Dreamcast Games to Play on Halloween.

Well, I have been forced into the Halloween spirit this year as my place of work seems to require it.

The theme is "Batman" this year so I managed to grab a burlap sack from a local coffee shop and I am making into a "Scarecrow Mask" for Halloween. It's coming out quite nice.

Here are a few games to play during Halloween.

The new Beats of Rag Mod based on the Splatterhouse series.


I have not played it yet. I am assuming you go around and kill evil stuff in a messy manner (If they stay true to the source material that is...)

Here is the DCEmu article and the LavaLit article for future reference.

http://dreamcast.dcemu.co.uk/splatterhouse-trilogy-openbor-mod-168907.html

http://www.lavalit.com/index.php?topic=2056.0


The original RE series is a no brainer when it comes to horror themed games.

RE Code Veronica was the first RE game to do away with 2D backgrounds and was the first RE game to debut on a non-Sony console.

I find that the Dreamcast controller is perfect for survival horror games and thus I enjoy playing this game on the Dreamcast rather than the PS2 or Gamecube.

Find a copy of this lovely gem and proceed to have a good time running away from zombies and biological freaks for awhile.


Bats are really annoying. Hold up your lighter to get rid of them. I played through this game once before I learned that trick.


Illbleed is like starring in a B-Horror movie.

Instead of running away from enemies the gameplay drives you to walk slowly through each level looking for traps and steak dinners to gorge yourself on.

It's fun to play a game that doesn't really take itself too seriously but still manages to be very creepy and bloody at times.

Also: Evil Undead Sonic.


And of course the ultimate Halloween party game.


"Suffer like G did?"
"No! Don't Come!"

We have all heard these lines before and we all love them.

You know what I really wanted to do an in depth article about why this game is so fun but come on.

Zombies with Chainsaws people...

...You can't get more Halloween than that.
Happy Halloween Everyone!

Atari Punk Console, Housed Inside a Dreamcast.

What is an "Atari Punk Console" you ask?

Wikipedia.

(NOTE do not watch this video if you have epilepsy or are sensitive to flashing lights).



Wow.

It's kinda a shame everyone was giving this guy crap for using a Dreamcast. I mean that particular Dreamcast had died already. Why not use the parts for a project like this?

My favorite part is that he installed Furby eyes in the middle control ports.

More photos of this project.

New Sonic Adventure 2 character revealed

It's no secret that by the time Sonic Adventure 2 was released, Sega had pretty much abandoned all hope of a victory in the war against the PS2. However, this was no excuse for clearly sacking the in-house proof reader:

Rouge the Bat. Worse than all of the Chaotix characters combined

What the fuck is an echnida? And all this time I thought Knuckles was an echidna...

HD-Cast

Just a few days ago, I was a wreck. A gibbering, sweating, puss-filled mess. And for once, it wasn't down to smashing in too many cans of Special Brew down the park and shouting at pigeons. No, it was down to the state of my eyes and contrary to what some may say, It had nothing to do with the Gok Wan-style goggles the cretin at Specsavers duped me into buying (left).

You see, several months ago I invested in a quite lovely Argos own brand HD-ready LCD telly. And you know what? It's sublime. Not only can I watch infinite Freeview repeats of Top Gear and Montel Williams in pupil-eroding clarity, but I can also romp through the Galaxy as Commander Shepherd in Mass Effect in the truly magnificent Xbox 360 hi-def. There was a problem though. Playing a Dreamcast on my new telly was something of a nightmare simply because the SCART signal gave such a crappy picture.

Take this guy:


and rub this into his eyes/hands:


And you have some idea of what I had to contend with when I wanted to play on my DC.

NOT SO ANYMORE, PEEPS! After moaning about this subject in my last post, the honourable Gagaman pointed me here. Behold the majesty of Racketboy.com! A magical place that offers DC VGA cables for under twenty quid - INCLUDING postage! All the way from The New World!


I seem to remember The Gagaman preaching about his experiences with a VGA cable some time in the distant past, but it's taken till now for me to have a reason to actually buy one, and boy, am I glad I did. Plugging the DC into a VGA compatible display opens up a whole new world of visual delight - everything becomes super-sharp and the Awesome Levels(TM) go through the roof! Granted, there are a few games that don't support this (mile) high-res display mode (most disappointingly is Hydro Thunder), but you have to take the rough with the smooth, I suppose.


Click here for a game compatibility list.

