Cowboy Bebop Homebrew Shmup Coming Soon To Dreamcast

Not going to lie in an attempt to look more learned than I am - I've never seen an episode of Cowboy Bebop. I know that it's an animation and that it's highly regarded...but that's about as far as my knowledge goes. Ask me about branch lines closed by Dr Beeching's infamous restructure of the British rail network in the 1960s instead though, and boy you're in for a treat.

But back to the main point. There's a homebrew shmup heading to the Dreamcast that's based on the Cowboy Bebop franchise and it actually looks pretty decent. Programmed using the BennuGD language, this new shooter from indie developer Rolando Fernandez (aka folken) reminds me a little of Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy in terms of visuals - and I hope that doesn't sound like an insult, as Trevor McFur, for all its shortcomings was a pretty good looking game.

From what I can gather this isn't a totally new game, but instead is an updated version of an existing homebrew, but using BennuGD it'll offer improvements in terms of smoother gameplay and some extra options. That said, I'd never heard of the original either, so this is a moot point. There's not really much more to say for now, but we'll be keeping an eye on this one and will update you when we have more information and/or a release date.

Thanks to our good friends at Sega Saturno for sharing this with us, head over there for the original reveal article in Spanish. Once you've read that, go here and read all about the Beeching Axe, and then leave a comment about your favourite closed branch line and/or station.

Crafti: A Homebrew Minecraft Clone For Dreamcast

Minecraft. A game which looks so simple on the surface due to its basic geometric visuals and fairly relaxed gameplay, but in reality is actually incredibly complex and even lends itself to being used as an educational tool. Yes, Minecraft is a true cultural phenomenon. It also made its creator disgustingly rich when Microsoft bought the franchise from Markus 'Notch' Persson in 2014 for $2.5 billion, and the game has gone on to become the second best selling game of all time. Not bad, I'm sure you'll agree.

There are ports of Minecraft available for a multitude of different systems and they all offer the similar gameplay and mechanics found in the PC original, and many people have carved out a career simply streaming gameplay online. The power of Minecraft knowns no bounds it seems, and now the game has come to the Dreamcast. Well...sort of. Crafti is a Minecraft clone developed by DCEmulation forum member gameblabla and is now free to download and burn to a CD-R for playing in a Dreamcast. Naturally, that's exactly what I did...

HankyAlienDC: A New Homebrew Space Invaders Clone

This one kinda came out of nowhere, but there's a new Space Invaders clone available for the Dreamcast and it can be downloaded for free. The work of a lone hobbyist coder known as ant512 on the DC Emulation forums, HankyAlienDC is available as a free file that can be run on either your choice of Dreamcast emulator, on Dreamcast hardware using an SD card reader, or burnt to a CD and played in the Dreamcast's GD drive. It's a pretty accurate recreation of the Atari original and is also available for Nintendo DS, should you have an R4 card to play it through.

"The archive contains a .elf version that will run in lxdreams, and presumably other emulators, and a .bin version that will run via an SD adaptor and DreamShell RC4. It will presumably run if you somehow burn it to a CD, but it’s been so long since I’ve made a CD of Dreamcast homebrew that I’ve completely forgotten how to do it. Plus I’m on a different OS and don’t have an optical drive any more."

- ant512

Having recently got a new MacBook, I know exactly how ant512 feels! Anyhow, before this becomes an Apple-bashing humblebrag circle jerk, check out VasiliyDC's video of HankyAlienDC in action:

And once you've finished, be sure to head over to Simian Zombie to download the HankyAlienDC game files for free. Thanks to VasiliyDC for sharing this information with us.

New Homebrew Tooth Cracker Available Now

We took a fairly comprehensive look at Ben Lancaster's homebrew Nintendo Game & Watch parody Tooth Cracker a few months ago here at the 'Yard. If you can't be bothered clicking the link and reading my thoughts though, I'll explain all over again. Because I'm nice like that. Tooth Cracker is the second title in Ben's James & Watch series and tasks the player with cracking human teeth with a (warm) can of bitter twinned with a well-placed fist. I appreciate that sounds very odd, but in practice it's a simple reaction-based skill game with some fairly basic visuals but highly addictive twitch game play - especially so when you progress through to the later stages. Also, whether the can of bitter is actually warm is open to interpretation, but I like to imagine that it spent a good three hours on a sunny window ledge before being incorporated into the game.

