Showing posts with label Rare Dreamcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rare Dreamcast. Show all posts

The Mystery Of The EB Special Edition Dreamcast

I love a good mystery, and internet-based mysteries are among my favourite types. Of course Moth Man, the Mary Celeste and the tale of Springheel Jack are cool things to read up on, but the ubiquitous nature of the internet means we can all be cyber sleuths without ever leaving our living rooms. And just to compound what I'm yapping about, stuff that was actually spawned by the internet itself (such as Cicada 3301, Unfavourable Semicircle and Webdriver Torso) is every bit as fascinating to me as 'real world' mysteries are.
Fuck...I was only trying to play Doom.
That's not to say the more mundane aspects of the online world are any less wondrous - the very nature of the internet means that stuff written long ago can still be found online and still be read today, either because the hosting service still exists or the Way Back Machine allows us to glimpse into the past and recover the information contained on those garish (and often embarrassing) GeoCities/MySpace pages of yore.

As a person with an unhealthy obsession with all things Dreamcast-related, It probably won't surprise you to learn that I do spend an inordinate amount of time perusing these ghost sites in the hunt for obscure references to cool stuff that never saw the light of day; and the good old Way Back Machine has helped me verify a story more times than I care to remember.

Rare Dreamcast Premiere Posters Surface On eBay

The UK launch party for the Dreamcast is the stuff of legend. I've heard many a recounted tale of booze and debauchery from industry types who were lucky enough to be invited, in some cases (rather interestingly) by means of a VMU with a 'golden ticket' attached:
Look who it is!
The event took place during the annual European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) in September 1999, where a private party was held at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, London. The thing that makes this private launch party so interesting is that a lot of fairly (now) extremely rare merchandise was handed out to revellers. How rare? How about 'I bet you've never, ever seen these' rare? Here you go:

The Rarest Dreamcast Hardware On Earth?

Sega Dreamcast SFL-20001P Control Unit
*Updated! We have new info on this. Scroll to the bottom for the update*

Allow me to be presumptuous, but I'm going to guess that if you're here at the Junkyard reading articles about a console that has been out of production for well over a decade, you're either a) a Dreamcast enthusiast; b) a retro-gaming enthusiast; or c) both. For these reasons alone, I'm also going to presume that you dear reader, know a thing or two about so-called 'rare' hardware; and more specifically rare or lesser-spotted Dreamcast hardware. You know the kinds of thing I'm talking about - the Divers 2000 and the various special edition consoles that occasionally pop up on eBay for astronomical sums of money. Think the Resident Evil STARS edition, or the Hello Kitty variants that surface every now and then. Hell - you might even own one or two. There's something that I can guarantee the vast majority of people reading this don't own though. Not only that - I would wager that the vast majority didn't even know of the existence of this Dreamcast variant - I certainly didn't until I stumbled across DreamcastGaga's article a few days ago. Allow us to present the Dreamcast SFL-2000P1 Control Unit.
Sega Dreamcast SFL-20001P Control Unit
As mentioned in DCGaga's original article, the Control Unit originally surfaced on eBay in late 2014 and was snapped up for a mere $123 (that's about £80) by an eagle-eyed bidder. This was probably down to the fact that the item was listed rather ambiguously as 'Vintage Sega Dream Cast Japaneses Metal Console,' [sic] and not (as I would have listed it) 'Rare as Rocking Horse Shit Hitherto Unknown Dreamcast Box Thing.' 

In the Land of the Giants

When people talk about the rarest games on the Dreamcast, the same names tend to be bandied around. Friend of the Junkyard Racket Boy published a rather nice article focusing on the Dreamcast's rarest and most valuable titles a while back (click here to reveal it's delights), and we looked at a few of the more expensive PAL games right here at the 'Yard a few weeks ago...but here's the thing - a clear distinction needs to be made right now: 'expensive' and 'rare' are not the same thing.

One game that is forever being listed on eBay as 'rare' and commanding some ridiculous prices is Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64. It is a fantastic title and an example of Rareware of old at their finest, but as any well-read N64 collector will attest, Conker is not a rare game - it is merely desirable. Quite where the horrific price tag came from is anybody's guess (maybe someone saw the Rareware sticker and got a little confused), but the snowball became an avalanche and now Bad Fur Day has become the fodder of the more affluent collectors out there. Unless you own an Everdrive...but we won't go down that particularly grey alley.

Back to the original point - rare Dreamcast games. Games like Rival Schools 2, Bangai-O and Cannon Spike regularly get a mention; as do titles like SegaGaGa and Mars Matrix. Whether it was down to low print runs or low sales figures, all of these are uncommon titles. There is one game however, that never gets mentioned in these 'rare games' lists. A game that I believe is so rare, it transcends the very lists it should proudly sit atop. This game is Giant Killers - a UK exclusive football (soccer) management sim released by Smoking Gun Productions in May 2001.
Before we go any further, I want to address the rather odd name of this particular title. In British football terminology, 'giant killer' is a name afforded to a team from a lower league who manage to create an upset and defeat a team from a much higher division. This generally only happens in either the FA Cup or League Cup and is the cause for much celebration/egg on face when say, a non-league outfit sees off Championship or Premier League opposition. There is a long history of bigger teams slipping up against sides they should easily have beaten (for further info see Manchester United vs Anyone during the current season), and giant killing is an oft-used expression on these shores. So that's the science bit done - anyone from overseas seeing the name Giant Killers would be forgiven for thinking UK Dreamcast owners were privy to some hitherto unknown David vs Goliath simulator...alas, the truth is a little less exciting.

