Incredibly, the most infamous racing title on the Dreamcast, Spirit of Speed 1937 - the Dark Souls of racing games itself - had online multiplayer all along, and we had no idea.
As many of you know, I have previously spoken to the original Broadsword development team on numerous occasions, including a lengthy interview featured in the excellent Dreamcast: Year Two book released last year. Recent discussions have revealed that online multiplayer not only existed in the Japanese version of the game, but it’s now back online thanks to recent efforts.
The online mode was added after the official European and American releases and is only available in the Japanese version of the game, according to the original Broadsword development team:
“We wanted to add online multiplayer into the original release, but the deadline dates for launch prevented us from ironing out a few network bugs. With the Japanese version releasing 9 months later, it gave us the opportunity to do more testing. Ultimately we still decided against officially releasing it just before the Japanese disc went gold, but left the netcode there hidden away. If servers had existed, it would’ve worked online, but they never did.”
That is, until now!
Since this revelation, we connected the original developers to Dreamcast network development expert Luke "Kazade" Benstead, who has helped them re-create the server to restore the online functionality.
The hidden network mode can be accessed on any Japanese copy of the game. On the “Press Start” screen, simply press and hold Y, X, A before hitting the start button and you’ll be taken to the hidden menu allowing network play to be started.
We’ve only tried a few online matches so far, but they’ve all worked great. The online Dreamcast community is constantly growing with new titles being resurrected every year - this is certainly one we were not expecting. Are you excited to hit the Spirit of Speed 1937 courses online? Let us know in the comments below…
April fools!!!