Showing posts with label Atomiswave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atomiswave. Show all posts

Faster Than Speed: A closer look at the Atomiswave Need for Speed: Underground clone

Alongside the recently covered Maximum Speed, Sammy's 2004 street racing title Faster Than Speed represents one of only two racing titles released for the Atomiswave arcade platform. Faster Than Speed differs from its stablemate in that it is a street racing title with an emphasis on high stakes, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, one-on-one vehicular duels through neon soaked city streets; in stark contrast to Maximum Speed's more traditional, reality-based stock car racing shenanigans.

Now, while it's quite clear that Sammy plundered Sega's own back catalogue when searching for inspiration for Maximum Speed (it doesn't require a PhD in the field of 'looking at stuff' to see the similarities between Maximum Speed and Daytona USA), the inspiration for Faster Than Speed is - checks notes - unequivocally Electronic Arts' phenomenally successful 2003 underground street racing title Need for Speed: Underground. A game that was released a year earlier than Faster Than Speed and which also offers high stakes, winner-takes-all races in highly tuned import vehicles, through perpetually dark (but beautifully lit) city streets, parks, boardwalks and other civic areas not really designed to be driven through at 100mph.

It's true that other night-themed racers existed in this period (Midnight Club springs to mind), and there were some small, independent art house movies that also touched on the topic at the time, but for me there is no other title that is as heavily borrowed from than Need for Speed: Underground when it comes to the aesthetic or the general demeanour that Faster Than Speed is trying to exude. Hell, even the name is a sort of side-eyed reference to EA's title - they may have the need for speed, but we're faster than speed! 

It's a subtle touch (almost as subtle as Bizarre Creations naming its flagship Xbox racing series after Gotham City in reference to Metropolis being cited in the title of its Dreamcast prequel); yet it is enough to corroborate my suspicions that yes, Faster Than Speed was plopped out by Sammy to cash in on the massive popularity of Need for Speed: Underground. And those small movies about cars that nobody saw. Cough.

Naming and visual conventions aside though, there's precious little else within the Faster Than Speed package that compares favourably to Need for Speed: Underground. That's because, well, Faster Than Speed is (whisper it) a bit naff. Before anyone leaps down my throat I want to qualify that the work done by such amazingly talented people as megavolt85 et al over at Dreamcast-Talk is the reason that Atomiswave games are now able to be played on the Dreamcast console. 

The Atomiswave is about as esoteric and rare as forgotten arcade platforms get, and due to that fact, the vast (vast) majority of people will have either never heard of the system; and even fewer outside of either the arcade collecting scene or - more recently - the Dreamcast scene will have ever had the opportunity to play many of the exclusive titles. Faster Than Speed is one such Atomiswave exclusive and that we now have the ability to sample these uncommon titles is a testament to the devotion of the Dreamcast community in bringing such long-lost games back to the fore. Even in light of the impressive resurrection of the Atomiswave library though, we mustn't turn a blind eye to mediocrity...which unfortunately is exactly where Faster Than Speed conks out.

As stated, Faster Than Speed was released in arcades in 2004. There appear to be two variants of the cabinet made available - both of which seem to be quite rare, according to the user ratings over at the International Arcade Museum. The first is an upright arcade cabinet with a steering wheel, pedals and the kind of bench seat that looks like it would cause irreparable damage to your arse after too long sitting on it; while the other is a sit-down model with a proper racing bucket seat (see the flyer below for details). 

An intriguing sidenote about this system though, is that the documentation (available on an archived snapshot of the Sega Amusements website) makes reference to several update kits, whereby arcade operators could install Faster Than Speed Atomiswave hardware, buttons and marquees in cabinets that previously housed such iconic racers as Rush: The Rock, Cruisn' USA, and even Ridge Racer (the upright cab, not Ridge Racer Full Scale).

The rear of the Faster Than Speed flyer (Image credit: Sega Amusements)

Taking even a cursory glance at the promotional materials for Faster Than Speed, it's quite evident that Sammy was positioning the game as a multiplayer-first experience; the operation manual explains how to go about activating the hidden 'Head 2 Head' mode, whereby two cabinets must be linked together via the optional router and then the Head 2 Head mode be switched on in the Atomiswave system menu. By default, this option is set to off. So what option is there for the arcade proprietor who only owns a singular cabinet? Four player alternate mode, of course!

