Sakura Wars Returns with Flying Colours (PS4 Review)

The Sakura Wars (aka Sakura Taisen) series is possibly Sega's worst-kept secret, at least for us in the West. Most Dreamcast fans have probably encountered it at some point, but without the ability to understand the Japanese language, most have not proceeded further. This Japanese steampunk-themed tactical RPG series was a massive hit in its country of origin, spawning sequels and spin-offs, as well as crossing into other forms of media. As I'm writing this, the Sakura Wars multi-media franchise has surpassed over 4 million units shipped in Japan.

Despite the series' massive success, Sakura Wars was probably deemed too culturally-different for Western gamers, probably due to its heavy use of unfamilar (at least, back in the late '90s and early 00's), visual novel/dating simulation-style gameplay. The only Sakura Wars game from the original batch to be localised into English was the fifth game in the franchise, Sakura Wars V: So Long, My Love (released on the Wii and PS2). Most would probably agree that it wasn't the best entry the series had to offer, but hey, at least it was something. The series would then remain untouched for many years.

This was no small franchise. A big thanks to our very own Mike for the pics.

But Sakura Wars has stepped back onto the stage and into the limelight once again. Sega have blessed us with a worldwide (albeit, staggered) release of a flashy modern-gen reboot of Sakura Wars, exclusively for PlayStation 4. Developed by Sega's CS2 R&D department, Sakura Wars saw involvement from new and returning staff; including veteran Sega producer Tetsu Katano, director Tetsuya Otsubo and music composer Kohei Tanaka. Tite Kubo, the creator of manga ultra-hit Bleach was responsible for the designs of the main cast of characters. Guest artists BUNBUN (Sword Art Online), Ken Sugimori (Pokémon) and Shigenori Soejima (Persona) contributed their talents towards the designs of various supporting characters. It's clear from such star studded pedigree that Sega really pulled out all the stops for this one, and as an owner of a pre-order copy that turned up three days early, I'm happy to confirm that it resulted in a big success. If you're a fan of Sakura Wars, you'll be happy to know Sega have done the franchise the justice it deserves. If you're new to Sakura Wars, this is the perfect entry point.

The Dreamcast Cocktail

For a limited time (Oct 15 to Nov 14, 2018), there was a Dreamcast inspired cocktail available from Japanese Karaoke Bar chain JOYSOUND.

Classy

It was only available on the secret "back menu" - items that were unlisted and not advertised in store. You could only order one if you were "in the know" and hence forth impress all your Japanese salarymen and careerwomen buddies. It would set you back a princely 680 Yen.

And just what goes into a Dreamcast cocktail, you might ask? Let me impress you with my elite on screen character recognition software and google translate skills:

(....drum roll....)

A Beginner's Guide to Visual Novels on the Dreamcast

Avid fans of the Dreamcast are most likely already aware that the console enjoyed a much longer life in its home country of Japan (the last officially licensed Dreamcast game, Karous, was released in 2007). For this reason, as well as the fact 90s console developers had a track record of thinking Western gamers were frightened of anything even slightly unconventional, there is an extensive list of Japan-only Dreamcast games just waiting for fans to import. The best part is that so many are playable without knowledge of the Japanese language. All you need is a boot disc or a modded Dreamcast and voilà! you've unlocked another section of the Dreamcast library. Check out our A to Z of Dreamcast Games if you want to know the best Japan-exclusives to get your mitts on.

However, for every playable game, there are just as many that are unplayable for anyone who isn't fluent in Japanese. Anyone who is insane enough to try and collect a full Japanese set will soon realise that there is plenty of "filler" - the kind of stuff you only buy for the sake of checking another game off the list and not because you are actually going to be able to play it. You know, those games with the anime girls on the front. Games like this:

 

Some might mistakenly call these things "dating simulators", but that's a different kettle of fish entirely. No, these are "visual novels", and they do exactly what they say on the tin, they are novels with visual elements. Boot any of these up and you'll be greeted with nothing more than walls of Japanese text and images of anime characters making various expressions. They are a very niché style of game that have never had a big following outside of Japan, especially back in the early 2000s (hence their Japanese exclusivity). Some may debate whether or not they are actually games at all, but they're still something I'd recommend to keen readers and anime fans alike. 