Built with the Unity engine.

Anyhow, I'm regurgitating all this because Ben has finally put this interesting little title on sale over at Retrogaming Roundup for the grand total of £15 with free worldwide shipping. For an extra £5 you can also grab the prequel, James & Watch Arm - another title we looked at some time ago.

These games aren't pushing the Dreamcast hardware in any way, but they are a nice throwback to the days when games were more about testing your skill and the hunt for a high score rather than trophies and the like. Ben will also be peddling his game at the upcoming Play Expo in Blackpool, so if you see him there be sure to tell him you read about Tooth Cracker at The Dreamcast Junkyard. Do this, and he'll furnish you with a manly hug and a kiss on the cheek (of your choice) as an exclusive DCJY bonus gift. Please bear in mind that the hug and kiss are mandatory, and non-transferable. This does not affect your statutory rights.

New Dreamcast Multiplayer Shooter [TERMINAL] In Development

Before you scroll down and view the images in this post, let me assure you that this is a look at an extremely early work in progress being created by a single programmer. Now that discalimer is out of the way, allow me to introduce [TERMINAL], the latest homebrew title to be added to the list of upcoming titles for our favourite wheezing cuboid. [TERMINAL] is the work of Rico Tyrell and is an online multiplayer shooter played from a third person perspective. At present the visuals are very basic, but Rico assures us that the reason for releasing this information is to garner some interest in the fledgling project:

"Currently the game is in pre-production. This is an open source game written using SEGA's Katana SDK rather than KallistiOS, which I am assuming will annoy a lot of people who are homebrew toolchain purists.

As of this writing, the server backend for multiplayer sessions is being written with the short-term goal of getting players connected and moving around on one server by the beginning of April 2016."

 - Rico Tyrell

That thing in the middle is you.

The Dreamcast Epitech Collection

Just a short post this, and I can't really take any credit for the high quality video content that's about to assault your senses. No, the spoils for the aforementioned must go to our good friend and prolific YouTuber Pcwzrd13, who has come up with the goods yet again! If I didn't know better, I'd be inclined to wager that Mr Wzrd is actually a transcendent AI, trawling the interwebs for the most obscure Dreamcast stuff there is and neatly packaging it up as digestible, well-made videos. Luckily, I'm here to re-blog his stuff and artificially generate more hits for the Junkyard like a damned leech, so everyone's a winner.

But I digress. The Epitech Collection is a compendium of rough homebrew games created by a class of students at Epitech in 2002. If you don't know, Epitech is a colossal information technology and computing college in Paris, France and these unfinished (but still quite impressive) titles are the result of some coding sessions involving Dreamcast and Gameboy Advance development tools.

You can actually download these games and try them yourself, so let us know how you get on if you decide to give them a whirl. As always, be sure to subscribe to Pcwzrd's Dreamcastic Channel for even more cool videos like this one.

A Quick Look At James & Watch: Tooth Cracker

In 2015, RetroGaming Roundup's Ben Lancaster released a new homebrew game for the Dreamcast modelled after the popular Nintendo Game & Watch LCD units of the 1980s. James & Watch: Arm was a fairly simple game that tasked players with throwing and catching a small child, and was inspired by true events that involved some bored brothers, a broken arm and a little bit of sibling bribery. If that sounds even remotely intriguing, you should have a look at our previous feature and all will be made clear.

Fast forward to 2016 and Ben has been back to the drawing (developing?) board and come up with the second entrant in the James & Watch saga, the brilliantly titled Tooth Cracker. As with the first in the series, Tooth Cracker is inspired by true events but rather than being based on brotherly 'love,' it is based on the wince inducing tale of a few beverages of the alcoholic persuasion, an errant elbow and the resulting smashed incisors.