So, to reiterate, the crux of the matter is this: if you own a Dreamcast and a PC - which I'm guessing you do if you're reading this, click here. Get your debit card out and buy a goddamn cable! You'll be glad you did.

One thing I really must point out though, is that the VGA cable's connection is a 'female.' If your monitor also has a female connector, you'll need to invest in a male to male VGA adapter, like I did.

Dreamcast: The Novel

You know, it's amazing the amount of bollocks you can dig up on the net if you look hard enough. And by 'hard enough,' I mean trawling Amazon for cheapo Dreamcast games. During this morning's epic journey, I happened across this little gem:

"Wow!" I thought - someone's written a hard hitting novel documenting the rise and meteoric fall of our favourite dead console! Just think - the intrigue! the espionage! the blood, sex and tears played out against a backdrop of hardcore business meetings and mass redundancies! DREAMCAST - A NOVEL!!!*

Alas, upon reading the actual synopsis...

"What really goes on behind the scenes in the mysterious world of community theatre? Dreamcast is a look at the most underpaid volunteers on the planet, those who serve the muse of live theatre in the small towns and suburbs of America."

...I came to the conclusion that it actually sounds like a load of shite.

Shame.

* Once again, I apologise for wanton over-use of apostrophies.

A Gentle Reminder: Dux and Wind and Water Puzzle Battles

For everyone who has been living without Internet access...(you know, like me). The rest of you might be sick of hearing about these games but come on!

Wind and Water.It's a fast paced puzzle game!
http://www.wind-water.net/
http://www.redspotgames.com/shop/

Dux.
It's an old school shooter!
http://www.hucast.net/
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-17-71-4-74-1uf-49-en.html

This is a very exciting time for the Dreamcast scene. Possible success for these titles may help usher in a new wave of Dreamcast Independent releases from smaller companies.

Also bear in mind that similar games with limited releases became quite the collectors items once the original run ran dry. So yeah. If you are considering spending some cash on a "current gen" game maybe you should consider investing your cash in one of these instead. It's gonna cost you about the same amount of money.

(And don't forget they still have some copies of Last Hope left at Red Spot Games. I know I am gonna grab one!)

"Dream Trooper" Storm Trooper Head Portable Dreamcast.

I am sure you have all seen this before.

Better late than never.

http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?t=26128

He made this thing out of an old Lazer Doodle! Amazing! All it's lacking is the back cover.

Recession? What you talkin' bout, Willis?

'Sup. Seeing as it's been about 9 millenia since I last ejaculated anything of note onto these hallowed pages, I thought it was about time I got back into the swing of things with a post of sorts. I have however, in my absence, been a regular visitor to the 'Yard and have been quite entertained by the exploits of the rest of the team over the past few weeks and months. Kudos where it's due.

So what's been happening then? Well, there's this 'credit crunch' thing going on at the moment. To be quite honest, if it wasn't for BBC News presenters constantly banging on in their painfully middle class accents about the ECONOMIC CRISIS gripping the ENTIRE MEGAVERSE, I'd be none the wiser to it's apparent existence. How so? Simple: I, like many other proletariat, live within my means, don't go fox hunting and don't take my obese kids to boarding school in a Range Rover. So, you see - for the normal person, everything is as it ever was: expensive. For the rich...well: WELCOME TO OUR WORLD, BITCHES! YEEHAW!!!

There is a point to my rambling on about this Bantha shit though - the price of Netto beans may have gone up by a solar system-shattering 1.5% in the last month (which has hit me hard, regardless of the contents of the last paragraph); but the meagre price of a Dreamcast game has remained constant, even in the light of Wall Street crumbling to the ground and the FTSE melting down into the sub-components of a Pot Noodle.

Want evidence, my Lord? Then wrap your festering eye sockets around this little lot:

Virtua Atlete 2K - eBay price: A QUID!

Never been much of a fan of athletics games. They're always the same - basically you have to either tap buttons so fast that your fingers seize like a Montego engine in winter; or you have to rotate the analogue stick until it buries itself into your palm and draws blood (something that actually happened to a friend of mine). Virtua Athlete 2K is no different. It's basically an unofficial take on the Olympics and involves you participating in a number of events such as running, running and jumping, throwing stuff and, well not much else.

