A Space Channel Remake? Probably not...Or Maybe yes!!! *Edit*
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/interview-mizug.html
Tetsuya Mizuguchi was talking about Rez HD and he was asked about Space Channel 5.
"(Laughter.) If I had a reason to remake Space Channel 5 on the new platforms, I will do that."
hmm...
Ok. It would be interesting to see a space reporter dance in HD.
There you have a reason. Get to the remaking...
But really. I dunno. I haven't finished the ORIGINAL Space Channel 5 yet. AND I got the PS2 remake.
A remake would be cool though...
UPDATE:
Sega Nerds just reported there IS going to be a remake on the Wii.
Gagaman is batting about 100 right now for his Wii-remake predictions. Give him a hand everyone!
http://www.seganerds.com/2008/01/24/space-channel-50-coming-to-wii/
They got this info from the Magic Box
Well, hopefully Tetsuya Mizuguchi will be involved somehow. From what I have read he did an awesome job of remaking Rez.
And hopefully we will see more girls cosplay as Ulala...
What The F**k???
In the second of a series of videos requested by DCJY correspondents, it is with a massive degree of trepidation that I post the above video... I'll do it, because long term commentor and Planet Dreamcast forum chum, Nick944 has requested it. And I'll take whatever (inevitable) flack comes my way for doing so.
What relevence does this have to the DCJY then? Well apparently this is the video journal of two guys who are producing a Dreamcast Homebrew title called (possibly) Chaos Rift... (Well that's what the developers website is called...) From what I can gather it's an RPG featuring... erm a crudely drawn massive knob, and an even cruder representation, of a ladies... erm... "Lady Garden"...
Apart from being a rather poorly made video, with bad sound, it is also, dare I say it rather tedious... And this is just one snippet of a vast catalogue of diary-type videos on Youtube, based on enlightening us all on what it takes to develop a homebrew title. Now I know some of you tech-types might marvel at the ins and outs of 'coding' and 'sprites' and the like, but I would rather pour red hot salt in my eyes, and wash it out with rancid horse piss, than watch any more of these two chickless dweebs, showing off their homebrew adventures.
So there you have it! my genuine apologies to my friend Nick for not sharing his enthusiasm about this project, for I will NEVER, EVER play this game even if Sega announce they are launching The Dreamcast 2 bundled with the title!
Dreamcast Attention Hotting Up...
For those of us who love the Dreamcast Junkyard, Sega's final console never died. But for those gamers in the mainstream, the Dreamcast was written off as a failure, when Sony's PS2 outstripped it in sales and became the dominant console of it's generation.
However, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in our beloved console of late, largely due to it's most comparable current gen system, the Wii. Why comparable? Well, a quick scroll down these very pages will reveal the Gagaman(n)'s most recent post about how the Wii's motion sensor controls were actually pioneered on the Dreamcast, even though Nintendo are loathe to admit it. This post simply serves to show some video of, and links to, the topics Gagaman(n) has already so eloquently flagged up...
Sega are currently referencing some of it's finest Dreamcast games in new releases or actual straight ports of it's back catalogue. Take Sega Superstar Tennis, running on the Virtua Tennis engine, Dreamcast favourites Ulala (from Space Channel 5) Beat (from Jet Set Radio) and Amigo (from Samba De Amigo) will all be playable characters within the game. Lovely! Look at the intro scene for the game in the video above and weep tears of joy.
But Amigo's star continues to rise with the inevitable re-release of Samba De Amigo for the Wii... As suggested some time ago by DCJY's G-Man, this was a no brainer for the Wii, with the Nunchuck and the Wiimote replacing the maracas. Official Nintendo Magazine had the bloody cheek to gush recently (and I quote...) "It's as if this game was made for the Wii!" Deluded fools! Nintendo have no plans to release maraca peripherals either! BAH!
Oh and by the way, did you receive any royalties for this Gagaman(n)? You bloody should have!
Then there's the Wii release of Sega Bass Fishing. According to the most excellent Sega Nerds blog:
"The game will feature four modes - arcade, tournament practice and nature trip; 15 stages, seven of which are brand new with four from the arcade and Dreamcast versions; and finally, you’ll be hunting down four different types of bass - Florida Large Mouth, Red Eye, Small Mouth and Northern Spike Large Mouth." Fishtastic!
Then for all those Wii Zapper fanatics we see the release of House Of The Dead 2 for the Wii with the imaginatively titled "House Of The Dead 2 & 3 Return" (finally I mention something Gagaman(n) hasn't already!) I've got a couple of copies of the original which I still play regularly... I've never completed the game, maybe I'll have more luck with the Wii version!
