The Dreamcast Mini: Hopes and Prospects

Since Nintendo launched their NES Classic to commercial and critical acclaim in 2016, most video game console manufacturers of the '80s and '90s have been stirred to try and reproduce that success, dusting off long neglected brands and intellectual properties in the hunt for financial gains. 

Technically speaking the NES Classic isn’t all that innovative – ‘plug and play’ systems that enable users to sample a selection of old games straight out of the box had already been kicking around the market for many years. Dozens of these types of units were produced during the nineties and noughties, typically on the cheap, including a spate of abominable Mega Drive clones churned out by third-party manufacturers under license from Sega. 

One of the more famous Dreamcast Mini images one can find with a bit of Googling.

Although the fundamental premise was the same, the NES Classic had characteristics that distinguished it from what came before and established a framework to be emulated moving forward (good pun, right?). Here was a first-party designed and produced system that stayed true to the original's aesthetics, with a carefully curated set of games, and a decent build quality that gave customers a much more realistic reproduction of the console’s experience.

In its first year on the market the NES Classic sold over 1.5 million units. Rather than languishing in the darker recesses of the Argos catalogue or piling up in the gloomy discount bins of retailers, these new-old consoles sold like hot cakes, and competitors quickly took note. Sony’s PlayStation Classic was released in late 2018, while Sega were relatively late to the party, with the Mega Drive Mini hitting stores in late 2019.

The Mega Drive Mini, released in 2019, did well enough to warrant the release of the Mega Drive Mini 2 in 2022.

Inevitably, the question many gamers and industry hacks have persistently raised since the revival of plug-and-play system via the ‘Classic’ model is: what's next? Could it be feasible that Sega are secretly working away on a Dreamcast Mini as we speak? For some outlets, the mere mention of the Dreamcast in a survey sent to Japanese buyers of the Mega Drive Mini was enough reason to run pieces with rather optimistic headlines earlier this year.

While the anticipation felt by some for the possible revival of a personal favourite is understandable, the harsh reality is that to date no verifiable proof has surfaced to suggest that a Dreamcast Mini is on the horizon. This article could probably end here, but as we’re occupying that strange limbo period between Christmas and New Year with little else productive to do, let’s allow some leeway to ponder the prospects of such a product appearing in the near future.

No matter how much you’d love to have a teeny tiny version of a design classic sitting next to your TV, the first and foremost factor Sega will be considering is the potential profitability of a Dreamcast Mini. After all, behind the sparkly mission statements and corporate social responsibility lingo, they are a business with shareholders that only love Sonic as long as he is bringing home stacks of hard currency alongside the chaos emeralds.

Maybe a Dreamcast this mini would be taking things a bit too far...

Is there really a large enough audience for a Dreamcast Mini? One key customer profile in this respect would be those who are motivated to open their wallets by nostalgia. Middle-aged folks who want a momentary escape from the drudgery of modern life but can’t be bothered with the hassle of picking up second-hand hardware, or the need to trawl through forum posts to figure out how to re-calibrate their rickety GD-Rom drive. 

On this point, the Dreamcast is at a severe disadvantage, as without some serious mental gymnastics it is hard to be nostalgic for something that you never experienced in the first place. 9 million units sold is nothing to be sniffed at, but it is a drop in the ocean when we consider the figures racked up by the behemoths of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Title Defense: Dreamcast's lost boxing sim

Think boxing on the Dreamcast and no doubt your mind will be instantly transported to the cacophonous auditoria of Midway's infamous Ready 2 Rumble; an ebullient Afro Thunder pacing around the ring with the kind of swagger only normally reserved for arcade boxers that looked - through a contemporary lens, at least - like playable CGI creations.

Yes Ready 2 Rumble and its sequel Ready 2 Rumble: Round 2 pretty much had the boxing genre sewn up on the Dreamcast; so while other systems before and since have enjoyed a wealth of options when it comes to digital pugilism, Sega's own great white (now possibly yellowing) hope only played host to the two Midway propositions. This is especially curious since previous Sega systems offered an embarrassment of riches when it came to boxing titles, with games like Greatest Heavyweights on the Mega Drive and Victory Boxing on the Saturn being two particular highlights from my own sordid youth. Arguably the most famous boxing franchise of all time is Punch-Out!!, but seeing as I was a Sega kid, I never really dabbled with those games until later on.

