The Best Dreamcast Merchandise: a Post-Christmas Breakdown

As a group of proudly obsessed Dreamcast fans here at the Junkyard, we don't simply leave our admiration for Sega's 128-bit box of wonders at talking endlessly about the games, hardware or accessories that most people associate with the console. For us, the Dreamcast is life, and we need little encouragement to escalate our borderline obsessive behaviour by purchasing as much plastic tat merchandise associated with the console as our little wallets can handle. Genuinely, we would buy a bin full of sick if Sega printed a swirl on the side and called it the “DreamBin” (Lewis, copyright that shit right now).

But of course, we don't actually need to stock up on vomit-filled metal containers, because Sega, and the various publishers of Dreamcast games, have seen fit to release or provide their license to a whole assortment of items related to the console and the games that made it great. Some of these are awesome… so awesome in fact that this article will mark the start of what will become a long-running series of “Mike's Random Dreamcast Top Tens”, with this first one looking at some of my favourite pieces of merchandise that you too can buy and put on a shelf, and admire from a distance with a tear in your eye as you realise you'll never have enough time to play all those games you've bought, but purchasing mass-produced nonsense for display like your 80 year old grandmother’s collection of porcelain dolls is now your life. 

Enough waffle. Let’s get on to today's random list, and too late for you to be able to get these in your stocking for Christmas! A pre-emptive warning - I may have my tongue firmly in my cheek for much of this article.

Dreamcast Socks

I write this as the full charade of Christmas is upon us. There are the sounds of happy little children outside, seasonal songs fill the airwaves and I can catch a glimpse of a tinsel and fairy light bedecked tree from my games room. I hate it. The children are little arseholes, the songs are shit and that tree is a fire hazard. No one remembers the true meaning of Christmas anymore - no, not Jesus (hail Satan), but family members you see for one day a year giving you shitty socks because they are bereft of ideas and refuse to indulge you in your childish love of gaming. 

But here's an idea - get those family members to buy these snappy little numbers and everyone's a winner! When Sega remember they have licenses they haven't used for decades they release some cool stuff, and this selection of two different Dreamcast sock designs fulfils both our collective need to keep buying Dreamcast stuff while also allowing us to be all grown up and shit at the same time. 

You can get these in traditional festive sock grey with a swirl on them or in a slightly wrong coloured approximation of the controller. They obviously missed a trick by not putting some kind of hilarious message in the VMU window, such as “I wanted a new Skies of Arcadia game but all I got were these socks”, but who cares when you can proudly display your love of the 128-bit wonder to your significant other every night with these?

The fetching grey of the socks on the right doesn't quite embody the blue-sky aesthetics.

A pile of socks! Christ - what a time to be alive.

Dreamcastic Christmas 2023: Heart-warming Tales from DreamPod Listeners

Ahead of recording episode 125 of the DreamPod, which first aired as part of RadioSEGA’s illustrious Winterfest and is now available in all the regular places, we appealed to our listener base to send us their festive Dreamcast-related ideas, memories and musings. And thankfully, in generous Christmas spirit, our mailbag promptly filled-up with a hefty slab of responses ranging from the witty, to the heart-warming, to the downright impressive. Quite a few were discussed on the pod, but many are undoubtedly worth sharing on the blog too, and so here we are. 

Thanks to all the wonderful Junkard-ers (yardies?) who made submissions, tuned into the podcast or are currently reading these hungover scribblings of mine. The Junkyard wouldn't be what it is without you and we are blessed to have such a wonderful community gathered around the site eighteen years on from its founding. 

So, if you'd like to amplify your festive cheer, pour yourself a glass of Creamcast ale, and read on.

 Our guest on DreamPod 125, Pat from Sega Saturn, SHIRO!, lovingly embracing the Dreamcast that Santa brought him as a child.

Christmas Cracker Extravaganza

In typical parochial British fashion, I had assumed that Christmas Crackers were a widespread phenomenon, when in fact, it turns out they are pretty much contained to the shores of the UK. Nevertheless, we had some fantastic responses from all over the world to our call for Dreamcast-themed Christmas cracker ideas, several sent in by folks who had no prior familiarity with the concept (but evidently got with the programme quite rapidly).

Horror host extraordinaire Uncle Clutch knocked it out of the park, delivering a set of eight sublime watercolour paintings. Feast your eyes on their magnificence below, and, if you ever happen to meet the dude in person, be sure to buy him a drink (or three) on us.

