Shadow Gangs Kickstarter re-kicked with lower goal

We recently reported on the promising Shadow Gangs Dreamcast port and its Kickstarter campaign. Though the game is a top quality side scrolling punching simulator, one of the most common concerns we saw raised was how high the Kickstarter funding goal had been set. It appears that the team behind Shadow Gangs saw similar cause for concern and as a result, the original campaign for this excellent addition to the Dreamcast indie library has been cancelled with a new one launched in its place. The new campaign has a much more realistic goal of £25,000 (the previous target had been set at a fairly optimistic £140,000) and it can be found here.

Naturally several of us here at the Junkyard backed the previous Kickstarter, and have also now pledged towards the new campaign. If you're wondering what all the fuss is about though, below is a preview of the game running on a GDEMU equipped DCHDMI system:

Honestly, this is a really high quality, hard as nails scrapper and I'm very much looking forward to playing the final game on a Dreamcast. Not sure I'll be seeing much more than the first level judging from my shockingly bad playthrough of the demo, but cest la vie and all that.

Anyone who wants to try the demo on actual Dreamcast hardware (or an emulator) themselves can do so by heading over to the new Shadow Gangs Kickstarter here, and grabbing the file via the handy download link. Oh, and maybe support the campaign too. New Dreamcast games, especially ones with Shadow Gangs' level of quality, are never a bad thing to back. Unlike that coffee maker I backed two years ago and still haven't recieved. Yes Oomph, I'm looking at you. Harrumph.

Preview: Non Casual Encounter - Prologue

Non Casual Encounter (or, if you prefer, Encuentro No Casual in its native Spanish) is a brand new visual novel for Dreamcast. Developed by SEGASaturno Productions, the game is set for a full physical release in 2022; and we have been given an exclusive preview of the game's 'Prologue' chapter, hence the title Non Casual Encounter - Prologue. Confused yet? I know I am...and I'm the one typing these words.

If the name SEGASaturno Productions seems familiar, it's because this is the same indie studio that brought us the quirky Dreamcastnoid: 128 Bit Wars a few years back - you know, the Arkanoid clone where you had to smash PlayStation 2 consoles and which came on a miniature CD in a tiny case? Yep, that one. Non Casual Encounter is the follow up release from the veteran Spanish outfit - which incidentally is aligned with the popular Spanish language forum SEGASaturno - and the Prologue is a teaser for what is to come in the final game.

A couple of things to mention up top. First - this game represents *gasp!* the first time in my life I have ever played a visual novel, so I go into this blind. I know the Dreamcast has a glut of this type of game (check out DreamPod Episode 73: Visual Novels for a deep dive) but somehow I have simply never attempted to play one. Second - thanks go to Alfonso Martínez González from SEGASaturno Productions for deeming us worthy enough to test this sample of his new game. As he explains, the Prologue will be available as a physical release and will launch around Christmas 2021, with the full Non Casual Encounter releasing in 2022.

As this is a prologue to the final game, the main reason for its existence is to explain what players can expect in the full release of Non Casual Encounter, and honestly, it hits that target rather well. From the very start the sense of humour and self aware, fourth wall breaking dialogue is very well done, and even with the somewhat stilted English translation it is still easy to appreciate the tone. The game knows that it is a visual novel and pokes fun at the genre, inviting you in once instance for example, to ask a character about the lack of music. Complaining about this lack of ambience prompts the narrator to command the Dreamcast to start playing music from the game CD.

In another sequence a bizarre noise starts repeating and I wasn't sure if it was a glitch or something wrong with the game, until the character you're conversing with mentions the noise and explains how to make it stop. It's all very Eternal Darkness, and I really appreciate this type of humour. I don't want to give too much away as there really isn't a great deal of game here - it is after all a prologue - but what there is is certainly entertaining. True, there's not a lot of variety in the gameplay - simply reading the text, pressing A and occasionally choosing between different response options won't be everybody's cup of tea - but from what I have seen so far in this ~20 minute long prologue (with a few additional surprises for those who can unlock them) I am very much looking forward to what becomes of Non Casual Encounter's full fat release in 2022.

Non Casual Encounter - Prologue is likely to be released (physically, on a disc pesented in a cardboard sleeve) around Christmas 2021 for a budget price in order to whet peoples' appetite for the full game. We'll be keeping an eye on this cleverly written little adventure, and no doubt have a full review once it is released.

Keep an eye out on SEGASaturno for more information in the near future.