At the risk of turning this into a stroll down my personal memory lane of boxing games, it's time to take a detour through a lesser-travelled ginnel. See, the Dreamcast may have only received the two Ready 2 Rumble titles as officially released boxing games, but there was scheduled a mandatory challenger to face Midway's undisputed champion. In the opposite corner to Ready 2 Rumble, and hailing from the south coast of England, wearing superlative hi-res visuals and offering an impressive array of inventive gameplay modes, stood Climax Studios' Title Defense. 

Or at least it did, before the camera panned back around and it had vanished from the ring leaving nought but the faint whiff of Ralgex and dissappointment.

Source: DC-UK / Out of Print Archive

Announced in March 2000 by Portsmouth, Hampshire based Climax Studios, Title Defense promised a more realistic simulation style approach to boxing for the Dreamcast. Acutely aware of the long, muscle-bound shadow cast by Ready 2 Rumble, the game's designers were keen to distance Title Defense from Midway's arcade rooted punch fest at seemingly any and every opportunity. While not a Dreamcast exclusive, the fact that the Dreamcast was the only 'next-gen' console gamers could actually purchase at the time of Title Defense's announcement meant that it was the lead platform in many ways; and also presumably the reason Sega's system was the focus for a lot of the early media.

"Climax today announced it has begun development on Title Defense, a cutting-edge boxing game for PC, Dreamcast, Nintendo Dolphin, PlayStation 2 and X-Box. As addictive as a pure arcade game, but as detailed as a serious simulation, Title Defense is being designed to provide the all-round thump-'em up experience that previous boxing games have failed to deliver. 

"Making full use of the power in PCs and next-gen consoles, Title Defense will use high-resolution 3D graphics to bring TV-style mug-punching to glorious life. It promises to be a heavyweight game in every respect, weighing in with a fluid control system, advanced AI and punch-by-punch interactive commentary."

- Climax Studios, 9th March 2000

In the months following the initial press release, various members of Climax Studios' development team were interviewed by the gaming press, extolling the virtues of their Ready 2 Rumble-killer, and detailed the various features and gameplay modes that Title Defense would offer over the competition. The game was also featured in magazines of the era, with UK Dreamcast magazine DC-UK printing a four page spread focussed solely on Climax Studios' upcoming Dreamcast releases in the June 2000 edition. Naturally, this feature included a 'first look' at Title Defense, which showcased the game's impressive graphics and detailed some of the modes players could look forward to.

Source: DC-UK / Out of Print Archive

These modes included a sparring session, an exhibition fight mode, a curious sounding 'shadow boxing' mode (in which players would spar against a 'ghost' version of their own fights, apparently), and of course a full on career mode. 

Speaking to IGN in May 2000, Climax Studios' Business Development Manager Chris Eden said: "There's a career mode in there, yeah. The plan is, in terms of game modes, there will be a sort of straightforward arcade style mode where you'll go through and you'll fight 'X' many fighters, yeah? That's something we really need to do to keep the arcade gamers happy. But what we plan to do is put in a career mode, that'll require so much progression into the game. And that's something people hadn't really thought about before. For example if you look at real life how many fights does a boxer have? What's the level of opponents they fight? Things like that. Boxing isn't a sport where you fight anybody all the time, and games like Ready 2 Rumble don't show the hard work behind a boxing career or anything like that. Something we're sort of looking at as well is a small management mode where you'd be able to manage a stable of boxers and you'd be able to take part in the fight itself."

DC-UK's Climax Studios feature, July 2000

It wasn't just the variety in gameplay options that impressed though. The visuals, from the scant screens that were available looked truly outstanding. While clearly very early, the shots that were shared with magazines and websites of the era depict some excellently detailed character models - somewhat reminiscent of the superb models seen in Ultimate Fighting Championship - and some large (albeit empty) venues which would no doubt have eventually have been filled with roaring crowds. 