Get Back Online With DreamPi

Online functionality was one of the the main selling points of the Dreamcast, but in the here and now, playing online-enabled games with Sega's final system is something that is out of reach for many a gamer. There are lots of Dreamcast games that are still playable via the internet and new dedicated servers are popping up all the time, but unless you have a broadband adopter or some other more convoluted means to get your console connected to the internet, offline gaming is your lot.

It seems that a clever guy called Luke Benstead has other ideas though, and has created a rather impressive little Raspberry Pi-based device called DreamPi. What does this creation do? Well, it allows the Dreamcast to connect to the internet using the dial-up modem so you can play games online again. Without a dial-up ISP or a Dreamcast broadband adaptor.

DreamPi is a piece of software I've written combined with a standard set of hardware which allows the SEGA Dreamcast to connect to the internet without a dial-up ISP

- Luke Benstead

New Dreamcast Racer On The Horizon?

A very talented guy by the name of David Webster has been working on Dreamcast homebrew projects for the past few years and uploading his tech demos to his YouTube channel. Among his works on the Dreamcast are some rather cool real-time lighting and environment rendering demonstrations (complete with adaptive tessellation - whatever that is!); but by far the most impressive of David's creations is the 'Dreamcast Engine,' a 3D first person demo that shows the beginnings of some truly impressive lighting effects and architecture. Check out the video:

Sadly, it seems that work on Dreamcast Engine has been placed on hiatus as of now, but all is not lost - David has turned his attention to another project. This project is still in the very early stages of development, but judging from the two YouTube clips below the Dreamcast could soon be playing host to it's very own sprite-based, procedurally generated take on either Rad Mobile or F-Zero. Exciting stuff indeed.

Indie Review: Powder

I'm going to level with you: I don't particularly like RPGs. While I can totally appreciate why a lot of people love them, I've just never got on with sprawling story arcs, random battles, item collection and all of the other aspects one would generally associate with the genre. I'm also totally aware that there are many, many sub-genres within this particular channel of gaming and that to say I don't like RPGs is probably a little bit short sighted on my part. I mean, I really enjoyed Link's Awakening on the Game Boy and Ocarina of Time on the N64, have battled through all of the Mass Effect games and even got pretty far into Virtual Hydlide on the Saturn before the desire to vomit explosively enveloped me...but those aren't really the kinds of game I'm talking about.

I'm talking about learning spells, calculating hit points and wading through loads of text. Frankly, I just find traditional RPGs boring. That's just my (admittedly ignorant) opinion and I totally respect that people reading this may have just spat either cornflakes or a Pot Noodle (or both?) all over their computer or phone screen, but I haven't even attempted to play Skies of Arcadia yet because I just know what I'm going to get in that particular package; and I spent about 8 minutes playing Final Fantasy 7 before I removed it from my PlayStation and stuck Alien Trilogy back in. You can take a horse (me) to water (RPGs), but you can't make it drink (play them). Brackets were used in that last metaphor to clarify what I was trying to convey with my cack-handed grasp of wurds and stuff. Keeping that last sentence at the forefront of your cerebellum, allow me to explain that very recently I was made aware of a home brew roguelike RPG that has been ported to the Dreamcast and can be played using an SD Reader.

Powder started life as a Game Boy Advance project and is the brainchild of programmer Jeff Lait. Writing on the Powder website, Jeff explains that the game was borne out of his desire to play a roguelike RPG on his handheld:

"I created POWDER for one simple reason: I wanted a roguelike on my GBA. The standard RPGs were annoying me with endless battle screens against weak enemies to unfold a drug induced plotline. I wanted a game I could just jump into, and start killing things. Having had more hours than I'd care to log playing Nethack, ADOM, and the Diablos, I knew the exact type of game I wanted. The problem was I didn't see anyone publishing it any time soon."

