New Dreamcast Game Revealed: In The Line Of Fire

A few months ago we showed off some images of a brand new first person shooter that didn't actually have a name. If you don't know what I'm talking about, cast your mind back to those pictures of the clowns holding invisible guns. If you still don't know what I'm blathering on about, simply cast your peepers downward a few pixels and refresh your memory:

Remember now? Excellent. The guys behind the 'unnamed shooter' have been hard at work behind the scenes, it seems and have finally put together a fully playable build of the game. Oh, and it has a name now too: In The Line Of Fire. I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet (much), but I thought I should mention that I had a small hand in choosing that name...but this isn't about me. It's about a brand new story-driven first person shooter coming exclusively to the Dreamcast...and we've played the alpha build!

Review: Zia and the Goddesses of Magic

The term 'role playing game' has always puzzled me. I get the connotations and I understand that titles with which it is associated must meet certain criteria to be classed as such...but don't you play a role in any game you play? Bear with me on this one, OK. I know I’m talking (writing) utter rubbish, but what do you expect here? Look, in Crazy Taxi you play the role of Gus, picking up passengers while wearing an open shirt and exposing the odd man boob. You are Gus. Similarly in Virtua Tennis, you assume the role of a square-headed Tim Henman and do things the man never did in real life, such as winning trophies; and therefore Virtua Tennis should technically be designated as a phantasy role playing game, too. Man, this gin is strong.

The thing is, these examples are not classed as role playing games, or ‘RPGs.’ No, RPGs fall into their own little genre identified by magic potions, stat points, levelling up and pointy ears/gigantic beards/scantily clad nymphs (delete as applicable). I'm going to be honest here and state that my experience with RPGs isn't as extensive as some other members of the Junkyard team, and I'm happy to admit that I've never finished Skies of Arcadia or Time Stalkers. The latter because it’s about as interesting as watching a group of pensioners play boules down the park on a Sunday morning.

That said, I have played other non-Dreamcast RPGs so I do have a decent level of appreciation for the genre (Ocarina of Time, Link's Awakening, Rainbow Moon, Fallout 3, The Witcher etc), and naturally there's also Shenmue but I'm apprehensive to class that as an RPG unless a hate mob of Shnemue truthers be mobilised against me. I'm already expecting a whole load of comments completely ignoring the main purpose of this review and just focusing in on the fact that I described any of the aforementioned games as RPGs, but fuck it. Haters gonna hate and I won't be posting this on Reddit anyway, so there's a 65% risk reduction of that straight out of the gate. What has all this guff got to do with the Dreamcast you may be wondering? Well, the latest indie release for Sega's little white box has landed...and it's an RPG!

Orion's Zia and the Goddesses of Magic was released at the beginning of September 2016 and is the latest new title to grace the Dreamcast, so let's take a look at what this curious little game is all about.

Developer Interview: Orion

Orion has been creating indie games for retro consoles for quite some time, and is behind the latest title to be announced for the Dreamcast: Zia and the Goddesses of Magic, out in September 2016. Orion's impressive back catalogue also includes recent Atari Jaguar to Dreamcast ports such as point and click adventures Elansar and Philia, and platformer Alice's Mom's Rescue. The Dreamcast Junkyard recently caught up with Orion to find out a bit more about this elusive indie dev and ask what is coming next from the French outfit...

DCJY: Hi, thanks for taking the time to speak to us and the Dreamcast community at large! Could you explain just who makes up the Orion team?

Orion: There is no team - just me! Orion is my internet nickname, I'm just one guy on my own trying to create games as a living.

Zia comes to Dreamcast in September 2016

A true one man outfit then! How did you get started in indie game development, and what are your earliest memories of wanting to be a developer?

My earliest memories are when I was playing games on my Atari STe computer at the age of 8, looking at those nice graphics and thinking to myself "I want to do the same!" From there, I quickly began to learn the Basic language by myself, and finally made my first 'game' when I was 12 years old. When the internet became popular, I started learning other programming languages, and continued making small games as a hobby. Later, I worked for 5 years at a small game company in Paris, and finally I decided to go solo and start my own company. It's been 3 years now that I've been creating commercial games on my own for various retro platforms.

Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles Re-Released

Yuan Works' Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles is one of the most highly regarded independent games on every platform it has graced, and the Dreamcast is no different. It's a charming little strategic puzzler in which blocks featuring different elements (earth, wood, fire, metal etc) must be arranged in such a fashion as to remove them from the board. There's much more to it than that though, and it features some outrageously good production values for an indie game. We have covered Puzzle Battles extensively here at the Junkyard in the past and several of our team members are actually in the game and can be accessed by way of a special code - who wouldn't want to play as Aaron, complete with sombrero; or Caleb pointing an accusatory finger?!