Again speaking to IGN, Chris Eden stated: "Title Defense is mainly really nice technology. People talk about physics as the new Rock and Roll in games and that's true, we've got a very detailed physics model in Title Defense and it allows us to model where the muscles work, and stuff like that. When the characters move, the muscles bulge and deform realistically, that's essentially how it works. And that is what will set us apart from games like Ready 2 Rumble, this total realism, like watching a boxing match, the movement the physics of it all."

What's especially interesting about the visuals of Title Defense is that the fighters were apparently not animated using motion capture of real boxers, but instead relied on manual hand animation. This time speaking to Game Interviews, Chris Eden said: "The game is fully hand animated at the moment. We did toy with the idea of using motion capture but to us the benefits of animation outweighed those of mo-cap."

Alas, there is no known video footage of Title Defense in motion, so quite how well this animation style held up is something of a mystery at this point, but still an interesting little fact to note.

Source: DC-UK / Out of Print Archive

While Climax were quick to point out that Title Defense was at the opposite end of the spectrum to Ready 2 Rumble when it came to gameplay and feel, the one similarity both games would share would be the lack of any official boxing license, with EA Sports having the exclusive rights to real world fighters tied up in its pre-Fight Night era Knockout Kings franchise. 

"EA has most of the boxing licenses sewn up, I think. As we've seen with Ready 2 Rumble and other games, a license isn't necessary for boxing as it is for like football, yeah? If you look down the line and looking at a boxing game, we've got this idea of this game with a player to interact with, and an awful lot of the people you meet are going to be other players," Chris went on to explain during his interview with IGN. "In a game world like we envisage people will generate their own reputations and careers. Licenses are essentially about having pre-generated reputations that you're up against, yeah? But if you start thinking about a boxing universe then reputations get generated by players, which I think is far more interesting."

The Band that Played the Dreamcast - an Interview with Adam Demirjian of Brave Little Abacus/Me in Capris

At the beginning of this year, I was doing some early research for an article I wanted to write for my personal blog. As part of that piece's intro, I wanted to explain how now-defunct band Brave Little Abacus were able to escape the cruel fate of obscurity thanks to file sharing and a passionate cult fanbase... I think I wanted to prove some grand point about the importance of music preservation in the modern era of music streaming. Y'know, stick it to the man, or something. Like I said, that research was early.

While searching the internet for information about the band, however, I stumbled upon the following quote attached to a YouTube video of them performing live back in 2010:

"For some reason around this time we stopped playing backing tracks off of a Dreamcast or Playstation/Small CRT and started rocking the much more regular laptop."

They performed live… with a Dreamcast?! I'd heard of game consoles being used as part of musical performances before, such as the Game Boy being used by chiptune artists, but the idea of a band lugging a television to a show and hooking a whole console up to it for the purpose of playing backing tracks was definitely something I'd not heard of before. We're no stranger to the unconventional here at the Junkyard, though - so of course I instantly wanted to know more. 

The next thing I knew, I had contacted Adam Demirijian, who was the lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for Brave Little Abacus, and now plays in the band Me In Capris. I wasn't sure what to expect back at first, but Adam did reply and was actually really stoked to talk all things Dreamcast with me!

Before I dive into mine and Adam's chat, some background on Brave Little Abacus. For the uninitiated, they were a band from Sandown, New Hampshire, USA that existed from 2007 to 2012. Writing for Sputnik Music, staff writer Trebor described them as "hard to pin down. They were eclectic, energetic, experimental, odd, off putting, and above all else, they were remarkable." While their music was very experimental, many consider BLA to fall under the genre of 'emo.' They were also known for their abundant use of video game and pop culture samples in their songs. 

Their cult status can be attributed primarily to the online popularity of their final album, 'Just Got Back from the Discomfort - We're Alright' which was quietly released onto Bandcamp in 2010, initially to limited fanfare. This was the album that would go on to earn them the reputation as one of the most important bands of the emo revival. Spin Magazine even placed the album 27th on its 30 Best Emo Revival Albums, Ranked list... but because the band was disbanded by the time their fanbase really started to bloom, and had no real online presence, they retained an air of mystery about them for the longest time.

