After hearing that horrible rumour about Gamestation destroying most of their retro stock to make more room for modern games, you may need some cheering up, so here's my crack at it: while you won't be able to buy Dreamcast games in any UK chains anymore (excluding the odd second hand shop you may be lucky enough to live close to), Dreamcast games seem to keep invading the current generation of consoles.
Most recently we've had REZ HD and Ikaruga on Xbox Live Arcade, giving HD gamers the chance to play two of the greatest shooters the Dreamcast ever conceived, and news has been released that Namco plan to release the original Dreamcast Soul Calibur on Live Arcade in anticipation for the upcoming forth installment. Have they really made that many already? It only feels like yesterday that Soul Calibur was rocking my world. Oh wait, that because it was, because it's still arguably the best in the series, and playing it on a 32" TV with a VGA cable is still an absolute wonder to look at, despite not being in HD.
On just about every system most recently we were treated to Sega Superstar Tennis, a Virtua Tennis spin off that salutes Sega's history of great characters (and Shadow), particularly the Dreamcast era that gets a huge representation in it with the inclusion of characters and locations from Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, House of the Dead and Samba De Amigo.The game is great fun and already quite cheap to buy if you haven't already. The games developer Sumo Digital seems to know why we love Sega more than Sega itself.
Speaking of Samba De Amigo, the upcoming Wii version of the game was shown off at a recent Nintendo event, along with some wonderful looking screenshots (but sadly no footage yet) and impressions that were mostly positive (except some complaints from people who can't play the game properly). It is looking beautiful and gives you the option to play the game with two remotes instead of a remote and a nunchuck, the first game to even do this on the Wii so far. While there is nothing quite like shaking two big plastic maracas that rattle, this new game will finally give this much over looked classic a second chance and this time it has the potential to be BIG.
Even the handhelds are not safe from the Dreamcast invasion, with a DS sequel to a personal favorite of mine, Bangai-O, on it's way to the DS, and the PSP getting ports of Crazy Taxi and Power Stone.
These alongside Sega Bass Fishing, House of the Dead 2 + 3 Return, Trigger Heart Exelica on Xbox Live and the Milestone Shooting Collection (Chaos Field, Radilgy and Karous) on the Japanese Import Wii, show that the Dreamcast's amazing library of games is spreading across all formats even today, years after the console stopped production. Be happy in the knowledge that those that never played the Dreamcast are only just now catching up with it's greatness, and that we were years ahead of them. =)
Nice, huh? According to the developer (I think this is not really a project by NG:DEV.TEAM, but a side-project from some of its members) DUX will be released as soon as June/July with a price of about 20 euros.
"After the blast I had while playing Zero Gunner, I couldn't wait to try out its sequel, now on a real console instead of an emulator, so I popped the game in, turned on the Dreamcast, and...well, I liked some things but there's also some stuff that I really hate, so in the end I guess I have mixed feelings about this one.
Back in May last year, I introduced a website called 'Unseen 64,' a cool little place where they post pictures and gameplay details of games that either never saw the light of day, or were changed radically before being released. For some reason hidden deep within the cavernous emptiness of my pre-fabricated heart, details of beta versions and unreleased games captivate me with some kind of morbid fascination, and as such I often check the hallowed pages of Unseen 64 to see if they've added any new Dreamcast screens. And guess what?
Capcom – undoubtedly one of the Dreamcast’s staunchest allies – brought some superb games to the swirl-shaped table. You only have to look at stuff like the Marvel Vs Capcom fighters, Resident Evil Code Veronica and Power Stone to see that when it came to the DC, they had their fingers on the pulse. It is for this reason alone that I decry Capcom releases like Dino Crisis. Why? Three little words for ya: Shitty PlayStation Port. 
Look! A floating, rotating box! Wonder what's inside...
On the plus side, Regina's quite fit. Wonder if she's a natural red head.
However, as you’ve no doubt gathered, I’m not Dino Crisis’s biggest fan. On the 32-bit consoles it’s probably par for the course, but not on a console that has stuff like Shunmue, Nomad Soul, Code Veronica, Headhunter or even Carrier knocking about. If you want a decent adventure game, go and seek out one of those badboys. If you want a by the numbers Resident Evil clone with a shit, cliché-ridden story, poo graphics (it’s even got that weird texture-warping thing going on that most PSX games have), and acting straight out of the Barry Burton Academy of Drama and Dance then by all means have a crack at Dino Crisis.
I first heard of this game while browsing through Segagaga Domain's Dreamcast write ups. Always a great place to get info on Japanese Sega releases, that. Described as a simple but clever puzzle game, I was intrigued as I do love me a good puzzle game.
Graphics wise the characters are very blocky crude models, much like those seen in Sengoku Turb, only in this case we're talking about a small team of student programmers and not the company that produced the Dreamcast's graphics chip. It makes up for the lack of any technical prowess with a very charming art style, including a beautiful colour scheme and characters you will find yourself warming up to, despite how simplistic they are. Even the instruction manual is full of cute child-like drawings of the characters. This charm comes across in the story as well, which I found a translation of at Gamefaqs...
But getting the king into the exit is not all. You also have to make sure all the walls on the stage are linked to the red wall when the level is over, so the Golem can knock them all over in one push. This is where things can get complicated as you need to adjust the walls to move the king towards the goal and link them all together once he is heading in the right path.
There are about 100 or so levels in total with cut scenes inbetween every 10 or so of them. Once you have conqured all of those however the game is not over. Considering what a low budget, small staffed game this was, Caramelpot sure did utilize a lot of the Dreamcast's features. There's also a two player battle mode (which I have yet to try out) but the real life expansion for this game is the stage creator, which gives you free realm to produce a level using any of the games elements and save it to your VMU, as many as you like as far as I can tell. What's more, there is a link to caramelpot's website on the disc where you could download new stages and upload your own for others to play. It's a shame the website has long since vanished as i would have loved to try out some of the user created stages.