Caleb and Aaron - bottom row, green shirt and sombrero respectively

While Wind and Water has been available as a free download for Windows since 2011, the Dreamcast version of the game has been out of stock across the internet for some time (unless you want to pay through the nose on eBay). Recently though, it has been the subject of a much-needed reprint and can be purchased - right now - for the meagre sum of €9.99 plus postage from DragonBox. Due to the recent Brexit, that probably means that UK buyers will end up paying around £75 for it, but it's worth it. Probably. This re-issue comes with the same printed inlays and manual and for the price it's a steal.

Head over to DragonBox now to order your copy of Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles.

Source: Yuan Works Dev Blog

SEGAbits Swingin' Report Show podcast interviews SEGA tournament champ and former Capcom employee Chris Tang

This past weekend was the culmination of SEGA Week at Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL. The week consisted of ten tournaments on new (well, new to the arcade) SEGA arcade machines as well as other special events which were held on SEGAbits Saturday. One big happening on the big final day was the reveal of Strike Harbinger, a very early look at an upcoming indie title from HitSparks Games which is led by competitive gamer and developer Chris Tang.

In the past, Chris took part in the historic 1990 Nintendo World Championships and was the winner of SEGA's Sonic & Knuckles Rock the Rock competition in 1994. Since then, Chris has worked on games at Atari and Capcom, including Gauntlet IV, Primal Rage, Street Fighter III, Rival Schools, Tech Romancer and Power Stone. Now, Chris is hard at work on a new game inspired by classic SEGA titles like Space Harrier and Phantasy Star. The game, titled Strike Harbinger, combines the fast paced forward flying gameplay of Space Harrier with the RPG and combat elements of Phantasy Star while utilizing a unique control structure that evokes Virtual On.

I had the pleasure to meet Chris and the game’s Senior Artist Kiyoshi Okuma, whose past work includes Gauntlet: Legends, World Series Baseball 2K2, The Sims 2 and Darkspore. I also had the honor to be the first member of the public to play the game, and following that experience I chatted with Chris about his life as a tournament gamer, his career, and his plans for Strike Harbinger.

I wanted to share this episode on the 'Yard as I thought fans of Capcom's Dreamcast titles would enjoy some of the stories Chris shared. So give it a listen and enjoy!

More ways to listen:
[Download] [RSS] [iTunes] [Archive]

Review: Leona's Tricky Adventures

The latest addition to the Dreamcast’s already overflowing library of independent games burst onto the scene earlier this year (that’s 2016 if you’re reading this in the distant future); and it’s taken us until now to finally put pen to paper - or rather finger to keyboard - and share our thoughts. Leona’s Tricky Adventures has a somewhat storied background and we’ve documented it here at the Junkyard in the recent past, but in the name of simplification I’m happy to remind you. The game originally started life as a Kickstarter back in 2013 but unfortunately didn’t make its funding goal.

Due to the rules of launching a project through that particular crowd-funding site, it meant that the whole project was cancelled and the developer KTX turned to funding the game using donations and pre-orders instead. It took almost three years for Leona’s Tricky Adventures to finally come to Steam and the Dreamcast, but eventually the game landed and here we are. If you’d like to know more about the development of the game, make sure you check out the recent Developer Interview we did with KTX Software’s CEO Thomas Musal, and Chief Technical Officer Robert Konrad.

But what of the game itself? What if you’ve never even heard of Leona or the particularly tricky adventure she finds herself embarking on? Well, you’re in luck as two of the finest wordsmiths known to mankind (yes, I stole that from hip hop artiste Labrinth) are here to give you the definitive lowdown on Leona’s Tricky Adventures in this tag-team review! Allow me to introduce...um...myself (Tom), and our intrepid Australian correspondent Scott ‘DocEggfan’ Marley!

I think the developers might have an inordinate appreciation for the colour cyan.

As this game is aesthetically quite ‘retro,’ we thought it only fair that we did a retro-styled review. To really drive home how clever and avante garde we really are, we’ve split it into several paragraphs, each with an equally antiquated heading such as graphics, sound, gameplay etc. We might even give it an arbitrary percentage at the bottom...but you’ll have to wait and see. Let’s saddle up and join Leona on her adventure!

