DCJY welcomes Nick Thorpe

In episode 126 of our podcast, the DreamPod, Kev and I welcome Nick Thorpe - the features editor for the excellent Retro Gamer magazine - to chat all about his career and the brand new issue 254, a Dreamcast special of the mag that releases today on the 21st of December. 

We also dig deep into Nick's long-time passion for the Dreamcast, touch on his meetings with the likes of Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka and Kenji Kanno, and also take a trip down memory lane as Nick recalls his earlier days of writing for his own Dreamcast fan site!

It was an absolute pleasure to talk to Nick, and his burning passion for the Dreamcast is clear. I for one am very excited to get my hands on the latest issue of Retro Gamer!

Retro Gamer magazine issue 254 is available to purchase from a wide selection of brick-and-mortar stores that sell magazines in the UK and other countries, but is also available to purchase online as a single issue from Magazines Direct.

You can listen to this episode of the DreamPod and all of our previous episodes on Buzzsprout, along with all great podcatchers.

Immortalised in Print...Again!

Alreet! Been a while! Profuse apologies for my absence from the hallowed Junkyard for the last umpteen months...although I'm not sure my presence has been missed much, what with the quality of Barry, Caleb and Gagaman's recent bloggage. I'll be back with a proper post in the next few days (If I can get my ass in gear), but in the meantime, here's a little something that kinda ties in with the previous post:

A Dreamcasting dude by the name of Andrew sent me an email stating that Ryu's native Dobuita is now up on Google Street View. Have a look here. Like he says, it doesn't look an awful lot like the town as depicted in our beloved Shenmue, but you can kinda get the feel of the virtual version, and there's a jacket shop that looks fairly familiar...

Also, I was in WH Smith t'other day and noticed this little periodical hiding behind the May edition of Chicks with Dicks Magazine on the top shelf:

That's my thumb. I need to buy some nail varnish.

Yep, it's the Retro Gamer Hardware Handbook. It costs a fair bit (about a tenner if I recall...although my mind is cloudy through excessive alcohol consumption), so I naturally eschewed the option to purchase it. Furthermore, it appears to just be a collection of hardware features previously published in the actual Retro Gamer magazine It's still a good read though...and all the better when you discover that the DCJY is again featured in the re-produced Dreamcast special that was raved about here a few years back:

It's nice to know that we've been immortalised in print more than once. Even if it is a screen grab of the old layout. Saaaaweet!

The DCJY gets a nod in Retro Gamer Magazine! - Part 2

Remember this? I bet most of you went right away to the near kiosk/book store/other magazine selling place to buy it, didn't you? Unfortunately not all of us have access to it (I remember even Racketboy himself was having some trouble finding a copy of said issue), so for all of you who have been dying to read it here's a shot at the column where the DCJY gets mentioned for your reading pleasure (click for full size, although the full image is not that big, don't forget to put your reading glasses on...).

The DCJY gets a nod in Retro Gamer Magazine!

Retro Gamer magazine, up until this point, had been pretty short on write ups about the Dreamcast. Maybe they weren't classing it as a "Retro" console just yet, waiting until the last few retail releases in Japan were out of the door to call it old. This has changed with the latest release, Issue 50, with a whole retrospective dedicated to Sega's last console, including a rather brilliant front cover with the tag line "Why the Dreamcast was the greatest Sega console ever". The cover is slighly spoiled a little by the big Grand Theft Auto logo (I know it's quite the event and all but you simply cannot go anywhere without hearing about it at the moment) but there is remedy in the fact that the issue also features an article about The House of the Dead and another for Gunstar Heroes.


The Dreamcast article itself, while I haven't read it in full yet appears to be very in-depth on the consoles history and strengths, and for their "10 Perfect games" bit they struggled to find just 10 games to pick, so cheated a little by putting Shenmue 1 and 2 in one entry. The best thing about the whole article however? The Dreamcast Junkyard gets a little write up in the "essential websites" part! We're described as "amusing", "passionate" and "one of the only Dreamcast websites that still updates regularly with anything other than emulation". Is this the first time this blog has been mencioned in print, or did I miss one along the way? Whatever the case, this is rather ace.don't you think?