The Dreamcast Dreamphone

Up until today I'd never heard of the Dreamcast Dreamphone, and I'd wager many other people haven't either. What meagre information there is on this little-known device can only be accessed through liberal use of the Way Back Machine; but I'll explain how I came to find this odd and fascinating contraption before explaining what I've pieced together about it.

Sorry. Wrong number.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Twas a dark and stormy evening and I was randomly browsing the internet for cheap Dreamcast games, when I happened across the following listing at US website eStarland.com. At first I thought I must be looking at an April Fools' hoax or something because even though I consider myself to be quite well versed in Dreamcast peripherals, the Dreamphone is something I've never, ever heard of.

After finding this item (it's out of stock by the way, and is likely to be so for some time to come forever), I did some Googling but could find barely any information on it. There are thousands of references to a board game of the same name (see above), and a couple of forum threads from 2004 and 2007 where people seemingly stumbled upon the Dreamcast Dreamphone in exactly the same manner as I did...and virtually nothing else, anywhere.

Toy Racer Multiplayer Back Online Through Dial-Up

Remember Toy Racer? Of course you do - we only mentioned it a few days ago in this post about the work of two highly talented individuals working to get our trusty old Dreamcasts back online. There's a chance you've just clicked on this because someone's retweeted it or shared it on Facebook though, so I'll explain. Toy Racer was a PAL-only spin-off from Toy Commander that featured toy cars being raced around various tracks that were constructed from bits of Scalextric and broken stickle bricks. It was intended as a budget multiplayer racer to demonstrate the Dreamcast's online capabilities and for the most part it fulfilled its role amicably...until Sega's European servers were smashed to bits and thrown into a landfill. And then pissed on by several tramps.

The good news is that Toy Racer is now back online. And while we've told you this before, this time you don't need any other additional bits and bobs to experience it. All you need is a Dreamcast and a phone line. And Toy Racer, obvs. Plug it in with the standard modem cable and point your DNS at 46.101.91.123. Viola! Toy Racer is back online via dial up...right now!

DreamPod - Episode 24: DreamPi

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If you'd like to know more about Dreamcast Now! or DreamPi...just click on the links! DreamPipe can be found here. Enjoy your time online and please leave us an iTunes review if you can find the time.

DreamPi 1.1 with Dreamcast Now! Released

Just a short one this. You may recall a few weeks ago that we revealed a new online service for Dreamcast called Dreamcast Now! that allows you to see when other users are online and what games they are playing etc. It's about as close to something like Xbox Live or PlayStation Network that we're ever likely to see on the Dreamcast, but it's real...and it works with the DreamPi Raspberry Pi device created by Luke Benstead. The good news is that Luke has released the latest version of the DreamPi image and it includes everything you need to get Dreamcast Now! up and running.

Episode 24 of DreamPod features Luke as a special guest and he explains exactly what the DreamPi and Dreamcast Now! service will mean for the future of online gaming on the DC. That episode will be out by the end of the week, but in the meantime feel free to head over to Luke's blog and download the image for yourself.

DreamPi To Launch 'Dreamcast Now!' Online Service

A few weeks ago we featured the stellar work of Luke Benstead and his Raspberry Pi-based DreamPi device; a device with which Dreamcast owners can get their consoles back online without the need for an expensive broadband adapter. The DreamPi is still very much a work in progress, but this work is progressing at a rate of knots and this week Luke announced the next step in DreamPi's path to world domination: Dreamcast Now!

A Raspberry Pi. Not to be confused with a Raspberry Pie.

Dreamcast Now! is a new service that will allow DreamPi users to see who is online at any given moment, and also to see which games other people (or rampant AIs) are playing. The test site is actually live now and can be viewed here. Luke also has also revealed details of an exciting partnership with Dreamcast browser portal Dreampipe.net, which in his own words will "provide a level of integration with the site which will allow you to see who's online without ever leaving the confines of the Dreamcast."

