As I bid 2025 farewell to the tune of the traditional New Year's Eve song Auld Lang Syne, I contemplated the lyrics and their theme about leaving things in the past. I promptly disregarded that message and continued to write for a blog about a console that was discontinued 24 years ago.
But that idea of "farewells" sparked an idea — one that taps into a new collecting obsession I fell into in 2025. You see, I developed a bit of a bug for tracking down old Dreamcast magazines, specifically ones that were published in the UK. Although I was able to frequently play the Sega Dreamcast during its commercial heyday round a friend's house, I was probably too young for the magazines of the time to cross my radar, and even if they had, I probably would've been too busy reading the Beano and Dandy to care.
Anyhow, last year I managed to pick up several bundles of assorted issues of Official Dreamcast Magazine, Dreamcast Magazine (the unofficial one), and DC-UK. I quickly noticed a common thread with these lots, however. While I did manage to acquire some earlier issues in them, the majority consisted of each magazine's final entries. It seemed that the sellers were particularly keen to offload these last issues — and upon reading them, it was easy to see why.
As the death knell rang for the Dreamcast, there was a clear scramble from these magazines to reassure their readers that the console still had plenty of epic games on the horizon. As the issues wore on, however, the cracks began to show. The number of games reviewed in each issue dwindled, features became steadily less inspired, and page counts shrank. In the most egregious cases, past reviews were simply reprinted in a desperate attempt to pad out pages.
Of course, this strange editorial limbo couldn't last forever, and eventually each of these magazines would come to accept that the Dreamcast’s fate was a doomed one, and sail off into the sunset — most of them rather unceremoniously. Next issues were promised, but never came. Only one publication, Paragon Publishing's unofficial Dreamcast Magazine, managed to last long enough to earn itself the privilege of a proper send-off.
In what I hope to be an ongoing series, I will be taking a look at how each of the UK's Dreamcast magazines said their farewells —or didn’t— with an additional goal of uncovering what went wrong behind the scenes for those that ended prematurely. You know we love solving a mystery here at the Junkyard.
To start off, I'll be taking a look at Dennis Publishing's officially licensed offering, Official Dreamcast Magazine. Its final issue, issue 21, was released in June 2001.
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| My scan! |
The issue hit newsstands sporting a rather fitting PAL-blue cover featuring Sega’s iconic spiky mascot. Like the rest of the magazine, the cover is clean as hell — and perfectly timed to coincide with the mag’s review of Sonic Adventure 2. Readers would have also found Volume 22 of the Dream On demo disc adorning this issue's cover, which was responsible for its premium £4.99 price tag.
Depending on where you were in your Dreamcast journey, this demo disc may have proved to be either a blessing, or slightly disappointing. Rather than including playable previews of the latest upcoming titles, the 22nd instalment of Dream On served as a "best-of" compilation, packing in demos for nine Dreamcast bangers. These included Jet Set Radio, Metropolis Street Racer, Sonic Adventure, Virtua Tennis, Space Channel 5, Toy Commander, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, Ready 2 Rumble, and Ultimate Fighting Championship. Seeing as all nine of these games were voted into our Top 200 Dreamcast games list, with the majority of them ranking inside the top 30, it was a well-curated selection, and perhaps well-timed for any new Dreamcast adopters who had picked up the console following its price drop to £99.99 earlier that year. If you were a long-time ODM reader, though, you may well have played a fair few of these titles already thanks to the magazine’s high review scores, and were perhaps instead expecting demos for the brand-new Sonic Adventure 2 or Crazy Taxi 2. If that were the case, you might have been left feeling a bit miffed.
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| Credit: Chromagi |
The magazine's editor, Warren Chrismas, made the reasoning for this demo selection clear in his note at the front of the issue. While he began by calling out the "gloom merchants" for insisting the Dreamcast was dead and buried months before —citing the high quality of both Sonic Adventure 2 and Crazy Taxi 2 as a reason for fans of the console to remain excited— this positive tone was soon contradicted by the sobering reality of Sega's situation.
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| From here onwards, all magazine scans are credit of Sega Retro, unless stated otherwise. |
Referencing the results of a reader survey that went out in issue 18, Warren jovially discussed the video game preferences of ODM’s (mostly male, apparently) reader base and their affection for the mag, before serving them with the bad news (I believe this is what conversation experts commonly refer to as the “shit sandwich” technique).
"Fourteen percent of you were 'unsure' whether you'd buy ODM without a demo disc for a lower price... and we'll soon be putting this to the test! With few playable demos available, Sega Europe can no longer produce cover discs to the standard you and I expect. As such, this month's disc is the last [Dream On] you'll see taped to the cover of ODM, although we haven't ruled out the possibility of special one-off discs in the future. In fact there may be one with our next issue, so watch out for that."