Since the GBA original, Powder has been ported to various other formats including the Nintendo DS, Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Recently though, Dreamcast.es forum admin Indiket successfully translated the source over to the Dreamcast and the source has - rather helpfully - been turned into an SD Reader-compatible ISO file by DCeric so that morons like me can get involved and begin dungeon crawling.

Xump Your Dreamcast

Xump. How do you pronounce a game called Xump? I'd go for "Zump" personally, but to be honest it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because Xump is yet another homebrew game that's totally free to download, burn to CD-R and pop in your Dreamcast to play. Here's the jargon from the rather lovely retro-themed, pixel-art Xump website:

Xump - The Final Run is a simple multi-platform puzzler by Retroguru. Initially released by Psilocybin Development in 2005 the game has been improved in almost every aspect you can imagine. New graphics, new levels, new music, new options, new everything...

Help Holger to clean up deserted space fields. As this is a very dangerous task for a human being a headbot named Xump will be the one who has to suffer.

Your main task is to clean all dissolvable tiles on several single-screen levels by simply stepping on them, one by one. Few fields are secured with mines and need a double tap. Mines can be blown up when passing by or de-mined by Xump when staying on this specific field for a short moment. Certainly the mission sounds easier than it will be.

Doomcast

I'm a huge fan of the Doom games. I have played or own every single console release of the game, and know the ins and outs of each version with quite frightening detail - from the music-less Atari Jaguar version and the texture-less floors and ceilings of the SNES port, to the windowed 3DO and 32X versions and the sublime multi-coloured PS1 iteration. I've also played the PC originals to death and more recently the Brutal Doom mod on my mac...yet my personal favourite has got to be Doom 64. You can read about my love for that game here if you so wish, but let's get down to business - you've come to the Dreamcast Junkyard for DC-related prose, not N64 circle-jerking.

Sadly, the Dreamcast never got an official retail port of id Software's genre-defining shooter, which is understandable when you consider the timing of the console's release and lifespan. It was probably too late to put the original games out as an official release, and too early for Doom 3; plus the idea of semi-retro compendiums was quite new at the time and so a re-issue would probably have been derided as unnecessary, and a bit of an insult to those people who had shelled out for a 128-bit system. While retro collections are all the rage these days, back in the early 2000s they simply were not the de rigueur. That said, Doom 3 was years away from release and the game we all know today would have been far too much for the Dreamcast to handle with it's complex vertex shading and texturing techniques - even the original Xbox had to make do with a heavily compromised port of the PC game.

Sydney Hunter, I Presume...?

Another week, another new game. First Pier Solar HD gets announced (see Barry's awesome SEGAbits podcast episode below) and now it appears that after some mild success as a browser-based flash game, Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death is being ported to several retro systems...including the everlasting, ball-busting, mother-f*cking Dreamcast! There aren't any screens from developer StudioPiña as yet, but you can play the original here for free. Yes, free. There are no paywalls here, my friends. Anyway, you play as the titular Sydney Hunter - an 8-bit Nathan Drake with some rather special boomerang-hurling skills - and must traverse various caves whilst avoiding enemies, climbing ropes and retrieving treasures. It's actually a damn good game, with easy controls and nice graphics.

Sydney Hunter is meant to look like an MSX or Colecovision game according to the author, and even though I haven't played on either of those systems, I did have an Amstrad CPC back in the day so it kind of reminds me of Amsoft's Roland on the Ropes and other similar titles. Sydney Hunter is much better than those games though, and is slightly reminiscent (to me at least) of Spelunky. Hopefully the Dreamcast version will feature better visuals and animation, but even without any upgrades, Sydney Hunter will be a welcome addition to the Dreamcast's amazing catalogue.

Upcoming Homebrew: HyperTension

Want even more homebrew FPS goodness on your Dreamcast? Well I've just been informed about this project by TDGMods called Hypertension. It's based on and the Monolith series Blood, and is being developed with an engine called EDGE, which is based on the Doom source code. Here's the video preview:



The game is unfinished so all the bugs haven't been ironed out yet but either way it looks interesting. The game has some RPG elements including an inventory so you can combine items to make weapons. Looks like theres some good fun to be had setting enemies alight with a lighter and spray can, reminds me of Dynamite Cop/Die Hard Arcade!

