Mighty Morphin' Power Boards

Last weekend was amazing. Really, really amazing. For several reasons. The first - and most important - was that it was Revival Events' self-titled Revival 2014, a massive retro-gaming event held at Dunstall Park racecourse in Wolverhampton. I was there as part of the RetroCollect team, running loads of gaming challenges and just generally chatting to gamers and acting the fool. Another reason it was amazing was that I got to meet, chat with and actually touch the flowing hair of John Romero:

The photographer wasn't happy with the focus

In case you're unfamiliar with what the genius behind Doom looks like, that's him on the right. Not the grinning fool on the left - that's me. To be fair I was grinning like that because Mr Romero had just whispered the secret to his flowing mane into my ear, and as you can see this was greatly received as my hairline is receding faster than the Norfolk coastline. He also signed my boxed copy of Doom for the Atari Jaguar, so there was that too. But let's get back to the reason you're here: I also bought a Dreamcast. Yes, another Dreamcast. but unlike all of the others I now have clogging the entrance to my bathroom, this one is different. It came in a box...with an orange swirl:

Yes, I bought my first NTSC-J system for the bargain price of £50 from a trader called Sore Thumb Retro Games. And to say its in great condition is an understatement. The console has no signs of yellowing at all, and has all of the documentation including the Dream Passport (sealed) and manuals. Naturally, being a Japanese system the plug adapter ends with two prongs and simply will not fit in a UK power socket. And even if it could, the power coming out of the wall would likely travel down the wire, into the console and instantly transform the immaculate white box of fun into a large ball of flame, simultaneously causing untold collateral damage to any curtains, throw cushions and random empty beer tins in the vicinity. And in my gaff, there's always a high probability that empty beer tins could also be hidden inside the throw cushions, so the damage bill - in this hypothetical situation - could easily be triple that caused inside your average residential shit-hole. In order to prevent the aforementioned cataclysm, I employed the services of one of these things in order to play on my newly purchased NTSC-J machine:

That's a converter thingy. You put the foreign plug in one side and the UK three-pronged side into the wall socket, and by some kind of magical process no doubt involving a tiny wizard living inside the device, the horrid nasty UK electricity transforms into Japanese Dreamcast-friendly power! See - magic! So anyway, I played the DC for a bit, mucked around with the menu and changed the language to English and marvelled at Sega Rally 2 running a bit quicker...and then I went to do some other menial task that life dictated I must do. It was probably the washing up or something...to be honest I've totally forgotten. Actually, it could have been folding some towels up. Or was it some ironing? Fuck it - I can't remember.

Anyway, I totally forgot (there's a theme here) that I'd left the Dreamcast plugged in to the step-down transformer. It wasn't until a few days later that I went to turn on the Dreamcast again that I discovered it would not turn on. I was pretty stumped until I deduced that leaving the transformer plugged into the mains must have damaged it in some way - indeed, the smell of burning wizard flesh coming from the vents on the side of the thing added weight to my hypothesis. So there I was, left with a Japanese Dreamcast and a dead step-down transformer. I looked on eBay for another one, but being a bit strapped for cash having spent all my money buying the secret ingredients to concoct John Romero's Magical Hair Serum™, I decided that I would investigate an alternative remedy to getting my NTSC system up and running again. I took to Twitter and asked the question - is it possible to put a UK power board inside a Japanese or US Dreamcast in order to use a standard UK plug with it, thus negating the need for a converter. Amongst others, The Gagaman himself answered my call - the answer was a resounding "yes!"

Knowing I had a load of spare PAL Dreamcast bits knocking about, I decided to give it a go - putting a UK power board into an NTSC Dreamcast. Here's how I got on:

And there it is! An NTSC-J Dreamcast happily humming away with a UK plug adapter attached to it, with nary a step-down converter in sight. It's a really easy operation to carry out providing you have the parts handy, and I've also kept the original board and plug in the box just in case I ever move to Japan and feel the need to take a native console back there with me.

I'm off to apply some of my hair serum now. If I end up looking like a Cacodemon, I'll be writing a strongly-worded email to my old pal John.

We Have the Technology...