Their "gameplay" more or less consists of reading text and occasionally answering a multiple choice question on how the main character should react or respond in a certain situation. That might not sound all that interesting to some, but I like to look at visual novels as a more visual version of a choose your own adventure book, and being a fan of anime, the artwork contained within is something I'm familiar with. A lot of the stories are enjoyable, and believe it or not, the plots aren't always romantic; there are visual novels that focus on genres like sci-fi and mystery, for example. I'm such an advocate for these anime-centric pieces of flashy reading material that I even wrote a whole article on my website Alt:Mag defending their case.

Does it Matter if You're Black or White?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that this post will relate to the design shift from white to black in the old US of A-NTSC land. Well, you'd be wrong, I'm not going to talk about that. It's already common knowledge and well understood, though I will just quickly mention that it's supremely handy that both designs use a standard 10.2mm CD jewel case with a clear plastic tray. These are dime-a-dozen and can easily be replaced if you want to return your collection to showroom condition.

Nope, not going to talk about these.

Top 5 Dreamcast Games for Studying Japanese

The title of this article is a bit misleading so a disclaimer is necessary. Firstly, you will not learn Japanese through playing Dreamcast games alone but they can be a great tool when used to supplement regular study and great fun to boot. If you really want to learn Japanese to any significant usable level then you need to study some textbooks (Genki textbook* is a good place to start), go to a class and/or visit Japan for a significant period of time. A more appropriate albeit less catchy title would have been 'The Top Five Dreamcast Games to Supplement the Gruelling Years of Japanese Study Required to Play Most Story Heavy Games… with difficulty… whilst referring to a dictionary regularly,' but that's perhaps a little harsh and not nearly as click-bait-worthy.

Even something quite basic, accomplishable (is that a word? Well, it bloody well should be) in a weekend, such as memorising Katakana* (Japanese letters used to write foreign loan words usually imported from English) will enhance your experience with Japanese games. Now, let’s get started!

Paint-tastic!

5. Fire Pro Wrestling D (Arcade Style Games)
This really includes any game that isn’t reliant on story or excess text to be playable; fighters, puzzlers, racers, platformers etc. You can jump right into these games without knowing a single word of Japanese and still have a blast. Where you can often run into difficulty however, is in the menus. Despite being of Japanese region, many games have their menus and option screens written entirely in English, but there are just as many where this is not the case. Learning Katakana* will go about 70% of the way to making them understandable, luckily they can be memorised in as little time as a weekend or two. During or after the learning process, decoding menu and option screens can be a great way to improve your reading ability.

Fire Pro Wrestling D's menus are full of katakana*

Who Dat? Dreamcast: Not the Console - the Anime Lady!

Did anyone here watch the anime SEGA Hard Girls last year? It was a short lived 13-episode series of only 11 minutes a pop, and starred the Mega Drive, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast as school girls attending a Sega high school where they are warped into games like Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio and Virtua Fighter to earn medals. It's a very odd premise, and I'm really surprised that in this day and age, and so long after Sega stopped making consoles that they would make something like this. That said, it is so full of in-jokes for hardcore Sega fans it's hard not to like.

This video by friend of mine DiGi Valentine is a review/analysis of sorts of the character that represents the Dreamcast, detailing her design, personality and importance to the anime series. DiGi does a particularly good job of explaining her ditzy, zany attidtude attributed to the fact that she has a built in modem like the console. If you liked the video, go to DiGi's channel to see more character reviews including plenty of other Dreamcast icons such as Ryo from Shenmue, several Street Fighters and even Big the Cat.