Apart from recycling my good friend's posts and (hopefully providing you all with some nice video and links) my point is this... The Dreamcast lives on... And who knows? Maybe some of the Wii generation will be inspired to grab themselves a Dreamcast themselves, to see where all these classics came from and experience some of the 200+ other games that graced the little white box... Any publicity for Sega's finest creation must be good!
Now! What if I were to tell you that Sega were (finally) showing some love for the Dreamcast, after cruelly stopping GD-Rom production, closing down the PSO servers and withdrawing technical support... Well according to Sega Nerds, Sega want to make Border Down an official 2008 Dreamcast release! Read on...
"Earlier today we reported that the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis isn’t quite dead yet all these years later a new game will release on our beloved old friend console. Well I’m happy to report that Sega doesn’t think the Dreamcast is dead yet either!
That’s right, Sega have decided that they want to rerelease Border Down on the Dreamcast, The game which is a Shmup (shoot em up) developed by G-rev was originally released on the Sega NAOMI Arcade board and later ported to the Dreamcast.
It appears the game will be available on the Dreamcasts GD-Rom disks and I assume will come in a DVD style case. It will probably be available from Sega Direct and other Japanese Import websites.
The game will be available from January 17th, 2008. At the price of 7,140 yen."
Big thanks to Sega Nerds and The Gagaman(n) for all the information that I so shamelessly plagiarised in this post!
Counterstrike on Dreamcast??? WHAT!?!?!!?!??!
http://www.dcfan.net.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=689
So it's single player with Counterstrike weapons and bots. I assume that multiplayer would be almost impossible. Still pretty cool. I have played single player Half Life mods with Counterstrike weapons before and they were fun.
This is actually more of a technological step for the Dreamcast than anything else.
If any Dreamcast or Half Life coders are out there listening please considering making this playable on the Dreamcast:
http://manke.planethalflife.gamespy.com/theyhunger.htm
They Hunger. The sweetest single player mod for Half Life EVER. It would be AWESOME to play this on the Dreamcast!
Or as a close second:
http://hosted.planethalflife.gamespy.com/heartofevil/default.asp
If either of these mods was playable on the Dreamcast I would be able to die a happy death.
They both feature zombies.
The future of the Dreamcast looks pretty good if people can get more Half Life mods to work on it.
Furthermore...
Anyone seen Eragon? You know, that shit Lord of the Rings wannabe? I have – and it’s poo. Malkovich – you know where the door is. Anyway, Eragon and Dragon Riders could quite easily been separated at birth. I realize that they’re both based on books by totally different authors before some green-toothed librarian comes on here to engage in some pathetic argument, but the fact remains. But back to Dragon Riders. You play a titular Dragon Rider who lives in a magical noddy-land type place called – you guessed it! – Pern. The world is under threat from some enigmatic evil thing called Thread and it’s down to you, with the help of your dragon, t’ save t’ world, laddy. Quite how you will achieve this by wondering around sparsely populated Kokiri Village knock-offs is unclear, but that’s the aim anyhow. Dragon Riders is essentially your bog standard westernized RPG. You build up stats for your character; you get different outfits; you engage in very poorly done hand to hand combat; you go on sub-quests that involve finding things for lazy NPCs. For me though, the biggest disappointment in Dragon Riders is that YOU DON’T GET TO RIDE ON A DRAGON!
Iron Aces
Another plane based shoot ‘em up for the Dreamcast, Iron Aces differs from the rest of the pack (Aerowings 2, Deadly Skies, Incoming et al) in that it’s set during WWII. Sort of. You see, even though at its heart it is for all intents and purposes a game set during the height of the Second World War, all of the theatres are totally fictitious. Therefore, instead of fighting the Hun over the English Channel or the fields of Southern England, you shoot down Messerschmitts and attack enemy naval convoys around a made-up archipelago consisting of bizarrely named islands that are meant to represent real countries.
Cell shade overload alert! Coming from the same Infogrammes/Warner Bros stable as Wacky Races, Looney Tunes Space Race is another cell shaded racer that – dare I say it – features even better graphics! Seriously, at times you could be forgiven for thinking you were playing an actual cartoon. LTSR differs from Wacky Races in that eschews the familiar hub style setup in favour of a more traditional menu-driven system. You win races, you get tokens. Tokens are then used to ‘buy’ other cool things like challenge races or view gallery items like character models etc. What sets LTSR apart though, is that it a genuinely funny game. The voice samples are superb, and the humour is very clever – even though it is at its core a kiddies game.
