Dreamcast officially goes Postal this June!

We looked at the beta version of Dan Redfield's excellent Dreamcast port of Postal in the recent past, and decreed it to be about as faithful a recreation of the 1997 PC shooter as we could have hoped. The work-in-progress version was released in December 2021, and was available to try by downloading the file and putting it on a CD-R or a GDEMU. It was a great example of an indie developer porting open source PC code onto the Dreamcast - not least because it featured full Dreamcast controller support and pretty much every bit of content from the original game.

The story of Postal on the Dreamcast is a fairly interesting one, as the source code was released by original developer Running with Scissors back in 2016, along with an appeal for a willing indie dev to port it to the Dreamcast. Just shows you good things come to those who wait though, as the game is now being given a full official physical release - and you can get your hands on it on 2 June 2022 via WAVE Game Studios, with pre-orders now live on their website. The press release reads: 

Retro gaming fans will be able to experience the rapid-fire action enjoyed by millions of PC gamers later this year when WAVE Game Studios releases this officially licensed port of the classic title on Dreamcast, marking the franchise’s first appearance on the console.

Twenty-five years after the game’s original release, the dream of a professional release on the classic console is finally a reality. POSTAL™ developers Running With Scissors have given their blessing for this brand new no compromises version for Dreamcast, built with love from the original source code.

For more information about POSTAL™ for Dreamcast please visit the WAVE Game Studios website or for more information about the POSTAL™ franchise please visit the Running With Scissors website.

So there we go - yet another new game heading to the Dreamcast in 2022 - and they don't come with much more fame/infamy than Postal. Rather superbly, this release will also come in a choice of PAL, NTSC-U and NTSC-J packaging. Check out some gameplay from the Dreamcast beta version here, and read our interview with WAVE Game Studios here.

Look out for our full review when Postal lands on Dreamcast later this year.

WAVE Game Studios – an interview with the indie publisher keeping the Dream alive

WAVE Game Studios is a name you will be familiar with if you recently bought a copy of Senile Team's excellent Dreamcast platformer-cum-beat 'em up Intrepid Izzy, and has recently announced that they will also be publishing Yeah Yeah Beebiss II in Europe. The UK-based outfit has been busy establishing itself as the hottest new label in Dreamcast indie game publishing, and we thought it would be cool to catch up with WAVE as they start to make a splash in the community. Splash? Wave? See what I did there? I almost went for 'dipping a toe in' but pulled myself back from that particular cringeworthy literary cliff edge with mere keystrokes to spare.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with WAVE Game Studios, their history, and what they have planned for the future; hopefully you will be by the end of this interview. Furthermore, if you're an independent developer working on a Dreamcast game and you have dreams of putting your game in a physical case and into the GD-ROM drives of Dreamcasts the world over, then read on...

DCJY: Hi, thanks for agreeing to talk to us about WAVE Game Studios. Before we begin, can you give us little bit of background about who makes up the team?

WAVE Game Studios: It’s our pleasure! WAVE is primarily made up of two brothers, Daniel and Nick. We’re based in Norwich, Norfolk, UK.

Norfolk, known for Alan Partridge, mustard...and now WAVE Game Studios! So, when was WAVE Game Studios established and what was the reasoning being the creation of the label?

WAVE has a fairly long history, but the most recent incarnation stems back to 2015 which is when we started distributing games to UK based retailers. We really started to ramp up our efforts this year, which is when we began publishing games in addition to just distributing them.

That’s interesting – this might sound like a daft question, but what is the main difference between distributing and publishing a game?

It’s a very good question. The role of a publisher is to, in short, take a game and turn it into a saleable product. Usually the publisher will help with artwork, marketing, production, and various other tasks such as providing review copies to magazines and influencers.

The distributor, on the other hand, deals primarily with ensuring the product is available for sale in as many appropriate places as possible. In the indie games world, these two roles are often (but not always) filled by the same company or person.

Yeah Yeah Beebiss II now available for Dreamcast

If the title Yeah Yeah Beebiss I means anything to you, you'll love this little news snippet. If you're wondering what the hell I'm blathering about, the mystery of Yeah Yeah Beebiss I is a totally fascinating trip down a rabbit hole of copyright traps, misunderstood language translations, fabrications of the truth...or all of the above. 

In a nutshell, it's the story of a strange Nintendo Entertainment System game which is considered to represent one of the greatest gaming mysteries of all time, and which prompted a years long search for a title that many people were convinced didn't exist. I would implore anyone with even a passing interest in this flavour of gaming oddness to visit YouTube and watch any of the amazing videos on the topic, including this one from LSuperSonicQ, or this one from All Things Lost which does a damn fine job of explaining the whole saga as well as offering a solution to the mystery.

In a rather excellent twist on this strange tale, YouTuber and retro gaming tinkerer John Riggs has released a 'sequel' to Yeah Yeah Beebiss I - titled Yeah Yeah Beebiss II - for both the NES and the Dreamcast. As announced over on his Twitter account, you can purchase a limited edition copy for the Dreamcast by visiting John's store here. 

There's not a great deal of info on the game available at the time of writing, with only a single screenshot released; but once John releases a video on it (or one of us here at the Junkyard manages to get hold of a copy) we'll update this news piece or post a full review. To be honest, it would be a brilliant meta twist if this whole thing is a complete hoax and Yeah Yeah Beebiss II turns out to be just as mysterious and nonexistant as the prequel. It's more likely that Yeah Yeah Beebiss II does exist though (is there such a thing as being too meta?), and it's great to have yet another new title released for the Dreamcast.

Check out the Yeah Yeah Beebiss II store page here, and visit John Riggs' YouTube channel here.

Update - looks like it's now sold out for Dreamcast, which makes the title of this post fake news. Sorry folks :/ 

Update 2 - Yeah Yeah Beebis II will now be published by UK publisher WAVE Game Studios and is available for pre-order now, priced at £24.99. It is expected to ship in January 2022, which is awesome!