New Dreamcast Game Zia and the Goddesses of Magic Announced

Another week, another new Dreamcast game is announced! To be fair that title is a teeny tiny bit misleading as Zia and the Goddesses of Magic was technically announced a few weeks ago; but now there's some artwork (above) and a brand new teaser trailer that shows actual gameplay footage (below). Coming from French indie developer Orion (previously of Elansar, Philia and Alice's Mom's Rescue fame) Zia and the Goddesses of Magic is a traditional top-down RPG in which players are tasked with rescuing the eponymous goddesses and restoring peace, harmony and free love to the fantasy land in which the adventure is set. Well maybe not the free love, but we can hope. Here's the blurb from Orion's website:

In a fantasy world, where the goddesses of magic are the guardians of the good, a powerful evil demon captures all the goddesses and jails them in different places where they cannot use their magic powers. Evil creatures start populating the surrounding villages and threaten the inhabitants.

Zia is a little girl who lives in a mountain village with her beloving parents. One day, she discovers a book of magic and starts training to learn how to use magic spells. During her journey, Zia will find out about the imprisoned goddesses, and will try to free them from the evil creatures using the magic spells she will learn.

Join Zia in a Journey around this mystic world, help her find the imprisoned goddesses and try to free them from the evil creatures!

- Orionsoft website

Here's the accompanying YouTube announcement trailer:

According to the Orionsoft website, Zia and the Goddesses of Magic is pencilled in for a September 2016 release and is also planned for both Steam and the Playstation. We'll be keeping an eye on the development of this interesting RPG and you can too by visiting Orion's Twitch channel.

Source: Pcwzrd

Three Indie Games I'd Love to See on the Dreamcast

The other day I read an interesting article over on Kotaku (yes, yes I know) that documents the creation of a new football (soccer) game by an indie developer who has never played a football game. Furthermore, he doesn't even know the rules of the sport and has pretty much guessed how football 'works' through hearsay and supposition. It's a really interesting concept, and the resulting interpretation of the beautiful game - now titled Behold the Kickmen - looks like it's shaping up to be the best thing to happen to the football genre since Konami thought Goal Storm was worth reinvestigating.

The developer's name is Dan Marshall, and he's a BAFTA-winning indie developer. Earlier today I cheekily asked him via Twitter when a Dreamcast version of Behold the Kickmen was coming:

Kickmen for Dreamcast: confirmed.

He didn't give a definitive answer (although I'll settle for the 'like' he graciously afforded my stupid tweet), but this got me thinking. Since Volgarr the Viking suddenly appeared out of nowhere in 2015, what other cool indie games would it be amazing to see make the leap to the Dreamcast? Obviously, a lot of indie games these days are built to run on modern platforms and so some of them probably wouldn't be possible on the Dreamcast (stuff like Broforce makes even a PS4 shudder, for example), but this is just a fun little look at some of the titles I'd give my right arm to have ported onto Sega's little box. Well, maybe not my right arm as I'd then have difficulty holding the controller...but you get the idea.

Xenocider Update From Retro Sumus

A few weeks ago we brought you an exclusive video preview of Retro Sumus' upcoming Space Harrier homage Xenocider. The video was really only a taster of what we can expect from this ambitious indie title, and since then Carlos and his talented team have been slaving away behind the scenes to add even more to the game engine.

The latest video update throws in enemies, more scenery and shows how Xara's main weapon and targeting system will look. Obviously, this is still very early and there'll undoubtedly be many, many changes over the course of development but the video below provides a more accurate depiction of how Xenocider will play when the disc is actually spinning happily inside your trusty old Dreamcast. Here you go:

The Xenocider Kickstarter launches in May 2016 and Retro Sumus hope to be able to offer a downloadable playable demo in the coming weeks. As ever, we'll keep you posted on any further developments on either Xenocider or AMEBA as they come.

Four SD Reader Indie Gems

Dreamshell and its uses are well documented on various sites around the internet, and for me it represents one of the most interesting facets of the Dreamcast. If you aren't familiar, Dreamshell lets you boot the console into a PC-like Unix GUI and allows for the loading of various applications. Dreamshell can be burnt to a CD-R (or installed into the BIOS of the Dreamcast if you really want to) and then used alongside an SD reader to access all manner of fantastic homebrew and indie software. I did have a look at Dreamshell in the recent past, but with this post I just wanted to give some exposure to games that have been kicking around for a while but that you may have missed.

None of these games are particularly new, but if you're a recent adopter of a Dreamcast or have only recently decided to dip your toe into the world of homebrew games for Sega's final system, this article may be of interest to you. Possibly even more so if you also happen to own an SD card reader, as these games are all readily availible in ISO format and can be played simply by dropping the files onto the SD card and then executed through the Dreamshell loader interface. The internet is a fast-moving place and people join the Dreamcast community all the time, learning of the many uses for the console that Sega never intended. With this post, I really just wanted to give a mention to the games that are out there, but that rarely get a mention when people discuss this awesome machine.