Bust A Move 4
Fire different coloured balls up the screen. Get 3 together and they pop. If your screen fills up, it’s “GAME OVER MAN!” Cough. It’s a very simple game, with very simple graphics, but it still kicks 28 tonnes of ASS in multiplayer. Not the game to rival Chu Chu Rocket (what can?), but top fun nonetheless. The single player ‘story’ is unnecessary, as are the vomit-inducingly twee characters (please God, no more vomit), but Bust A Move 4 is a pleasant little puzzle game. And I don’t think there’s much point putting anything else. So I won’t. 6/10
Oh to be a police sniper. The fame, the money, the women. Well now you can have it all! That’s right – just whack a copy of Silent Scope into your Dreamcast, and your life will be transformed! No longer will you have ‘kick me’ sellotaped to your back; or have to give the school bully your dinner money! No – you can pop a cap in his fat face from seven miles away! Well, that’s what it says in the manual anyway. Silent Scope, then. Have you seen that cool-as-fuck looking arcade machine with the big rifle and scope on it? That’s Silent Scope, that is! And here’s the Dreamcast conversion – in all it’s arcade perfect glory. It would’ve been better if they’d packaged a sniper rifle peripheral with it, but I’m pretty certain – no I AM certain – it’d never work. Basically, it’s an on-rails shoot ‘em up, but instead of using a lightgun (which could’ve worked, maybe), you have a little curser that you move around. Press the button and it zooms in, sniper style. Leaving you free to fill any passing terrorist or ne’er do well with hot lead. It’s quite good fun in small blasts, but the longevity is tainted by the fact that it’s just an arcade game. That you’re only meant to play for about 5 minutes in a bowling alley whilst you wait for your lane to free up. And at that it excels, but Silent Scope is about as deep as a supermodel’s belly button, so you’ll get bored very quickly. Like I did. And go and make a cup of tea, or a Cuppa Soup depending on your preference. 5/10
On a different note, I saw a film called Kung Fu Hustle yesterday. If you haven’t seen it, go now and get it. They’ve got it in Tesco for 3 quid. It’s a ridiculous martial arts ‘comedy’ (that isn’t remotely funny), but the fight scenes are amazing. Nothing to do with the Dreamcast, I know – but just thought I’d mention it.
Vomitus!
tions to my bulging – nay burgeoning - Dreamcast catalogue of games…
And that’s where this story starts. Ebay. I remember a time when I simply refused to buy anything off ebay because of the postage costs sellers forced upon me. £3.50 to send a game in the post is not unreasonable. IT’S FUCKING SCANDALOUS. Ahem. However, desperate times call for desperate measures. So I’ve swallowed my ‘pride,’ bitten the proverbial bullet, and coughed up a lung to pay these ‘postage costs.’ And what has this behavior merited? Games galore, my friends, GAMES FUCKING GALORE!
Has anyone ever even heard of this? I hadn’t until I bought it. For twenty quid. Most I’ve ever paid for a DC game I think. I’m pretty sure that this was one of the Dreamcast’s final releases, and you can tell. Graphically, it’s quite superb – think Rayman 2 but with a more mature feel. But I’m jumping the gun. You play as a young orphan dude called Cyprien who must venture into a strange world called Undabed and kill stuff. Not original, no – but quite unique on the DC. Think Mario 64 with nicer, darker visuals and swearing – yes, swearing!, and that’s Evil Twin. Quality. 8/10
Buggy Heat
Snow Surfers
Q. Can I be bothered looking for decent pics of Snow Surfers?
A. No.
Tomb Raider: Chronicles
Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear
Exhibition Of Speed
Ducati World
Fighting Vipers 2
Cleaning Up Vomit (AM R&D #2)
An N64 emulator for the Dreamcast? Surely not!
It really does seem too good to be true, doesn't it? Dcemu.co.uk has all the technical details:
Daedalus for Dreamcast
I have ported two versions of Daedalus to the Dreamcast, mainly to see how the performance would be. Both versions only use the interpreter core of emulator and neither version has support for sound or saving. Both speed and graphics are far from being playable, and I can’t imagine that a N64 emulator can ever run at 25+ FPS on the Dreamcast. This emulator is not completely without optimization, the graphics plug-in for example uses the TA directly to get the maximum speed. However, the CPU core is completely free of optimizations and there is no DynaRec available. It would be a lot of work to implement a working DynaRec core for the Dreamcast and there would be only little RAM left to be used for the DynaRec.