Copyright Uncle Clutch, 2023. Not to be reproduced without permission of the creator.

Copyright Uncle Clutch, 2023. Not to be reproduced without permission of the creator.

Drum and Bass superstar Pizza Hotline delivered a detailed pitch for some garish Hello Kitty crackers: “A mixture of pink and blue semi-transparent non-recyclable plastic Hello Kitty crackers, like the consoles. There’s confetti inside that consists of mini plastic hello kitty faces and Dreamcast swirls which gets everywhere, sticks to your carpet and clothing, and no matter how much you brush or hoover it, it won’t come off. The prizes in the crackers are any of the capsule toys from Shenmue 1 or 2. You might get a poorly formed Sonic or Virtua Fighter character, or, better yet some dice or a mini forklift. It’s a Christmas miracle! When you pull each cracker, they don’t go BANG. Instead, they make the annoying VMU beeeep sound, and, instead of jokes you get awful one-liners from Shenmue. However, if you’re lucky you might get the odd inappropriate line from Blue Stinger’s Dogs Bower too. ‘Years ago I was Chinese’, ‘Try asking Chinese people about Chinese’, ‘Ugly like the worst sin’, or perhaps ‘Our jackets are too cool for that scum. I want guys like you to wear them’”. 

Of course, we assume that the emphasis on plastic-heavy construction is in fact a tongue-in-cheek throwback to the excesses of the late '90s and not something for David Attenborough to be worried about. 

The Hello Kitty Dreamcast has certainly become a bit of a style icon in recent years.

Bobby (purveyor of the magnificent Wandering Through Shenmue YouTube channel) provided an equally detailed pitch for some crackers that we would love to see on our tables – and gets top marks for including a bad joke: “I believe the cracker itself should be in the shape of a VMU. They could even come in different colours seeing as we had so many to pick from when the Dreamcast was originally released. To open it, you put your fingers where the finger grip traditionally is and pull the protective dust cap right off. In addition, the VMU screen will have traditional Sega images that are slightly altered. Sonic wearing a Christmas hat. Amy with mistletoe above her head. Nozomi wearing a scarf.

All of the hats will bear the traditional Dreamcast swirl logo. I suppose if the cracker is released in Great Britain the swirl will be blue, whereas if it's released in Japan or North America, it will be the traditional orange. But what's inside? How about some rubber erasers in the shape of different character heads from Sega franchises. One of them could have Skies of Arcadia characters. Another one would have Sonic characters of course. Maybe the other would have Virtua Fighter characters.”

And how about that bad cracker joke? Make sure you are seated for this one folks.

“Q: What do you tell your friend when the laser on your Dreamcast is having a hard time reading a disc because it's dirty?

A: It's thinking”

Dreamcast Graveyard: Websites We Miss from the Post-Sega Era

While logging into Phantasy Star Online the other night, with my GD-ROM screeching away under the immense pressure of having to load a lobby with three other players, it struck me that my character is now 18 years old. That’s a bloody long lifespan in gaming terms, and in fact, means that this morsel of code stored on my VMU is now quite a bit older than I was when I first brought it into existence. 

Flicking through the guild cards (effectively virtual business cards) my character has amassed, and especially the early ones, I was presented with a snapshot of the Dreamcast scene of yesteryear. In the notes of these cards, aside from the frequent appeals for cannabis legalisation made by idealistic teenage stoners, the URLs of a multitude of Dreamcast fan websites cropped up - the majority of which are sadly now ceased or in a moth-eaten state.

The Grubensau of 18 years ago would be pleased to hear how his dream has now turned into a reality in some parts of the world.

So, instead of tackling one of the many unfinished D.I.Y. jobs that are strewn though my house, I’m scribbling this post and inviting you to celebrate the good times that these fallen virtual-comrades-in-arms gave us. A blog post that contains a list based on nostalgia might be a worn out trope, but that's what I'm serving up, so strap in. In no particular order...

Dreamcast-Scene.com (2002-2018)

The final Dreamcast-Scene website header image.

The project of Max Scharl and a close knit team of associates, Dreamcast-Scene was a bit of a powerhouse back in the day. As their initial moniker of ‘Dreamcast-Petition’ would suggest, their roots lie in directing campaigns for GD-ROM production to continue, and for Dreamcast ports of late-stage Naomi arcade games to be made. How influential these campaigns were is hard to gauge, but the demonstration of consumer demand certainly can’t have hurt, and the subsequent flow of shmup releases on the Dreamcast between 2003 and 2007 no doubt exceeded expectations. 

