Stick It to the Man: Playing Games That Aren’t Fighters With the Dreamcast Arcade Stick

As with everything Dreamcast, the official arcade stick is something I have noticed has increased in price in the last so many years. Having been looking to add a second stick to my setup, I've discovered its average listing price on eBay now clocks in at well over £80 (close to double what I paid for mine back in 2018 when I finally decided I should get one for my beloved white box), although at the time of writing, it appears UK second hand retail chain CEX are currently selling them at a much more respectable £65!

Despite being a fighting game fan, I am the sort of fan that doesn’t actually fully understand the concepts of blocks, cancels, charge characters, spin characters or laser tappers. Okay, I made those last two up, but they definitely sound like the sort of things I imagine people on modern online fighting lobbies mutter to themselves as I lose my 115th game in a row: ‘this guy is trying to play a spinner like a lazerT, the idiot!’ Probably.

Anyway, I do own a number of different sticks - mainly for Xbox consoles, but also for some others - but not because I'm some sort of fighting purest as evidenced in the intro. It’s mainly because of my love for arcade games, which leads me back to the Dreamcast. With its focus on arcade conversions or at least arcade-style home gaming, I decided to bypass the merit of discussing the DC's fighters and go straight to discussing the games of other genres in my collection that offer arcade stick compatibility, which is normally indicated by a handy logo on the back cover of the game (thanks, Sega). However, this isn't always the case, I'm looking at you, Midway. Come see me after class, please...

I hope this piece proves to be useful for anyone who hasn't yet purchased an arcade stick and wants to know if it's 'worth it' for games other than fighters. Or maybe if you have one sat in a cupboard collecting dust, hopefully this article will give you the drive to get it out and give it another go, as it's frankly a glorious piece of kit.

Virtua Tennis 

This was one I was instantly drawn to try when I first got my own arcade stick. Its inclusion here offers a rare chance for me to give a shout-out to anyone who ever played the Virtua Tennis arcade machine that was in the Scream pub "The Pulpit" in Cheltenham during the years of 2001 and 2003. Unless you are the person who broke the lob button on the player two side, in which case I hope all the hinges fall off your PAL Dreamcast cases because you are a monster.

My first ever experience of Virtua Tennis was on said arcade machine, and I remember actually being disappointed when it appeared in the pub, as it was a replacement for my beloved Virtua Striker. I reluctantly had a go anyway, and then another, and then the next thing I knew, I'd bought Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast (later that day, if my memory is correct).

The arcade stick is obviously perfect for this game. I’ve always felt the standard Dreamcast controller was a tad unwieldy for the game and that this is one of the very few drawbacks that the Virtua Tennis series has against it. But with the arcade stick, the smooth movement of the stick and the really effective yet simple amount of buttons offers a perfect way to play, to the extent I now want a second one for the rare chances I have a second person in the house willing to play Dreamcast. The arcade stick also has the added benefit of not causing D-pad indentation on your hand like the standard controller can. Surely that alone makes it worthy of purchase?

Final verdict: Get your stick on! Stick > Controller > Fishing rod (in that order).

Virtua Striker 2 ver 2000.1

I am overly fond of this game. Even though it has numerous flaws and actually plays a terrible game of football, I still love it. I love playing it on the arcade stick even more than the standard controller as it controls in the same stuttering and janky way that the arcade did. Oddly, the game itself would only let you use the D-pad when using the standard controller and not the analogue stick, so getting to control the game with the stick is a much nicer feeling all round, and is a clear improvement over the controller, as long as you can forgive the game for all its other issues.

Final verdict: GOOOOAAAALLLLLL!!! *ba da bum ba*

DIRECT SHOOT!

Virtua Athlete 2K

Those who know me, know I love track and field games. I can see that they are ultimately dumb and shallow, yet still they have been responsible for some of my best competitive and multiplayer memories on virtually every console up to the Xbox 360, which was when those kinds of games (and the people who’d play them with you in person) all seemed to vanish.

Prior to officially joining the staff for the Junkyard, I made an overly elaborate comparison of the three athletics games that found their way onto the Dreamcast and that was actually the first time I ever played Virtua Athlete 2K.

I was not overly surprised to see it had arcade stick support, as it is effectively a more serious reskin of the Sega Saturn great Athlete Kings/DecAthlete (originally of the arcades). So is it any good with the arcade stick? Well, not really no. The button mashing is more satisfying on the arcade stick due to the larger buttons, but the game is significantly harder with this control method. I tried to adjust to compensate, thinking this might be from my many years of using the standard controller for these kinds of games, making me unfamiliar with the arcade controls, but it isn’t. For the quick precise nature of this sort of game, the wider spread of the buttons and control on the arcade stick isn’t ideal.