For this same reason, a geek like me looking for something as specific as photo or video evidence of a Dreamcast or a CRT television present at a BLA performance before 2010 had me coming back empty-handed... so I appreciate Adam for being so gracious as to fill me in on this intriguing part of the band's history, as well as taking the time to dig up some photographs taken at a show on February 21st, 2009, that feature the setup in question! Thanks, Adam! Also, thanks to James Gentile, the individual who snapped the photos a whole thirteen years ago!

"Just Got Back from the Discomfort - We're Alright" album cover

If you want to know more about BLA, I highly recommend 108 Mics' video about them, as well as Adam's interviews with podcasts i might go to the beach and The E Word. Those interviews are the real meat and potatoes when it comes to unravelling the lore surrounding Brave Little Abacus. This interview, however, is about Brave Little Abacus and their love for video games, in particular, the Sega Dreamcast. It's the interview the core fans never knew they wanted! Let's get into it...

Retrospective: Nettou Golf - a Golfing Hidden Gem for Dreamcast

Given the plethora of Golf titles available on virtually all Sega systems leading up to the Dreamcast, it’s somewhat of an oddity that, even with the Dreamcast's shortened lifespan, there was only a mere three golf titles released worldwide, one of which was a sequel. 

Tee Off was the only golf title released in PAL regions (meaning a poor showing for the home of Golf itself!), as well as NTSC, and isn’t a terrible game. While its name change (from Golf Shiyouyo) and cover reworking completely belie its cutesy presentation and characters, it's still a reasonable enough effort. Its sequel never left Japan.

Whilst there were stories and news reports that Sega had been in the process of converting their arcade title Virtua Golf, no real evidence that this was actually in the works exists from what I can see. For more information about Virtua Golf, check out Dreamcast Today's article.

There was another golf game, however, that is probably not as well-known by many. Step forward Nettou Golf.

A Dreamcast version of this with a trackball controller would have been incredible. 

Nettou Golf isn't well-known to us Dreamcast gamers in the West due to its Japan exclusivity, but, in my opinion, it’s rather good, and surprisingly playable without needing an English translation of any sort. The fact it was published by Sega themselves (it was developed by Data East) is vaguely curious to me considering its lack of a worldwide release. Given that the name derives from "NetGolf", because the game had online capabilities, it's even odder considering Sega's global touting of online play as a big marketing push for the Dreamcast, but it was apparently decided we weren’t considered as a territory for the game. Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity at the very least given how little in the way of a translation would have been needed to cover a game in this genre.

As previously mentioned, Nettou Golf is very accessible despite the language barrier. Not only does Google Translate do a very competent job of allowing you to understand the menus and modes, but I discovered this handy site (pictured below), that despite now being defunct, appears to be a couple's attempt to provide others with enough understanding to functionally navigate through certain less heralded Japanese games that were likely never going to get a localisation of any kind. They only translated seven games prior to stopping, but luckily for us, one of them is Nettou Golf.

Gauntlet Giveaway! An investigation into the Gauntlet Legends limited edition pewter miniatures

Back in 2015 we looked fleetingly at the Gauntlet Legends pewter miniature giveaway. If you're not familiar and can't be bothered clicking this link to refresh your memory, allow me to offer a quick recap on the situation. Gauntlet Legends is a 3D polygonal sequel to the original 2D Gauntlet and Gauntlet II titles released by Atari in the mid 1980s. Gauntlet Legends was subsequently released into arcades in 1998 and then ported to a range of home systems in 1999 and 2000 - one of which was the Sega Dreamcast.

The game received a fairly positive reception on release for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and finally Dreamcast, offering a solid - if somewhat repetitive - romp through various fantasy stages, with the player (accompanied by up to 3 friends on N64 and Dreamcast) being required to knock the ever-loving crap out of hordes of mindless enemies as they progressed through the adventure. The Dreamcast version of Gauntlet Legends was the final home port to be released and featured several aspects of Gauntlet Dark Legacy, the follow up title released in arcades in 1999. 

This post really isn't about the actual game Gauntlet Legends though. It's about something a little bit more interesting and esoteric - the fabled Gauntlet Legends pewter miniatures that were given away for free to anybody who purchased the NTSC-U version of the game for either Dreamcast or PlayStation.

