8BitMods announces the VMU Pro — their Modern Take on the Sega Dreamcast VMU

When we first laid our eyes on the Dreamcast's memory card, the VMU, we all collectively thought, "Wow, it has a screen. This is the future", only to soon realise it had a battery life so short it could rival the lifespan of an adult mayfly. Still, the VMU was undeniably cool. When slotted into the Dreamcast controller, it added to gameplay, like providing an easy way to track your health in Resident Evil: Code Veronica or becoming a compass so you wouldn’t get lost in D2. When removed, it could play a whole host of little applications, even doubling up as a sort of Tamagotchi, letting you raise your chao from Sonic Adventure on the go. The VMU had plenty of cool features but was ultimately held back by the technology of the time — a point ex-Sega peripheral designer Kenji Tosaki reflected on in his interview with us last year.

It’s only natural, then, that those manufacturing modern takes on retro hardware would want to revisit the VMU and finally unlock its full potential. We’ve previously seen the excellent VM2 from veteran Dreamcast modder Chris Diaoglou, but now the UK-based 8BitMods are throwing their hat into the ring with the “VMU Pro”.

Considering the success of 8BitMods' MemCard PRO line of souped up memory cards for both PlayStation (1 and 2) and GameCube, it was inevitable that they'd turn their attention to the Dreamcast's VMU, and they started teasing the development of such a product as early as 2022. Various videos of the VMU Pro's development process would show up on 8BitMods' social media channels in the intervening years, including a video of an in-development prototype running DOOM. Watching the teaser trailer 8BitMods put out at the weekend, it looks like the VMU Pro will be capable of doing much more than that, though. 

Mario and Sonic were at the Olympics together, it's okay now.

One of the hooks that is being heavily promoted as part of the product's announcement is the fact it can play "8-bit era handhelds and games consoles like the Game Boy Color, NES and Master System" and do so "on a beautiful 16-bit [colour] IPS TFT display", so no monochrome here. Another feature that isn't mentioned explicitly but I noticed flash up in the footage, is the inclusion of an in-built music player. A spiritual successor to the ill-fated VMU MP3 player before Grand Theft Auto 6? Madness!

A showcase of the on-board file management system.

Touted by 8BitMods as "the last VMU you'll ever need for your Dreamcast", the preview also boasts these following features:

• Wi-Fi enabled
• Backwards compatible with original VMUs 
• Rechargeable battery
• “Unlimited” storage
• "The best on-device file management you've seen on a memory card" 

We will update this news post as more features are announced, but if you're interested in acquiring a VMU Pro, pre-orders go live on the 15th of May on the 8BitMods website at 6pm UK time (10am PT/ 1pm ET). We will also add a price here when one is confirmed, but 8BitMods have said they are aiming somewhere in the range of $60-$80.

Are you excited about the VMU Pro? Does it look like the perfect storage solution for all your Dreamcast save file needs? Let us know in the comments below or via social media.