Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works Hits Kickstarter

We all love a good book, especially if said tome features a glut of previously unseen Dreamcast-related photos, interviews and concept art. It looks like our dreams are about to come true, as journalist Simon Parkin has launched a Kickstarter campaign for just such an item of merchandise - Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works.

Working in collaboration with veteran publisher Read-Only Memory (who previously released the incredible Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works), and also Sega, this new Dreamcast-flavoured release looks set to really delve into the history of our favourite console and the finest games to grace the system.

As detailed in the press release, Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works will feature the following:

• Production artwork, design documents and game artwork from pop hits such as Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure to arcane curiosities like Space Channel 5 and Segagaga.
• Hardware manufacturing drawings, concept paintings and original photographs.
• An in-depth, interview-led editorial piece by New Yorker writer Simon Parkin. Assembling voices from late 1990s Sega boardrooms around the globe, as well as the game developers who helped to define the platform, this revealing retrospective will chronicle the rise and fall of this lauded videogame console.
• Directory of stand-alone developer interviews and Sega team members including: Masayoshi Kikuchi (Jet Set Radio), Yuji Naka (Sonic Adventure, Phantasy Star Online, ChuChu Rocket!), Naoto Ohshima (Sonic Adventure).

The Kickstarter project at the time of writing has already garnered nearly £60,000 of its £68,000 target (update - it has reached its funding goal with 28 days to go), and naturally we here at the Junkyard have already pledged our support. Quite how different the book will be compared to the soon-to-be-released Dreamcast book from Pix N'Love remains to be seen. However, if you'd like to back Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works on Kickstarter, then follow this link and give generously!

Thanks to Darren Wall at Read-Only Memory for the assets used here, and also to all the other Sega sites for reporting on this while I was away on holiday in Bulgaria with no access to a computer!

Dreamcast Presents Ozzfest 2000: The Official Event Programme

A while back, we featured an eBay auction for a Dreamcast console signed by none other than The Prince of Darkness himself, Mr John Michael Osbourne. You may know him better as Ozzy Osbourne. He's a Brummie musician who was quite famous in the 1970s, apparently. And he got so famous that he even had a music festival named in his honour: Ozzfest.

Back in 2000, Sega sponsored Ozzfest and supplied the eponymous superstar with a bounty of Dreamcasts that could be won by members of the public who competed against various headline acts in Dreamcast-related game challenges. One of these units was offered up for sale recently, although it doesn't appear to have fetched the $995 asking price. Can't think why. It'll take an entire bottle of nail polish remover to get that pen mark off. Tsk.

As you'd imagine, a touring music festival of this magnitude - sponsored by Dreamcast or not - generated a large amount of merchandise, and this post is about such an item: the official Ozzfest 2000 event programme. A gigantic book comprising 45 pages of interviews and band biographies, and made of high quality glossy paper; a book that feels like it is made from the forgotten dreams and weaved wigs of ten thousand 50-year-old men who used to wear skin tight silver trousers but who now wear beige slacks and drive their 12-year-old daughters to school in a Nissan Juke.

Taking place over the summer of 2000, Ozzfest took in numerous locations around the US and featured some of the biggest heavy metal and alt rock bands of the era. And I just happened to stumble across a mint condition copy of the aforementioned programme while browsing eBay...

Brighten Up Your Dinner Table With These Dreamcast Drinks Coasters

If like me you spend a ridiculous amount of time perusing eBay for all manner of Dreamcast-related nonsense, then I'm pretty sure you'll have already seen this. If you actually have a life though, you may not have, so allow me to get to the point before I waste any more of your precious time. Time that could be spent doing something infinitely more important or interesting. Such as watching a teabag percolate in a cup of boiling water, for example. Or looking for your keys that you swear to God you left on the table in the living room but are now nowhere to be seen. Where are they?!

Yes, quite. Right. Someone's had the bright idea of putting Dreamcast box art inside perspex squares and is now selling them on eBay for £4.99 each as drinks coasters. It's a spectacularly simple idea, but it's also quite brilliant as these coasters look decent and would undoubtedly brighten up the most utterly boring of chintz-covered, best china-adorned tables.

The seller does have other coasters with art from other consoles available (PlayStation, Game Boy etc.) and the only criteria for this treatment appears to be the square dimensions of a console's boxes. Personally, I'd like to see a full size, 1:1 coaster of the big box PC edition of Doom turned into a coaster that I can rest a plate of beans on toast atop, lest I spill my juicy quarry all over the upturned fruit box I use as a makeshift table...but we can't have it all. My squalor is my curse.