Nikkei Dreams: Business On The Dreamcast

The Dreamcast is often described as a system that was ahead of it's time, and in many ways it was. You only have to look at all of the ingenious peripherals and add-ons; even the lowly memory card, the VMU, is a technical marvel when you think about it. The entire range of official and unofficial enhancements is as staggeringly large as it is diverse, but perhaps the most important of them all is the one many of us forget is even there these days - the little modem stuck to the rear of the system. While the modem and the internet services it allowed played something of a minor role in PAL territories, and online gaming was a huge success in the US, over in Japan the humble modem played a much more interesting part in the story of the Dreamcast.

While the Dreamcast is first and foremost an entertainment machine, the modem allowed Sega Japan to look beyond it's primary function and decide that the console should also be used for other, non-gaming purposes. For instance, the console was installed in Toyota car showrooms and a whole range of bespoke 'Doricatch Series' GDs were produced. These were little more than advertising demos for various Toyota vehicle models and are today some of the rarest examples of NTSC-J exclusive Dreamcast software on the planet.

Boku Doraemon: Bored Robot Cat Simulator 2001

Hello there, the Gagaman here! With the arrival of my copy of The Dreamcast Ultimate Collectors Book and due to having some spare time, I have for the last few days been playing a lot of Dreamcast games; namely ones I feel I haven't played enough of. With this in mind I want to get back to writing articles here as its been far too long, so I may as well start by talking about what I was playing last night - a Japanese exclusive that is not very well documented, based on a famous long running children's anime: Boku Doraemon. More after the jump...

Which Version of Jet Set Radio is the BEST?

In the latest edition of my weekly article series for SEGAbits, I compared three regional versions of Jet Set Radio to find out which version was the best. Those unacquainted with the US, European and Japanese versions of Jet Set Radio may be thinking: “whats the big deal? A ton of Dreamcast titles were released in three regions.” Well, unlike most Dreamcast games, Jet Set Radio had rather notable differences between regional releases. Each version features unique graffiti tags, unique songs, different stages, different character names and voices and even different titles. Of the three, which is the best? That’s what we’ll try to decide today, by comparing five aspects of the games and choosing a winner! 

Check out my full article over at SEGAbits!

DCJY Rummage: Zusar Vasar

Another new Rummage review! I would love to make one of these every month or so, though things don't always work out as planned. Possibly the oddest (and oddest named) game I've played yet. Robotic animal chariot racing awaits in this drab racer, a game that would be mind numbingly boring if it wasn't for the battle mode.

You could say Wind Squid of Classic Game Room's obsession with flame-throwers has rubbed off on me. Also next time I decide to doodle art for one of these, I'll make them actually fit the ratio of the video, me thinks.

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.

Ever wanted to own over 500 mostly sealed Japanese DC games?

Well now you can for only 7,499 Euros (that's £7014, or about £13 a game) plus 149 Euros shipping! I spotted this insane buy it now on Ebay from a French shop there. Oh, and the seller isn't taking any offers. There is only one small photo of the massive lot, but the auction also has a list of everything featured in order of their release, phew! Even with this lot not everything is there: I noticed Trigger heart Excelcia's not there, oooh!

Apparently many special edition box sets are not pictured but included, though. Wouldn't it be great to just sit on a floor with this lot like a little kid at Christmas, unwrapping all those seals and sticking it online just to piss off all those hardcore collectors who don't like to play their games! Well ok, there are probably at least 100 games in there that are just anime schoolgirl dating nonsense, but still!

I found some other pretty bizarre auctions on there, including a job lot of 50 rumble packs. What in the hell could you do with 50 rumble packs? Actually, don't answer that.

You know what the real crazy part is, though? If this set of games was the equivalent of a couple quid a game, I'd be very tempted.

New Dreamcast 2 details!

Look at those specs! HD-GD ROM! A 1 Terabite Harddrive! Erm...what ever those other features say! Ok, not really, this is just some art I found over at Pixia. It's a pretty neat place to find odd Japanese fan art like that, and this rather excellent piece below. Click it to full view and see if you can recognize everyone on it!


EDIT: Another one, why not? This one is probably the only time I've ever seen anyone illustrate Seaman and Ulala IN THE SAME PICTURE.