Final verdict: Controller or bust if you want to go fast.

Retrospective: Virtua Striker 2 ver 2000.1

When is a football game not actually a football game? When it's Virtua Striker, of course! The Dreamcast iteration of Virtua Striker 2 was initially released in Japan in 1999, under the slightly odd moniker of Virtua Striker 2 ver 2000.1; a title which you'd be forgiven for mistaking as a Windows update patch. This comparison isn't actually as outlandish as you might think though, when you consider that previous Model 3 arcade based versions of Virtua Striker 2 were bequeathed with similarly date specific nomenclature - Virtua Striker 2 was previously delivered to arcades in ver '98, ver '99 and ver 2000 before ver 2000.1 finally made its way into homes as part of the Dreamcast library.

Naturally, that this Sega AM2 developed soccer title has a numerical suffix hints that it is indeed a sequel, and not only that; for if you were to be even more inclined to combine inquisitive cognition and the human ability to conceive of future tenses (even though we are technically going into the past, here), then you'd also be totally correct to hypothesise that it is also simultaneously a prequel. Basically, what that absolute nonsense means in a nutshell is that there was a prequel (Virtua Striker) released in arcades 1994; and two sequels in the form of Virtua Striker 3 released on Nintendo Gamecube and in arcades in 2002; and Virtua Striker 4 released exclusively as a coin-op in 2004.

Now we've covered the potted history of Virtua Striker releases in very abridged form, let's get down to brass tacks. Cast your mind back to when you first started reading this badly constructed article and you'll recall that I rather brazenly announced that Virtua Striker is not a football game. And that's because it's not. Rather, it is football in the most arcadey format you're ever likely to see...which kinda makes sense given the actual arcade cabinet based origins of the series. Apologies if the constantly backpedaling mess of contradictory meandering is confusing the whole situation here, but I've had a long day and I just need to write something. Anything. And it's turned out to be this. Sorry.

Designed to be played in short sessions, easy on the eye and spectacular almost to a fault, the Virtua Striker games are divisive in the extreme...and Virtua Striker 2 ver 2000.1 for Dreamcast does nothing to upset this particular apple cart. Indeed, I think I'm well within my rights to pompously declare Virtua Striker the Marmite of football games - you'll either absolutely loathe it; or you'll think it is the best thing since sliced bread (and then try to spread it on said staple before ravenously devouring it, you contemptible monster).

I remember when games magazines of yore would show screens of Virtua Striker, sometimes even going as far as to state that a Sega Saturn port was in production. I would gaze longingly at those chunky-legged polygonal footballers contorted into impossible shapes while toe-poking sharp-edged footballs into bulging nets, and dream of them someday adorning my beloved Saturn. Alas, that dream never became reality, and so my first real taste of Virtua Striker's flavour of footy came when Virtua Striker 2 ver 2000.1 burst onto the PAL Dreamcast in 2000. 

Feverishly I loaded the GD into my console and was instantly mesmerised by opening cinematics of highly detailed footballers lining up for Sega-ised anthems in cathedral-like stadia. Footballing nirvana was a mere button press away. The hype was real, Virtua Striker 2 was finally in my living room and memories of ISS '98 on the Nintendo 64 were ready to be overwritten with the barnstorming return to glory of the mighty Sega. And then the game started and I almost cried. With sadness, that is.

Before I go on, I want to remind you that I'm writing this from memory - I was a teenager who had heard about how amazing Virtua Striker was, had never played it but been a fully paid up passenger on the hype train since the first time I saw the amazing screenshots of Virtua Striker 2 in magazines. And now here it was, finally being pumped into my eyeballs via the power of a Tatung CRT television (with full on mahogany surround and Fastext, I might add)...and yet I was heartbroken. Why? Because - and to be blunt - it played like absolute arse crack.

I was expecting something like ISS 64 but with CGI graphics; instead I was playing a computerised version of Subbuteo with a cloth pitch that hadn't been ironed properly so the ball never made it over the creases to the intended destination. Virtua Striker 2, here, in all it's amazing looking glory...but with no commentary, no changeable camera angles, about two buttons and a stupid 'swooshing' noise every time you attempt to tackle. Idiotic AI teammates, hardly any teams to actually play as, a daft time limit on matches, no half times, and no substitutions. I hated it. I hated what I was witnessing. How could they have gotten something that looked so right, so awfully and harrowingly wrong...?