You can spend £4.99 of your hard earned cash on these things by visiting the eBay store here. But please don't moan at me if it turns up and you don't like it. Cheers.

Damascus Apparel Releases Limited Edition Dreamcast Shirt

Damascus Apparel is a clothing brand based in San Diego, and is a huge name in the alternative and EDM (Electronic Dance Music) scenes. Damascus has been in business since 2009 and since then has become one of the largest and well known producers of clothing and accessories tailored to meet the needs of its community. Why am I telling you this? Because they've just released a limited edition Dreamcast t-shirt. We've featured apparel, jackets and shirts here at the Junkyard on many occasions but this is the first time we've seen a relatively niche, underground - and widely respected - clothing manufacturer incorporate the Dreamcast into one of its products.

Taking a look at the Damascus website, it's clear that the offerings may not be to everyone's tastes, but what they do they do well. I was actually pretty intrigued to know more about the EDM scene after learning about Damascus, and there are a few interviews on various scene-specific magazine websites (here, here and here) that I would recommend giving a read. The Dreamcast t-shirt itself mixes a Dreamcast logo and a Sonic render with other symbols and designs which are a consistent theme in Damascus's clothing. Oh, and a whopping great dragon. Honestly, I can't see myself wearing it because I'm more of a Hawaiian shirt kinda guy, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who would snap this up in a heartbeat.

The Dreamcast shirt is limited to just 99 copies (is that the right word?) and costs $45 plus shipping. Head over to the Damascus website here for further information.

Dreamcast VMU Keychains & Phone Straps Now Available

Ever wanted to decorate your keys, mobile phone, camera, laptop or just your body with tiny Dreamcast VMU-shaped charms? Or what about going through the looking glass and actually decorating your VMUs with VMU-shaped charms? Well get ready because your prayers have been answered! Talented artist and graphic designer Sami Briggs - who also goes by the name SmaiART - has launched a range of cool charms and keyrings in the shape of everyone's favourite Dreamcast-branded visual memory device, and they can be yours for the sum of £8 each.

Measuring 5 cm in length, the charms come in a variety of colours and feature an assortment of Dreamcast-related pixel art on their Potato-powered screens, with Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio and Phantasy Star Online all represented. Crafted from acrylic, these cool little trinkets would brighten up even the most corporate-looking company-issued Nokia or Blackberry, so inject some VMU-themed fun into your life and head over to Sami's store here and see if there's a particular design that takes your fancy!

We spoke to Sami about these new VMU charms and asked what the inspiration behind them was. Here's what she said:

"This is my first time making merchandise, so I wanted to give back to the Sega community by creating goods you don't usually see officially or by fan artists. Plus I just want to see more retro Sega merchandise out there since that kind of market is dominated by Nintendo. With these different variations of VMUs I thought it'd cater to a lot of people since the Dreamcast is well loved!"

- Sami Briggs

What are you waiting for? Head over here to check out Sami's store. You can also follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

Respect Your Dreamcast Controllers With This Display Stand

Ever wanted to display your beloved Dreamcast controllers on a shelf but couldn't find a way of keeping them vertical? The unwieldy and unsightly controller wire trailing all over the place like some ghastly leviathan? Nope, me neither. However, it's nice to have the choice, right? Well, thanks to Rose Colored Gaming you now have this very option. Leave your controllers strewn across the carpet like the aftermath of some long-forgotten future war (where all the soldiers have entrails shaped like Dreamcast controllers); or put them neatly on a shelf with the wires all wound up, neat and tidy like. It's totally up to you.

According to Rose Colored Gaming, the Sega Dreamcast Controller Display Stand is laser cut from acrylic and even has a Dreamcast logo laser etched into the base. It costs $11.99 (plus shipping), weighs in at 0.25lbs and comes in transparent, black or neon red flavours. You can also get a discount if you buy multiple units.

Thanks to @pomegd on Twitter for alerting me to this little beauty.

Huge Official Dreamcast Magazine Prize Surfaces On Ebay

The November 2000 issue of the UK's Official Dreamcast Magazine ran a fairly large competition, where entrants were given the chance to win a glut of Dreamcast-branded paraphernalia lifted - rather impressively - from Sega Europe's offices. Fleeces, bags, frisbees, t-shirts...even a snowboard and football signed by Eric Cantona and his teammates from the Sega Beach Football Championship we featured some time ago. It was an impressive prize back then, and I'm pretty sure I entered it but alas I wasn't a winner. The good news is that the guy who did win the competition is now offering up the prize in an eBay auction.

