The Rarest Dreamcast Hardware On Earth?

*Updated! We have new info on this. Scroll to the bottom for the update*

Allow me to be presumptuous, but I'm going to guess that if you're here at the Junkyard reading articles about a console that has been out of production for well over a decade, you're either a) a Dreamcast enthusiast; b) a retro-gaming enthusiast; or c) both. For these reasons alone, I'm also going to presume that you dear reader, know a thing or two about so-called 'rare' hardware; and more specifically rare or lesser-spotted Dreamcast hardware. You know the kinds of thing I'm talking about - the Divers 2000 and the various special edition consoles that occasionally pop up on eBay for astronomical sums of money. Think the Resident Evil STARS edition, or the Hello Kitty variants that surface every now and then. Hell - you might even own one or two. There's something that I can guarantee the vast majority of people reading this don't own though. Not only that - I would wager that the vast majority didn't even know of the existence of this Dreamcast variant - I certainly didn't until I stumbled across DreamcastGaga's article a few days ago. Allow us to present the Dreamcast SFL-2000P1 Control Unit.

As mentioned in DCGaga's original article, the Control Unit originally surfaced on eBay in late 2014 and was snapped up for a mere $123 (that's about £80) by an eagle-eyed bidder. This was probably down to the fact that the item was listed rather ambiguously as 'Vintage Sega Dream Cast Japaneses Metal Console,' [sic] and not (as I would have listed it) 'Rare as Rocking Horse Shit Hitherto Unknown Dreamcast Box Thing.' 

The Vanishing of Shrapnel: Urban Warfare

The popularity of military shooters like COD and Battlefield isn't a modern phenomenon. The tactical (or not so tactical) shooter featuring hard-as-nails military types shooting big guns and blowing stuff up is a trope of games as old as the hills, and the Dreamcast also played host to its fair share of similar titles. Soldier of Fortune, Rainbow Six and Spec Ops II: Omega Squad all followed the familiar template of the genre...and for the most part they all did it well. I say 'for the most part,' because Spec Ops was an unfinished mess of a game that could probably have done with another six months of development time before being pressed to GD...but that's another story. Or is it? Spec Ops was developed by Ripcord Games and Zombie Studios and their series of military shooters enjoyed moderate success on the PC and PlayStation, and more recently on the Xbox 360 and PS3 under the Spec Ops: The Line moniker. However, the Spec Ops connection goes slightly further on the Dreamcast...but ultimately leads down one of my favourite avenues - cancelled games.

Setting the Pace

I'm constantly amazed by all the stuff I still come across regarding the Dreamcast. Just when you think you've seen it all, something else pops up. Now, I'm aware that there are plenty of other folks out there on the interwebs who no doubt know far more about the Dreamcast and Sega than I ever will...but quite how this passed me by, I don't know.

What am I on about? Well, it appears that in 2001 Sega entered into a partnership with set-top box manufacturer Pace with a view to create a digi-box...with a 40GB hard drive and the guts of a Dreamcast chucked in. The vision was an all-in-one digital TV receiver that could also download 'on demand' Dreamcast games that were subsequently to be stored internally. Yep...mind: blown. Obviously, this kind of thing is the norm in this age of broadband, Xbox Ones and Hi Def thingamajigs...but in 2001? It was truly groundbreaking stuff.

Toejam & Earl 3 Dreamcast beta discovered!

Second hand Dreamcast development kits have quite often led to some rather special discoveries of beta versions of both released and cancelled games, including not long ago the Alpha build of the Starfox styled Sega shooter Geist Force. Now a beta of Toejam & Earl III has been discovered!

Toejam & Earl III was announced for the Dreamcast at E3 2001, around that time when Sega was stopping Dreamcast development and moving into multi platform development. This meant a lot of Dreamcast projects got moved onto other consoles and one of those was this game, which found it's way on the Xbox a few years later. For all we knew the E3 trailer we were shown could have been running on early Xbox hardware, but now we know it was intended for Dreamcast after all.

The beta was found on a devkit purchased by ZakhooiTM who signed up to Assembler Games forums to show his discovery. It's not a complete build of the game of course, but judging from the video the ownr of the beta has uploaded (see above), it's in a perfectly playable state. The game also appears to be quite different to how it was on the Xbox: the graphics were clearly tuned up a bit on the move to more powerful hardware and they added more elements to the gameplay for the final version too. This beta is almost like a 3D remake of the original Mega Drive game, which is fine by me!

Other games that were supposedly planned for the Dreamcast first before being shifted to other consoles include Gunvalkyrie, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Super Monkey Ball and Jet Set Radio Future. Whether those were true is yet to be seen, but at this rate who knows? Maybe someone will find any of those games lurking on a devkit one day..