Gauntlet Legends NTSC-U box art showing the Gauntlet Giveaway! (source)

As detailed in that 2015 post, the covers of the NTSC-U edition of Gauntlet Legends offered the opportunity to claim a free set of these pewter figures based on characters from the game, and all that was required in order to own them was to send in a supplied mailing slip and proof of purchase to publisher Midway Home Entertainment. 

This 'Gauntlet Giveaway!' was advertised both on the front of the manual (which doubled up as the front cover in most NTSC-U and NTSC-J Dreamcast games), and on the rear cover; while the mail order slip could be found inside the manual. As the Dreamcast port of Gauntlet Legends was launched in early June 2000, and the giveaway only ran until the end of December 2000, gamers only had 7 months to stake a claim to their birthrights (well, their little metal models).

The Gauntlet Giveaway mail order slip

Close-up of the offer advert - details inside!

Until getting my hands on an American copy of Gauntlet Legends for Dreamcast, I had never heard of this promotion, but I later discovered that a similar scheme had previously been run in connection with the Nintendo 64 version of the game. The difference being that in the case of the N64, a single miniature came bundled in the box as part of an exclusive Walmart promotion, and they are now some of the rarest Nintendo 64 special editions available.

Back in 2015, I lamented about the mysterious nature of these minature models (well, mysterious from a European perspective), and the seemingly nonexistent nature of any information surrounding them; namely how many variants had been manufactured and how many sets had been claimed. Back then there was precious little info available about the promotion, and even now, if you do a cursory Google search you'll invariably end up looking at the same 2015 blog post hosted here on the Junkyard, the Gauntlet Wiki, or some forum posts from the early 2000s. 

What we do know though, is that the Gauntlet Legends pewter miniatures were manufactured by Reaper - one of the biggest names in the miniatures and model manufacturing sector. Why then, do I bring up this relic from the mists of time? Because we only went and got our hands on a set of the fabled Gauntlet Legends miniatures, that's why!

The Legends of Gauntlet in miniature form

The way these things came into my possession is actually pretty bizarre in its own right, so indulge me while I explain the whole sordid sequence of events before we take a closer look at the miniatures themselves, and also an extra nugget of interesting detail contained therein.

Let's take a look at the 'All About Dreamcast VCD'

Here at the Junkyard we appreciate the obscure and the bizarre. For folks that have had a Dreamcast-shaped monkey perched firmly on their backs for over two decades, it is probably only natural to begin delving into the unexplored corners of the console, whether that be vague rumours of cancelled games, potato-based marketing splashes, or weird little knick-knaks that catch your eye on eBay. This post is about an oddity that falls squarely into that last category. Some may suspect we are scraping the barrel for the last few dregs of copy here, but oh no, this post is being authored in the honourable service of  documentation and preservation (and distracting myself from the impending economic collapse due here in the UK).

The official Dreamcast logo is there, but something tells me Sega had little to do with this product...

The 'All About Dreamcast VCD' is a Chinese-language Video CD accompanied by a short six page pamphlet that was sold in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1998 for the princely sum of $90 New Taiwan Dollars or $25 Hong Kong Dollars (around £3.50 GBP accounting for inflation). The package appears to have been produced and distributed in advance of the launch of the Dreamcast and was intended to showcase the console and its forthcoming games. It's definitely not an official product, and although there is an address and phone number shown for the producers, I can't identify a company name. The 30-minute VCD contains footage of the Japanese release day titles, games that were scheduled to arrive in December 1998 (including the canned Geist Force) and beyond, as well as some clips of Naomi titles that the creators presumably thought would make it over to the home console some day. If you ever used to watch pirated DVDs that had clearly been filmed from the back of a cinema, the last section will give you a nice nostalgic hit.

Aside from the handful of facts that can be gleaned from the package itself, nothing else appears to be known of the 'All About Dreamcast VCD'. Internet searches produce zilch. Perhaps that is simply down to this artifact being a little insignificant, although that hasn't stopped similar VHS-format Dreamcast videos being ripped and viewed thousands of times. While this VCD doesn't really show off anything new, we reckon some of you may get a kick out of it. So, grab some popcorn, transport your mind back to autumn 1998, and get hyped for the console that is going to solidify Sega's domination of the gaming hardware market for decades to come!