Everything (bar the snowboard and some Dreamcast-branded sweets) still appears to be in the same condition it was in when he won the competition 17 years ago, and most of the stuff is still sealed in the polythene. You can see from the pictures I took from the auction (reproduced here with permission from the seller, I hasten to add) that most of the stuff is still in pristine shape, and while the starting price of £600 might be a bit outside most people's price range it's still cool to know that these items are still all together after all these years. At the time of writing there's a day to go and the auction has no bids, but you can find full details on this veritable hoard here.

Shenmue Bomber Jackets Now Available

Veteran games merchandise store Insert Coin has launched a new Shenmue-related product, and fans of Ryo Hazuki's adventures are likely to be lapping it up in droves. If you've already used your eyes to look at the images below, you'll no doubt be able to tell that it's a bomber jacket fashioned after the attire sported by Ryo as he traverses the back streets of Dobuita and Hong Kong in Yu Suzuki's as-yet-unfinished magnum opus.

In this day and age it's all too easy to just froth about anything Dreamcast related, but I'm going to give my honest opinion here: I think this jacket looks bloody awful.

It appears to be made of bargain-basement nylon and while the patches on the chest and arm are embroidered, the one on the back is screen printed. I suppose this is to be expected of a jacket that costs £60, but that doesn't explain why the colours are way off the mark. Yes, Ryo's jacket was leather in the game and leather replicas do exist...but this is just a cynical example of big businesses churning out shite to fleece (heh!) fans of a franchise. Again, I've got nothing against Insert Coin - they do some really top quality stuff and I own several t-shirts by them. But this Shenmue jacket is an affront to the Hazuki family name. Interestingly, Insert Coin did have a slightly more accurate Ryo Hazuki jacket for sale in the past (check it out here), but even that still looked a bit on the cheap side.

Check out the Shenmue bomber jacket here. If you must.

Readers Share Their Rare & Unusual Dreamcast Items

A couple of years ago, we the writers of this blog shared our collections with the readership and allowed the internet at large to bask in the fuzzy glow of the weird and wonderful items of Dreamcast-related tat we have all accumulated over the years. With that in mind, we thought it was about time that we turned the tables and asked our lovely readers - namely the members of our awesome Facebook group - which odd, strange and unique items they had acquired and added to their Dreamcast collections over the years. And they didn't disappoint.

No, they answered the call with gusto, and I was quite literally flabbergasted at the range of the unique and lesser-spotted items of Dreamcast hardware, software and merchandise (both official and third party) which was offered up for others to gawk at. Some of these items I had no prior knowledge of, and some of them are just downright weird. Others are completely unique and one-of-a-kind pieces of Dreamcast-related history. Forget your standard 'L@@K! R@RE!' eBay listings for copies of Buggy Heat. These items are the real Dreamcast crown jewels. So, without further ado let's embark on a journey into the more obscure annals of Dreamcast collecting...

Nonsensical Dreamcast Shirts Now Available At Urban Outfitters

I really don't know where to begin with this. I started seeing these long-sleeved pullovers popping up on eBay several years ago, and I thought they looked awful. The thin, cheaply made material and the garish screen-printed (nonsensical) decal featuring a PAL Dreamcast swirl with a load of Japanese text just turned me off. I noted that the same sellers were also listing similar Sega Saturn, N64 and PlayStation-branded shirts, and various other items of apparel with console logos all over them. Back then, they were on sale for around £10 each if memory serves. Personally, I thought they looked a bit shit so didn't even bother entertaining the idea of buying one.

Photo credit: Jan Swidan

In the intervening years, it appears that someone has tapped up Sega Europe, acquired official licensing and now these dreadful garments have found their way onto the racks of high street fashion outlet Urban Outfitters. Several people on Twitter have asked me if I'd seen these shirts and so I thought I'd write this article to say that yes, I have seen them. Yes, I saw them years ago on eBay. I thought they looked shit in 2015 and I still think they look shit now - even more so because they now cost £35.

Officially Licensed Dreamcast T-shirts Available to Pre-order at Play-Asia.com

Heads up. Play-Asia.com are taking pre-orders for a range of officially licensed Dreamcast t-shirts now. Expected to ship in February 2017, the t-shirts are manufactured by Japanese clothing and apparel company Cospa so quality is pretty much guaranteed. Made from 100% cotton and coming in either medium, large or extra large (where's the small, guys?!), the t-shirts feature a Dreamcast swirl on the front and a stylised console design on the back. I think you'll agree that they're pretty cool, and for £20 you can't really go wrong. Head to Play-Asia.com for further details.

