DCJY welcomes Mike Arkin

Another month means another episode of the DreamPod, and this time, we're joined by a very special guest: Mike Arkin. With over three decades of experience in the video game industry, Mike has worked for the likes of Acclaim, Sony Imagesoft, Fox Interactive, and Activision. Most notably for us, he served as an executive producer at Crave Entertainment, the publisher behind some of the most unique and unforgettable titles on the Sega Dreamcast.

Mike shares a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes stories from his time working on the releases of beloved Dreamcast titles like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Super Magnetic Neo, Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm, StarLancer, and everyone’s favourite guilty pleasure, Razor Freestyle Scooter.

We also take some time to discuss Mike’s current role as co-CEO of the newly reformed Argonaut Games, their new remaster of Croc, and whether we will ever see a re-release of their Dreamcast opus Red Dog.

You can listen to this episode of the DreamPod and all of our previous episodes on Buzzsprout, along with all great podcast services.

New Book Documents Every Single Tony Hawk Game

We love a good book here at the Junkyard, especially if there's some interesting and original Dreamcast specific content contained within said tome. Naturally, due to this we're eagerly awaiting the upcoming Dreamcast books from Pix 'N Love and Read-Only Memory, but here's something you may not have heard about previously: a brand new publication that goes deep on the entire series of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater releases, which also includes the two awesome Dreamcast versions.

Tony Hawk's Gaming Domination: The Rise and Fall of the Hawk Franchise (website here) features in-depth investigations on all 17 Tony Hawk games, across 25 different platforms and promises to be the most comprehensive examination of the Tony Hawk series ever laid down. The fact that it's written by the most knowledgeable Tony Hawk expert around - Trevor 'Slateman' Esposito, founder of Planet Tony Hawk - only adds extra weight to this lofty claim.

The book includes comparisons of the Hawk games

The Dreamcast played host to a number of skating titles, but the Tony Hawk ports are regarded as the very best not only on the Dreamcast, but the finest versions of those respective titles; with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 singled out in particular for how good a conversion the Dreamcast received.