The DCS crew sticking up for the Dreamcast alongside now defunct import store, Lik-Sang.com, at a gaming conference in 2003. Image courtesy of jeuxvideo.com.

Rapidly expanding beyond their founding purpose, the website morphed into a place for Dreamcast news to be reported at a time when mainstream outlets had halted their coverage, and to act as a kind of life-raft for those who didn’t wish to give up on the console after Sega pulled the plug. With in-person events, contests, press releases, t-shirts, and the rest, Dreamcast-Scene was a flame that burned brightly; the website is still online, but has not been updated for five years. Founder Max Scharl would go on to establish indie publisher RedSpotGames that delivered several top quality indie games, including Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles and Sturmwind, which, alas, has also since bit the dust.

Celebrating 25 Years of the Dreamcast and the Kaiju Monster it Rode in on

Well, shit. It’s been 25 years…or 300 months…or over 13 million minutes. That’s how long it’s been since Godzilla Generations was unleashed in Japan.

And the Dreamcast, too, for that matter.

In our house, it's always November 27th, 1998.

I was a tween when I first learned of Sega’s swansong console. Undeterred by President Shoichiro Irimajiri’s creepy disembodied head at the initial Dreamcast reveal, it was ultimately Sonic Adventure which ignited my hype for the platform and all the ambitious and imaginative experiences that would come to define it.

(From EGM #112 November 1998)
Don’t tell tween me that middle-aged me kept this tattered mag. He’d think it was weird and sad and he’d probably be right.

But the blue ‘hog was just the tip of the spear. With unprecedented visual and aural fidelity, groundbreaking online capabilities, intuitive hardware architecture, and a supplemental operating system, the Dreamcast fancied itself as both a developer-friendly haven and bleeding-edge forerunner of gaming’s future.

(Preserved by Unseen64.net)

Elsewhere on the software front, Virtua Fighter 3tb, Get Bass/Sega Bass Fishing, and Sega Rally 2 signaled a renewed commitment to Sega’s iconic arcade experiences at home. Blue Stinger, Pen Pen TriIcelon, and Climax Landers (eventually released as Time Stalkers in the West) flaunted their vibrancy and helped crystallize the Dreamcast’s aesthetic. AM2’s Shenmue – known as 'Project Berkley' at the time – promised to help reimagine how players might inhabit dense and bustling virtual spaces. Meanwhile, the presence of Biohazard: Code Veronica and D2 hinted at resurgent third party support from large and small game makers alike. And Godzilla Generations…was also there.

Although most of Sega’s in-house projects had yet to be unveiled in depth, they’d go on to spark a creative and innovative renaissance that continues to endear the Dreamcast to us a full 2.5 percent of a millennium later.

(From EGM's 1999 Video Game Buyer's Guide)
Some of the other games I was looking forward to.

In the meantime, Sega faced hurricane-force headwinds as it prepared to get the thing off the ground. The community has expressed no shortage of anecdotes for all the challenges stacked against the company at the time. Among them, people often blame the following:

• Sega’s dwindling financial resources (i.e. capitalism*);
• A merciless competitive landscape amid Sega’s diminished command of industry trends (also capitalism*);
• The upcoming launch of the PlayStation 2 (capitalism strikes again!*);
• Intracompany divisions over the direction and priorities for the Dreamcast across regions;
• Sega's squandered goodwill with publishers, manufacturing partners, retailers, and consumers through several generations of missteps;
• Minimal time to prepare for the Japanese launch, yielding a meager day one lineup and delays for several would-be launch window titles;
• Shifting tides in consumer sentiment (sometimes people just like other things, you know?)
• Sega being Sega;
• Obama.

* I mean, maybe Sega just sucked at capitalism and that's totally OK. Would we really love the Dreamcast as much today if it had been managed by a more fiscally responsible and risk-averse company?