Maximum Speed: A closer look at the Atomiswave Daytona USA clone

Maximum Speed is a white hot racing game that will thrill all your senses. Not my words - the words of whichever advertising guru came up with the guff adorning Maximum Speed's European marketing materials. And who am I to argue? Absolutley nobody, that's who. Right, let's get crack-alacking.

Maximum Speed was released in arcades in 2003 on the Atomiswave platform, and represents arcade racing in its purest form: there's you, a load of thick-as-mince AI adversaries, a plethora of tracks of questionable design quality and an ever-ticking clock. Thanks to the incredible development efforts of Megavolt85 et al over at Dreamcast-Talk in the recent past, Sammy Atomiswave titles are now playable on the Dreamcast, and we thought it was high time we took a more in-depth look at some of the games that have made the leap from the coin-op to the home and expanded the Dreamcast collection even further. 

If you aren't familiar with the Atomiswave story, it's worth taking a look at our guide to the short-lived Sammy arcade format here, and the story of how these lesser-spotted arcade titles ended up being ported to the Dreamcast here.

The two marquee racers for the Atomiswave platform were Faster than Speed, a sort of Need for Speed: Underground style street racing title stacked to the gills with neon strip lights, garishly painted hot hatches and more night racing than you could shake a Tokyo Extreme Racer at (check it out here); and Maximum Speed, a more traditional stock car style racer very much in the vein of Daytona USA. Its the latter of these two (obvs) that we'll be poring over here, to discover why, even though its not really up to the standard set by SEGA's own stock car racing series, Maximum Speed is probably still worth a look if arcade racing is your bag.

From the outset, it is clear that Maximum Speed is a game that's meant to be played in short bursts. Because this is essentially the very same code that would be played on a coin operated cabinet with a steering wheel and pedals (of which there were stand up and sit down variants), probably secreted away in the darkest reccesses of some brick and mortar arcade somewhere, there is no championship mode, no career mode or owt even hinting at anything more than "please put your money in dickhead, play for 5 minutes and then kindly piss off." The only real quality of life improvements for the home console are that the controls have been helpfully mapped to the standard Dreamcast controller, complete with analogue stick and trigger support (which is important - more on this later).

So what you're essentially getting, should you plop Maximum Speed onto your GDEMU (other optical drive emulators are available) is the authentic arcade experience with no home conversion improvements whatsover. Mainly because, y'know, Maximum Speed was never (officially) ported to anything. What you're confronted with when starting Maximum Speed is the ability to play a single race, in any of the initial three classes of vehicle, on any of the six circuits. There are 23 other vehicles also vying for the top spot during each race, and there's a clock counting down that replenishes by varying dwindling allotments each time you reach the next lap checkpoint. So far, so 'as you'd expect.'

The vehicle selection boils down to three different classes, with stock cars, trucks and open wheel variants being slectable, and then each type of vehicle being further sub-divided into three distinct flavours; one being an all rounder, one having better acceleration and the other having a higher top speed. Once you've selected your whip you get to select a track, of which there are six and these are, again, further divided into easy, medium or hard difficulties. 

The game explains these difficulty levels using a series of stars to denote how tricky they are, but the operations manual that I managed to scrape from the remnants of the now defunt SEGA Amusements USA Inc. website goes a little further, actually labelling the tracks as easy, medium or hard. Thanks Wayback Machine. For ease, I have now uploaded this operations manual here so you too can view it, dear reader. As an interesting side note, I did find that the preserved website for Maximum Speed appears to exhibit the text for SEGA Clay Challenge rather than the correct copy for Maximum Speed. Not sure why that is, maybe someone absent mindedly pasted the wrong paragraph in there when the page was created. A hangover maybe? Or just plain old incompetence? Who knows...but I digress.