You may recall that very recently I attended a fantastic gaming event by the name of Play Blackpool. I wrote about my experiences here, here and here. The experience I want to refer to today though is the first link. And if you can't be arsed to move your mouse pointer back up to the previous sentence (or your finger - I know some of you hipster Dreamcast owners are reading this on iPads, for fuck's sake), you can just click here instead. Sorry - I meant here.

In that post, I mentioned in passing that I bought a 'new' Dreamcast console because it was white and not yellow. I won't go into that whole hideous saga again, but know this: the new Dreamcast didn't work. I only discovered that when I actually hooked it up to a TV and attempted to play my recently acquired copy of Skies of Arcadia on it. I'd previously 'tested' said system simply by plugging the machine into the mains and turning it on - the orange LED burst to life as one would expect and so I just thought all was fine and dandy. Imagine my complete and utter disgust then, when I finally got around to inserting some AV cables and attempting to play an actual game, and was confronted with a slow-motion, flashing boot screen which was then replaced by a totally white square where either a 'date/time' screen or a system menu should have been. Not impressed, was I. Hmmm... (that was meant to be an impression of Yoda, by the way).

I did a bit of Googling and deduced, after a good hour of trawling through posts from 2009, that my 'new' Dreamcast was pretty much fucked. There was only one thing for it - take the innards out of my yellow system and put them into the white case of the deceased machine. Simple, I thought. But upon opening up both machines and preparing for some surgery, I noticed that there were some discrepancies between the two consoles...

The Light Fantastic

Today's post is a bit of a cop out, as it has required minimal creative input from me. Other than, y'know, browsing Youtube, watching people fire M&Ms out of their belly buttons into cups, realising what the hell I'm doing and then looking for proper stuff...like this:

Yeah, a guy with a blatantly obvious talent for electronics (and a truckload of patience, I'm guessing!) modded a VMU so that it has a cool backlit screen. Reminds me of the Game Boy Light...only smaller, and I would probably buy one if he was making them to order as it looks fantastic when plugged into the controller. I was actually planning on doing a post about this:

Please ignore the dust on the TV. The butler hasn't been in yet.

It's a Dreamcast SD card reader I managed to acquire through a very odd series of events that I won't go into here, but after wasting a shit-load of CD-Rs and trawling various forums I still can't actually work out a) how to use it; and b) what the point of it is if you've already got 90% of the DC's game library and enough VMUs to fill a quarry. I understand it can be used to run other operating systems and games from, but to be honest I'm not really overly interested in that kind of thing...so it shall remain in my box of Dreamcast-related paraphernalia as an odd little curio, alongside the tissue holder and the jar of pickled eyeballs.

Pimp My 'Cast

Chances are, if you collect retro consoles you’re likely to own at least one beige-coloured piece of hardware. And the chances are that, if you’re reading this site, you own a beige Sega console. And that beige console is more than likely a Dreamcast. How do I know this? Magic, naturally, with a slight hint of mystical intuition. One of the more common problems I’ve noticed with the hallowed Dreamcast (yes, aside from the controller port fuse blowing) is that unless you keep it in the box and only ever get it out for special occasions (you know, like Christmas or a family funeral), it will eventually start to ‘yellow.’ Yellowing is what happens to lightly coloured plastic over time, where the chemicals that make up the dye in the plastic react with UV light and begin to break down, thus giving the material a tired and well...yellow appearance. And frankly, it looks shit. Add that to all the knocks and scuffs that build up over time (over a decade now, actually), and your Dreamcast can end up looking pretty sorry.

There are several remedies to this. First, you could attempt to ‘bleach’ your system’s shell as this Youtuber demonstrates...but that malarkey looks pretty dangerous to me - and besides, caustic chemicals do not mix well with hands that constantly drop cups of tea onto new carpets. Cough.

Secondly, you could spend a small fortune on one of those replacement cases that regularly pop up on eBay for fairly reasonable prices...but are located in Venezuela and so cost £30 to ship to the UK (granted, it may be cheaper to ship if you live closer to Venezuela but damn that’s expensive shipping). The Dreamcast shell is fairly easy to take apart and remove from the internal workings, so if you don’t mind spending the equivalent of a fortnight’s worth of food shopping on shipping costs, this is a fairly good way of pimping your Dreamcast.