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.

More than just an orange swirl

こんばんは！ OK, that's the last Japanese I type unless someone asks me to. Good evening, dear readers. For my first post on the hallowed 'yard, I thought I would bring something special. Something from a distant land. Over here, for whatever reason it is (though I have my opinions) we don't seem to give much of a damn about limited editions. Over in Japan, there have been limited edition game consoles and peripherals since the early 90s. Typically, if someone says they've been playing games from Japan, it'll usually be chipped or modded native hardware, playing 'backup' games/CDRs. Rarely, do people import consoles themselves. There's the large postage cost, the language barrier and the question of power sources (see my reply to "modded DC goodness"). There is, however, a beautiful and rarely seen world of limited edition consoles and peripherals...

This is my Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars) Dreamcast system. Sakura Wars is one of the largest RPG and anime franchises in Japan. In 2006 I went to the Sakura Taisen café in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Inside, the waitresses were dressed as the very characters printed on this limited edition Dreamcast. For those of you interested in Sakura Wars, I plan on doing a special feature at some point. There have been many limited edition games, including goodies ranging from calendars to music boxes, included with the games. Anyway, this one is pink (yes, girls either love it or worry about your sexuality), there's a matching controller and VMU too. All boxed. Lovely.

Doesn't this thing look evil?? It's my Regulation 7 Dreamcast. This is my console of choice. Sleek, sexy and very rare. Regulation 7 is related to the Pachinko (Japanese slot game) restrictions on gambling. These Dreamcasts were made for pachinko parlours (in the UK these are seedy "arcades" - think Piccadilly Gardens bus stop arcade), for people to get a feel for what the Dreamcast was about. Showing the "edgy" side of gaming, this black limited edition console really has character. Again, matching black VMU and controller. All boxed. Lovely. Running out of room; I will include my Hello Kitty Dreamcast in a Hello Kitty special in the future :)

Now, a weird peripheral this one. The Densha de Go! controller! Yes, you drive a train in the game. Yes, this is the controller. Yes, that space in the middle of the controller is for your pocket watch. Yes, I feel a bit weird owning one, but the plethora of DC stuff I own hides this weirdo controller... which is actually brilliant for Densha de Go! An often overlooked game, "Let's go Train!" is an excellent arcade conversion. More on that another time though... but you'll love it I am sure.

Anyone reading this on a MacBook, iMac or MacBook Pro? How about anyone owning a phone with a 0.3MP camera on it (VGA)? OK, well, the Dreamcast had a webcam years ago. It is a stand alone digital camera; a webcam and also part of a series of games and 'foto-fun' on the Dreamcast. Again, this is pretty rare folks. The build quality is astounding and it genuinely makes me wonder how the Dreamcast didn't crush the PS2 and DC2 (*we wish*) kill off the PS3 and rival XBOX 360 consoles. Only problem with this is that there's no memory card. That means, you have to upload photos to your Dreamcast and email them. Of course, you can save it on your VMU if you have one...

Which brings me onto my last photo and set of comments. Visual Memory Units. Look at them all. So cute. Why aren't we all walking around now, with something similar to a PSP/iPod Touch that plugs into our 360s? The potential of the VMU was huge. Plugged into arcade games, around a friends. Take your gamer profile with you... again, huge potential. As you can see, the bottom left VMU is the dull generic and UK only model. The others are, clockwise from top left: Godzilla VMU; SEGA direct black; SEGA direct camo; SEGA direct leopard; Astro Boy VMU; Reg 7 VMU; Limited Ed Green; Limited Ed Blue; boring-UK-why-the-fuck-don't-we-do-limited-editions VMU.

So there you have it. My first post and hopefully a little colour into the otherwise drab world of western gaming experiences. There's more to import Dreamcast gaming than an orange swirl...

Modded Dreamcast Greatness (and much more)

Sometimes I think I spend too much money on collecting Dreamcast stuff, but then I think of that guy you owned every single Japanese game sealed up and how much he must of spent to get that lot only to not even play any of them. Last week I splashed out quite a lot of cash on a Dreamcast bundle of stuff: £120 (+£10 postage) to be exact. It all arrived yesterday and i must say though, I think it was a great deal.