Update: the demo is now available and limited to 100 copies here.

Review: Arcade Racing Legends

As the third decade of the 21st century dawns, it's becoming quite clear that we're entering a renaissance of sorts for our beloved little box of dreams. While the masses wax lyrical about their shiny new Xbox 5's and PlayStation Series X's (that's right, yeah?), or relentlessly bore on about ray tracing and load times of 3 nanoseconds, we here at the Junkyard are rightfully far more excited about the impending tsunami of new titles about to wash away all our troubles and restore that blue swirl (red, I suppose, if you prefer) to it's rightful place at the pinnacle of gaming excellence.

Sort of, anyway. 

It's true though that we are spoiled for new content right now. We've got an upcoming Dreamcast games calendar chock full of titles, the likes of such not seen since the time nu-metal was vaguely popular with teenagers with terrible hairstyles and ludicrous length jeans, we can barely go a week without some new-fangled piece of technology to enhance/cannibalise/set it on the path to sentient life, for our Dreamcast getting announced, and we've even got geniuses coming out with ports of post-DC titles from the arcade that we can play on the console too. It feels less like a rose tinted, nostalgia driven website written by Sega fanboys around here now; and more like we're covering some sort of current-gen machine.

The main menu screen you're first presented with.

But I'm blabbering again. We're not here to moan about being too old to keep up to date with latest news today, we'll save that for the podcast. Instead, we're here to take a slightly belated look at the newest addition to the Dreamcast's now substantial indie library - the much anticipated, made for the Dreamcast latest release from JoshProd - Arcade Racing Legends.

Successfully Kickstarted back in 2019, we've been keeping a watchful eye over the development of the title, and had access to some early builds as well. There's a fair few keen racing fans here at the 'Yard, so the prospect of a new, fully 3D racing title for the console, and one promising to bring back some of the blue sky arcade racing pedigree of Sega games of yore, was one that had us positively salivating with hope. 

Scud life. Cough.

JoshProd have been a relentless supporter of the Dreamcast independent scene in recent years, but have so far focused on bringing us ports from other platforms rather than self-developed titles. Indeed, despite what some have said, this isn't the first 3D indie title on the system - JoshProd's own delivery of the Dreamcast port of 4x4 Jam takes that honour. They've got a very interesting lineup of titles on their way to us, and their past output has had some serious hits - Flashback, Another World, The Escapee - as well as a couple of misfires - the disappointing Ganryu for one. But when any developer has the ambition to bring us something completely new - well, we sit up and take note.

Some of the campaign artwork really whetted our appetite for the game

So just what is this new game all about? Well, Arcade Racing Legends wears its inspiration clear for all to see - not least in its title. An old school homage to the golden age of arcade racing games, it gives you a super fast car, exotic track locations and plenty of wink-wink, nudge-nudge references to past Sega titles. In fact, that's probably not quite true - there's little subtle about the inspiration for some of the vehicles here, and that's no bad thing at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

New Dreamcast Games Coming In 2020

It's 2020 - hurrah! We made it all the way to another decade as a fully functioning species on this so very fragile planet we call home. But enough about that communist nonsense. You came here to read about the greatest home console released in 1998 and then again in 1999, and more specifically new vidya gaemz set to be released on said ageing hardware at the dawn of this new decade. I realise that last sentence is really quite cumbersome and uncomfortable to read, and if I were a proper 'games journo' I'd probably restructure it and make it a bit easier to mentally digest. But I'm not a proper games journo, and besides, if I were I wouldn't be writing about something as idiotic as games; I'd be on social media posting the hottest of takes and having arguments with random people about Star Wars and politics. But I digress.

So here we are then. The Dreamcast has celebrated its twentieth year as a thing (or twenty first, if you happen to live in Japan), and yet we are still looking at even more brand new software releases over the next 12 months. Granted, the steady stream of releases is slowing somewhat, but that the Dreamcast community still has new titles to look forward to is nothing short of amazing. And we aren't talking about homebrew releases either (not that there's anything wrong with homebrew, of course). We're talking proper, boxed retail releases with manuals and cases and discs and everything. Will the Dreamcast enjoy more physical releases than the Nintendo Switch this year? Only time will tell, but here's a hint: it won't. But again, I digress.

Enough of this pointless preamble. Here's a brief run down of all the games we know of (so far) that are heading to a Dreamcast GD-ROM drive near you in 2020...