To me, Sega’s biggest challenges of the era were inseparable from its identity. The company’s deep-rooted stubbornness and rebelliousness – while enabling its uncompromising creativity and ambition – led it to hang its fortunes on innovations the public was not yet ready to embrace (e.g. online console gaming). At the same time, Sega continued to cling to established conventions which had fueled its past success and legacy but were falling swiftly out of vogue, globally (e.g. its arcade-centric ethos). In straddling the future and past, Sega found itself awkwardly out of step with gaming's present.  Sega was a perpetual pioneer yet it struggled to meet people where they were, or adapt enough to counter its competitors’ most basic strategies to woo them. Sadly — insomuch as we can feel sad for a for-profit corporation — the world was growing ambivalent to Sega’s presence and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

(From the What's Shenmue? Dreamcast demo)

In many ways, the Dreamcast’s Japanese launch reflected the history of this turmoil. And charmingly, Sega owned it. The company responded by promoting the platform in perhaps the most human way imaginable. Senior Managing Director Hidekazu Yukawa (R.I.P.) became the literal face of the Dreamcast to the point his image was emblazoned on a later edition of the console’s retail box. People knew him as Mr. Sega.

Sega’s Japanese Dreamcast advertising campaign was unconventionally humble and earnest, a likely reflection of Yukawa-san himself. Abandoning the brutish bluster of Segata Sanshiro’s salesmanship, Yukawa wore a friendlier face and carried a more genuine demeanor. Acknowledging the dire situation Sega found itself in, he made a gentler appeal to players. He was simply grateful for the chance they may invite the Dreamcast into their homes.

(via Advermax on Youtube) 

Yukawa-san was just doing his best.

The Yukawa TV ads rolled with the punches with humility if not grace. In an early spot, demon children haunted Yukawa’s nightmares, exclaiming they didn’t need Sega just before a rift opened and swallowed him into an abyss. And when production challenges hobbled Sega’s ability to produce enough Dreamcasts to meet retail targets, Yukawa-san dedicated an ad to apologizing for the stock shortages while fans pelted him with trash (gamers, amirite?). Meanwhile, his wife wondered when he’d be done with making all these stupid commercials. It was a pitiful ad campaign in that Yukawa-san and Sega actively solicited our pity.

So yeah. Sega was having a rough time even without a new generation of competition looming in the next millennium. As such, the company aimed to seize as much of a head start as possible, hastening the Dreamcast to the Japanese market just to get it out into the world. No doubt Sega of Japan needed to start generating revenue and building a user base sooner rather than later. So as a byproduct of that, there was little time to develop games ahead of the Japanese launch. In fact, the Dreamcast rolled out with four whole titles on day one.

The Dreamcast lobster

I recently revisited those Japanese launch games, so I'll ramble about them next...

The Hunt for the PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox versions of the Sega Dreamcast

Over the years, fans of the Sega Dreamcast have had the opportunity to see many interesting and artistic case mods, but some of the oldest to make a splash in the Dreamcast scene were the ones you see below; case mods designed to look like the Dreamcast's sixth generation competitors: Microsoft's Xbox, Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PlayStation 2.

Cool designs? Or heresy against the Dreamcast? These case mods have had many fans and detractors over the years.

Long-time fans may dimly recall seeing pictures of these customised Dreamcasts making the rounds on Dreamcast forums and fan websites as early as 2002. The pictures have continued to show up over the last 20 years on various forums, fan sites and social media pages across the internet (including a 2006 post on this very blog), although genuine information about their origin has tended to be scarce. Given their relatively polished-looking designs and their appearance around the time of the Dreamcast’s commercial death, theories and rumors have spread that a Japanese gaming magazine or even Sega themselves may have commissioned them to use in conjunction with a story or announcement about Sega’s decision to create games for third party systems. Some critics have even gone as far as to argue that the images were mere Photoshop creations and never even truly existed.

After being reminded of these designs through a chance encounter with a fan who had found the GameCube design for sale on an online marketplace, I set off on the complex mission of discovering the truth about these mysterious custom Dreamcasts. I searched my own memory, trawled through defunct websites of yesteryear on the Internet Archive, and even managed to track down and discuss the case mods with the original Japanese creator. After all of this, I can finally provide the authentic story of these early and unusual custom designs.

The Creator

Enter G-Cube – the name of a group of Japanese model kit builders. In the early 2000s, G-Cube was a group of three people who would get together and use their extensive modeling, graphic design and painting skills to cosmetically enhance existing model kits, toys and other items. 

One of many logos used by G-Cube

Their projects involved assembling things such as retail model kits with highly detailed custom paint jobs, some of which would also have significant modifications, including custom fabricated parts, to make finished products that were substantially different from their original design. The group’s work often included designs for mecha, figures, spaceships, and other vehicles from anime and video games. Over the years, G-Cube’s creations would be profiled in Japanese hobby magazines, and the group would even display their work at public exhibitions and festivals. The group would also take commissions from customers, and to this day, G-Cube puts recent creations up for sale on Yahoo! Auctions Japan from time to time.

