We Played the Unreleased Game "Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen" for Sega Dreamcast

What could've been. Cover created by Dreamcast Me That.

Developed by Arxel Tribe in the late 90s, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is a point-and-click adventure game that would be released for the PC in 1998. It turns out that the game was supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast a few years later, but ultimately ended up on the mammoth pile of unreleased titles which never saw the light of day on Sega’s console. And no, we’re not talking about The Ring: Terror's Realm, which unfortunately for us, did sneak its way into the console’s release library.

However, thanks to the ongoing preservation efforts of Comby Laurent from Sega Dreamcast Info, this previously unreleased title is now available to download and play via emulation or, even better, on a real Dreamcast with a real controller in your sweaty hands.

But before we get into how this title should’ve ended up on the Dreamcast sometime in the year 2000, let’s talk a little about the game itself.

I asked this chap what he thought about the Dreamcast.

Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is loosely based on Der Ring des Nibelungen; four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. Yes, that’s right, a game based on an opera. I’ve officially heard it all. Indeed, the game itself features music from various performances of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the legendary Georg Solti himself.

I had to Google Georg Solti as well, don’t worry. You’ll find out he’s a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor who’s won countless awards including a British CBE, a knighthood and a whopping 31 Grammy Awards. Bet you didn’t think you’d learn that on a Dreamcast blog, did you?

Even if you’re not an opera fan, you will absolutely know the Ride of the Valkyries score which was featured in Der Ring des Nibelungen. In fact, I’ll give you a moment to go and search for it on YouTube so you can have it playing in the background as you read the rest of this article; it’ll add to the overall experience.

Anyway, back to Der Ring des Nibelungen. The scale and scope of the story told in these works is so epic that I simply don’t have enough time to cover it all here. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. In the game, there are four characters which you assume control of. Alberich (a cruel and sadistic dwarf king), Loge (a fire spirit), Siegmund (the son of the god Wotan), and Brünnhilde (a Valkyrie warrior).

Some of the areas in the game are beautifully atmospheric.

There are loads of additional characters and even a family tree to help you make sense of it all. In fact, the story and puzzles in Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen are so complex that the PC release actually included an entire walkthrough in its own instruction manual! Arxel Tribe clearly had little faith that their playerbase would get their head around it all, either.

As I mentioned, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen did actually get a release on PC in 1998. Whilst it did enjoy significant commercial success -shifting an impressive 600,000 lifetime copies according to Arxel Tribe’s Guillaume de Fondaumière- the reviews were not so favourable. IGN described it as a “complete travesty when it comes to gameplay” on the way to awarding it a 2.7/10 score, whilst GameStop said it was “so utterly uninviting” in their 3.7/10 appraisal.

Magic frogs. For the diving helmet. Obviously.

News of a Dreamcast port in the UK media at the time was sparse, despite the fact that from what we can see now, most of the game was finished and not far away from being ready to rock. Whilst flicking through some issues of the UK’s Dreamcast Magazine, I did find a small news bite tucked away in the corner of issue four which read:

“News has broken on a forthcoming Dreamcast game from Success. The game is to be a port of the hit PC game Ring: The Legend of Nibelung, which is currently in the midst of conversion and should be with us sometime during 2000.”

No accompanying screenshot or half-page spread. It’s fair to say that this port was somewhat under the radar and so it’s unsurprising that many Dreamcast fans hadn’t heard of its existence before. IGN also reported that “the makers of Rainbow Cotton for the Dreamcast will be bringing The Ring of the Nibelungen to Japanese DC gamers. Currently, this game is listed on the Success web page as being set for release on the PC in Japan on October 29th of this year.” But again, no screenshots or noteworthy details.

The Dreamcast version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was seemingly lost forever at some point after this. Well, I say lost forever but what I actually mean is lost until the efforts of Laurent and his team managed to preserve the title for us all to enjoy.

A prototype version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was actually discovered and dumped a few years ago, but it was only a partial dump. Some of the three discs were missing meaning that the game could not be played in any logical order. But all was not lost. In a recent post, Laurent has managed to obtain dumps of all three discs and additionally some VMU save files which allow for each of the games’ chapters to be loaded and played.

Premier Eleven: A Closer Look at the Lost Atomiswave Football Game

Throughout history there are numerous examples of the story behind the creation of a particular piece of media being more interesting than the final product. Take for example, the 1996 movie The Island of Dr. Moreau. A movie which was based on the 1896 H. G. Wells novel of the same name and which teamed a star-studded cast (Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk) with a hotly tipped up-and-coming director (Richard Stanley). In what is now a notorious turn of events, the final movie turned out to be something of a box office bomb, but the story of what went on behind the cameras spawned such tall and bizarre tales that the production has become infamous amongst movie aficionados. If you’re not in the slightest bit familiar with what I’m blathering about, then I implore you to seek out the documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau and be amazed at just how wild movie making can become.