First Screens Of New Dreamcast Shooter Released

Hold on to your hats folks - it looks like there's another new Dreamcast game on the horizon. Not only do we have SLaVE, Elysian Shadows, Alice Dreams Tournament, Redux 2 and Hypertension to look forward to - there's an as yet unnamed shooter coming as well...and it looks pretty amazing.

This news comes from the DCEmulation forums (and I was notified of this by long-time supporter of the Dreamcast scene Pcwzrd13), but it appears that a talented two-man team has been working on a spectacular-looking new shooter that employs a game engine built specifically with the Dreamcast in mind. In the forum thread (you can read it here), lead developer PH3NOM explains that he can't give too much away due to an NDA signed with Goat Store but I think you'll agree that these shots (and video below) are very impressive.

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.

SLaVE: An Update

Those Dreamcast owners savvy enough to have pre-ordered the awesome-looking SLaVE from Goat Store will already be aware of this, but if you're yet to take the plunge you may find this news to be of some interest. Jay Townsend's SLaVE was announced quite some time ago and looked to be nearing completion when some game-breaking bugs were discovered in the code. Fast forward to 2016 and we're still waiting to play this retro-themed mash-up of 'Robotron 2084 and Doom.'

Pre-orderers who have checked their inboxes recently will find an update from Goat Store though, informing them that work is continuing apace and that SLaVE should be hitting Dreamcasts in the very near future. How near, we're not sure...but we thought it was worth spreading the news that this indie release is far from dead.  Here's the update:

"Quick update on your pre-order of Jay Townsend's SLaVE - a couple of the pesky bugs have been put to rest. We are now in process of finding and eliminating any others. We expect the process to go quite quickly at this point, although we do not yet have a final delivery time frame for the game, as we do not want to declare a date until the game is in official production. We hope to be able to provide this date soon!"

 - Goat Store

It's also worth mentioning that developer Coraline Annis recently issued an appeal for a Dreamcast coder's cable (and directly referenced that it was for debugging SLaVE) via Facebook so the game could be closer than we think. Fingers crossed!

SLaVE can be pre-ordered from Goat Store here for the bargain price of $20.

Developer Interview: KTX Software

The first Dreamcast game of 2016 - Leona's Tricky Adventures - is on sale now and currently making its way to longtime supporters who pre-ordered the game way back in 2013. The game's developer, KTX Software, graciously accepted our invitation for an interview to talk about the release, and we got a chance to sit down (ok, exchange emails, but sit down sounds more professional so just go with it) with the company's CEO Thomas Musal, and Chief Technical Officer Robert Konrad.

It's out now! Go buy it!

DCJY: Tell us a bit about KTX Software, who are the people behind the scenes? Is it a one person band or a team? How did you come together to work on Leona?

KTX is a subsidiary of European company SyA, which is basically an agency working on graphical products for more than 30 years, based in Spain since 2005 and represented in UK and Germany. At the end of 2009 there was a meeting with respect to a German software project when it was decided to create a department for software development at SyA.

Make Your Own Dreamcast Games With Elysian Shadows Toolkit

By now, you'll no doubt be aware of Elysian Shadows - the successfully-funded Kickstarter RPG that is coming to Dreamcast, Steam and a whole host of other platforms. Now, this isn't widely known, but Elysian Shadows Team will be bundling the ESTk development tools with every copy of the game. ESTk stands for Elysian Shadows Toolkit and as anyone with even a passing interest in game development will know, this is massive news for the Dreamcast indie scene. ESTk will allow gamers to create their own content for use within the Elysian Shadows engine and it will also allow more talented coders to create whole new games from scratch. Yes - you read that right.

"ESTk is the custom multiplatform Toolkit/Level Editor developed with C++ and the Qt framework written specifically to create the immersive worlds of Elysian Shadows. It shares a significant amount of code with ESGamma and boasts advanced tiling and sheet management tools, including the ability to create 2D worlds with 3D depth."

- Elysian Shadows Website

While this isn't new news, a lot of people may have missed the initial announcement, and I certainly wasn't aware of this - even though it was made public back in 2014! Regardless, this is simply incredible and literally blows the the door wide open for a whole new generation of indie Dreamcast games with all manner of cool audio and visual features, accurate environment physics, light sourcing, particle engines and more. On top of this, there's also Dreamcast SD reader and coder cable support. Jaw-dropping stuff. Here's the original video from Elysian Shadows lead developer Falco Girgis:

Remember, you can still support Elysian Shadows - go here and pledge what you can!