But there is a third remedy. Enter DCJY reader Mike. He does shit like this to Dreamcasts:

Skies of Arcadia-cast

That right there isn’t one of those console stickers you just peel off and apply to your console - it’s a full on professionally applied vinyl coating. And you can have pretty much any design you want:

Jet Set/Grind Radio-cast

How is it done? I’ll let the man himself explain:

“Basically I work for a graphics and vehicle wrapping company, wrapping everything from race cars to motorbike helmets. I actually work in the finishing department. This involves cutting vinyl graphics, laminating prints, getting race car kits etc ready to fit, mounting custom graphics to Foamex and diabond panels etc.

For wrapping the Dreamcasts I first use an HD or similar quality image - this ensures that the picture doesn't look pixelated at all or blurry when upsized to fit the console. It's then down to the printing and artwork department to retouch the image (maybe change the colours slightly, resize it, upscale it etc). The picture can then be printed on cast vinyl in one of the HP Designjet L65500 printers (which are serious bits of kit), and it then comes to my department to be 'finished,' which in this case involves laminating it with some cast Arlon laminate, then trimming and applying to the Dreamcast. 

Placement is key to making the console look cool (you don't want to have an image of say Shenmue where Ryo's face is half off the console), and once you've got placement sorted apply the graphics and heat around all the different levels of the console. Trim carefully around the lid etc to ensure the join looks good. Then it's just a case of popping any air bubbles and trimming the edges and recesses nicely.”

I think you’ll agree that these custom Dreamcasts look pretty damned sweet, and as any image can be applied using the technique detailed in Mike’s explanation, you could have the world’s only Spirit Of Speed 1937 Dreamcast. Or not.

If you’d like to have your Dreamcast transformed - hell, go crazy and get a top-down view of a Sega Saturn or Neo Geo printed on it! - drop me an email via the link in my profile and I’ll supply contact details for Mike and his factory of wonders.

DCJY InsideOut - Clear White Dreamcast

Frequently seen in my collection photos, but never featured in a video, it's my clear Dreamcast!

Stunning Dreamcast Mod.

iVMU

Via Kotaku comes this rather cool VMU mod. Looks like the new iPod Nano has the exact same screen size as the Dreamcast's VMU, so somebody was smart enough to put two and two together! It's a pretty cool mod, however it would be extra cool if the VMU still functioned. The buttons seen above are merely aesthetic now. I'll bet some genius could jail break the Nano and add a VMU emulator then find some magical way for the Nano to talk to the Dreamcast. If only that was made a reality...


Check out more photos here!

Introducing: The Dreamcast Boombox!

Thanks to DCJY regular 'tdinc' for this little gem:

Yep, just as other frantic Dreamcasters around the globe have turned their favourite console into a Millenium Falcon, an iMac and an electric guitar, the curiously monikered XCKDIY has converted a knackered old CD player into a fully functioning portable DC - even going as far as to rip out the cassette player and install a little LCD screen. Not sure if it'd run off 6 batteries from the pound shop, but it's still an awesome bit of reverse engineering. The original story can be found here.

Cool...?!

Sometimes an item appears on ebay that makes you think "why?"

Here's an auction for such an item. It's a external Dreamcast cooling fan that comes complete with it's own power cord. And there's me thinking just the one fan was sufficient.

Why does this thing exist? Answers on a postcard. Or, erm, the comments page...

Oh, and if the auction ends before you can piss your money away on such a pointless artifact, you can buy one here.

The DreamTablet

It seems we don't go a month now without hearing about someones ingenius Dreamcast mods: last time it was a Dreamcast shoved inside a iMac monitor, and now from the creator of this Dreamcast handheld comes the DreamTablet, a DC inside a 15" tablet screen thingy, complete with the GD-Rom drive as a very speedy slot loader in the side (I think that in itself may be a first), and controller ports in the other side. It can be plugged into a telly and has a battery life of about 3 hours or so. More photos and details over at the Benheck forums, as well as a video below. One of these days there will be a kitchen sink with a Dreamcast built into it!