What of the game itself then? Well, I have a little confession to make: I hate football management sims. I've never seen the point of looking at screens of stats and never actually getting to play the beautiful game for real. I love stuff like FIFA and all the behind the scenes tinkering that the career mode in said EA Sports flagship title offers...but if you take away the ability to actually play the game, my interest levels wane. By 'wane,' I mean 'vanishes altogether.'
That said, I had an open mind when I approached Giant Killers. I powered the PAL-exclusive title up and settled down into the manager's chair, ready to get stuck in to the day-to-day running of a full blown professional football club. The first thing I noticed when I started the game was that all of the teams are from the English leagues and the conference - there are no international leagues at all, and this has the rather odd knock-on effect that players cannot be purchased from foreign teams. As previously hinted at, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to management sims, but Giant Killers has a pretty basic and beginner-friendly menu system. You switch between the different management screens via the icons at the bottom of the screen and follow the button prompts in each sub-area in order to set your starting 11, your substitutes, the rather limited gameplan and tactics, and also read emails from your chairman and board of directors. Compared to something like Championship Manager, this is management lite...which I must admit, is quite commendable on the part of the developer when you consider the rest of the Dreamcast's library and the target market for the system. I picked to play as Manchester City and it quickly dawned on me that this game is also very much a snapshot of the English game in 2001. Names like Shaun Goater and Danny Tiatto loomed out of the mists of time like miss-kicking leviathans...and the Dreamcast sponsoring on the Arsenal shirts in the backgrounds got me all dewy-eyed.

Once you've picked your starting lineup and tinkered with the slightly threadbare team tactics, you are encouraged to start your first game from the dug-out, and I must say that it's about as exciting as you would imagine: text-based commentary scrolls up the screen while crowd sound effects play in the background. There's no Premier Manager 64-style 3D representation of the game here - just text. It's quite detailed to be fair, but you'd have to be a hardened statto to get excited about this aspect of the game...and this is where the action happens.
There's not much more I can say about Giant Killers. It's a competent management sim from what I can tell with my n00b eyes, but it really isn't my cup of tea. The menus look uncluttered and the button prompts are helpful...but the lack of any real excitement or 'game' left me wanting to put King Of Fighters '99 back in my Dreamcast after about 10 minutes. This wasn't helped by the fact that I lost all but one of my first 8 games as the new manager of Manchester City - and that was a draw against Sunderland on the opening day of the new season. The shame.

So Giant Killers then. It stands alone as the only football management game on the Dreamcast (unless you count the Japan-only Let's Make A Soccer Team! as a proper management sim, and not an RPG), and also the only UK-exclusive title. That fact alone makes it pretty special in my eyes...it's just a shame I'm not really into this genre.

Price-wise, I've seen copies of Giant Killers fetch a few hundred pounds on eBay...but I paid £8 for this boxed and complete copy at a recent gaming expo so there's proof that you don't have to pay through the nose for genuinely rare Dreamcast titles.

Breaking The Bank

The rising cost of hardware and software is something that affects us all as gamers – the latest console offerings from both Microsoft and Sony are out of the financial reach of a lot of people (me included), and while Nintendo’s latest system is cheaper than both the Xbox One and PS4, the Wii U will still leave a hole the size of £200 in your pocket if you decide you need Mario Kart 8 in your life (and from what I've played of it, that means everyone). But as I stated in a recent article/rant on emulation, the high price of gaming certainly isn't limited to the contemporary formats – retro-gaming and collecting is rapidly becoming a big business and the prices that some games, systems and memorabilia command can be pretty eye-watering. As an avid Dreamcast collector, I’m only too aware that Sega’s final system is no different to many others in that there are certain hardware variants that are way out of the budget range of most average gamers – look at the prices a Treamcast or a Divers 2000 fetch on eBay, if indeed they ever surface. However, I’m going to talk about a slightly different aspect of this subject in this post: software. More specifically, which Dreamcast games are the ones that will leave your bank account looking anorexic if you do decide to take the plunge? Please note that I’m only really looking at PAL releases here and I don’t actually own legitimate retail copies of any of the games on this list as I refuse to pay the ridiculous sums required, but I thought it would be interesting to have a look at some of the more expensive Dreamcast games out there…

A Dreamcast collection that makes you want to punch a hole in the wall

Just one of dozens of rare items. Only 78 of these exist.

Imagine a Dreamcast console collection so huge, and a collector so casual about it, that you just want to punch a hole in the wall and cry in a corner. I think I've found it. Beware all who click below. Once you've finished, come back to this post (unless you've passed out):

http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25769


Have you returned? Do you feel envy? I myself felt a mix between envy and hatred. Did you scroll down and read the his reply to being called "rich"? "I'm not rich, got a normal salary, only i´m collecting Dreamcast 5-6 years".


I'm not sure if I want to clap my hands or boil an egg on my forehead. Congrats! *grumble grumble*

Dreamcast Collections To Die For Vol 1...

This is Gary's collection and I must say that I'd kill/die for it... Ooooh Lush!

Nuff said... LOL! : P


)

WOW! Just imagine if that was your stash!

Dreamcasting@btinternet.com... You know it makes sense...


(And we didn't even show you the Treamcasts...)