Poster for the 1996 movie. The on-set drama
eclipsed that of the 1977 rendition.

With this in mind then, let us turn our attention to something much more Dreamcast-centric: Dimps Corporation’s ‘lost’ Atomiswave football (soccer) title Premier Eleven. We’ve covered the storied history of Premier Eleven here at the Junkyard in past, indeed I almost transformed into the aforementioned Dr. Moreau myself while researching it - at one point even visiting an arcade where a cabinet had been trialled back in the early 2000s, hoping and praying that there may be some remnant of it still in situ. Spoiler: there wasn’t. If you’d like to know more than is healthy about my recalcitrant obsession with this previously lesser-spotted arcade kickabout, please do check out our previous articles on Premier Eleven here and here; and you can read about the history of the Atomiswave arcade system (and its fascinating link to the Dreamcast) here.

A photo of the Premier Eleven arcade cabinet installed
at Clarence Pier, Southsea (UK) - Credit: John Baseley.

The long and short of it though, is that Premier Eleven was a football game in development by Dimps Corporation, which was planned for release on Sammy’s Atomiswave arcade system. After some testing in a few select locations, release plans for the game were scrapped, cabinets were unceremoniously slung into the fires of Orodruin, and the few remaining copies of the original arcade board ended up in the hands of private collectors. 

When the Atomiswave library was ported to the Dreamcast back in 2020, it was truly a marvel to behold and many a Dreamcast enjoyer was - quite rightly - overjoyed to finally be given the opportunity to sample such delights as Faster Than Speed, KenJu, Dolphin Blue, Maximum Speed et al. Only, there was a small hole in the collection of games being unleashed onto the Dreamcast - the Atomiswave library was not complete. Several games were missing from the catalogue, mainly due to being unreleased back during the Atomiswave’s heyday, and among them was (you guessed it) Premier Eleven.

Original Premier Eleven promotional flyer.

Now (well, in June 2026), thanks to a Dreamcast-Talk forum user who goes by the monicker ‘dimps’ (I see what you did there, dimps) Premier Eleven has finally been dumped and ported to the Dreamcast. Not only that, but this dump apparently came direct - and with permission to release - from a private collector who had in their possession a genuine Premier Eleven PCB. Even better, is that dimps managed to delve into the game’s code and release versions of the ROM which increase the default game time from a paltry 4-minute game length to both 12-minute and 20-minute game lengths - something which may not sound like much, but actually turns Premier Eleven into so much more than it could ever have been if left in its default state.

A Premier Eleven board went up for sale for $15,000 back in 2022.

The mystique around Premier Eleven, and that it promised so much from the promotional materials released back in the early 2000s, is possibly what led me to obsess over it so much in the past. The Dreamcast’s stable of football (soccer) titles is somewhat lacking when it comes to quality, with releases such as Virtua Striker 2 Ver 2000.1 and UEFA Dream Soccer generally being regarded as the cream of the crop (and cream always rises to the top, right?); but with Premier Eleven’s release, we finally get a chance to experience what could have been another option for Dreamcast-owning football fans. Well, if the Atomiswave games had been officially ported. And Premier Eleven had been fully released. And the Dreamcast hadn't had its life support yanked in 2001. You get what I mean, don’t be pedantic.

So then, what do we actually get with Premier Eleven? Not a great deal in truth. The game was always intended as an arcade experience and as such if you’re expecting something like Pro Evolution Soccer then you’ll be disappointed. No, this is squarely in the Virtua Striker mould (and in some ways it has more in common with the Super Sidekicks games), but hold that thought about PES because there are some similarities to Konami’s title if you look beyond the somewhat basic gameplay and impressive visuals and animation. Firstly, remember that this was an unreleased game that was never intended to be played on a Dreamcast. For that reason, it can be forgiven for featuring only a single play mode: a sort of cut-down World Cup where you choose a team from the 32 international squads available and then enter the tournament at the last 16 stage. You pick a team, get randomly matched against an opponent in the tournament tree, and then it’s game on.

32 international teams are included.

You'll start every run through at the Round of 16.

He's got a foot like a traction engine.

Hitting the post from 25 yards.
As Ally McCoist would say: shenshashional!

There are no options, no other play modes. There are no player names (although there are likenesses) and there is no way to change the camera angle. There is no play-by-play commentary other than a rudimentary International Superstar Soccer Deluxe style announcement whenever the ball leaves the field of play for a throw in or a goal kick. You can choose your team’s formation from a choice of two…but that’s about as deep as the technicalities get. No subs, no messing with player positions…you can’t even pause the action once a game starts. No, this is a totally barebones arcade football experience. But you know what? Premier Eleven plays a bit of a blinder when it eventually clicks into place.

Panzer Dragoon Is Being Ported to the Sega Dreamcast! — First Level Available to Play

Artwork mockup by Frogbull.

