Premier Eleven: A Closer Look at the Lost Atomiswave Football Game

Throughout history there are numerous examples of the story behind the creation of a particular piece of media being more interesting than the final product. Take for example, the 1996 movie The Island of Dr. Moreau. A movie which was based on the 1896 H. G. Wells novel of the same name and which teamed a star-studded cast (Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk) with a hotly tipped up-and-coming director (Richard Stanley). In what is now a notorious turn of events, the final movie turned out to be something of a box office bomb, but the story of what went on behind the cameras spawned such tall and bizarre tales that the production has become infamous amongst movie aficionados. If you’re not in the slightest bit familiar with what I’m blathering about, then I implore you to seek out the documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau and be amazed at just how wild movie making can become.

Poster for the 1996 movie. The on-set drama
eclipsed that of the 1977 rendition.

With this in mind then, let us turn our attention to something much more Dreamcast-centric: Dimps Corporation’s ‘lost’ Atomiswave football (soccer) title Premier Eleven. We’ve covered the storied history of Premier Eleven here at the Junkyard in past, indeed I almost transformed into the aforementioned Dr. Moreau myself while researching it - at one point even visiting an arcade where a cabinet had been trialled back in the early 2000s, hoping and praying that there may be some remnant of it still in situ. Spoiler: there wasn’t. If you’d like to know more than is healthy about my recalcitrant obsession with this previously lesser-spotted arcade kickabout, please do check out our previous articles on Premier Eleven here and here; and you can read about the history of the Atomiswave arcade system (and its fascinating link to the Dreamcast) here.

A photo of the Premier Eleven arcade cabinet installed
at Clarence Pier, Southsea (UK) - Credit: John Baseley.

The long and short of it though, is that Premier Eleven was a football game in development by Dimps Corporation, which was planned for release on Sammy’s Atomiswave arcade system. After some testing in a few select locations, release plans for the game were scrapped, cabinets were unceremoniously slung into the fires of Orodruin, and the few remaining copies of the original arcade board ended up in the hands of private collectors. 

When the Atomiswave library was ported to the Dreamcast back in 2020, it was truly a marvel to behold and many a Dreamcast enjoyer was - quite rightly - overjoyed to finally be given the opportunity to sample such delights as Faster Than Speed, KenJu, Dolphin Blue, Maximum Speed et al. Only, there was a small hole in the collection of games being unleashed onto the Dreamcast - the Atomiswave library was not complete. Several games were missing from the catalogue, mainly due to being unreleased back during the Atomiswave’s heyday, and among them was (you guessed it) Premier Eleven.

Original Premier Eleven promotional flyer.

Now (well, in June 2026), thanks to a Dreamcast-Talk forum user who goes by the monicker ‘dimps’ (I see what you did there, dimps) Premier Eleven has finally been dumped and ported to the Dreamcast. Not only that, but this dump apparently came direct - and with permission to release - from a private collector who had in their possession a genuine Premier Eleven PCB. Even better, is that dimps managed to delve into the game’s code and release versions of the ROM which increase the default game time from a paltry 4-minute game length to both 12-minute and 20-minute game lengths - something which may not sound like much, but actually turns Premier Eleven into so much more than it could ever have been if left in its default state.

A Premier Eleven board went up for sale for $15,000 back in 2022.

The mystique around Premier Eleven, and that it promised so much from the promotional materials released back in the early 2000s, is possibly what led me to obsess over it so much in the past. The Dreamcast’s stable of football (soccer) titles is somewhat lacking when it comes to quality, with releases such as Virtua Striker 2 Ver 2000.1 and UEFA Dream Soccer generally being regarded as the cream of the crop (and cream always rises to the top, right?); but with Premier Eleven’s release, we finally get a chance to experience what could have been another option for Dreamcast-owning football fans. Well, if the Atomiswave games had been officially ported. And Premier Eleven had been fully released. And the Dreamcast hadn't had its life support yanked in 2001. You get what I mean, don’t be pedantic.