Xeno Crisis (Bitmap Bureau)
Xeno Crisis wowed gamers on both the Mega Drive and modern platforms when it released in late 2019. Bitmap Bureau's successful Kickstarter campaign resulted in this rather brilliant homage to retro shooters like Smash TV bringing some proper old-skool top-down arcade action back to TV (and Switch) screens, and the Dreamcast version was added as a stretch goal. Luckily, enough people wanted a version for Sega's old warhorse that this became a reality and Xeno Crisis is set to hit the Dreamcast some time in early 2020.

There's no definite release date as yet, but Bitmap Bureau assures us that it is coming along nicely and everything is up and running on actual Dreamcast hardware, and there's even going to be support for the Dreamcast Twin Stick. Which is good news for all nine people who own one. I have played the Switch version of the game and I must say that it is a really enjoyable and polished homage to the shooters of yesteryear, with some great humour and nods to the sci-fi movies it clearly takes inspiration from.

Visit the Bitmap Bureau website for more information.

Arcade Racing Legends (PixelHeart)
The second fully 3D indie racing game to hit the Dreamcast after 2017's rather impressive 4x4 Jam, Arcade Racing Legends looks to pay respects to some of the most iconic vehicles from Sega's arcade heritage and bring them all together in one place. It's a nice idea, and one I'm surprised Sega hasn't capitalised on itself. What this means is that you can pit the iconic vehicles from Daytona (Hornet), Sega Rally (Lancia Delta and Toyota Celica), Scud Race (Porsche), Crazy Taxi (Axel's Cadillac) and other well known franchises against each other across a range of original tracks.

Like most of the other titles listed here, Arcade Racing Legends is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign (my colleague Mike Phelan wrote an impressively detailed article about this here), and while the campaign page states that the game would ship in December 2019, this doesn't appear to have happened just yet. As a big fan of racing games, I'm hopeful that Arcade Racing Legends will live up to the promise, and add a new dimension to the stable of indie titles coming in 2020.

Visit the Arcade Racing Legends Kickstarter campaign for more information.

Intrepid Izzy (Senile Team)
With such iconic titles as Beats of Rage and Rush Rush Rally Racing already in their portfolio, you'd be daft not to have high hopes for Senile Team's latest Dreamcast offering Intrepid Izzy. The action platformer looks like a playable cartoon, with some very clean character designs and inventive gameplay elements. You play as the titular Izzy, ass-kicking her way through a number of 2D platform stages and engaging in light RPG elements. There's also a pretty cool move list implemented, meaning that traditional commands for executing fireballs and special attacks are seamlessly integrated into proceedings.

I've already had the pleasure of playing a demo version of Intrepid Izzy on the Dreamcast, and I really liked what I saw. Tight controls, great visuals, infectious music...all the right ingredients for another Dreamcast success methinks. Senile Team released an update on Kickstarter in late December 2019, in which it was revealed that the game will be entering testing very soon with a PC release to follow. There's no concrete date for the Dreamcast and PS4 versions, but rest assured they will both launch in 2020 and hopefully continue Senile Team's run of excellence on Sega's platform.

Visit the Intrepid Izzy website for more information.

Review: Hermes

2017 is fast becoming a bumper year for new Dreamcast releases, and may well take the crown for most productive year for commercially released indie titles since the demise of the platform we all love so much. Not only do we have JoshProd porting classics to the console, Orion bringing us Escape 2042 and several highly anticipated titles on the horizon, but we now also have the second Dreamcast offering from Retroguru (who released the fun puzzler Fruit'Y a couple of years ago) and Dragon Box Shop. Hermes is a little 8/16-bit inspired run and jumper that opened for pre-orders a couple of months ago, and has now been received without much fanfare by those who purchased it.

Hermes sees you play the role of the title character, a French chef who has an almost unhealthy appetite for some grilled chicken. But rather than take a trip down to the nearest supermarket (which wouldn't have made a very good game - let's be honest. Bit short. Still more fun than Spirit of Speed though...); our Gallic hero does what every red-blooded meat eater who values good food would do, and that's slaughter the chicken himself.

If video games have taught me anything, it's that the slaughtering of animals usually involves jumping on platforms, avoiding snails and risking agonising death all in pursuit of the ultimate nutritious goal, and that is exactly what happens in Hermes. The chicken, unsurprisingly not keen on becoming the next gastronomic experience for our eponymous hero, decides to leg it, leading Hermes on a merry dance to chase down what is fast becoming a poorly chosen source of nourishment.

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!