Giana Returns Trailer

The team working on an unofficial homebrew sequel of the famous Commodore 64 game Great Giana Sisters have released a trailer showing of the new version of the game, with completely re-drawn sprites and a re-done engine since the version supplied on the DCEvolution disc 'The Sandman'. Kudos on the choice of music: Machinae Supremacy are brillaint, go download some free songs by them if you get the time.

A Dreamcast SD Card Adaptor!

The Dreamcast homebrew scene never fails to surprise me. Not content with developing games and game ports for the system, we now have a piece of homebrew Dreamcast hardware on the way via those chaps over at dreamcast.es! Here's the translated article from DCemu:

"After turning several months, we've assembled an adapter to connect an SD card for the Dreamcast port of the link. The truth is that the speed is amazing and we already have a library to use. More info on our wiki.

But for the production of a few adapters and selling, we need to know how many people would be interested. Cost about 20 € with shipping to SPAIN (+10 € for some foreign countries) and sent with a CD with a program that will be able to exchange files with VMU BINS and launch from the SD card.

The prices have been changed to make them accessible to the world, remember that this is not done for profit but for the common good. For this reason we have reset the price originally agreed to cover costs of materials, and assembly time.

Later we will use the library and implemented quickly to a pager for the big games of AES4ALL, load / save snapshots DCaSTaway all emulators and ROMS can be loaded from the SD card.

Reason for development

The Dreamcast has support CD / GD, and visual memory card (VMU). The first one is read-only, and the latter has clear shortcomings: transmission speed and size. For this reason, are always looking for an alternative storage unit that saves the main support (save states) and other files, such as the configuration in our emulators. For a time it was speculated that the port expansion (G2) where the currently connected network adapter (or modem) is ideal for access via the new peripherals. But unfortunately, its architecture and requirements are far beyond our reach. Therefore, the serial port of an alternative that, while not enjoying all the privileges of the port allows for expansion if the most part, our wishes for a new carrier additional capacity and speed. This port allows us to use an SD card adapter that are usually used in mobile devices such as phones, MP3 players, etc..

Key Features

* Good transfer rate in both reading and writing (about 500 KBytes / s).
* Very low average access time for reading (a few milliseconds).
* Support for cards up to 2 GBytes of SDS (not tested with larger cards).
* Loading binary from the card as a backup utility dcload and to / from VMU."

What an amazing development, I wouldn't of thought something like this was even possible! It even uses the extension port at the back of the console that was barely used! Imagine having all of your VMU save files in one place! I know in my case at least it would be major handy as I have around 15 VMU's worth of save files and it's hard keeping it all organized. Imagine being able to run emulators without having to keep burning CD-R's? This is one of the most exciting things to happen to the scene in a long time, and the fact there are going to sell it for rather cheap (cheaper than it'll cost to make) is highly commendable.

Chui is currently looking to see who's interested in one when they're ready, so if you'd like one of these reply at either the Dreamcast.es or DCemu forums. I know I'm putting myself for one!

Neverball

(Yep, another custom cover.)

I guess I'm a little late to the party with this homebrew release, the beta of which came out some time ago, but I've been on a bit of a homebrew high lately thanks to some recent releases like the amazing Counterstrike port below, catching up with games I had not got around to downloading until now, mainly content from DCevolution.

Neverball is a freeware PC game that has been ported over to the Dreamcast and released over at DCemu, and is essentially a Super Monkey ball clone, which is great as if the Dreamcast lasted just a year or two longer it may of got that game. It is a beta so it isn't quite perfect yet: for example the ball which should looks like it does in these screenshots looks more like a ball made of bubble paper and sometimes when there are a lot of objects on the screen things can disappear(though I believe this only happens if you have the polygon settings to high). Still, there isn't many 3D homebrew games about and for what it is it looks the part.

(Take note these are PC screens. It's almost there, though.)