Get Back Online With DreamPi

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

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

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

- Luke Benstead

A Quick Look At Alien Front Online

This week I received in the post a fully boxed and complete copy of Alien Front Online, for which I paid the princely sum of £3. I have played this game extensively in the past as I own a burnt copy of it, but there's nothing like having the complete official set in your collection...and for such a minuscule sum who could turn it down? I'll tell you who: a screaming buffoon. A buffoon I am not though, and this is evident in the way that I now own Alien Front Online. Am I making any sense at all? No? Excellent.

Following on from our recent A Quick Look At Virtua Cop 2, I intend this series to be - as the name suggests - a sort of whistle-stop investigation of titles lots of people may already be familiar with, but that others may never have experienced. Indeed, many people will be very familiar with Alien Front Online, and I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of those folk would be Dreamcast owners hailing from the good ol' US of A. This is because Alien Front Online didn't receive a PAL or NTSC-J release, and even if it had been launched in the UK I very much suspect that the 'Online' part of the title would have been dropped just like it was from PAL versions of Outtrigger, Daytona and Unreal Tournament. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Just what is Alien Front Online? Let's have a little look...

Comparing Speed Devils Online

Several weeks ago we had a quick look at Racing Simulation: Monaco Grand Prix and it's later online-enabled re-release, Monaco Online. As we know, Sega's online component wasn't really working as intended when the Dreamcast initially launched and it was only later in the system's unfathomably short (natural) lifespan that truly online games started to come to the fore. A lot of games with 'online gaming' splashed all over the box simply allowed players to upload scores to online leaderboards or download other players' ghost data. It was only fairly late on that bonafide online gaming became possible, with titles such as Quake 3 Arena and Phantasy Star Online. Not surprisingly, developers who had released games earlier cottoned on, and re-released their offerings with the added functionality. However, these re-issued games were launched with varying levels of quality. If you look back at the article on Moncao Online, you'll see that it was simply an identical product to the original, but with the added bonus of online play...which is fair enough.

Toy Racer Dial-Up Connection In The Works

You may have read recently that the online-only multiplayer title Toy Racer is the latest Deamcast game to be dragged out from under a rock and plonked back onto the interwebs (or whatever it's called). And you'd have read right. The Junkyard was recently contacted by Bob Dobbs, a member of the popular Dreamcast-Talk forums, who confirmed that the game's servers are well and truly back online and running well. Unfortunately for most of us, you can only get your online fix of Toy Racer if you own a highly sought-after and expensive broadband adaptor for your Dreamcast, but those clever chaps are also working on a method that will allow you to hook up via your trusty old 33k (56k in the US) dial-up modem. Huzzah! Here's an info-burst from the man himself:

Dreamcast-Talk (International) & Dreamcast-br (Brazil) has yet another game back online. This one is Toy Racer. For the first time, the original game server software has been released (thanks to petter3k who contacted No Cliche, the programmers of Toy Racer). Dreamcast-br has already had a server running, but we do not know if their server is the original or not (Igor Isaias Banlian was kind enough to allow us the IP addy to play). In both cases, the game only connects via BBA (dial-up wants to go to Dreamarena). Currently, DC-Talk is working on a boot-disc to allow the game GD-ROM to use dial-up.

To note, DC-Talk was where the "Netopia" method of connecting your DC to the internet without a PC of any kind. It has much less latency than the troublesome DC-PC server set-up. I use it, which is purely hardware driven (developed by brourke228). The other is the and the PC-DC windows/VMware server portion to work with the Ryochan Linux PC-DC server method (brourke228 of DC-Talk developed the Windows portion).

Here's the science bit:
Brazil IP: 200.165.140.20:2048
TCP Port: 2048
UDP Port: 2049

As stated, the guys at Dreamcast-Talk are working on a boot-disc to get Dreamcast gamers up and running with a dial-up connection, and are currently ironing out some issues with the remnants of Dream Arena at present. For a full guide on how to get online with Toy Racer right now though, follow this link; and be sure to check the DreamcastBr Facebook group for further updates.