The hunt for Premier Eleven - the lost Atomiswave soccer title

As we've detailed here in the recent past, the Sammy Atomiswave is a gold mine of interesting and lesser known titles that are now playable on the Dreamcast. This is thanks to talented Dreamcast community members such as megavolt85, yzb and others; and is possible in part due to the hardware similarities between the prematurley cancelled arcade system and the Dreamcast on which it is based.

Although the vast majority of the games released on Atomiswave have now been ported to the Dreamcast, there still remain several 'lost' titles that are either in the hands of private collectors; or really are lost to the annals of gaming history. One such game is the now almost legendary Chicago 1929/The Roaring Twenties - a racing game set in prohibition era America. Another of these lost 'holy grail' Atomiswave titles is a football/soccer game developed by Dimps Corporation and titled Premier Eleven.

Source: The Arcade Flyer Archive

As is well documented, the Dreamcast's stable of soccer titles never really hit the heights of titles on contemporary systems, with PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox owners all having superior kick ball experiences at their disposal. But what of Premier Eleven then? Details are relatively scant on just how good this game could have been, but the small amount of video available online shows a Virtua Striker style experience with some outstanding animation and excellent visuals. Regardless, I for one would love to sample Premier Eleven simply out of pure curiosity (and my love of soccer games); and who knows - Premier Eleven could be the top tier football game Dreamcast owners have been waiting for.

Alas, that's unlikely to happen. Not least because Premier Eleven was never relased. Or was it? Here's where things get interesting. Over on Dreamcast Talk, there's a thread all about a Premier Eleven arcade board coming up for sale on eBay. The thread was started back in January 2021 by user Ro Magnus Larsson and the eBay auction is still live, with the seller 'neotropolis' asking for $15,000 in return for a 'fully working, 100% complete' example of Premier Eleven. The listing goes on to claim: "To my knowledge, this game only exists in the form you see here; a true holy-grail centerpiece for any arcade-gaming collector!"

What would appear to back this claim up is that the only footage of this game actually running comes from the previous owner of the Premier Eleven board up for auction. Upon learning of the video, several members of the Dreamcast Talk forum commented on the upload pleading for owner 'bowser 123' to dump the rom, but they responded saying that they'd already sold the board to the person who now has it listed on eBay: "I made this video because I sold the game for USA, specifically for an ebay seller called neotropolis, I think he is still selling it for a fortune, even if I wanted to make the dump I couldn't because I don't have it anymore."

So end of story right? There is one known copy of Premier Eleven for the Atomiswave. The person who owned it made a video to show it working, and then sold it. The buyer now has it listed on eBay for $15,000 and it's unlikely that the rom will be dumped unless a super wealthy Dreamcast fan buys it and releases the rom online out of the goodness of their own heart. Well, not quite.

There is some proof that this copy of Premier Eleven is not in fact the only known version out there. First, back in 2017 when we covered the discovery of a dev kit containing previously unseen Chicago 1929 assets, friend of the Junkyard and MSR authority RJAY63 commented: "I actually played Chicago 1929 at Southsea Island Leisure Arcade (Clarence Pier, Southsea, UK) circa 2005. They briefly became a test site for Sega Amusements with an Outrun 2 SP set-up and quite a few Atomiswave titles. Only played it once but I wasn't very impressed so I'm not surprised it got canned."

The key information here is the Southsea Island Leisure Arcade in Hampshire, UK. And furthermore that this location was a test site for Sega Amusements back in the 2000s. This could be written off purely as a baseless rumour, if not for the further evidence backing this up in the form of photos. Photos of a Premier Eleven arcade cabinet running at Southsea Island Leisure Arcade, circa 2004:

Dreamcast Talk forum member Baseley0o frequented the same arcade as RJAY63, and also took photos of the machines at the time, stating: "This game deffo went out into circulation/arcades. I took these snaps at my local arcade Clarence Pier, Southsea (UK) not too long after Atomiswave came out and one of them was Premier Eleven. I'm unsure if the 2004 date my camera shows is accurate. I thought maybe 2003 but it's a while back now! The arcade in question wasn't a test site for anything that I recall, though did have the odd surprise like these."