Basically, Sega weren't releasing Dreamcast games frequently enough to fill up Dream On discs each month, so Volume 22 was to potentially be the last. And of course, without a flashy GD-ROM taped to the front to entice readers, the magazine's cover price would also have to be lowered.
But it wasn't just discs that Warren and his team were worried about filling, it was pages too. Which brings us onto his next big announcement: ODM was to change to a bi-monthly publication schedule.
“We don't wish to produce weak issues with little news and just a few reviews, so we'll be adapting a flexible release schedule from now on with the next issue of ODM due to appear at your local newsagents (or through your letterbox) in two months' time. Sure, you'll have to wait twice as long as normal for the next issue but, if you look at it another way, you'll also get two months' worth of news, previews, reviews and happenings squeezed into one. Not such a bad deal, eh? So we hope to see you on Thursday 23 August…”
Sounds reasonable, really. It is definitely commendable that they were willing to contemplate sacrificing release frequency in order to prioritise quality. Just looking through issue 21, it was clear that the Dreamcast’s continued decline was starting to take its toll. Previous ODM issues had tended to average around 120 to 130 pages, whereas issue 21 weighed in at just 106.
While the features were decent, with plenty of ODM’s typical lifestyle-centric content still present —such as coverage of the latest gadgets, an interview with Noodles from The Offspring about Crazy Taxi 2, and the drinking-and-thinking chat where the ODM team would drink and discuss games— only six new games were reviewed in this issue. In comparison, the previous December's issue saw a whopping 15 rated. Not exactly reassuring for a two-year-old system that supposedly had "plenty more to come".
The new change to a bi-monthly publication was reflected at the bottom of every page.
Warren ended his run of news bites about how the mag would be adapting with a touch of optimism, listing some exciting upcoming Dreamcast games. See how many you can spot that never actually came out on the console. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.
Speaking of upcoming releases, the news section confirmed that several new Dreamcast titles —including Alien Front Online, Bomberman Online, Ooga Booga, and Sega Bass Fishing 2— had been unveiled at E3 that year. However, there were already concerns about whether any of them would actually make it to Europe, and those doubts would later prove well-founded. Thankfully, the Phantasy Star Online update Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 was still looking likely for a European release, and Virtua Tennis 2 was also unveiled. Ports of PC-juggernauts Black & White and Half-Life remained uncertain after a year of delays, and AM2’s Propeller Arena was also announced. Ultimately, those last three titles would never see an official release, though both Propeller Arena and the Half-Life would later be leaked online, finally giving Dreamcast fans a chance to play them.
Headhunter, Outtrigger and Floigan Bros got big previews this month, while Crazy Taxi 2 and Spider-Man took home high review scores — along with Unreal Tournament, which still earned a very respectable eight despite online multiplayer being removed from its European release. The very average Resident Evil clone Evil Dead: Hail to the King landed a fitting five, while the absolute stinker Exhibition of Speed limped away with a two, with reviewer Steve Key calling it "one of the worst games we've had the misfortune to play." Ouch.
The biggest review of the month was, of course, Sonic Adventure 2, which spanned ten pages at the front of the issue, with plenty of cutaways covering the blue blur's history (with mention of the then upcoming Sonic Advance — the first Sonic game to release on a Nintendo system), as well as some of Adventure 2’s new features. There was also a page partly devoted to a nice letter from Yuji Naka addressed to the staff of Official Dreamcast Magazine, with a competition below to win a Sonic Swatch watch and the commemorative plaque from the Japan-exclusive Birthday Pack edition of Sonic Adventure 2... but not the game also included in that set. Maybe they were worried those lucky winners wouldn't have the means to play it on their PAL Dreamcasts. ODM generally steered clear of anything related to import gaming, while its contemporaries like DC-UK were reviewing any overseas releases they could get their mitts on, and even publishing guides on how to region-mod your Dreamcast. But I guess being the official magazine, ODM had to play by the rules. I can only imagine that in the eyes of Sega’s PR reps, import gaming was seen as a slippery slope toward piracy.
It's bizarre then, that this issue featured a four-page spread all about Bleem!, an unlicensed piece of software that allowed a selection of PlayStation games to run on the Dreamcast. Everything Bleem! was fully laid out in this article from Adam Phillips, who got the lowdown from coder David Herpolsheimer on how the software worked, the lawsuit from Sony, and even where readers could get themselves a copy — all complete with a smattering of screenshots of Gran Turismo 2 running through it.