The number of events is pretty small and there's no swimming, fencing or shooting involved. Granted, those aren't really athletics per se but with such a crappy roster of events (7, with a few unlockable ones) you'd have thought Sega would involve them just for the sake of longevity. Graphically, Athlete is fairly good looking. It's not Anna Faris good looking, but it's decent enough. For a quid, I'm not going to berate Virtua Athlete 2K too much but if I'd paid 40 notes for this back in the day I probably would've taken it back to the shop and projectile vomited bile into the face of the twat who allowed me to purchase it.

Resident Evil 2 - eBay price: £2.40

I recently ventured into a branch of Gamestation and was astounded to find that they had a handful of Dreamcast games hidden in one of those glass cabinets that they unusually preserve for the display of broken and/or stolen iPods. One of those games was Resident Evil 2, and they were asking £24.99 for it. TWENTY FIVE QUID! As much as I love the DC, there's not a chance in hell that I would even entertain the notion of paying that much for ANY DC title. Not even a white label disc that contained fully working versions of Picassio, Take the Bullet and Scud Race. Actually, I probably would pay 25 nicker for that, but Resi 2? Pfft.

But why was it so expensive? Is the DC version that much of an improvement over the original PSX game that it warrants such an incredible price point? The answer is a resounding no. It's basically the same game, albeit with higher resolution backgrounds and a new random item mode, plus a few extra bonus modes that were only available in the original after you'd completed the game. Everyone and their mum has played Resi 2 before so there's not much point in me going into the story in any great depth, but it's basically a survival horror set in Raccoon City, you can play as either Leon or Claire and you've got to shoot zombies...yada yada yada. On the plus side, the VM helpfully lets you know how much health you've got left...but this feature is made redundant if you're using one of those cheapo-nasty third party VMs with no screen. To put it bluntly, if you've ever sampled any version of Resi 2 before (excluding the pathetic Game.com version), you've played the DC version. But if you ain't - it's a classic; and at £2.40 it was a steal, too.

Razor Freestyle Scooter - eBay price: yep, another quid!

I seem to recall that at the very end of my last post I promised a review of Razor Freestyle Scooter. It's taken until now to do it because I simply couldn't be bothered. But here it is! Another entrant into the "I only paid a pound for it" Hall of Fame (Shame?), Razor is a sort of Tony Hawk style game, only with the 'coolness' associated with sk8r bois/MTV rejects ripped out and replaced with those hideous little folding scooter things that feral youths just love to ride along pavements up and down the country. They're also extremely useful as getaway vehicles after mugging old women for their pension money...erm...apparently. Cough. But back to Razor Freestyle Scooter.


Like I said, it's a Tony Hawk clone with frankly superb graphics...but only 3 - yes THREE! - stages. Oh, and a rather strange back story that involves a robotic paedophile who steals kids and takes them to his magic castle for a thorough seeing to (I would imagine). Dodgy storylines aside, Razor is a fairly enjoyable game for the time it lasts - all there is to it is riding your scooter around the various (3) stages doing tricks and collecting scooter wheels. It's clearly another one of those infamous kiddie games and it's predictably easy peasy lemon (muthafuckin') squeezy, but if you have a four-year-old who loves scooters AND has a penchant for rare Dreamcast games...by all means make Razor Freestyle Scooter your next purchase.

Moving away from my most recent purchases, I was toying with the idea of finally taking the plunge and buying a Dreamcast VGA cable. Y'see, I bought a fucking amazing HDTV a few months back and whilst it displays my Xbox 360 games in glorious 1080i HD-O-Vision(TM), when I plug my faithful ol' DC into it via SCART, it looks like someone has smeared a tub of beef dripping across the screen. I then, in my infinate wisdom, went and got an S-VHS cable off Amazon...only to find that it doesn't FUCKING work. So basically what I'm saying is: Can anyone out there in the ether tell me where to get a reasonably priced VGA box/cable from? Cheers, me dears.

Finally, I'd just like to congratulate Sega on their awesome homage to all things Dreamcast: Sega Superstars Tennis. Got it on 360 yesterday for a tenner...and it's simply brilliant.

That is all.

Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles Pre-orders are open!

I just received an e-mail from the guys at Yuan Works that Pre-ordering is now open for their indie Dreamcast release Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles. It'll be released at the end of October, and costs about £21/$40. There's still a chance to buy a custom sprite if you haven't alreday, but get a move on if you want one of those! You can pre-order it from the RedSpotGames shop, the publishers of this game as well as last year's shump Last Hope. If you enjoy puzzle games like Panel De Pon (otherwise known as Tetris Attack) this is a must play, and the love and care that's gone into it's production shines through every pixel. Look out for a Rummage video review in November!