So what does all this mean? To me, it points to the very real possibility that there is more than one single copy of Premier Eleven in existence. That there is a small chance that somewhere - possibly even in the UK - the Premier Eleven Atomiswave cartridge in final, working form exists. And this is very exciting, for various reasons - not least for video game history preservation.

All of this would not have been possible without the investigation of the Dreamcast Talk forum members and people like RAY63 and Baseley0o; but there's still a lot of work to be done to discover the fate of the Premier Eleven game that was playable in Southsea in the mid 2000s. 

To this end, I have contacted Sega Amusements to ask if they have any records of what happened to Premier Eleven and if they can help to shed any light on this mystery. Likewise, for what it's worth I've emailed Dimps via their corporate website. Furthermore, Southsea Island Leisure Arcade is still in operation to this day, and according to the UK Government's Companies House website, the same directors who ran the location in the mid 2000s are still in charge. It's probably a long shot that they would even remember the Premier Eleven machine being placed in the arcade (or indeed what happened to it), but I've also reached out to them, too. If this article can help to shine even a slither of light into the darkness and assist in the release of this long lost Atomiswave title, then all the better.

For now though, I guess waiting for a reply from Sega Amusements or Southsea Island is our best bet. Unless anyone wants to cough up $15,000 for the copy on eBay...


Update

After I published this article, I took a trip down to Clarence Pier in Southsea and located the very arcade in which the photographs above were taken. Naturally, in the intervening decades since Baseley0o took the photos, the arcade has been completely redecorated and there relatively few recognisable video arcades on offer; much of the floor space now being taken up by gambling machines and toy grabbers. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting really - maybe a faint glimmer of hope that the passage of time had somehow avoided this little corner of Hampshire and that the Premier Eleven Atomiswave machine might still be there in some forgotten corner, covered in dust and be happily chiming away to itself in attract mode. Alas, this wasn't the case - the machine had obviously long since been removed. I asked a member of staff but they had no recollection of it either, again this is not surprising considering how long ago the photos were taken.

In a slightly more bountiful turn of events, I did recieve a response from Sega Amusements, with several members of the team responding to my emails. The most interesting reply came from Martin Riley, the International Sales Manager:


Hello Tom,   

Yes, actually I was the one who placed those games into the Southsea arcade, but it was later than 2000.   

I was the Sales Manager at Sammy Europe based in London at the time that we launched Atomiswave into the UK. In your picture you can see the standard modular version first launched, and then the squarer box cabinet which was the deluxe version for the larger arcade. 

Premier Eleven was indeed a game we looked to launch in UK market and only really tested, but it didn’t go into wide circulation. However, I’m not 100% sure it was the only prototype. This was from either Japan or USA Sammy studios and was supposed to be an on-line version with servers in each country, but was a little before its time and wasn’t popular, or worked as planned, if I remember correctly, and in the end was never continued. So, you are right that there are very few of these cartridges around as it was never on general release in the UK.

I hope this helps.

Martin Riley

International Sales Manager


This update doesn't really add a great deal to the quest to locate other copies of Premier Eleven, although it is cool that we managed to track down the very person who put the Premier Eleven cabinet into that arcade in Southsea.

Lost Atomiswave fighter KenJu ported to Dreamcast

The number of Atomiswave games ported to the Dreamcast continues to grow, and one of the latest offerings from developer megavolt85 over at Dreamcast-Talk is one we thought deserved a bit of attention. 

KenJu is a 3D fighting game from DreamFactory which was intended for release on Sammy's arcade system, but was apparently cancelled before it could be launched into brick and mortar arcades. The KenJu story has a happy ending though, as you can now get a glimpse at this fairly enigmatic polygonal scrapper either on actual Dreamcast hardware or via emulation! Here's a video of some (ham-fisted) gameplay by yours truly:

There's not a great deal known about KenJu, other than it was in development by DreamFactory (of Tobal No. 1 fame), who for unknown reasons decided not to release the game and consign it to the dustbin of history. Until now, that is. As far as I can ascertain, KenJu was due to hit arcades in 2005 before it mysteriously vanished without trace. KenJu did resurface in 2016 when a collector of Atomiswave boards released footage of it running, and then it slipped back into obscurity once more. The game has a fairly appealing visual style, with psuedo cel-shaded polygonal characters fighting in some nice looking 3D arenas.

