Not content with giving us just one new Dreamcast present for Christmas this year, the elves over on the Dreamcast-Talk forum have evidently been working tirelessly on the most recently dumped contents of a broken Dreamcast dev kit in an attempt to bring more festive joy to Dreamcast lovers all over the world.
The most recent discovery appears to be yet another previously unseen Dreamcast title from Red Lemon studios again: Blowup!. Another Dreamcast-Talk user, Ian Micheal, was able to get this game to boot in the early hours of this morning.
What's particularly fascinating about this demo is that as you can see from the title screen above, it was ultimately intended for display at the E3 expo in the year 2000. This leads me to the assumption that, unlike The Simpsons: Bug Squad!, which was clearly just a developer pitching to a studio, Blowup! was a real game that that was actually in development heading for an actual release at some point.
The only part of this demo which actually runs at the moment is the title screen, which then loops to a promo screen highlighting all of the exciting features that Blowup! will offer, promising compelling gameplay and a rich, detailed story amongst other things. This would have been very common for game demos at the time, especially those playable at E3 so that the gaming press had an idea of what the full game would be like.
Blowup! never did see the light of day; potentially another victim of the Dreamcast's demise and the publisher just not seeing the return on investment on a game that would've likely not have seen shop shelves until 2001.
Unfortunately the demo will not load at the moment beyond the boot screen due to some missing texture files. But I have little doubt that if there is a way to get beyond these screens, the boffins working on it over on Dreamcast-Talk will find out soon enough. We will of course keep you updated here on the Junkyard!
In the meantime, it's fun to speculate on what this mouse wearing a Fez hat would get up to in Blowup!. He looks like a mischievous little blighter, don't you think? Maybe, judging by the second screen, he just fancies a game of pool? Muse away below or on Twitter.
UPDATE: The founder of Red Lemon Studios, Andy Campbell, has added some additional insight: "Blowup! was a puzzle platformer game where you controlled a character who would blow or suck a ball or balls over a level".
So there you have it, looks like it wasn't heading for a release after all!