Compiling the emulator
I used gcc 3.4.6 and KOS 1.3.0 for compiling the emulator. The Non-PSP-Version has a makefile made by me (which is not very good) and for the PSP-Version a modified version of the original makefile is used. There are no project files for an IDE included.
Using the emulator
Both emulators are available as scrambled 1st_read.bin and DaedalusDC.elf file. The scrambled file is intended to be burned to a disc (not tested) and the DaedalusDC.elf file can be used with dc-tool and a serial programmer cable. There is no real user interface; the emulator only scans the root directory of the inserted disc. The ROM filenames should have no spaces in them and I recommend using short filenames for the ROMs.
Non-PSP-Version
This is the faster of both versions, but has more limitations. This version only supports ROMs that match into the RAM of the Dreamcast. There are 16 MB RAM available on the Dreamcast. 4 MB are used for storing the N64 RAM. Up to 8 MB are used to store the N64 ROM and the remaining RAM is used for the emulator. The only game that goes ingame with this version seems to be Super Mario 64.
PSP-Version R8
This version gets rid of the 8 MB ROM limitation, but therefore it is even slower than the older version. There are some games that go ingame (Mariokart, Zelda – Ocarina of Time, Rugrats in Paris – The Movie), but there are a lot of graphic glitches. In Zelda – Ocarina of Time for example you only see parts of the GUI ingame after ages of loading.
Further Development
Because I’m sure that this emulator will never run playable, I won’t continue the development. This was just a test for me to see, how the SH4 would perform emulating the N64. I ported the emulator nearly one year ago (as you can see from the PSP-Version R8, currently there is PSP-Version R13 out) and since then I have not worked on this port. Some days ago I found my video that I have captured after the development and thought I could upload it on Youtube. I did not think that someone would be interested in perhaps the slowest emulator on earth.
Did you catch any of that? Nope, me neither! It's still pretty darn impressive, and who knows, maybe someone out there with the knowhow could get this running even better! Very exciting times, indeed, my friends.
Dark Falz's last stand online. Dreamcast PSO
This is during the last days of the official Sega European Servers.
While you can not longer play the game online "officially" anymore, there are other methods that can be used. I am still playing the game offline myself. It's too bad that they never setup a multiplayer offline option. (One of the gamecube releases did have some kind of split screen option)
It's a bit of a spoiler because it shows the end boss. Still pretty cool. You can tell that some people still enjoyed playing the game in 2007 and it's a shame that the plug had to be pulled.
Powerstone: A Video Review!
The only reason I'm posting this is 'cos the God-like entity that is NebachadnezzaR told me to do so! 'Nuff said!
Top Dreamcast Moments of 2007
But that's all right because 2007 was a year stuffed with awesome Dreamcast occurrences!
Join me, will you, as I blog about some of my personal favorites...
New Dreamcast games!
Karous, Trigger Heart Exelica and Last Hope. Remember these? What a great year for classic shumps!
Proving once again that the Dreamcast IS the undead console, new games were announced for 2008 as well. This was AFTER the GD-Rom was discontinued!
Redspotgames doesn't want to leave the Dreamcast.
Interview.
Website.
They are coming out with Dalforce and Wind And Water Puzzle Battle this year!
And lets not forget about Dynamite Dreams!
4 players with VMU mode!
http://alicedreams.com/NewsANG.htm
And of course we cannot forget the many homebrew releases and ports from the Dreamcast Evolution site!
http://www.dcevolution.net/
My Favorite?
http://www.dcevolution.net/game_bass.php
Beneath a Steel Sky! If you have a Dreamcast mouse and keyboard you will be all set!
Nick Perry gets a new copy of Resident Evil 2 for the Dreamcast
Just a random youtube video. But I liked it and the Resident Evil 2 Dreamcast version is the best one out there!
The Dreamcast 2 rumour.
Is it possible to crush the Dreams of Sega fans anymore? Yes, yes it is.
Getting a copy of Powerstone 2!
Ok, this was just a personal thing. I have wanted a copy of this game for a long time. I was so lucky to get this game and many other Dreamcast gems in 2007. I made the effort to rearrange my collection this year as well so I got to get some new pics up.
And my personal favorite for 2007?
The Dreamcast guitar.
I don't know why this masterpiece (originally blogged here by Gagaman(n)) caught my attention but it did. Perhaps it's just a nice symbol of how cool the Dreamcast and the Dreamcast community is.
Thank you Flooky from Destructoid.
Here is hoping for an awesome 2008.