We Played the Unreleased Game "Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen" for Sega Dreamcast

What could've been. Cover created by Dreamcast Me That.

Developed by Arxel Tribe in the late 90s, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is a point-and-click adventure game that would be released for the PC in 1998. It turns out that the game was supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast a few years later, but ultimately ended up on the mammoth pile of unreleased titles which never saw the light of day on Sega’s console. And no, we’re not talking about The Ring: Terror's Realm, which unfortunately for us, did sneak its way into the console’s release library.

However, thanks to the ongoing preservation efforts of Comby Laurent from Sega Dreamcast Info, this previously unreleased title is now available to download and play via emulation or, even better, on a real Dreamcast with a real controller in your sweaty hands.

But before we get into how this title should’ve ended up on the Dreamcast sometime in the year 2000, let’s talk a little about the game itself.

I asked this chap what he thought about the Dreamcast.

Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is loosely based on Der Ring des Nibelungen; four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. Yes, that’s right, a game based on an opera. I’ve officially heard it all. Indeed, the game itself features music from various performances of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the legendary Georg Solti himself.

I had to Google Georg Solti as well, don’t worry. You’ll find out he’s a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor who’s won countless awards including a British CBE, a knighthood and a whopping 31 Grammy Awards. Bet you didn’t think you’d learn that on a Dreamcast blog, did you?

Even if you’re not an opera fan, you will absolutely know the Ride of the Valkyries score which was featured in Der Ring des Nibelungen. In fact, I’ll give you a moment to go and search for it on YouTube so you can have it playing in the background as you read the rest of this article; it’ll add to the overall experience.

Anyway, back to Der Ring des Nibelungen. The scale and scope of the story told in these works is so epic that I simply don’t have enough time to cover it all here. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. In the game, there are four characters which you assume control of. Alberich (a cruel and sadistic dwarf king), Loge (a fire spirit), Siegmund (the son of the god Wotan), and Brünnhilde (a Valkyrie warrior).

Some of the areas in the game are beautifully atmospheric.

There are loads of additional characters and even a family tree to help you make sense of it all. In fact, the story and puzzles in Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen are so complex that the PC release actually included an entire walkthrough in its own instruction manual! Arxel Tribe clearly had little faith that their playerbase would get their head around it all, either.

As I mentioned, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen did actually get a release on PC in 1998. Whilst it did enjoy significant commercial success -shifting an impressive 600,000 lifetime copies according to Arxel Tribe’s Guillaume de Fondaumière- the reviews were not so favourable. IGN described it as a “complete travesty when it comes to gameplay” on the way to awarding it a 2.7/10 score, whilst GameStop said it was “so utterly uninviting” in their 3.7/10 appraisal.

Magic frogs. For the diving helmet. Obviously.

News of a Dreamcast port in the UK media at the time was sparse, despite the fact that from what we can see now, most of the game was finished and not far away from being ready to rock. Whilst flicking through some issues of the UK’s Dreamcast Magazine, I did find a small news bite tucked away in the corner of issue four which read:

“News has broken on a forthcoming Dreamcast game from Success. The game is to be a port of the hit PC game Ring: The Legend of Nibelung, which is currently in the midst of conversion and should be with us sometime during 2000.”

No accompanying screenshot or half-page spread. It’s fair to say that this port was somewhat under the radar and so it’s unsurprising that many Dreamcast fans hadn’t heard of its existence before. IGN also reported that “the makers of Rainbow Cotton for the Dreamcast will be bringing The Ring of the Nibelungen to Japanese DC gamers. Currently, this game is listed on the Success web page as being set for release on the PC in Japan on October 29th of this year.” But again, no screenshots or noteworthy details.

The Dreamcast version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was seemingly lost forever at some point after this. Well, I say lost forever but what I actually mean is lost until the efforts of Laurent and his team managed to preserve the title for us all to enjoy.

A prototype version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was actually discovered and dumped a few years ago, but it was only a partial dump. Some of the three discs were missing meaning that the game could not be played in any logical order. But all was not lost. In a recent post, Laurent has managed to obtain dumps of all three discs and additionally some VMU save files which allow for each of the games’ chapters to be loaded and played.