When the Dreamcast was unleashed upon the masses, Sega seemed determined to create brand-new, never-before-seen experiences for adopters of the console. As a result, the system spawned a wealth of new franchises, with far fewer sequels to the staple titles of Sega's previous console - the Saturn - than you might expect. You could find NiGHTS in a capsule toy in Shenmue, but you couldn't actually play a game starring the genderless purple harlequin on the Dreamcast itself. Another example of this was Team Andromeda's dragon-riding rail shooter Panzer Dragoon. Akihiko Mukaiyama was quoted in an interview with Famitsu that the eventual sixth-generation return of the franchise - Panzer Dragoon Orta on the original Xbox - was originally slated for release on the Dreamcast, but the console "didn't meet [...] technical specifications". Oof.

Perhaps this is why Frogbull, the King of proving things once thought impossible possible, has been reverse-engineering the original Panzer Dragoon and porting it to Dreamcast. He's previously showcased proof-of-concepts demonstrating that Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty could have run on the Dreamcast, as well as Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy VII on the Saturn, and that's just a small selection of his work. While those projects were primarily created as proof-of-concepts, Frogbull does hope to port Panzer Dragoon to the Dreamcast in its entirety one day.

He showed off footage of Panzer Dragoon's first level (or "episode 1", as the game calls it) running on Dreamcast via his YouTube channel on Tuesday, and it's looking great. A far cry from the original Saturn visuals, Frogbull's port looks closer graphically to the 2006 Japanese-exclusive Sega Ages 2500 PlayStation 2 version of the game. There is some quite obvious slowdown in busier sections of the level, but I'm sure this is something Frogbull will be working to improve as this project continues. 

Frogbull has also made a cool video that compares his port to the original Saturn version, so check that out below.

At the moment, only the first level is ported and playable, with limited access to the version 0.1 build available through Frogbull's Patreon for those wanting to play it for themselves. This build is expected to be made publicly available at some point in the near future. Frogbull's long-term plan is to release more levels gradually, as and when he reverse-engineers them.

Are you excited for this port? Let us know in the comments below, or on our social media pages.

The NAOMI Games That Deserved Dreamcast Ports

Ask your average gamer with a passing interest in the Dreamcast to name their favourite titles for the system, and there is a good chance that you might hear answers like Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, or Resident Evil CODE:Veronica. The console certainly had a healthy crop of long-form, narrative-driven sagas like this which remain an enduring part of its identity to this day. However, it’s probably just as likely that the answers you’ll receive are replete with brash, high-tempo classics such as Crazy Taxi, Power Stone, or The House of the Dead 2. Titles in this vein, which were so obviously shaped by their arcade roots, also played a huge role in making the Dreamcast what it was – and some of them shifted big numbers too (OK, big numbers for the Dreamcast).

In retrospect, given what was just around the corner for video gaming, it is not uncommon to hear the opinion that Sega’s swansong console was overly reliant on arcade ports. If it were to serve evolving tastes, so the argument goes, perhaps it needed to have attracted more games that were divorced from the arcade scene. Considering the multitude of factors that coalesced to make the Dreamcast a commercial flop, it is impossible to say with any certainty whether this theory holds much weight. Personally, I suspect it may have the tiniest grain of truth to it. If so, then daydreaming about how the console’s release library could have been packed out with even more arcade titles is perhaps a little bit perverse, but this is the Dreamcast Junkyard after all, and pontificating on this type of nonsense is our jam.

The NAOMI-Dreamcast Connection

For the uninitiated, I should probably explain that, in the same year that Sega launched the Dreamcast to the home market (1998), they also launched the New Arcade Operation Machine Idea (NAOMI) system for the arcade market. And, barring a handful of differences which made the arcade system marginally superior, the two were practically twins. 

The front page of a NAOMI press release from 1998, with the Dreamcast swirl incorporated into the logo (later to be dropped in favour of clarity). Image courtesy of Sega Retro.

I am not at all technically minded, and plenty of other articles by highly knowledgeable authors have been written about the affinities between the two systems, so I won’t feign expertise and start talking about chips and memory. For now, it is sufficient to say that because of the similarities between the NAOMI and the Dreamcast, porting games from the former to the latter was a fairly simple affair. Naturally then, masses of NAOMI titles were brought over to the home market using this route - or were they?

Relying on the data assembled by the wonderful archivists of Sega Retro, by my count 159 titles were released for the NAOMI, either on ROM cartridge or GD-ROM, but only 60 of these made it over to our beloved Dreamcast. Sure, among those 60 there are many, many, stone cold classics, ranging from blockbuster hits like Crazy Taxi through to lower-profile titles that have garnered a cult following over the years, such as Ikaruga. As thankful as I am for ports like these, those numbers mean that 99 NAOMI games didn’t make the jump over to the Dreamcast, and indeed, many never left the arcade full-stop.

