DCJY Rummage: Visual Park for Dream Eye

Here is the review of the Dream Eye's Visual Park software. I also mentioned a homebrew photo manager that was recently released on DCemulation which you can get here.

Dreameye InsideOut Video

Well here's that Dream Eye video I promised, or should I say the first of two, as this will be followed up with a Rummage video of the Visual Park software. 'InsideOut' is the name for all the unboxing type videos I'll be doing from now on (I guess you could count these Samba De Amigo and Wind and Water videos as 'InsideOut' videos, too).

The Dream Eye! Oooh.

Well lookie what showed up toady: The DreamEye, a digital camera for the DC which I got rather cheap in an auction (about £20). Is that not the happiest box art you have ever seen? It's right up there with Samba De Amigo's box, at least.

Here's all the hardware of the box. The camera itself almost feels like a toy one, it's very light, has barely any buttons, a tiny light and weighs almost nothing. The blue part attached to it is a battery pack (takes two AAA's) so you can use it as a portable digital camera (albeit an extremely out of date one now, as most mobile phones can take better photos than this, let alone anything else).

You get a blue microphone adapter for the controller (just like the one you get with Seaman, Planet Ring etc) and a microphone head set, so you don't have to talk at the controller, which is nice. There's also a stand you can screw the camera into, which is quite heavy and sturdy.

Finally this is the software you get with it: Visual Park. The disc is in a CD case like any other Japanese Dreamcast game, only with no manual inside it as the manual is rather big, the same size as the box. Using the software is pretty easy even without being able to read the Japanese as there are plenty of visual clues to what is what.

The disc has an excellent photo editor that lets you do all sorts of daft things, and a video creator where you can record a (terribly compressed) 25 second clip and save it to your VMU or e-mail it to someone. You could also chat online with this thing, which is pretty amazing on a console considering it's age. Once again Sega was far too ahead of its time for its own good, and sadly this wasn't used for any other games like the Eye Toy was when that came out years later.

I'm working on videos of both the DreamEye and Visual park at the moment, but for now here'sa video I uploaded a little while ago in case you missed it.

Dreamcast Express Videos

Remember me showing you these in a post a while back of recent purchases of mine, including that modded Japanese Dreamcast? If not I'll jog your memory: these are demo discs that you could only obtain if you were part of the Dreamcast Partners Club. They only made 7 volumes but many of them had 2 discs in each. I managed to get these two volumes pretty cheap and they're quite a novelty.

Volume 4 contains a Tokyo Game Show '99 disc which is crammed with video previews of all kinds of Dreamcast games, including many that were not released here. Below is two youtube videos of all of these clips on the disc. Be warned; squeaky Japanese narration throughout that may grate on your ears.

What you won't see is how they're presented: you select a stand of Sega's Tokyo Game Show area, and a camera is swooped through that area in live action. As you swim past the set up games, you can hit A to view a video of that game. There are also interviews about Space Channel 5, Virtual On 2 and D2. The D2 video is a special screening in a fancy cinema room. The disc also contains some content to download to your VMU.

Volume 7 contains two disc with a whole bunch of playable demos and heaps of VMU game saves. One of the discs contains a bunch of videos, which I have a video of above. Blue Submarine No.6 looks particularly interesting, with stunning cel shaded graphics for it's age. Looked it up and the game is mega rare and expensive. I remember seeing the anime of that once.

There is also a video on there all about the Dream Eye, that sweet digital camera we never got over here, which gives you a good insight into how it works and what you can do with the software. Web cam chat on a console in 1999. Mental. As a further tease, the video also has footage of 'presents' you could obtain if you were part of the same club you would get these demos from. Virtual On soft toys! A D2 figure! An Afro Thunder T-shirt! I want it all! :(

To get a good read up on all of the Dreamcast Express demo discs, check out Segagaga Domain's write up on them.