So then, what do we actually get with Premier Eleven? Not a great deal in truth. The game was always intended as an arcade experience and as such if you’re expecting something like Pro Evolution Soccer then you’ll be disappointed. No, this is squarely in the Virtua Striker mould (and in some ways it has more in common with the Super Sidekicks games), but hold that thought about PES because there are some similarities to Konami’s title if you look beyond the somewhat basic gameplay and impressive visuals and animation. Firstly, remember that this was an unreleased game that was never intended to be played on a Dreamcast. For that reason, it can be forgiven for featuring only a single play mode: a sort of cut-down World Cup where you choose a team from the 32 international squads available and then enter the tournament at the last 16 stage. You pick a team, get randomly matched against an opponent in the tournament tree, and then it’s game on.

32 international teams are included.

You'll start every run through at the Round of 16.

He's got a foot like a traction engine.

Hitting the post from 25 yards.
As Ally McCoist would say: shenshashional!

There are no options, no other play modes. There are no player names (although there are likenesses) and there is no way to change the camera angle. There is no play-by-play commentary other than a rudimentary International Superstar Soccer Deluxe style announcement whenever the ball leaves the field of play for a throw in or a goal kick. You can choose your team’s formation from a choice of two…but that’s about as deep as the technicalities get. No subs, no messing with player positions…you can’t even pause the action once a game starts. No, this is a totally barebones arcade football experience. But you know what? Premier Eleven plays a bit of a blinder when it eventually clicks into place.

Unreleased Atomiswave Football title Premier Eleven has been Preserved and Ported to Sega Dreamcast (along with Miracle Stadium!)

Sports games often get short shrift from retro game collectors. Just think about the rows and rows of FIFA and Madden entries lining pre-owned game store shelves, with not even a price sticker of a quid being low enough to convince buyers to leave with them.

On the polar opposite end of that spectrum is Premier Eleven, an unreleased football/soccer game for the Atomiswave — an arcade system that was based on the Sega Dreamcast's architecture. DCJY founder Tom Charnock wrote an excellent article back in 2022 documenting the community's quests to find and preserve it, with the ultimate goal being to port it to Dreamcast, as had been done previously with many other Atomiswave titles. At the time of Tom writing that article, someone had a Premier Eleven prototype board up on eBay for just under 15 grand (USD). Now that's one expensive sports game...

It was very generous of them to skim off those 3 cents.

Well, thankfully for those like Tom who have long lamented the Dreamcast's fairly underwhelming line-up of football games, the owner of a (or perhaps the) Premier Eleven PCB has finally preserved the game online for public consumption, with the help of Dreamcast-Talk forum user "dimps", whose online namesake is presumably a nod to the game's developer. Also, the coincidence isn't lost on us that this long-lost footie title is finally seeing the light of day during the FIFA World Cup season.

If you'd like to play Premier Eleven on your Dreamcast, simply head over to the dedicated Dreamcast-Talk forum thread and download the supplied .GDI file, which can be played via emulators or on real hardware using ODEs such as GDEMU and MODE. The fact that we can finally do so honestly feels like a miracle!

Photo of the original Miracle Stadium Atomiswave cart, supplied by dimps.

Speaking of miracles, the same duo has also preserved another Atomiswave game: a baseball-themed title called Miracle Stadium. This one did actually see a release back in the day, but has remained the last publicly released Atomiswave game to be dumped online. Until now...

Once again, you can find the .GDI for Miracle Stadium on Dreamcast-Talk. dimps says in their post that the game, which was designed for kids, is "more of a curiosity than anything else" and "probably not something you'd ever really sit down and play." Well, I'm about to download it and stick it on my GDEMU, so I'll report back at some point to confirm if it's any good.

Photo of the original Miracle Stadium unit, supplied by dimps.

We doth our hats to the owner of these PCBs and dimps for their preservation efforts! Let us know if you'll be loading up either of these Atomiswave titles on your Dreamcast by leaving us a comment below.

Farnation: Gameplay Footage Surfaces of Unreleased SEGA Dreamcast MMORPG!

Credit: fuperslizzle

"Farnation" is a name that is probably more familiar to the most diehard of SEGA Dreamcast fans. The game's existence was first revealed in August 2000 by GameSpot. The site's staff would then go on to be shown the game in private at the end of the same year, and were impressed by the amount of gameplay mechanics that were shown off, along with the visuals. Confirmed to be an online-based massively multiplayer role-playing game (MMORPG) that was to serve as SEGA’s answer to EverQuest, the game's development was eventually confirmed to have been shifted from the Dreamcast to another console in 2001 (with sources within the industry believing the new console in question to be the Xbox). For a great summary of all information known about the game, I highly recommend checking out this Reddit thread by Useitorloseit2.