In the Hot Seat this month was Neil Casini of Nottingham-based studio Clockwork Games, answering reader-submitted questions about the studio's most-recent title Vanishing Point. At the end of the article, ODM put out a call to readers to send in their questions for the US-based Heavy Iron Studios about Evil Dead: Hail to the King, with answers to appear in next month's issue. I can't wait to see what they have to say!
As for everything else, well, there was part two of ODM's walkthrough for Skies of Arcadia, as well as the usual review directory, reader letters, recommended websites, and the Dreamcast-themed crossword (possibly one of my favourite things in the whole issue, honestly). Then, finally, we reach the last ever page of the last ever issue of ODM, which featured a conversation with a guy who made $600 by selling rare in-game Phantasy Star Online items on eBay. He even shared some tips on how you could do it yourself! Top lad. Truly an entrepreneur of his time.
What happened to Official Dreamcast Magazine issue 22? — A Conversation with Ed Lomas
As you already know by now, there was no ODM issue 22. We never found out what the developers of Evil Dead had to say, but more importantly, we never got the solutions for the crossword from issue 21. ODM had stopped teasing the contents of its next issues early into its run, so it's not immediately obvious what else issue 22 would have featured…
Well, wonder no more! I was actually able to successfully reach out to Warren Chrismas to try and get some insight into what the heck happened. It turns out that while the unreleased issue 22 was in fact worked on, it was not Warren who headed it up as lead editor. He would kindly put me in contact with Ed Lomas, who had served as deputy editor on previous issues of ODM, and stepped up to the role of lead editor as Warren left to launch Dennis Publishing's PlayNation magazine. Ed graciously shared as much as he could about the cancelled issue.
"[Warren] had moved off ODM to launch PlayNation magazine. I was Deputy Editor and it meant I got to be in charge finally! As I remember it, we'd got most of the magazine done when we were told it wouldn't be released — I was very proud to have put together a good magazine, and sad it never came out."
Ed's memory was understandably foggy when it came to what readers could have expected from issue 22, but he believes it would most likely have featured Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 on the cover, with an exclusive on it inside. He recalled interviewing Yuji Naka at Sega’s offices, leading him to think the issue may also have included an interview with him about PSO Ver. 2, as well as a preview of the game. He also suspects that Shenmue II would have appeared somewhere in the magazine, and that he probably would have been the one who wrote about it.
When it came to why Official Dreamcast Magazine was ultimately cancelled, Ed confirmed a suspicion I already held: it was the lack of demo disc that killed it.
"I remember the magazine going to every two months and I feel like there was some ongoing debate as to whether we'd be getting a demo from Sega or not. I think the news finally came that wasn't going to happen and [Dennis Publishing] decided it wasn't worth carrying on with the magazine. I got called into a meeting, told the magazine was ending and that I could join Warren on PlayNation or be given redundancy money. It was the start of the summer and more money than I'd ever had so I took the cash and ran!"
Elaborating further, Ed would reveal that the magazine was actually doing better than expected. But the absence of that pesky demo disc, combined with the PlayStation 2's popularity, would seal ODM's fate.
"Dennis were generally happy with the performance of ODM because they had originally budgeted for it to be much more expensive to produce than it ended up being. The first few issues had very expensive high-end fashion photography in them, but Warren and I weren't fans (neither were most readers!) and we were able to phase them out and use staff writer Dan Trent as our main photographer. As such, even though the magazine wasn't selling what they'd originally hoped for, it was turning out more profitable as it was cheaper to produce. But with PlayStation 2 clearly the more popular console and sales declining as game releases thinned out, Dennis deprioritised ODM and made a move for the PS2 market. The loss of the demo disc was the killing blow."
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| PlayNation Magazine. Credit: Magazines From the Past |
Also, if you were wondering whether the readers who entered that big Sonic competition in issue 21 ever got their prizes, what with ODM closing and all… well, the answer is complicated.
These weren’t the only things that seemed to go walkabout in the Dennis Publishing offices…
Poor Ed. He finally got his big moment as a lead editor, only for the issue he worked on to never see the light of day — and for his stuff to get pilfered in the process! Still, he would go on to have a very prosperous career in the publishing industry and beyond. Thank you for your work on Official Dreamcast Magazine, sir, and thanks for indulging this nerd’s curiosity.
Finally, here's my somewhat janky approximation of what the cover of Official Dreamcast Magazine issue 22 might have looked like, based off Ed’s recollection…
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| Artist’s interpretation. |
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Do you remember picking up issue 21 of ODM on release? What was your reaction to the "greatest hits" demo selection? Did you enter that Sonic competition and actually receive your prize? Let us know on our socials or in the comments below!
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