Showing posts with label Dreamcast Dev Box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dreamcast Dev Box. Show all posts

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:

This HKT-01 Dev Box Can Be Yours...For £1000

I have issues sleeping. Most nights I just lie there awake until Hypnos leaves his sunless cave, breaks in through the bedroom window and kindly grants me the power of divine rest at around 5am. Which isn't much help when I usually get up at 7, but I appreciate the sentiment. Yes, I've read all that guff about not looking at phones/tablets/PS Vitas/ Tapwave Zodiacs at night...but even when I don't, I still just lie there like an idiot staring into the darkness waiting to drift off.

Inevitably, I end up looking at Twitter or some other rubbish online but occasionally I stumble across something worthy of sharing here on this hallowed blog. Last night was no different, as I unwittingly found myself mindlessly browsing online retrogaming store retrogames.co.uk. Imagine my surprise then, when I stumbled across this HKT-01 Dreamcast development machine, complete with GD burner and a stack of GDs:
These don't come up for sale very often, and this one comes with all the relevant cables and software required to use it (providing you have an old Windows 98 PC to connect it to). Priced at £1000, this particular specimen is way out of my price range, and to be totally honest I don't want any more useless old technology cluttering up my house...but I thought somebody out there may find this to be of interest. There's a nice article here giving further details on what you can (and can't) do with the HKT-01, and that this one comes with the HKT-04 GD-Rom burner as an added extra is pretty cool.
Sometimes, these units have tags on them giving clues as to where they've been recovered from, but this one doesn't. That said - who knows what could be lying in wait on the unit's hard drive? As an interesting side note, the same site is also listing a box of 50 blank GDs (priced at £250) so the chances are both of these items came from the same place. If you're particularly well off and end up purchasing this item, please be sure to let us know if you find anything interesting on it. Right, it's 6.50am now - I'm off to get some sleep.