In certain instances, this is understandable. The Dreamcast had its fair share of bizarre accessories, but would anyone out there really have wanted to cram a StarHorse terminal into their living room? Probably not.

OK lads, back to mine for a few hours of StarHorse?

For other reasons, games like Dragon Treasure, where players sought out ‘medals’ in a thinly veiled gambling loop, were probably not well suited to the home market either. You can’t lose money to yourself after all. Yet there are plenty of other games that could have feasibly made it onto the Dreamcast, brightening up its library, bringing us hours of joy, and getting savaged by a grumpy and short-tempered reviewer in the Official Dreamcast Magazine. So, in no particular order, here are the NAOMI games that I feel should have been blessed with releases on the Dreamcast.

Monkey Ball

Landing in arcades with aplomb in July 2001, Monkey Ball had that upbeat, blue-skies aesthetic that Sega development teams of the era seem to have mastered. On the face of it, rolling a twee monkey character around maze-like platforms to collect bananas and reach an end goal is very simplistic, but the combination of platforming and puzzle elements proved to be a big hit, and the opportunity to master the controls and beat prior scores lent the game a degree of depth and replayability. 

Monkey Ball screenshot courtesy of the Video Games Museum.

Before the end of the year, the game was ported to the Gamecube as Super Monkey Ball - the first game Sega published on a Nintendo home console following their exit from the hardware market. To the delight of an ailing Sega, it was a commercial hit, spawning a quick sequel and a franchise that has remained active to this day. But really, this game’s first home console destination should have been the Dreamcast, and had it hit the arcades a year earlier, I don't doubt that I could have been clasping a well-used copy of Monkey Ball in a battered PAL case right now. Fortunately though, thanks to the dedication of Memorix101, an unofficial port is in the works, and we may well see a fully working version in the near future.

Intrepid Izzy & Rush Rush Rally Reloaded are now available on ZOOM Platform

Well this is a nice little surprise. Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded (or R4, to those in the know) - two of Senile Team's most highly regarded Dreamcast titles - are now available for the PC via ZOOM Platform, while a third Senile Team release, HypnoTiles, has also made the jump to everybody's favourite DRM-free storefront.

If you've been around the Dreamcast scene for any length of time, you'll no doubt be familiar with Senile Team's pedigree. They are the studio responsible for some of the Dreamcast's finest post-mortem moments, with the Beats of Rage engine signalling their arrival in the indie space on Sega's final console back in 2003; before going on to release Polyko's Super Jelly Bean Quest in the Sketchbook of Illusion in 2012, and more recently Rush Rush Rally Racing in 2009 and 2017 (in the form of the updated Reloaded) and Intrepid Izzy, also in 2017.

We were/are big fans of both titles, stating in our glowing review of Izzy: "...the game has everything a great action platformer should have: great gameplay and controls, charming artwork and beautiful animation, varied and well-themed levels, and a great sense of humour...The many years of development experience that Senile Team have under their collective belts shines through here - resulting in an incredibly polished final product."

Similarly, we gushed the following about R4: "Rush Rush Rally Racing is a fantastic title even if you don't have the option of playing the multi-player games on offer. The vehicle handling is amazingly intuitive, it sounds great and the game is peppered with numerous imaginative details (just don't hit the cows!); and while it's very difficult if you're generally shit at games like I am, with perseverance there's a lot of fun to be had." We even spoke to the man himself Roel van Mastbergan, Senile Team's lead designer, artist and programmer back in 2017 - check out the interview here.

Intrepid Izzy launched to overwhelming critical acclaim on Dreamcast.

To celebrate the re-release of both Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded on ZOOM Platform (and the release of puzzle title HypnoTiles), there's currently a special offer of 25% off the asking prices. Naturally, we asked Roel for his thoughts, alongside ZOOM Platform's Jordan Freeman, who is a former colleague and business partner of the late, great Bernie Stolar and someone who is known to enjoy a bit of Dreamcastic action in his down time:

"Well, what can I say? It's always exciting to bring a game to a new audience, and now it's three games at once! Thrice the fun! Jordan and ZOOM Platform in general have been a pleasure to work with, so I hope this marks the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration."

- Roel van Mastbergan, Senile Team

"It is our pleasure to announce that Senile Team’s legendary catalog has come to ZOOM Platform. Roel and his team, like us, hold Dreamcast near and dear to their hearts. It’s a match made in Heaven. Tremendous classics such as Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded combined with exciting new releases like HypnoTiles are exactly why the incredibly fertile Dreamcast indie scene remains alive and well to this day!"

- Jordan Freeman, ZOOM Platform

If you enjoyed 16-bit Micro Machines, you'll love Rush Rush Rally Racing.

If you've never played either Rush Rush Rally Reloaded or Intrepid Izzy on your Dreamcast (there's no excuse, to be honest), then now is the perfect time to give them both a whirl on your computing device of choice. As long as it's a Windows PC. And don't forget HypnoTiles, which looks like a fun variant on the Tetris formula with a bit of Lumines thrown in. Find out more over at ZOOM Platform.