Forbidden Planet Now Stocking Dreamcast Merchandise

Thanks to author of the DCJY Ultimate Guide/DreamPod co-host/intrepid reporter Mike Phelan for this news. Today he braved the incessant rain of the British summer and ventured to his local branch of comic book/sci-fi emporium Forbidden Planet, and was met with an awesome selection of Dreamcast-related merchandise. We knew about the Megadrive branded stuff they were selling previously, but this Dreamcast range was news to us!

Mike's Nokia 7560 camera coming to the rescue once again

T-shirts, mugs, wallets, coasters, greetings cards, travel pass and passport holders - all emblazoned with Dreamcast, Jet Set Radio and Shenmue II designs are all now available to purchase from the popular retailer. Not only are they available in store - you can also find them online. Mike went a bit overboard and literally purchased everything he could find so we'll get a full update soon on the quality of the merchandise, but if you'd like to check these out for yourself follow the links below.

Dreamcast range

Jet Set Radio range

Shenmue II range

Signed Ozzfest 2000 Dreamcast Surfaces on eBay

Another remnant from those strange days of early 2000s Dreamcast marketing has come to the fore. It's not widely discussed anymore, but Sega apparently sponsored the 2000 Ozzfest music festival, slapped Dreamcast logos all over the place and kitted out a load of trucks under the Mobile Assault Tour brand in order to raise awareness amongst the angsty youth of the day. $135 million well spent.

One of the more interesting aspects of this endeavour was roping in stars like Ozzy Osbourne to play Dreamcast games against festival goers, so they could win signed merchandise and consoles...and one of these signed systems has once again surfaced on eBay. It's not known how many of these signed Ozzy Osbourne Dreamcasts there are out in the wild, but at least one other has come up for auction in the past, as detailed by this TSSZ article from 2011. The article up for grabs here though appears to be completely unopened and unused (apart from when the Prince of Darkness graffitied it with a sharpie, obviously), and the owner claims to be the original recipient back at Ozzfest 2000.

The asking price is just shy of $1000 (£700) and is out of financial reach for many, but as a piece of Dreamcast and music history, it will probably only increase in value (unlike those autographed Fred Durst Dreamcasts that people will actually pay you to take away). Check out the auction here.

Some Dreamcast Items From Video Game Market 3

This last weekend (Saturday 5th March 2016) saw the third annual RetroCollect Video Game Market, where traders and online retailers converged at Yorkshire's Doncaster Dome to sell merchandise, consoles and games at reasonable prices to thrifty retro gamers. That was the theory anyway - some traders were clearly not singing from the same hymn sheet, asking stupid money for old consoles that were so yellowed they could be mistaken for blocks of cheddar. On the whole though, it was a fantastic event and the sheer number of people in attendance was mind blowing.

Thousands of people looking for yellowing Dreamcasts...

I was amongst that number representing the Junkyard, and it was great to meet so many people who visit this hallowed blog and listen to our podcast - in fact I was a little taken aback by how many attendees knew of the Junkyard and asked about articles they had read here, so if you were one of them - thank you. As it was primarily a market, I was able to leave my little corner of the venue and venture into the fray briefly and I'm glad I did because I managed to acquire some quite lovely Dreamcast-related stuff at Video Game Market 3. Here for you delectation is a run down of the swag I got my hands on...

What a fool.

Sega Hard Girls Premium Figure Unboxing Video

A new piece of official Dreamcast merchandise in the year 2016? Impossible! Well, no actually. This is the official Sega Hard Girls Premium Dreamcast Figure exclusive to Japan.

Guard that Dreamcast collection with your life, my precious...

In short, the Sega Hard Girls franchise stars cute big eyed anime girls each based on a classic Sega console. It already has an anime and manga series, novels, PS Vita game, figures and all sorts of other merchandise under its name.

Yes - There was a Dreamcast energy drink

I've said this more times than I care to remember, but the diversity of the promotional items Sega commissioned in order to spread awareness of the Dreamcast brand is staggering. The latest oddity I have discovered is this - the Dreamcast energy drink. 

There's precious little documentation about this canned beverage to be found online, and I only know of its existence due to one coming up for sale on eBay Germany. 

The auction description says: "Selling a rare Sega Dreamcast energy drink can. Condition is very good for its age. Very difficult to find. A must for every collector." Which tells me this may actually just be for an empty can, the sticky contents having been guzzled ferociously at some point in the distant past.