A whole 23 years later, footage has finally surfaced of this long-lost MMO, courtesy of a Reddit user called "fuperslizzle". About four months ago, they posted a photo of the title screen, which you can see above. When asked for more, they replied with "I'll be blowing your collective minds shortly with actual video." Today fuperslizzle has released not one, but two videos of Farnation; one showing off the gameplay, and the other showing off an in-game menu that displays all the different textures available for use in the game.

Credit: OG_JoeCain (YouTube)

In a Reddit post that was posted early this morning (UK time), fuperslizzle explains that the footage "is from a legit disc belonging to a friend of [theirs] who worked at Sega during the time Farnation was in development." They finally sign off their post with the words "rest assured, more is coming!" You can see both of the gameplay videos below.

Update: a third video has been uploaded, this time showcasing some character movement and exploration.

Well there you have it. We've finally got to see a taste of what those GameSpot employees got to see all those years ago. Maybe one day we can get our mitts on the game’s disc image to play for ourselves. What do you think of the footage shown off? Let us know in the comments below, or via one of our many social media pages.

The hunt for Premier Eleven - the lost Atomiswave soccer title

As we've detailed here in the recent past, the Sammy Atomiswave is a gold mine of interesting and lesser known titles that are now playable on the Dreamcast. This is thanks to talented Dreamcast community members such as megavolt85, yzb and others; and is possible in part due to the hardware similarities between the prematurley cancelled arcade system and the Dreamcast on which it is based.

Although the vast majority of the games released on Atomiswave have now been ported to the Dreamcast, there still remain several 'lost' titles that are either in the hands of private collectors; or really are lost to the annals of gaming history. One such game is the now almost legendary Chicago 1929/The Roaring Twenties - a racing game set in prohibition era America. Another of these lost 'holy grail' Atomiswave titles is a football/soccer game developed by Dimps Corporation and titled Premier Eleven.

Source: The Arcade Flyer Archive

As is well documented, the Dreamcast's stable of soccer titles never really hit the heights of titles on contemporary systems, with PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox owners all having superior kick ball experiences at their disposal. But what of Premier Eleven then? Details are relatively scant on just how good this game could have been, but the small amount of video available online shows a Virtua Striker style experience with some outstanding animation and excellent visuals. Regardless, I for one would love to sample Premier Eleven simply out of pure curiosity (and my love of soccer games); and who knows - Premier Eleven could be the top tier football game Dreamcast owners have been waiting for.

Alas, that's unlikely to happen. Not least because Premier Eleven was never relased. Or was it? Here's where things get interesting. Over on Dreamcast Talk, there's a thread all about a Premier Eleven arcade board coming up for sale on eBay. The thread was started back in January 2021 by user Ro Magnus Larsson and the eBay auction is still live, with the seller 'neotropolis' asking for $15,000 in return for a 'fully working, 100% complete' example of Premier Eleven. The listing goes on to claim: "To my knowledge, this game only exists in the form you see here; a true holy-grail centerpiece for any arcade-gaming collector!"

What would appear to back this claim up is that the only footage of this game actually running comes from the previous owner of the Premier Eleven board up for auction. Upon learning of the video, several members of the Dreamcast Talk forum commented on the upload pleading for owner 'bowser 123' to dump the rom, but they responded saying that they'd already sold the board to the person who now has it listed on eBay: "I made this video because I sold the game for USA, specifically for an ebay seller called neotropolis, I think he is still selling it for a fortune, even if I wanted to make the dump I couldn't because I don't have it anymore."

So end of story right? There is one known copy of Premier Eleven for the Atomiswave. The person who owned it made a video to show it working, and then sold it. The buyer now has it listed on eBay for $15,000 and it's unlikely that the rom will be dumped unless a super wealthy Dreamcast fan buys it and releases the rom online out of the goodness of their own heart. Well, not quite.