Disclaimer for anyone interested: this isn't a paid or sponsored post or anything like that. I just like Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded so if more people get to experience them, that's a bonus. Cheers me dears!

Atlus' Japan-Only Dreamcast RPG deSPIRIA Receives English Fan Translation of its First Chapter

These days, Atlus is a worldwide brand, what with the massive success of its Persona RPG series, but once upon a time, not every title they developed was done so with an international audience in mind. They developed the earlier Persona games for the Japanese market, while their first Sega Dreamcast game, Maken X, was done so knowing it would be distributed across the globe. The only other game Atlus released for the Dreamcast was deSPIRIA, which remained exclusive to Japan and was its own beast entirely. Its dated gameplay and visuals for its release year of 2000 make it hard to believe it would've ever been considered for a Western release, and had it been, the gaming press would've torn it a new one. But without those same contemporary "everything must be polygonal" goggles on, deSPIRIA is a very novel —if not incredibly niche— horror experience in the Dreamcast's library, and today I am excited to report that its first chapter is now playable in English thanks to a team consisting of rio de popomocco (translation) and DinoJesus (programming), with more to come later.

"Ma'am, this is a Wendy's..."

The game puts you in the shoes of Allure Valentine, a woman working for an organisation known as "the Church" and has you exploring a dystopian underground version of Japan, getting into psychic mind battles with the creepy individuals you encounter. That's the operative word here, "creepy", and one deSPIRIA embraces proudly, with "grotesque" being how its opening disclaimer message describes some of its content. I mean, the protagonist snorts some kind of parasitic worm thing up her nose in the opening cutscene... for plot reasons. Graphically, it is filled to the brim with those cold, uncanny, pre-rendered visuals often seen in horror games from the 90s. Graphics that were aged on arrival back on release, but in retrospect, only further serve to up deSPIRIA's unsettling atmosphere.

The exploration takes place in first person, and is basically point-and-click, with a sort of slideshow quality to proceedings. You can rotate on the spot to survey your surroundings, then click on an area of the environment to move there, triggering an FMV of you moving towards it. Those who have played and enjoyed titles like D and Kowloon's Gate before will feel right at home here. Well, it's hardly homely, but you know what I mean. The game also features some pretty psychedelic —at times nightmarish— battles in which the protagonist jacks into other people's psyches.

To play deSPIRIA's first chapter in English, you will need to go to the translation project's GitHub repo and download a patching tool, which will apply the translation patch to your existing GDI of the game. The patching tool isn't available for Mac or Linux, so you will have to find a roundabout way to get it to work on those operating systems, or alternatively get a friend with Windows to do it for you.

Interestingly, the creators of this patch offer three different modes for gameplay speed, which reduce random encounters and rebalance the game for those who just want to focus on the story. 

Unfortunately, as of writing this, I have been unable to get my patched GDI to play properly on GDEMU, with it crashing on a certain scene right at the start. I was, however, able to play the game successfully (and take the screenshots you see in this very article) via the Flycast emulator.

Those who have heard me witter away on the podcast before will already know how stoked I am for this translation, and I will be eagerly awaiting any future preview instalments (there's no word as of yet as to whether this is how they wish to release the rest of the patch going forward), and of course the full patch somewhere down the line. Will you be giving deSPIRIA a go? Let us know in the comments or on our socials.

New Dreamcast Survival Horror Title 'White Creek' is Getting a Visual Upgrade

We recently reported on the reveal of JoshProd, PixelHeart and Storybird Studios' upcoming survival horror title White Creek, and the general consensus is that it looks (no pun intended) pretty cool. Interestingly, the mainstream press also seem to have cottoned on to White Creek's existence, and in some cases made disingenuous claims that it represents the 'first new Dreamcast release for 25 years.' I guess those outlets missed stuff like Rush Rush Rally Racing, Pier Solar, Intrepid Izzy, Xeno Crisis, Xenocider, The Textorcist, Driving Strikers, Sturmwind et al.

Anyhow, White Creek is now a known quantity, and promises to be an intriguing mix of D2, Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark and The Ring: Terror's Realm. Actually, scratch that last one. One of the main criticisms I saw levelled at White Creek when it was first revealed via trailers and screenshots, was that it didn't really look like a Dreamcast game, and instead looked more like an original PlayStation title. A fair criticism as far as I'm concerned. Looks like the fine folks at JoshProd also took heed at these observations and have given White Creek a bit of a visual upgrade just in time for the upcoming release of a playable demo.

Original left, upgrade right (click for a bigger version)

Original left, upgrade right (click for a bigger version)

These screens are taken from the video posted on the PixelHeart YouTube channel, and as you can see the background details have been reworked to give the impression that the game really was intended for the Dreamcast, and not one of those piss-poor, cash grab PS1 ports we so commonly received back during the Dreamcast's natural lifespan (yes I am indeed looking directly at you, Nightmare Creatures II).