Various older works by G-Cube

I was fortunate enough to find contact information for a Mr. Fuminori of G-Cube, who as luck would have it, was the designer behind all three of the Dreamcast case mods shown above. The following is a summary of information about each of the case mods...

Let’s take a look at the Sega Sports 2K1 Bible Editions

An actual book on the coffee table.

The Sega Sports 2K series is probably a lesser discussed set of games here on the Junkyard blog due to our predominantly UK-centric staff. The series formed a key part of the install base and marketing of the US Dreamcast campaign, and at least when I was active on the Dreamcast Junkyard Facebook group, it felt like every other week one of the 2K games would be cited as a favourite or a key memory of new members from the US side of the Sega sphere.

Whilst some of the 2K titles did get a European release, it's the Japan-exclusive 2K1 “Bible” releases that I am looking at here, and to be honest this is more of an accompanying article for the below YouTube video that looks at them in greater focus.

In short, these Bible releases are a re-packaging of both NBA 2K1 and NFL 2K1 that include not only a copy of the game, but a lovely printed booklet explaining not just the actual game, but the sports and their respective teams. The booklets themselves are rather large (especially that of NFL 2K1), which explains the "Bible" naming. At least from what I can discern from the loose amount of camera phone-based translations, these accompanying tomes are much more in-depth than you'd probably expect.

The booklets themselves both follow roughly the same layout: starting with instructions on how to actually play the games, before leading straight into set plays, formations and information breakdowns about the respective sports. As I mention in the video, my knowledge of basketball pretty much starts and ends with things I've learnt from either NBA Jam or the original Space Jam movie. However, as I’m much more au fait with NFL, I can appreciate how useful this guide - or at least an English variant - might have been at the time of release as it was around then that I was getting back into the NFL as a student in my early 20s.

Anyway, check out my video below:

If you don’t feel like listening to my droll “raised by Scottish people in the East Midlands before living in Sheffield for 20 years” tone (and who would blame you) then feast your eyes on these hastily taken snaps below instead.

The NBA 2K1 game and Bible packaged together.

The NFL 2K1 game and Bible packaged together.

Both Bible Editions side by side (kind of).

The "NBA Data Bank" section of the NBA 2K1 Bible.

Information on Miami Heat and their starting line up.

Information on San Antonio Spurs and their starting line up.

A glossary of basketball terms.

Different types of NFL plays.

Baltimore Ravens players.

Cleveland Browns players.

Seattle Seahawks players.

Were you aware of the Bible versions of NBA 2K1 and NFL 2K1? Would you have liked to have seen an English version of these booklets for the Western releases of these games? Let us know in the YouTube video comments or the comments section below!

Stick It to the Man: Playing Games That Aren’t Fighters With the Dreamcast Arcade Stick

As with everything Dreamcast, the official arcade stick is something I have noticed has increased in price in the last so many years. Having been looking to add a second stick to my setup, I've discovered its average listing price on eBay now clocks in at well over £80 (close to double what I paid for mine back in 2018 when I finally decided I should get one for my beloved white box), although at the time of writing, it appears UK second hand retail chain CEX are currently selling them at a much more respectable £65!

Despite being a fighting game fan, I am the sort of fan that doesn’t actually fully understand the concepts of blocks, cancels, charge characters, spin characters or laser tappers. Okay, I made those last two up, but they definitely sound like the sort of things I imagine people on modern online fighting lobbies mutter to themselves as I lose my 115th game in a row: ‘this guy is trying to play a spinner like a lazerT, the idiot!’ Probably.

Anyway, I do own a number of different sticks - mainly for Xbox consoles, but also for some others - but not because I'm some sort of fighting purest as evidenced in the intro. It’s mainly because of my love for arcade games, which leads me back to the Dreamcast. With its focus on arcade conversions or at least arcade-style home gaming, I decided to bypass the merit of discussing the DC's fighters and go straight to discussing the games of other genres in my collection that offer arcade stick compatibility, which is normally indicated by a handy logo on the back cover of the game (thanks, Sega). However, this isn't always the case, I'm looking at you, Midway. Come see me after class, please...

I hope this piece proves to be useful for anyone who hasn't yet purchased an arcade stick and wants to know if it's 'worth it' for games other than fighters. Or maybe if you have one sat in a cupboard collecting dust, hopefully this article will give you the drive to get it out and give it another go, as it's frankly a glorious piece of kit.

