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?