This orange logo on start up is going to take getting used to, I've had a blue one all these years up until now..

For starters the Dreamcast is a Japanese model with it's shiny triangle by the light and big metal fan, possibly one of those early 1998 ones as it has no phone cable socket in that modem attachment. Unlike my previous ventures with Japanese Dreamcasts' (which both turned out to be broken), this one has a step down converter and best of all..it's had a mod chip installed so it can play games of any region without the need of a boot disc.

One of those broken Japanese systems I had also had a modification: someone had replaced the Japanese power board in it with a British one, which simply means it now took British plugs with no need for a stepdown converter. So not long after this new one arrived yesterday I popped the two open and swapped the power boards around and wala! My new system now had two mods to it. Now all it needs is a direct VGA socket hack and it'd be perfection. I'll use the stepdown for whatever other Japanese electronics I get (like a Japanese Saturn one day) and sell off the broken systems.

Another reason this bundle was a great deal was the games. A mixed bunch from every region, the games that convinced me to make offers on the set were Gigawing 2, Radilgy and Trizeal. All three of these games would cost me quite a bit separately, possibly around £40-50 each. The guy who owned it clearly had good taste: just have a ganders above at the 12 games that came with it. There was also two light guns in the box, a controller and a black VMU. Not all the games were in great condition (Power Stone in particular was pretty wreaked), but it's still a fantastic lot.

The system is a real joy to use. When you start the console up with a PAL or American game in it, you can hear it stop and start the disc while on the Sega screen, which must be the how the mod works, recreating the disc swapping in a second. It's also very quiet, so it must of been looked well after. To make sure it stays that way I won't be sticking any CD-Rs into this one, I'll keep one of my PAL systems beside me to swap in when I want to play homebrew or emulators and as for CD-R copies of games..I have so many of the games I want now I'm barely going to need them.

The last couple months have been quite busy with spending: I've been buying Dreamcast stuff a plenty. The lot above came from a ebay shop that has tons of sealed stuff selling cheap. I got a total of six VMUs (two of each colour) as well as Heavy Metal Geomatrix, Kao the Kangeroo and Charge N' Blast.


These second hand ones (top row) came from someone in America and were unfortunately in pretty bad shape (I-Spy has it's back pages of the manual ripped out and a cut out hole in the back cover) but playable. The two in the bottom row were found at a boot sale, although those have completely dried up for the year now, what with the cold weather. Probably why I've been going so Ebay crazy.

Here's another load of Japanese games I got cheap. I'm going to be digging out some translation guides to play Rent-a-hero and Sakura wars 3 (always wanted to see what the fuss was about with that series) and both Cool Cool Toon and Tokyo Bus Guide are quite addictive. I also have a japanese copy of Shenmue with the Jukebox CD, which means I know own Shenmue on every region. Oops! Probably best if I got rid of the PAL one then, to save shelf space.

Finally there's these two little oddities. These demo discs called "Dreamcast Express" were apperently only availble if you joined a Sega club of some sort, and come with two discs each. One of the discs has a full on interactive video tour of Tokyo Game Show '99, which is rather neat.

Now I just need to wait for my Segagaga box set to show up! Oh dear, my poor bank account.

Every Japanese DC Game in one video! Sort of.

The Dreamcast History Project is going to take some work, so to tide you over until I eventually get as many of the Japanese Dreamcast releases on the timeline as possible, here's a video containing almost all of them in chronological order (I cut out some re-releases). You most likely won't recognize a lot of them and to be honest I don't either: I'm actually quite surprised just how many there is, especially in the later years. There is tons of dodgy anime dating sim stuff in there that I mostly don't know the names of, as well as a lot of other junk that we never got, and there's quite a few games we know well that are missing because Japan didn't get them. Can you believe they never got MSR but did get Spirit of Speed 1937? What's that all about?