The Tragic Fate of DC-UK Magazine and Its Unreleased Issue 21 — Four Lost Reviews Found!

These days, typing "DC-UK" into your search engine of choice will lead you to the UK web stores for an American comic giant, a classic skate shoe brand, or even a company that makes delightful wooden duck sculptures. But for British Dreamcast fans of a certain age, those four letters still spark memories of one of the best unofficial magazines to ever cover Sega's final console. DC-UK was Future Publishing's cheeky, offbeat stab at covering the Dreamcast, and it struck the perfect balance between solid game coverage and creative features, without ever taking itself too seriously.

In 2026, Future stands as one of the few remaining large-scale UK magazine publishers, having gobbled up many of its competitors over the past decade. But back at the turn of the millennium, many more publishing houses were vying for a slice of the magazine market, and for a time, a magazine dedicated to Sega's exciting new Dreamcast console seemed like a fair punt. We previously had the pleasure of chatting about the creation of DC-UK with its first editor, Caspar Field, on our podcast, but today we're fast-forwarding to the end of its run.

How DC-UK introduced itself in its debut issue.

Echoing the fate of the console it was created to celebrate, DC-UK would end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Just like Dennis Publishing's Official Dreamcast Magazine, DC-UK would be killed off seemingly overnight — no final farewell within its pages, and a promised next issue that would never materialise. 

If you, like me, believe a magazine as great as DC-UK deserved a more dignified send off, then read on, because I've found out why it didn't get one. I even spoke with three former members of the DC-UK editorial team, whose insights help shed light on the circumstances behind the mag's untimely end. And, as you may have noticed from the title of this article, I've also managed to recover and preserve four unreleased reviews that were originally intended to appear in DC-UK's cancelled issue 21... Pretty exciting, right? It only took 25 years for them to see the light of day!

But before we get into all that, let's first see how DC-UK bowed out. The magazine's final issue, issue 20, hit shelves on the 15th of February 2001...

All scans in this article were sourced from Sega Retro.

The front cover of what would turn out to be DC-UK’s final issue would certainly look good, but the game featured so prominently was an unremarkable one: Fighting Vipers 2, the often-forgotten sequel to a Sega Saturn fighting staple. Considering the online multiplayer-RPG phenomenon that was Phantasy Star Online was also getting a review inside, you'd think that might have gotten pride of place over fiery helmet guy (or whatever he's called) from Fighting Vipers, but it was instead demoted to a secondary coverline just below it. With Official Dreamcast Magazine running a big PSO cover that same month (issue 17) and promoting its own review as "the first in the UK", it appeared that DC-UK's response was to counter by securing a UK-first review for Fighting Vipers 2 instead.

The editor for the issue was Lee Hart, as long-time editor Keith Stuart —who'd been in the role since issue seven— had moved on to greener pastures (although he did provide some freelance writing for this issue). And greener pastures they were, as Lee's first port of call as the new editor of DC-UK was to announce that Sega was to become a third-party developer.

Despite the change of editor, and a reduced page count (100 pages, down from around 130 pages at the magazine's peak), issue 20 of DC-UK was still a decent read, although the kind of off-the-wall features and cutaways the mag had become known for were largely absent. Where were Nostradamus' Dreamcast predictions? The hungover fishing trips? Instead, readers got four pages at the front of the issue dedicated to Toy Commander developer No Cliché's then-upcoming Agartha — and that game didn't even release! Surely that space would've been better filled with a spread showcasing photos of the DC-UK team's body parts? (That was actually a genuine reoccurring DC-UK feature. I'm not being weird!)

All jokes aside, the Agartha feature is certainly interesting, and offered a staggering amount of behind-the-scenes content considering the piece's short page count, including screenshots, concept sketches, work-in-progress renders, and a conversation with former head of No Cliché, Frédérick Raynal. Reading it in 2026 feels somewhat surreal, knowing what ultimately would (or wouldn't) become of the game.