The general consensus is that KenJu looks a little like Project Justice: Rival Schools 2, but for me that's pretty much where the similarities end. It has some interesting characters and plays pretty well, but it seems to be missing that certain something...which may hint at the reasons for why it was quietly canned. That said, it's quite good fun and the fact that the Dreamcast is able to recreate the game so flawlessly opens up the door for even more ambitious Atomiswave games such as Premier Eleven. Who thought we'd ever see the day the Dreamcast got a decent footy (soccer) game?!

It's worth noting that as with the other Atomiswave to Dreamcast ports released so far, KenJu is only available as a GDI file, so you'll need some additional hardware to play it on an actual Dreamcast. Personally, I had no joy getting the game to run under either DreamShell or RetroDream using both a Compact Flash modded system or an SD Card reader via the Dreamcast's serial port. It did however run using a GDEMU, so you may want to give that method a go if you're determined to play KenJu on original (well, original modded) hardware. That minor hiccup aside, KenJu seems to be perfectly playable and also mostly complete.

If you'd like to download the game for yourself, visit the Dreamcast-Talk forum thread here. Huge thanks once again to megavolt85 and other forum members who not only continue to expand the Dreamcast collection, but are also preserving some of the Atomiswave's most intriguing and lesser known titles.

Have you played KenJu on your Dreamcast or on an emulator? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Let's play some Atomiswave games on Dreamcast!

As discussed in a recent article here at The Dreamcast Junkyard, Dreamcast-Talk forum members megavolt85 and yzb have been porting Atomiswave games to the Dreamcast. While many people reading this will no doubt get a lot of joy from playing these esoteric titles on an emulator - as did I initially - we thought we should get these titles running on an actual Dreamcast and see how they play with a standard HKT-7700 gripped in our mitts. So that's what we did!

Below is the fruit of our labour, which in reality was no more difficult than grabbing the various GDI files for games such as Dolphin Blue, Maximum Speed, King of Fighters XI, Samurai Shodown VI, Faster than Speed and Metal Slug 6, and dropping them onto the Compact Flash card which slots nicely into the side of the Compact Flash modded Dreamcast. Booting through DreamShell allows you to navigate to the files on the storage and simply boot them as you would any other game. I'm pretty sure this would work with any other type of solid state storage device you may have in your Dreamcast too, so let us know in the comments if it works with things like MODE or GDEmu. If you have any specific questions though, be sure to head to the FAQ on Dreamcast-Talk. Enough waffle, enjoy the video below!

Have you tried any of these games? If so, what are you thoughts? And are there any hidden gems on the Atomiswave crying out to be ported to the Dreamcast? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to head to Dreamcast-Talk, join the forum and thank megavolt85 and yzb for their stirling work.

Atomiswave games are being ported to Dreamcast...which is awesome

The Atomiswave, for those who may not be aware, was an arcade system co-developed by Sammy and Sega and released back in 2003. As explained in Ross's excellent deep dive on the hardware here, the origins of the arcade platform are thought to have been born out of Sega's pivot out of the home console market, leaving the firm with a surplus of hardware it had no use for (namely, bits of Dreamcast tech). 

The Atomiswave was first unveiled at the Japan Amusement Show in 2002, and piqued the interest of some of the biggest names in the arcade scene at the time, with SNK, Dimps, Psyko, Treasure, Compile, IGS, Visco and Tecmo all lending their support to the fledgling platform.

And lo, the Atomiswave became something of a hit among arcade gamers, hosting numerous inventive and colourful titles; and Sammy went on to purchase CSK's shares in Sega before eventually buying out the company in 2004. The intriguing thing about the Atomiswave is that even though its hardware was quite similar to the Dreamcast and NAOMI systems it was based on, Atomiswave games were incompatible with Dreamcast and so considered to be solely the preserve of dedicated arcade collectors. Until now, that is.