What really makes this worth playing though is how additing it is. There are two games on the disc: Neverball is the Monkey Ball style game where you must collect a certain amount of coins and reach the exit before the time runs out. Just like that game you can fall off the stage and you only start with three lives, but can gain more by collecting lots of coins. You unlock the stages as you beat them, and luckily there is a VMU save state feature, as well as a replay save feature if you want to re-watch a skillful round. There are three sets of stages on the disc, including a set of harder ones all alphabet shaped!

The 2nd game Neverputt takes the same physics and apples them to a crazy golf game. If you ever played the highly additive golf game in the otherwise average 101 Dalmatians game on the DC it plays a whole lot like that, only the stages get just as surreal and topsy turvy as the Neverball stages, with teleporters and traps. Again theres three sets of difficulty stages, and it's great fun.

Another great thing about this game is the ability to add new stages. You can't make them in game, but if you check out the Neverball forums you'll see there are lots of extra stages that can be downloaded, and if you're tech savvy enough you could burn a disc of the game with these stages added. I haven't tried it myself yet, but if I get time I might have a go at it. There is software that will let you develop your own stages too if you really wanna put some love into it.

So if you're looking for something a little different to Beats of Rage mods and first person shooter ports this is a neat little game to pass the time with. It has some sweet MOD tunes as well. This is the only video of the Dreamcast version I could find online (being played terribly), but I might rip some footage myself at some point.

Counter-Strike DC Final 1.0

(borrowed your cover, gagaman, hope you don't mind :P)

Looks like Counter-Strike DC has finally reached its final stage of development. Here's what the guys behind it have to say:

This project has finally reached its final v.1.0 release.
You will find hours of Counter-Strike gameplay, now on Sega Dreamast.
This final release is now very stable, and is fully playable with a standard controller.

And for the record, this project was intended from the begining to be
a great single-player experience. So to answer with certainty,
online/multiplayer will never be possible on Dreamcast.

Standard half-life dc codes work from the menu, for example:
"Otis Loves Dreamcast" --> God mode
"Dreamcast Gives Firepower" --> Infinate ammo

Also, huge credit goes to original authors of the content that has
been borrowed with or without permission for this release.

Looks good to me. You can download it here, and here's a gameplay video:

Custom covers for Homebrew games/ports

I've set up a folder on the Dreamcast Junkyard Photobucket of custom box art I've put together, so far all in the PAL style (might make American style versions soon). Quite a few are just edits of DCEvolution covers to make them look a little more official while some are completely made up designs like the Marathon trilogy cover using the highest res artwork of the game I could find, the Counterstrike one based on the X-Box cover art. Lot's of covers I made for the Dreamcast Forums scene years ago, mainly of Bleemcast releases. I like to make these from time to time so I can print them up and put them with the discs in their sleeves. All credits to whoever drew what in each image, these are just for free fun. :)

Splatterhouse Dreamcast Trilogy Released

Pulled from DCEmu

Yet another collection of Beats of Rage homebrews for the Dreamcast has been released.



This time it's all three games in the Splatterhouse remake.

It's the classic Sega game remade for the Beats of Rage engine.

It's amazing how much effort people are putting into these mods.

Check out the special moves for just one of the characters in the game.


Rick:
*down, up, attack (Head attack)
*forward, down, attack (Slide attack)
*forward, down, forward, attack (Spinning Razor)
*forward, down, up, spacial (Brutal Combo)
*back + attack (Back Punch)

*forward, forward (hold) (Run)
*forward, forward, attack (Shoulder Attack)
*while running press: jump, attack (Long Flying Kick)

*while jumping press: up + attack (Flying Spinning Razor)
*while jumping press: down + attack (Knee attack)

*while grabbing press: up + attack (Kick Blast)
*while grabbing press: down + attack (Heel Attack)

SH part2 Special Move
*back, forward, attack (Special Combo)

SH part3 Special Move
*back, forward, special (Critical Combo)

More about the mod.

Amazing really.

Download Links

DC Evolution

Lavalit

Custom Cover and Art