Virtua Tennis 

This was one I was instantly drawn to try when I first got my own arcade stick. Its inclusion here offers a rare chance for me to give a shout-out to anyone who ever played the Virtua Tennis arcade machine that was in the Scream pub "The Pulpit" in Cheltenham during the years of 2001 and 2003. Unless you are the person who broke the lob button on the player two side, in which case I hope all the hinges fall off your PAL Dreamcast cases because you are a monster.

My first ever experience of Virtua Tennis was on said arcade machine, and I remember actually being disappointed when it appeared in the pub, as it was a replacement for my beloved Virtua Striker. I reluctantly had a go anyway, and then another, and then the next thing I knew, I'd bought Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast (later that day, if my memory is correct).

The arcade stick is obviously perfect for this game. I’ve always felt the standard Dreamcast controller was a tad unwieldy for the game and that this is one of the very few drawbacks that the Virtua Tennis series has against it. But with the arcade stick, the smooth movement of the stick and the really effective yet simple amount of buttons offers a perfect way to play, to the extent I now want a second one for the rare chances I have a second person in the house willing to play Dreamcast. The arcade stick also has the added benefit of not causing D-pad indentation on your hand like the standard controller can. Surely that alone makes it worthy of purchase?

Final verdict: Get your stick on! Stick > Controller > Fishing rod (in that order).

Virtua Striker 2 ver 2000.1

I am overly fond of this game. Even though it has numerous flaws and actually plays a terrible game of football, I still love it. I love playing it on the arcade stick even more than the standard controller as it controls in the same stuttering and janky way that the arcade did. Oddly, the game itself would only let you use the D-pad when using the standard controller and not the analogue stick, so getting to control the game with the stick is a much nicer feeling all round, and is a clear improvement over the controller, as long as you can forgive the game for all its other issues.

Final verdict: GOOOOAAAALLLLLL!!! *ba da bum ba*

DIRECT SHOOT!

Virtua Athlete 2K

Those who know me, know I love track and field games. I can see that they are ultimately dumb and shallow, yet still they have been responsible for some of my best competitive and multiplayer memories on virtually every console up to the Xbox 360, which was when those kinds of games (and the people who’d play them with you in person) all seemed to vanish.

Prior to officially joining the staff for the Junkyard, I made an overly elaborate comparison of the three athletics games that found their way onto the Dreamcast and that was actually the first time I ever played Virtua Athlete 2K.

I was not overly surprised to see it had arcade stick support, as it is effectively a more serious reskin of the Sega Saturn great Athlete Kings/DecAthlete (originally of the arcades). So is it any good with the arcade stick? Well, not really no. The button mashing is more satisfying on the arcade stick due to the larger buttons, but the game is significantly harder with this control method. I tried to adjust to compensate, thinking this might be from my many years of using the standard controller for these kinds of games, making me unfamiliar with the arcade controls, but it isn’t. For the quick precise nature of this sort of game, the wider spread of the buttons and control on the arcade stick isn’t ideal.

Final verdict: Controller or bust if you want to go fast.

Radirgy De Gojaru! - Radirgy's Terrible 3DS Spinoff

Ah, Radirgy. One of a handful of high-quality shoot 'em ups developed by MileStone Inc. to grace the Dreamcast in Japan, Radirgy boasts a colourful cel-shaded anime style, and a ridiculous plot that follows a protagonist who is allergic to radio waves. It's as Japanese as these shooters come, really, and I bloody love it. Radirgy has enjoyed a quiet cult following over the years, and has received various sequels and offshoots.

A few years ago, I was browsing Wikipedia (as neurodivergent gentlemen like myself tend to do), when I discovered that, sometime in 2014, Radirgy came to the 3DS. "Wow!" I probably thought to myself, "Handheld Radirgy! I need this right away!" When I investigated further, I sadly discovered that it was only available for purchase on the Japanese 3DS eShop, and there was no way for me to access that on my European region locked 3DS (thanks, Nintendo).