There is some proof that this copy of Premier Eleven is not in fact the only known version out there. First, back in 2017 when we covered the discovery of a dev kit containing previously unseen Chicago 1929 assets, friend of the Junkyard and MSR authority RJAY63 commented: "I actually played Chicago 1929 at Southsea Island Leisure Arcade (Clarence Pier, Southsea, UK) circa 2005. They briefly became a test site for Sega Amusements with an Outrun 2 SP set-up and quite a few Atomiswave titles. Only played it once but I wasn't very impressed so I'm not surprised it got canned."

The key information here is the Southsea Island Leisure Arcade in Hampshire, UK. And furthermore that this location was a test site for Sega Amusements back in the 2000s. This could be written off purely as a baseless rumour, if not for the further evidence backing this up in the form of photos. Photos of a Premier Eleven arcade cabinet running at Southsea Island Leisure Arcade, circa 2004:

Dreamcast Talk forum member Baseley0o frequented the same arcade as RJAY63, and also took photos of the machines at the time, stating: "This game deffo went out into circulation/arcades. I took these snaps at my local arcade Clarence Pier, Southsea (UK) not too long after Atomiswave came out and one of them was Premier Eleven. I'm unsure if the 2004 date my camera shows is accurate. I thought maybe 2003 but it's a while back now! The arcade in question wasn't a test site for anything that I recall, though did have the odd surprise like these."

So what does all this mean? To me, it points to the very real possibility that there is more than one single copy of Premier Eleven in existence. That there is a small chance that somewhere - possibly even in the UK - the Premier Eleven Atomiswave cartridge in final, working form exists. And this is very exciting, for various reasons - not least for video game history preservation.

All of this would not have been possible without the investigation of the Dreamcast Talk forum members and people like RAY63 and Baseley0o; but there's still a lot of work to be done to discover the fate of the Premier Eleven game that was playable in Southsea in the mid 2000s. 

To this end, I have contacted Sega Amusements to ask if they have any records of what happened to Premier Eleven and if they can help to shed any light on this mystery. Likewise, for what it's worth I've emailed Dimps via their corporate website. Furthermore, Southsea Island Leisure Arcade is still in operation to this day, and according to the UK Government's Companies House website, the same directors who ran the location in the mid 2000s are still in charge. It's probably a long shot that they would even remember the Premier Eleven machine being placed in the arcade (or indeed what happened to it), but I've also reached out to them, too. If this article can help to shine even a slither of light into the darkness and assist in the release of this long lost Atomiswave title, then all the better.

For now though, I guess waiting for a reply from Sega Amusements or Southsea Island is our best bet. Unless anyone wants to cough up $15,000 for the copy on eBay...

Update

After I published this article, I took a trip down to Clarence Pier in Southsea and located the very arcade in which the photographs above were taken. Naturally, in the intervening decades since Baseley0o took the photos, the arcade has been completely redecorated and there relatively few recognisable video arcades on offer; much of the floor space now being taken up by gambling machines and toy grabbers. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting really - maybe a faint glimmer of hope that the passage of time had somehow avoided this little corner of Hampshire and that the Premier Eleven Atomiswave machine might still be there in some forgotten corner, covered in dust and be happily chiming away to itself in attract mode. Alas, this wasn't the case - the machine had obviously long since been removed. I asked a member of staff but they had no recollection of it either, again this is not surprising considering how long ago the photos were taken.

In a slightly more bountiful turn of events, I did recieve a response from Sega Amusements, with several members of the team responding to my emails. The most interesting reply came from Martin Riley, the International Sales Manager:

Hello Tom,   

Yes, actually I was the one who placed those games into the Southsea arcade, but it was later than 2000.   

I was the Sales Manager at Sammy Europe based in London at the time that we launched Atomiswave into the UK. In your picture you can see the standard modular version first launched, and then the squarer box cabinet which was the deluxe version for the larger arcade. 

Premier Eleven was indeed a game we looked to launch in UK market and only really tested, but it didn’t go into wide circulation. However, I’m not 100% sure it was the only prototype. This was from either Japan or USA Sammy studios and was supposed to be an on-line version with servers in each country, but was a little before its time and wasn’t popular, or worked as planned, if I remember correctly, and in the end was never continued. So, you are right that there are very few of these cartridges around as it was never on general release in the UK.

I hope this helps.

Martin Riley

International Sales Manager

This update doesn't really add a great deal to the quest to locate other copies of Premier Eleven, although it is cool that we managed to track down the very person who put the Premier Eleven cabinet into that arcade in Southsea.