Retrospective: The Flashback series on Dreamcast

With the recent announcement that a true Flashback sequel (imaginatively titled Flashback 2) is heading our way in late 2022, we thought it appropriate to cast our minds back to the recent past and take another look at the officially sanctioned Flashback titles released on the Dreamcast. 

It's not really common knowledge that Flashback was given a full physical release, complete with a hyper fragile PAL case, back in 2017. Well regarded publisher JoshProd was behind this fantastic edition of Delphine Software's sprite based action adventure, and the release was even given a full seal of approval by original creator Paul Cuisset.

We reviewed the game at the time, and gushed at the lovingly crafted package. From the excellent (and authentic) box art and printed disc, to the additional extras lavished upon the Dreamcast remaster, it really was excellent and packed with content.

This included such notable features as a full and uncut intro cinematic (previous console versions featured a cut down intro from the Amiga version), the option to enable pre-rendered cut scenes from the PC release, full voice acting, alternative soundtracks, 16-bit emulated versions, and quick saves using the VMU. 

Furthermore, quality of life improvements came in the form of numerous graphic filters and fully customisable controls. Underneath all the polish though, Flashback for Dreamcast was/is just plain old Flashback...but when 'plain old' Flashback is as good as it is, that's no bad thing.

The release of Flashback on Dreamcast went almost unnoticed by the mainstream gaming press though, and it was quickly forgotten about as the game was subsequently ported to modern platforms such as the Nintendo Switch. Naturally, the Dreamcast is a bit of a niche system these days so that's understandable, but the fact remains that the Dreamcast port of Flashback is as solid as they come and could arguably be viewed as the blueprint for the current gen re-releases that came after it.

What hapenned next was similarly seemingly ignored in the main - the 1995 follow up to Flashback, titled Fade to Black, was also given a fully approved 'official' physical release on Dreamcast. Fade to Black first came to the PC and PlayStation in the mid-nineties to some moderate success, eschewing the prequel's side on, rotoscoped gameplay for a more modern (for the time) leap into 3D. 

Once again assuming the role of main protagonist Conrad B. Hart, players of Fade to Black were thrown into another sci-fi adventure involving the wanton shooting of old foes the Morphs, solving of simplistic puzzles, finding keys and getting hopelessly lost...but this time from a pseudo over-the-shoulder perspective.

Again released by JoshProd and given full approval by the rights holder and designer Delphine Software and Paul Cuisset, Fade to Black on Dreamcast was released in 2018 to very little in the way of fanfare outside of the Dreamcast community. The Dreamcast release, in a similar fashion to the prequel, is a sort of mash-up of the other versions of the game, with the main bulk of the game seemingly based on the PC iteration. 

This is especially evident in the comparatively clean visuals and relative lack of severe pixellation and texture warping associated with a lot of PlayStation titles. Something that sets this game apart from the other indie Dreamcast releases of the era is that it is indeed a fully 3D game, that runs well on the Dreamcast and showcases just how well the Dreamcast might be used for the porting of other classic DOS or Windows games (something that has come to further fruition with the recent release of Postal). 

Controls can take a bit of getting used to, especially since the game employs a Soldier of Fortune style 'hold down a button to access a secondary menu' type system; and you can't manually aim Conrad's sidearm making for some frustrating firefights. Overall though, Fade to Black is a decent third person adventure, albeit one that is very much of its time.

There are a couple of interesting asides about this Dreamcast re-release of Fade to Black that are worthy of note. The first is that the game was originally published by Electronic Arts, an organisation which famously went on to completely ignore the existence of the Dreamcast. Does this make Fade to Black the sole Electronic Arts game to be officially released on Dreamcast, then? 

Also intriguing is a rumour abounds that the Dreamcast game has totally redrawn box art (drawn by Philippe Dessoly, see above) because the original high resolution versions of the Fade to Black artwork are lost to the mists of time. How true that is, I can't be sure, but it makes for a nice bedtime story.

So there we have it. Not one, but two Flashback titles came to the Dreamcast in an official guise. Most people reading this probably already knew this, but for those who didn't...well now you do. Both releases are superb renditions of their respective source material, and are well worth seeking out (go here for Flashback and here for Fade to Black - note these are not affiliate links). 