Credit: Depressed Sonic

Roll on March 2023, and the 3DS eShop was about to shut down for good, with its final day being the 27th of March. The Wii U eShop has now also shut down too; news I'm sure was received with a resounding whimper (no, it doesn't matter how many times a day retro Twitter tweets it, the Wii U is not "the next Dreamcast"). In this hustle and bustle, I learnt about a certain homebrew application that aims to collect and preserve 3DS eShop games, applications and DLC from many different regions - something which Nintendo clearly has no interest in facilitating (thanks, Nintendo). Using a Wi-Fi connection, the app granted me the ability to download any of this content for free, straight to my hacked 3DS that has the means to install .cia files.

As the app collects games from various regions and bypasses any region locking on your console, I immediately headed to the Japanese section, and lo and behold, there is was: Radirgy De Gojaru!. A moment later, it was downloaded onto my 3DS.

Screenshots taken with Luma3DS.

I booted up the game, and everything looked good at first. The startup menu screen featured the same bouncy electronic music and flat, 2D graphic stylings indicative of Radirgy. But this positive first impression all came crashing down when I actually started the game...

What I was playing looked liked Radirgy. It sounded like Radirgy. I was in control of a ship in a cel-shaded world, shooting at a painfully slow trickle of approaching enemies with the A button, or hacking at them up close with the sword by using the B button. For some reason, though, the background wasn't scrolling. Isn't your ship in Radirgy supposed to gradually move through a variety of constantly changing locales? Instead, I was just locked to a single static background, one which featured nothing exciting; just a load of trees and a grey building at the bottom of the screen. I thought at first that I was playing a tutorial level or something, but no matter how long I played for, this scenery never changed.

On the 3DS' touchscreen, amongst a variety of icons, I could select one of four different weapon options: a wide shot, an x-shot, a shot that shoots from both the front and sides, then finally, the "sword" option, which would make the sword attack more powerful than the bullets I was shooting. While I could freely switch between these options, doing so was weirdly unresponsive, and I often found myself having to hammer the touchscreen just to register my choice. Turns out I needn’t have exerted myself so much, as I soon figured out that just sitting at the bottom of the screen and mindlessly spamming the default wide shot takes care of oncoming enemies with ease. It didn’t take me long to decide I’d had enough. What on earth was I playing?

For you see, dear reader, this game was, in fact, not a port of MileStone's shmup for the 3DS (which is something I would've known if I'd spent just a few minutes with Google), but instead a small, eShop-exclusive spinoff game. Think something in the same vein as DSiWare or PlayStation Minis. This release was not developed by MileStone, but by Klon Co. Ltd., a company formed by ex-MileStone employees after the company closed due to the president getting arrested for violating Japan's Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (he was being shady with money, basically). Klon acquired the rights to previous MileStone properties, and this title, Radirgy De Gojaru!, was released as a result of that.

I'd love to give you a better variety of screenshots. But this was all the game had to offer!

So Klon had the Radirgy license, and they produced... this? Radirgy is beloved for its high energy and zaniness, but what they created here is frighteningly dull. I'm not sure what "Radirgy De Gojaru!" translates to in English, but I can only imagine it means something like "Radirgy: Shed Defender!" Because that's all you do here. Defend a shed. Or a bunker. Or whatever the hell the grey cube at the bottom of the screen is. The game is basically one of those old flash tower defence games with a Radirgy skin, although even those flash games were more enjoyable than this… and they ran better too. I hate to say it's true, but even on my New Nintendo 3DS (the more powerful, upgraded 3DS) this game suffers from slowdown. When the larger enemies are on screen and bullets are flying, the game chugs. Badly. Not even Ryo Hazuki running through Pigeon Park on a rainy day had frames dropping like this.

Believe it or not, this wasn't Klon's only game for 3DS to feature a previous MileStone license. They also released a spinoff of Karous, called Karous: The Beast of Re:Eden, which was actually a more fully-fledged release, featuring multiple levels and modes. It even went as far as to receive a physical release, exclusively in Japan. While I haven't played this one myself, I did find a very informative video about it by Briareos Kerensky, and, despite Klon's best efforts to flesh it out a bit more, Karous: The Beast of Re:Eden is pants too.

Klon folded in 2016, before being succeeded by RS34, Inc., who went on to release the excellent Radirgy Swag for Nintendo Switch in 2019, which is a much more faithful Radirgy title. If you're really looking for a portable Radigy experience, I'd probably just go play that instead. Or, for the diehards, there will always be the original on Dreamcast...

Have you played Radirgy De Gojaru! before? Had you even heard of it? Let us know in the comments below, or by dropping us a line on one of our various social media pages.

Related articles:

• A Quick Look At Radirgy
• Radirgy and Chaos Field now playable in English!