Being that the issue released in February of 2001, there were still enough upcoming releases on the horizon to give worried Dreamcast fans reason to keep the faith. Previews this month included Sega heavy-hitters Daytona USA 2001 and Skies of Arcadia, alongside a number of titles that would ultimately end up as Japanese and US imports for us here in old Blighty. The Last Blade 2 and Giga Wing 2 promised niche thrills for arcade connoisseurs, while The Typing of the Dead and Illbleed lay in wait to deliver their own uniquely quirky brands of horror.

Dreamzone Magazine: First 15 Issues now Digitally Preserved

 

Parles-tu français? No, me neither. Languages weren't a strength of mine at school, and despite some derisory attempts to pick up Spanish during adulthood, I remain a stereotypically monolingual Brit. Nevertheless, last year I took up the task of acquiring and scanning a whole heap of Dreamcast magazines from across the globe that had yet to be digitally preserved. A handful of those missing from the internet are in English, but the vast majority are in the Romance languages of my European neighbours, Japanese and even varieties of Chinese. 

Why on earth would I bother doing this? Well, for one, I'm hopeful that the pages of these mags might contain some information that is useful to hobbyists, journos and potentially even the more rigorous varieties of gaming historians.

Fortunately the Junkyard crew's attitudes towards our French neighbours are much more comradely than that shown in this Dreamarena chat snippet...

Secondly, it seemed a shame that masses of material was only available to those who were fortunate enough to hold private collections. And lastly, given that there is no profit to be made from it, it was unlikely that digital preservation of this sort was going to happen unless I (or other volunteers) took it up. Oh, and the biggest reason of all - I'm a big dork and get a kick out of dorky endeavours.

Ok, enough with the prelude and on to the main event. The primary purpose of this post is to announce that the first 15 issues of the French magazine Dreamzone are now available for your viewing pleasure, hosted by the virtual Aladdin's cave that is Sega Retro. That is, over 2,000 pages of retro gaming journalism, brought back to life kicking and screaming from the dark depths of the turn of the Millennium. 

Feel free to browse the scans for yourself, or, for an introduction to the magazine and a run-down of its contents, read-on.

Dreamzone: Stalwarts of the French Scene (1998-2002)

Launched by the prolific FJM Publications in December of 1998, Dreamzone was the first magazine of its ilk to appear in Europe. Understandably enthused by the Japanese launch, their early start meant that the first few issues of the mag were dominated by salivating previews and reviews of exotic Japanese imports, as well as extensive pondering over what the coming European launch may entail. Once the wait was over in late 1999 a substantial proportion of the page budget was duly turned over to a PAL-specific focus, though coverage of the many, many Japanese releases still remained a mainstay until the bitter end.

The FJM Publication team circa 2000, featuring two chaps who took up the Editor-in-Chief role for Dreamzone: Vincent Maulon (issues 7-15) and Cedric Devoyon (issues 16-29).

Dreamzone featured everything you might expect from a magazine of its genre and age: a copious letters section, interviews with game industry heads, reporting from events, boisterous editorials, competitions, game tips, reviews and previews, and of course, crass slobbering over a digital Lara Croft. What was perhaps a little more odd was their persistent coverage of the Neo Geo Pocket - seemingly adopted as an unofficial companion for the Dreamcast, perhaps in spite of the console war rivals over at Nintendo. Looking at it through the lens of 2024, the haphazard reporting on movies and websites that filled the back end of the mag seems rather twee too, but may well have added some value for readers at a time when internet access was limited.

"I'm not BOY". Vive la Neo Geo Pocket!

Despite lacking the GD-ROM giveaway of its official competitor, Dreamzone still packed a lot of bang for it's buck (or Franc to be more precise), coming in at 132 pages per issue on average. And, from what can be established through some rudimentary internet sleuthing, the mag appears to be fondly remembered by many a French millennial - more so than its other national competitor, Game Dream, which was bizarrely ran by the same publishing house. Whether Dreamzone ever actually made it to the shores of distant Francophone territories mentioned in the small print of its cover (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Quebec) is a question for another day...