It's probably worth mentioning here that I am more than a little biased in my views as a huge fan of the series, having owned or played pretty much every single release of Flashback across numerous different plaforms over the years. Of course the Atari Jaguar version is the best (and has the superior variant of the box art), but the Dreamcast version gives it a run for its money. Fight me in the comments.

A Farewell to Hidekazu Yukawa (plus a round-up of all the Dreamcast games he starred in)

Yesterday, Yahoo News Japan reported that Hidekazu Yukawa, the senior managing director of Sega Japan during the early part of the Dreamcast's life, passed away from pneumonia in June of last year at the age of 78. His family had kept this sad news private until now, but it is reported that Yukawa had been sick for the past 5 years (source). Our condolences go out to his family and friends.

Yukawa is nothing short of Dreamcast royalty, so this sad news has understandably led to many words of tribute from fans (and even former colleagues, such as Yuji Naka) across social media. 

Yukawa became an overnight success in Japan after starring in a series of very amusing and surprisingly honest commercials (watch them here) where he rises up from the depths of self doubt (and being bullied by PlayStation-loving children) to spread the good word of the Dreamcast and lead the fight as the senior managing director of Sega Japan. This bout of fame resulted in Yukawa's image being used on Dreamcast console boxes (pictured below), merchandise (such as the Yukawa keyring also pictured below) and print adverts.

Photo kindly taken for us by KingMonkey

We too wanted to pay tribute to Mr. Yukawa, and thought we’d do it in the best way the Junkyard knows how - by geeking out about Dreamcast games! After all, what's a better way to pay tribute to Yukawa than to boot up the console that he championed so mightily, and play one of the multiple games he starred in? Here they are:

Former Managing Director Yukawa's Treasure Hunt

Let's kick things off with Yukawa's very own Dreamcast game. This simple game was released exclusively in Japan near the Dreamcast's launch and was tied into a short-running competition. The game has you play as Yukawa himself, with the aim being to dig up various tiles to complete puzzles that make up images of Dreamcast-related memorabilia. During March 20th 1999 and April 11th 1999, players could submit their victories online to be entered into a raffle to win real-life Dreamcast goodies, or even ¥10,000. 

The servers for the game have since been shut down, so there's sadly no longer any prizes to be won, but the game is still playable. In fact, it's also now playable in English thanks to a team consisting of SnowyAria, EsperKnight and Mr. Nobody, who released a translation patch for it back in April. Go here to get that patch, and for a more in-depth breakdown about the game, check out Tom's article on it here.

Shenmue and What's Shenmue

What's a better game to contain a cameo of the man that sought to spread optimism about the Dreamcast than the game that was touted to save the console: Shenmue? Well, Yukawa makes multiple secret appearances in Shenmue, and a much more prominent one in the promotional demo What's Shenmue: Search for Yukawa (former) Senior Managing Director.

Image credit: Phantom River Stone

I always thought that Yukawa's inclusion in the regular version of Shenmue was limited to him appearing on a point of sale display for batteries in the Tomato Convenience Store. But thanks to a great article on Phantom River Stone, I learnt that Ryo can actually meet Yukawa twice, although certain conditions must be fulfilled first... 

Using DALL·E mini to create AI Dreamcast images from hell

Good old artificial intelligence. If it's not deciding to wipe out humanity for our own good or powering our Teslas, it's listening to our conversations and plotting ways serve us with adverts for things we never knew we needed. There is another important use for AI though - creating cursed Dreamcast related images. 

DALL·E mini is a prototype 'artifical intelligence model that generates images from any prompt you give,' and so naturally isn't limited to solely spitting out Giger-esque renditions of Dreamcast consoles and games - the very nature of the tool created by Boris Dayma et al is that you can punch whatever you like into the devil's own suggestion box and DALL·E mini will attempt to render approximations of what your twisted mind has concocted.

All joking aside, it really is a very clever little program, and is well worth playing around with if you have some time to kill. With this in mind, here for your delectation/utter disgust are some of the more 'imaginative' images DALL·E mini thrust into existence with a little prompting from yours truly. Viewer discretion is advised.

'Sega Dreamcast'

'Jet Set Radio'

'Shenmue'