That's because developer megavolt85 has begun porting Atomiswave games to the Dreamcast, and if you head over to the Dreamcast-Talk forums you'll be able to see (and download) the fruits of their (very obvious) labour. So far, several Atomiswave titles have been ported to Dreamcast, and the GDI files made available. Of the handful of titles released so far, I have only played Faster than Speed - an arcade racer which plays (and looks) like the bastard lovechild of Need for Speed Underground and Scud Race.





It's actually a pretty fun racer, with lots of tracks and vehicles and some really nice handling. Oh, and it looks gorgeous. I've been playing this on ReDream on a MacBook Pro, and compatibility with some controllers has been a bit iffy, but as far as I can tell from browsing the forums, other emulators on PC work even better so your experiences may be better than mine. I did try to also play the game using an actual Dreamcast by loading the GDI file onto the Compact Flash modded Dreamcast, and while it would display the Faster than Speed custom artwork in Dreamshell, the game would not boot. So close...yet so far!

Edit - I got games working on a Dreamcast (thanks to Pcwzrd13 once again!). Check out the results.


One thing is clear though - this game and the work of megavolt85 is a revelation for the Dreamcast library. That Atomiswave games can now be sampled - in my case for the first time ever - is truly amazing; and a massive boon for digital preservationists. And this could be just the start of a whole new side of the Sega arcade library being opened up to Dreamcast owners who never knew such experiences existed. Exciting stuff indeed.




Apart from Faster than Speed, other Atomiswave games to be ported to Dreamcast in 2020 include King of Fighters XI, Metal Slug 6, and Samurai Spirits Tenkaichi Kenkakuden, and we'd be a bit daft to think that even more Atomiswave games are not on the cusp of being ported to our beloved console.

Head over to the Dreamcast-Talk forums to find out more. Thanks also to @pcwzrd13 for alerting those of us (me) who have maybe been a bit lax on keeping up with Dreamcast news this year.

The Dreamcast Legacy - BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle

In a new series of articles (perhaps only a short-lived series, as I only have this and one other lined up), we will be exploring modern games that owe a debt to the blazing trails left by the games and developers of the bygone Dreamcast era. In this issue, we will be looking at the upcoming Arc System Works title BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, a new 2 vs. 2 tag-team fighting game coming soon to PS4, Switch, and Steam. Apart from the obvious correlations with similar Dreamcast heavyweight titles such as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and the Capcom vs. SNK series, this new crossover beat-'em up shares a little more Dreamcast heritage than you may initially realise.


Atomiswave Dev Kit 'SystemX' Discovered, Contains Fragments Of Unreleased Game 'Chicago 1929'

Ah, the Atomiswave. A beloved arcade system developed by Sammy that has its roots firmly planted in the fertile foothills of the NAOMI system heartlands, the Atomiswave is viewed by many as something of an extension of the Dreamcast family - indeed, our own 'Expanding the Dreamcast Collection' series goes into great depth looking at the Atomiswave, its hardware, some of its finest games and the link to the Dreamcast family.
The Atomiswave arcade system
With this connection in mind, a recent discovery may excite those interested in both the Dreamcast and the Atomiswave - an innocuous white box that looks for all intents and purposes like a standard Dreamcast dev unit; but one with the label 'SystemX' stuck over the familiar Dreamcast logo.
The Atomiswave dev kit, SystemX
After further investigation of the SystemX, owner Brian Hargrove has deduced that this is pretty clearly a Dreamcast development unit converted into an Atomiswave development kit...and even more intriguing is that it appears to contain fragments of a game that never saw a final release - Chicago 1929. Here, Brian explains how he came to own the SystemX and what he's discovered about the technical side of things:

Cancelled Atomiswave Fighter KenJu Discovered

This is only very tenuously related to the Dreamcast, so apologies if it offends your eyes. That said, Ross recently posted an awesome analysis of the Atomiswave here and Sammy's arcade hardware is linked loosely to the Dreamcast and Sega...so I won't lose any sleep over it. What am I on about? Well, it looks as though a long lost Atomiswave arcade fighter has been discovered. As reported on both the Assembler Games forums and hardcore fighting game site Shoryuken, 3D fighter KenJu was in development by Ehrgeiz and Tobal No1 creator DreamFactory before it dropped off the radar and was never seen again. Details on how the game was discovered by collector ShouTime are a little hazy, but we're not really that bothered - it's just cool to see yet another forgotten title come to light.