Dreamcast mods

I picked up a bit of a scuzzy PAL Dreamcast on eBay. Nothing really wrong with it, just some yellowing:

I had a can of spray paint that was left over from when I sprayed some wood for something years ago... and I remember how much I loved the smell of solvents. Anyway, I got spraying. Paint that is.

So, all-in-all, I recommend it. Here's the finished article:

Share your modded Dreamcast ideas/pictures/stories!

Modded Dreamcast Greatness (and much more)

Sometimes I think I spend too much money on collecting Dreamcast stuff, but then I think of that guy you owned every single Japanese game sealed up and how much he must of spent to get that lot only to not even play any of them. Last week I splashed out quite a lot of cash on a Dreamcast bundle of stuff: £120 (+£10 postage) to be exact. It all arrived yesterday and i must say though, I think it was a great deal.

This orange logo on start up is going to take getting used to, I've had a blue one all these years up until now..

For starters the Dreamcast is a Japanese model with it's shiny triangle by the light and big metal fan, possibly one of those early 1998 ones as it has no phone cable socket in that modem attachment. Unlike my previous ventures with Japanese Dreamcasts' (which both turned out to be broken), this one has a step down converter and best of all..it's had a mod chip installed so it can play games of any region without the need of a boot disc.

One of those broken Japanese systems I had also had a modification: someone had replaced the Japanese power board in it with a British one, which simply means it now took British plugs with no need for a stepdown converter. So not long after this new one arrived yesterday I popped the two open and swapped the power boards around and wala! My new system now had two mods to it. Now all it needs is a direct VGA socket hack and it'd be perfection. I'll use the stepdown for whatever other Japanese electronics I get (like a Japanese Saturn one day) and sell off the broken systems.

Another reason this bundle was a great deal was the games. A mixed bunch from every region, the games that convinced me to make offers on the set were Gigawing 2, Radilgy and Trizeal. All three of these games would cost me quite a bit separately, possibly around £40-50 each. The guy who owned it clearly had good taste: just have a ganders above at the 12 games that came with it. There was also two light guns in the box, a controller and a black VMU. Not all the games were in great condition (Power Stone in particular was pretty wreaked), but it's still a fantastic lot.

The system is a real joy to use. When you start the console up with a PAL or American game in it, you can hear it stop and start the disc while on the Sega screen, which must be the how the mod works, recreating the disc swapping in a second. It's also very quiet, so it must of been looked well after. To make sure it stays that way I won't be sticking any CD-Rs into this one, I'll keep one of my PAL systems beside me to swap in when I want to play homebrew or emulators and as for CD-R copies of games..I have so many of the games I want now I'm barely going to need them.

The last couple months have been quite busy with spending: I've been buying Dreamcast stuff a plenty. The lot above came from a ebay shop that has tons of sealed stuff selling cheap. I got a total of six VMUs (two of each colour) as well as Heavy Metal Geomatrix, Kao the Kangeroo and Charge N' Blast.


These second hand ones (top row) came from someone in America and were unfortunately in pretty bad shape (I-Spy has it's back pages of the manual ripped out and a cut out hole in the back cover) but playable. The two in the bottom row were found at a boot sale, although those have completely dried up for the year now, what with the cold weather. Probably why I've been going so Ebay crazy.

Here's another load of Japanese games I got cheap. I'm going to be digging out some translation guides to play Rent-a-hero and Sakura wars 3 (always wanted to see what the fuss was about with that series) and both Cool Cool Toon and Tokyo Bus Guide are quite addictive. I also have a japanese copy of Shenmue with the Jukebox CD, which means I know own Shenmue on every region. Oops! Probably best if I got rid of the PAL one then, to save shelf space.

Finally there's these two little oddities. These demo discs called "Dreamcast Express" were apperently only availble if you joined a Sega club of some sort, and come with two discs each. One of the discs has a full on interactive video tour of Tokyo Game Show '99, which is rather neat.

Now I just need to wait for my Segagaga box set to show up! Oh dear, my poor bank account.