Original left, upgrade right (click for a bigger version)

Original left, upgrade right (click for...you get the idea)

I'm personally hoping for an increased level of visual detail in the character models too, though I'm not expecting to see the kind of fidelity on display in something like Code: Veronica (the Dreamcast game, not that new one that's just been announced, obvs). 

So what do you think about this graphical upgrade? Are you more interested now that White Creek appears to look a bit more like an actual Dreamcast game? White Creek doesn't have a firm release date as yet, but it will be releasing on modern platforms as well as Dreamcast and you can find the game's Kickstarter campaign here. 

NTSC-J baseball title Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou Net! is back online

Another day, another dollar. And by 'dollar,' I of course mean 'obscure Dreamcast baseball game has been brought back online.' This time, the game in question is Smilebit's Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou Net!, which for those who may be unfamiliar, is a baseball game that was released only in Japan back in 2000, and was part of the popular 'Let's Make a Pro Baseball Team!' lineage.

Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou Net! differed from other entries in the popular super-deformed series by offering Dreamcast players the opportunity to enter into online games of rounders-on-steroids via the Dreamcast's Dricas service, essentially meaning you could attempt to hit a ball thrown by another human from the comfort of your own couch. Who needs to even bother going outside when such a concept is proffered? Not me, that's who. And neither do you.

I bet leg warmers are cheap in this reality.
And gloves with fingers. Mittens though? Gold mine.

Interestingly, Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou Net! is actually quite highly regarded as a decent baseball experience; which is surprising when you consider how much of a dog's dinner Smilebit's 90 Minutes was. They also made some other game about breakdancing rollerbladers or something, but I'm not sure what that was called or if anybody ever played it.

Anyway, this magic has been conjured by none other than Dreamcast online gaming royalty Shuouma, and if you point your weary eyeballs downwards, you'll find an excellent gameplay video from our good friend Pcwzrd, who also explains how to get involved via the DreamPi contraption in the video's description. Of course, you can also find a bit more information on this new Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou Net! release over at Dreamcast Live, along with a handy DreamPi connection guide. To be fair, the online scene on the Dreamcast has been on fire lately, with multiple games being brought out of the archive and placed back onto lane one of the information superhighway. Which is what us old people call the internet. Ask your dad/grandad. Cough.

Thoughts? You played this obscure gem? If so, what did/do you think? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out our look at similar (but not really) Dreamcast baseball-flavoured cartoon-characters-with-no-arms-which-aren't-Rayman-a-thon Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu here.

The Japan-Exclusive Magic: The Gathering Game for Sega Dreamcast has been Translated into English

Over the years, I've built up somewhat of a personal wishlist of Sega Dreamcast games I'd love to see translated into English, with Atlus' horror-RPG DeSpiria sitting firmly at the top, a choice I'm sure plenty of others also hold. Something a bit more niché I've been quietly rooting for though is the Japan-only Magic: the Gathering game, which simulates the long-running trading card game from Wizards of the Coast.

Quite why Japan ended up being the only region to receive this Dreamcast game based on such a popular Western TCG is anyone's guess. An American release was supposedly on the cards (sorry) according to an old article from IGN, with online features to be implemented, and the game even shipped with a folder on its disc titled "CARD_US" filled with English-language textures that were presumably intended for that American release. Now, a whole 25 years later, English-speakers can finally rejoice as a Dreamcast-Talk user by the name AstraLee has translated the game into English. 

In the past, those familiar with the TCG and the English versions of the cards (the game even featured ten exclusive cards) could muddle their way through this Dreamcast release, and in a similar fashion, AstraLee utilised a number of online Magic: the Gathering resources, along with their own knowledge of Japanese, to put together this patch. No AI or machine translation was used for the English translation itself, although for the sake of transparency, AstraLee did state that Claude was used to write some python scripts to extract the original Japanese text and format it into a .CSV file, which they then translated themselves. They did also run into some limitations with character limits when inserting the English text back into the game, so many phrases were shortened or compacted to fit better. Tutorial videos have also been left untranslated as of this first patch release.

For those who'd like to learn more about the Dreamcast game itself, I highly recommend watching this video from Magic: the Gathering YouTuber "Magic Untapped", which goes into some nice detail about it. To play this translation, simply head over to the GitHub repo to download the patch, which you can then use with Derek Pascarella's Universal Dreamcast Patcher to apply it to your own existing GDI of the game.

NAOMI Fan Ports are Finally Coming to the Sega Dreamcast with Cleopatra Fortune Plus (Vibe-Coded Edition)

What a crazy time we're living in. I woke up this morning to a message telling me that we've officially entered the era of NAOMI games being ported to the Dreamcast by fans, with Cleopatra Fortune Plus being the very first.