For the not insignificant price tag of €30, I'm happy to leave this interesting item for somebody with more disposable income to acquire (and drink, if the can is still full), but I'm sure you'll agree it's amazing that hitherto forgotten Dreamcast marketing material is still coming to the fore here in 2016.

'Flavoured with real Hitatchi SH-4 extract'

The other, rather creepy images below are of a rare outfit worn by promotional staff at a press event in Paris. It recently came up on eBay France and sold for over €100. With any luck, the buyer is now wearing it as they run around the local park scaring children.

To be fair though, I'd probably wear that myself. Not in the park though. Um.

The World's Smallest Dreamcast?

OK, so you've probably seen the Yujin Sega History Collection Dreamcast that comes in a plastic egg like something out of a Dobuita toy machine, but we're confident we've found an even smaller example of Sega's lovely white system. Behold:
This is available from Etsy seller Bricksanity for the equally minuscule price of £1.99, is based on a Lego brick, and is a pretty darn cool novelty item - even more so if you collect Lego. One of these Dreamcast bricks would look amazing in any Lego house, and it comes complete with a controller, VMU, mains plug and RGB Scart cable. Sadly this, much like the fabled cake in Portal, is a lie. In actual fact you only get a controller (of sorts):

This is in no way official, but it's pretty awesome. I wonder if Sega Europe will order the seller to cease and desist...surely not!

Japanese Dreamcast Promotion Disk

What with all the writing and playing of Dreamcast games lately, I'm developing gnarled claws where my hands should be. I blame that infernal controller with it's guillotine edges. No matter how much lard I rub into my palms, I just can't rid myself of the cramp and so I decided to make a lovely video for your delectation, rather than spend ages hammering out guff on my internet-enabled steampunk typewriter, while simultaneously listening to whale song playing on an 8 track. Hipster? You don't know the half of it squire. 

Anyway, a few weeks ago a chap named James sent me a rather spiffing selection of Dreamcast demos from the shores of Japan, and in amongst said collection was a GD labelled simply as a Dreamcast Promotion Disk. It also has 'not for sale' printed on it, and this piqued my interest. In all honesty, it's probably just a disk for use in shop-based demo pods and the like, but I thought it was worth investigating further. Cast your eyes downward, hit play and all will be revealed!

As ever, if you know more about this disk than I, please share the knowledge in the comments. Edit: it turns out the demo is from the Japanese Dreamcast Magazine, which I kind of suspected seeing as the logo for said periodical popped up at one point in the video. Still, an interesting item nonetheless as all of the other demos from that magazine are numbered and have a completely different look to them. More on those coming very soon!

Official Dreamcast Keyring

Last week I received a small package and inside was a random Dreamcast-related item I bought off eBay. I wasn't totally sure what it was, but after I made this video (and also contacted the seller), it became apparent that it is in fact a somewhat rare, and totally official Dreamcast branded keyring that was given exclusively to staff of Sega Europe back in the day. The seller is an ex-employee and had been using it as a keyring up until the day they decided to flog it. I've never seen a keyring of this design, hence my bafflement at the thing once it appeared in the mail, but I thought it might be cool to share some images of it. The main body is made of solid metal (I'm not sure what type) and is quite weighty, and the wire has unscrewable ends that allow you to loop it through your keys. As I said, I've never seen a keyring of this design before, and certainly not one that's branded with the Dreamcast logo (it appears to be engraved onto the metal). Do you have one of these? Do you know anything more about it? Let us know in the comments!

The Dreamcast 2016 Calendar

Tokyo Game Show 2015 seemed to feature quite bit of retro tat, some of which was Dreamcast-branded. Remember those hideous shoes? Exactly. Some of the stuff on sale was decidedly less garish though - the Dreamcast desk calendar for example. Regular reader and all-round good egg Ross (he who sent me the Twin Stick from Japan) happened to bag one of these lesser-spotted calendars and overcame extreme technological difficulties over in the Land of the Rising Sun (that is, no internet connection at home. Luddite) to scan and email me the various monthly 'pages' that make up the 128-bits of the year 2016. Or something. Oh, and before you start foaming all over your keyboard I know the Dreamcast is technically 32-bit. Anyway, here's the calendar in all it's glory:

In case you're wondering, the game featured on January's page is Otsukare! Guru Guru Onsen - a Japan-only collection of online mini-games like Trumps, Mahjong and Shougi (a type of Japanese chess). These calendars have appeared on eBay for quite astronomical sums in recent weeks, but Ross assures me they were on sale for ¥700 - which is about £3.75 in real money. Beware of eBay crooks!