Another excuse to pretend the DC2 is coming..

I'm sure you saw that Japanese project where someone had crammed a PC into a Sega Saturn, and if you browse about other blogs you have probably seen this already too but whatever...here is the same crazy bloke with a PC crammed into a Dreamcast. It even has a Blu-Ray drive!

It's quite amazing how this guy has managed to squeeze so such into the Dreamcast's shell. It must of been tricky enough with the Saturn, but the Dreamcast is mighty compact! The innards are insane!

Look at all those connections up it's backside! I sure would love to get a PC this compact and good looking, rather than a giant bulky block, mine of which is currently getting repaired as the darn thing decided to stop turning on.

And just to make sure it doesn't set on fire after five minutes it has a huge-arse fan in the bottom. I take it this means the system has to be layed on it's side when in use.

The controller ports are now USB ports. How cute. Yep, you could put me down for one of these! I'd get it emulating the previous Dreamcast, and scribble a "2" onto the logo.

Atari Punk Console, Housed Inside a Dreamcast.

What is an "Atari Punk Console" you ask?

Wikipedia.

(NOTE do not watch this video if you have epilepsy or are sensitive to flashing lights).



Wow.

It's kinda a shame everyone was giving this guy crap for using a Dreamcast. I mean that particular Dreamcast had died already. Why not use the parts for a project like this?

My favorite part is that he installed Furby eyes in the middle control ports.

More photos of this project.

"Dream Trooper" Storm Trooper Head Portable Dreamcast.

I am sure you have all seen this before.

Better late than never.

http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?t=26128

He made this thing out of an old Lazer Doodle! Amazing! All it's lacking is the back cover.

New Dreamcast Portable.

A rather boxy portable Dreamcast.



It looks pretty good. With a little work to protect the insides and maybe add some more ventilation this could be a sweet little unit.

I actually have a PS one screen that I was considering modifying to use on my Dreamcast. But I am lazy. A Dreamcast custom arcade cabinet is gonna be my next project.

Found at Sega Nerds.

Some more Dreamcast goodness.

This should help get you out of the depression brought on by Gamestation's retro betrayal.

Not only do we have remakes on other systems to look forward to, (as Gagaman(n) just mentioned) we also have the hardware modding community hard at work making awesome Dreamcast stuff!

Look at what this person made!









And no your eyes do not deceive you! if you look carefully at the first video part of this contraption is running off a normal Dreamcast!!!! Only the controllers and AV connectors seem to be modified!

I was really considering making a Dreamcast cabinet before this... Now I know I gotta go for a custom Dual Screen!

Elend's Most Fabulous Creations!

If you scroll down a little bit, you'll see a wonderful post by Caleb , about the Dreamcast's 9th anniversary competition, hosted by our most wonderful brothers over in Germany, Dreamcast Scene, in conjunction with Redspot Games (creators of the most excellent Dreamcast 'shmup' Last Hope) and also, quite surprisingly Sega Europe!

In Germany, they do a much better job of keeping our beloved consoles alive, than we do in the UK or USA! Wanna know why? Check out this and this!

I checked into the first competition, couldn't answer the question, then forgot to check out the rest! Oh how I wished I had! For I might have been the luckiest man in the world and won this!!!! elend's most amazing custom Redspot Dreamcast!!! How fucking cool is that???

Gaze on it's awesomeness! Bask in it's beauty! Revel in it's glory! God bless Dreamcast Scene! God love Redspot Games! And God bestow all His ultimate gifts on the genius that is... elend!

Oh! And the most exciting part of the post!? The mighty elend is now a contributor on the Dreamcast Junkyard's little brother, the Saturn Junkyard!

You see? I get all the best people! I got the mighty (if short) Greek wonder of the world, Gnome, I got America's finest, the American Dreamcaster, Caleb, I got Germany's finest graphic artist, elend, and I got "the special one" the awesome NebachadnezzaR!!! Pride of Portugal!!!

...and it's our birthday party on the 13th! And I want to see all of our readers and contributors there!!!! (Yes especially you Gagaman(n)...)

Happy days!!!