As you can see from the video, KenJu is aesthetically very similar to Capcom's Project Justice Rival Schools 2, and the stage demonstrated in the clip is uncannily reminiscent of the sports arena seen in the aforementioned high school-based brawler. Twelve interesting characters appear to be available to the player initially, and it's probably safe to assume that more would become playable after meeting certain gameplay milestones. Visuals appear to be pseudo cel-shaded and on the whole it looks to be quite a competent entry into the genre. There doesn't appear to be much information online regarding KenJu or the reasons for the game's cancellation, but we're sure you'll agree it's very cool to see hitherto unknown games still coming to light.

Expanding the Dreamcast Collection: Part 4 - Atomiswave

“Welcome back to the stage of history.” It's been a long time coming, and for that I can only apologise, but this mammoth article has finally been completed so let's take a look at the fourth system in the Dreamcast family of hardware: the Sammy Atomiswave. Out of all the hardware in the family, the Atomiswave is perhaps the most similar to the Dreamcast on a technical level and was supported by three names in gaming synonymous with the console's library: SNK, Sammy and Sega. With this in mind, if you consider yourself a fan of the Dreamcast, or the Neo Geo for that matter, you’d be doing yourself a great disservice by overlooking it.

A Quick Look at Dolphin Blue

Just like our previous article exploring the history of the Sega Driving Simulator, this began as a sub-section of the upcoming part 4 in our 'Expanding the Dreamcast Collection' series regarding the next in the line of arcade systems to share similar hardware to the Dreamcast; the Atomiswave system. People often ask me…wait - who am kidding…let me start again. In my imagination, people often ask me to name the 'exclusive killer app' for each of the systems in the Dreamcast family and I usually struggle, but with Atomiswave, an answer is easy to produce; not only is this the best Atomiswave game, but this could well very be the single best exclusive across the entire Dreamcast family of arcade hardware. Read on to find out more.

I’m a big fan of Metal Slug but like many of you out there, I found the series got a wee bit stale after the third game. Not to say that subsequent games were bad or anything, just that…well, I couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu, and have always preferred the purity of the original game without all the zombies, mummies, aliens and transformation nonsense. Dolphin Blue fills the void left in the wake of the Metal Slug series’ change in direction, and then some.
Even before merging with Sega, Sammy had a close relationship with Sega.
Atomiswave and the Guilty Gear series are heavily associated with both companies. 
The game was one of the last Sammy developed before the merger with Sega in 2004. Despite this, it feels incredibly Sega-like for lack of a better term; blue skies, upbeat catchy tunes, cute spunky characters with plenty of 'tude and even an appearance from Sega’s very own Ecco the Dolphin…Ok, well that last part I may have just pulled out of my arse, but many of the gameplay mechanics do revolve around a certain bad ass cetacean chum.

Forensic Examination Of The Dreamcast Corpse - File 1 of 2

In this first of two special guest articles, SonicRetro's resident researcher, Sonic game hacker, and owner of over 400 Dreamcast games Doc Eggfan performs a fascinating post mortem on the Dreamcast to discover just what happened to the units that were destined for the shop shelves, but ultimately wound up being re-purposed in a most interesting way. Doc Eggfan, over to you...

While pondering life's great inequities, I got a little question stuck in my head the other day - when exactly did the Dreamcast expire? What was the exact time of death, good doctor? We all know that the old girl continues to be supported up to this day by some very dedicated indie developers, but when exactly did official support dry up? Sega officially announced the discontinuation of Dreamcast hardware production on 1st February 2001, where the very last Dreamcast was set to roll off the assembly line at the end of March (end of the Japanese fiscal year). Some reports indicated that a backlog of about 2 million unsold Dreamcasts were sadly sitting alone and unwanted in some dusty old warehouses at this time.