For those unfamiliar, the NAOMI was Sega's arcade platform first introduced in 1998, built on architecture very similar to that of the Dreamcast. That technical similarity was what made the Dreamcast the first reasonably affordable home console to deliver an experience that looked and played genuinely close to the arcade. During its commercial lifespan, a number of NAOMI titles were ported to Dreamcast, including classics such as Crazy Taxi, The House of the Dead 2, Dead or Alive 2, and Power Stone. Others, such as Jambo! Safari and Virtua Golf, were announced for the console but were ultimately cancelled.

What with the constant influx of ports we're seeing now on a near-monthly basis, the logical thought from those who inhabit the Dreamcast fan community has been "could the fans just port those missing NAOMI games to Dreamcast?" They were able to do it with Atomiswave arcade titles back in 2020, so why not NAOMI? Well, the Atomiswave arcade system, which launched in 2004, was essentially a repackaged Dreamcast for the arcade, with virtually identical hardware specifications. The NAOMI, on the other hand, packed far more RAM than the Dreamcast, leading many in the homebrew community to dismiss the possibility of fan-developed NAOMI ports as "impossible".

That was until today, when a Dreamcast-Talk forum user who goes by CaptainKoffski posted that they've ported Cleopatra Fortune Plus to Dreamcast. Cleopatra Fortune Plus was the NAOMI arcade-exclusive sequel to Taito's puzzle game Cleopatra Fortune, which itself received a Japan-only port to the Dreamcast. CaptainKoffski was transparent from the off that the project had been created using what the internet has dubbed "vibe coding", the practise of using AI models to assist anywhere from a little bit to entirely with software development. In CaptainKoffski's case, they admitted "the entire port was done with AI, with minimal effort on my part."

AI is a huge topic of conversation at the moment, with a number of ethical and environmental concerns being raised surrounding its use. Just last month, Sega drew criticism from fans for revealing that AI was used in the development of the upcoming Crazy Taxi: World Tour. AI has also begun to seep into hobbyist circles, where it has received a mixed reception. What really is puzzling (excuse the pun) about this NAOMI port, though, is that despite its lack of human touch, it actually runs well, with seemingly no issues.

While we can't ignore the fact that this port's very existence is a huge breakthrough, we can only hope those who live and breathe Dreamcast development can unpick some of the information CaptainKoffski provided in their accompanying GitHub repo to find out how the heck the AI pulled this off, with the hopes it may aid future porting efforts. That said, I am aware that a very human effort to bring a major NAOMI title to the Dreamcast has been confirmed as being very close to completion, so I doubt this will be the last we see of NAOMI ports to the console in 2026.

Show Report: Nottingham Video Games Expo 2026

Back in 2022, The Dreamcast Junkyard travelled to the fair city of Nottingham to take part in Nottingham Video Games Expo '22. Nary four years later we were back to our old shenanigans, once again gracing Robin Hood's stomping ground with our collective odious presence. That's because on Saturday 18th July 2026, NottsVGE returned with gusto, in a plush new city centre venue to welcome hoards of rabid enjoyers of electronic games to the hallowed event space hidden within the bowels of the (actually pretty nice) Crowne Plaza hotel.

Armed with a plethora of slightly dodgy display screens (some of which were salvaged from charity shops), and an overflowing Lidl carrier bag of Dreamcast consoles, we trudged through the back alleys of Nottinghamshire to set up our encampment in a small corner of the event space. The scene was set, the hangovers were negligible and the monitor connection issues were overcome by the crack team of weary Dreamcast apologists which staff this very blog. Eventually, the doors were flung open at 10:00 and we greeted our expectant audience.

Early drama during the setting up process, as Lewis and Brian discuss whether Jaz should be allowed to run another Spirit of Speed 1937 competition.

Multi-player Mario Kart 64 running on a Dreamcast seemed to go down well. 

Marvel Vs Capcom 2 was a particular crowd favourite while I played Suzuki Alstare. Um.

To be fair, there were probably far too many of us manning the 12 foot table as myself (Tom), Lewis, Andrew, Lozz, Brian, Kev, Jaz and Harvey (aka Pizza Hotline and composer of our podcast's epic outro tune) were on hand to bellow uncontrollably at anyone who dared come near our stand. But by the grace of Zeus we were there to spread the Gospel of Dreamcast™ to all who would heed our words...and I don't believe anyone was left disappointed.

The event was very popular with those seeking gaming goodies.

One of the talks, this one being an interview with Ocean Software's Gary Bracey.

Sega Bass Fishing was popular with everyone. Because it is class.

Throughout the day we welcomed all and sundry to experience the delights of Under Defeat and Radirgy in proper TATE mode; unreleased Atomiswave gems such as Kenju, Maximum Speed and Faster than Speed; CRT-enabled joy in the form of House of the Dead 2 with light guns; slightly unhinged prancing with Samba De Amigo and maracas; and a whole host of competitions with titles such as Crazy Taxi, Sega Bass Fishing, Power Stone 2, ChuChu Rocket!, and Virtua Tennis 2. 

There was an online-enabled Dreamcast showing off Phantasy Star Online, Quake III: Arena and web browsing functionality through the unbridled power of DreamPi; and we also managed to showcase some of the work of the Dreamcast community, with the excellent ports of GTA III, Mario Kart 64 and Super Monkey Ball all going down a storm.

As you can probably appreciate, many a conversation about the awesomness of Dreamcast was had and many a round of Soulcalibur was lost and won. We even managed to rope gaming royalty like Wil 'Super Play and N64 Magazine' Overton into a doubles tournament on the aforementioned Virtua Tennis 2/Tennis 2K2.

Several generations of Dreamcast enjoyers in one shot.

That is one sexy modded Dreamcast system, I think you'll agree.
Ignore the yellowed controller on the right. Cheers.

Wil Overton is actually pretty good at Virtua Tennis. Who knew?!

Away from The Dreamcast Junkyard's set up, there were numerous traders hawking their glittering warez. YouTuber TootyUK and the ever-present Sore Thumbs Retro Games were selling hardware and software; our good friend Marc Jowett (aka The Gaming Newsagent) had a massive assortment of games magazines and books on sale - I even grabbed a copy of Chris Scullion's excellent Dreamcast Encylopedia for an unbeatable price.

Elsewhere, the Derby Computer Museum had a whole array of classic consoles and computer hardware on display which were fully playable; Arcade Club had a range of classic arcade cabs availiable set to free play mode; Debug and Secret Mode had a pretty massive area showing off a range of brand new indie games (I was quite partial to SUPER 56 from Onion Soup Interactive - think WarioWare, but even more unhinged); and the UK Amstrad Group had an entire room filled with Amstrad games, hardware and slightly musty nostalgia.

I grew up with an Amstrad. Not this one. I had a proper
CPC 464+ though, not a CPC464+ monitor connected to a povo CPC 464. Cough.

Roland Perry (right, obvs) is royalty in the Amstrad scene.

Obligatory Atari Jaguar mention. This one was £300, 
but can you really put a price on being able to play Club Drive on native hardware?

The UK Amstrad Group's area was of particular interest to me, as my very first gaming device was an Amstrad CPC 464+, so speaking to people who are as passionate about the Amstrad platform as I am about the Dreamcast was very, very cool. I even got to meet Roland Perry, the visionary architect behind the whole Amstrad CPC range. Not sure he was too thrilled when I said I wasn't a fan of his eponymous Roland series...but I digress/cringe.

Look at it! It's pure art. The thing in the middle, I mean.

Is this basically Inception?

Back at The Dreamcast Junkyard's area, we welcomed one of the OG members of the editorial team, Aaron 'The Gagaman' Foster, where he was presented with one of the amazing objets d'art created by VGNYsoft - an acrylic sign of his own artwork, a visual representation of the beginnings of this very blog. By all accounts he was very humbled, but that was short-lived as he was press ganged into a session of Samba de Amigo. On the topic of VGNY though, we also had on display some of the very special, very limited edition Dreamcast Junkyard 20th Anniversary Dreamcast console shells...and they looked (look) absolutely superb, even if I say so myself.

Old favourites like Crazy Taxi still command so much attention.
Note the DCJY console shell on the left, courtesy of VGNY.

ChuChu Rocket! 4-player went down a storm.
We won't talk about the fights that ensued after a Cat Attack.

Soulcalibur on a crisp CRT won't ever not draw a crowd.
The Pokemon toys weren't ours, btw.

I think it's safe to say that NottsVGE 2026 was the biggest and best yet, and full respect goes to Alex (aka The Sega Guru) and his team for putting on yet another stellar event. Personally, my thanks go to the DCJY team for their outstanding efforts throughout the day, and also to the people who came to speak to us, share their love for the Dreamcast and play some quality games. 

Never, ever accept a donut (or a cupcake) from this man.

Had to keep a tight watch on Jaz, lest he sneak off and subject
the entire event to more janky racing games.

Another highlight was that Jaz didn't get to re-run his disgusting Spirit of Speed 1937 competition on a giant screen (see the 2022 event for that blasphemous display of hubris); meanwhile Kev forgot to bring his customary petrol station cupcakes to hand out to unsuspecting event goers. He did go to Wendy's and buy some tiny donuts (most of which he consumed himself while grunting feverishly under a table), but to be honest I think the less said about that, the better.

From left to right: Pizza Hotline, Lozz, Kev, Jaz, Andrew, Brian, Tom, Lewis and Aaron

So there we have it. NottsVGE 2026 was a resounding success, and no doubt we'll be there again in years to come. See you there!

Were you at Nottingham Video Games Expo 2026? Did you encounter any of the reprobates in the image above? Are you mentally scarred? Let us know in the comments!