Tahi - The Arocean War

This project is actually pretty old news on most Dreamcast sites and forums, but it is totally new to me so I thought it may have passed quite a few others by as well. So what is it? Apparently, Tahi - The Arocean War is a new(ish) action RPG that is/was being developed for the Dreamcast by an independent outfit called Reticon Entertainment Technology. The thing that piqued my interest is that Tahi appears to be a fully 3D adventure game, using polygonal characters in an explorable environment. True, there have been several high profile indie releases for the DC over the last few years, but in the main they've been 2D shooters, 2D driving games or puzzlers. A totally new adventure title breaks this mould and I'm very intrigued to see what a late 2000s polygonal game looks like on the antiquated hardware.

I say late 2000s because all the evidence suggests that Tahi started its development cycle in 2009, but since then there appears to be very little new info on the game. I emailed the team at Reticon asking for further info but the email bounced back, and the form on the site doesn't work...so for now I guess we'll either have to wait for more info (they appear to have updated their site earlier this month so I guess there's still something going on there)...or just accept that development has halted and Tahi has gone to the great vapourware graveyard in the sky.

Here's a bit of info on the game taken from the dev's website:

Since Tahi was originally for the SEGA Dreamcast, we had physical hardware limitations --

• 200MHz - SH4
• 16MB RAM
• 700-900MB storage medium

When the project was first started in 2009, it was originally programmed procedurally as a 'guess and check' style as we explored the functionality of the Dreamcast and its limitations.  The first attempts were difficult since there was no perfect IDE to use or methods for debugging compiled code, which made (and still makes) for an extremely slow testing environment.

As the project continued, we had to stop coding the game in a procedural fashion, since the code was becoming 'too patched' to function well and the idea of an engine was brought to the table. 

The original engined titled 'ION Engine' was to pack the lower level functions into a much more abstract and easier to use and maintain source code.  

The largest challenges are that of compile testing and programming for the Dreamcast platform.  The Dreamcast has no easy 'how-to' guide to program a game for its platform other than KallistiOS, and even with KallistiOS, there is not much support available for it and how to optimize and really use the Dreamcast's features.  So programming has been a very slow and experimental process of trial and failure.

The next largest challenge for this project is man-power.  A game of this scope and size is difficult for a small team to develop, many of us have to wear 'multiple hats' during this production in order to see to certain goal completions, which does slow down a production significantly.

Here are a few images and a Youtube clip of what has been put out about the game:

On a slightly different note, The Dreamcast Junkyard seems to have vanished from Google's results if you search for us. I've looked at the settings in the Blogger dashboard and everything looks fine...so we're a bit baffled as to why this has happened. The 'Yard still pops up on Bing (all is forgiven!) and other search engines (yep, they do exist!)...so if anyone has any suggestions, be sure to let us know what you think might be the problem! Thanks.

Soul 2 Soul

Ah, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. If ever there was an example of how a port should be handled, surely that game was it. If you've never played Crystal Dynamics' amazing vampire/wraith-themed adventure, then I suggest you head over to eBay posthaste and grab a copy while you still can.

Yes, Soul Reaver has a few minor issues with fogging and combat collision detection, but on the whole the surreal landscape and marvellously gothic architecture of the realm of Nosgoth (and, y'know, the awesomeness of the adventure as a whole) make for a thoroughly enjoyable little romp. And then, just when you're getting into it...the game ends on a rather abrupt note and a major cliffhanger.

And that's where the story, rather annoyingly, ends for Dreamcast owners. You see, Soul Reaver 2 was planned for release on the Dreamcast but the demise of the system meant that the game was cancelled, even though development had apparently been running alongside the PS2 version (that actually went on to be released). The reason I bring all this ancient history up, is that I've stumbled across some hitherto unseen (by me, at least) images of an early Dreamcast build of Soul Reaver 2. They all come from this Legacy of Kain tribute site, and I discovered it while I was trawling through an Assembler Games forum. Just wanted to give credit where it's due. Anyway enough waffle...here are some pictures:

We can only really speculate how complete this version of Soul Reaver 2 was at the time the plug was pulled (I'm gonna guess that it wasn't anywhere near complete), but I always think it's a little bit sad when new images surface of DC games that never made it.

Zeit Geist

If you've looked at the comments for the previous post, there's a chance you've already copied and pasted the link to the following Youtube video. If you haven't, then get ready for a rather thorough analysis of the recently released (and unfinished) Geist Force. The Gagaman(n) did a post on the subject of this lost gem not too long ago, but I think the more exposure this newly released beta gets, the better. Geist Force is a game that really intrigued me when I saw it previewed in the games mags of the era - who wouldn't have wanted to see a Lylat Wars/Star Wing type game running on the brand spanking new Dreamcast hardware?

A reader by the name of DCeric has put together this rather cool video examining the various unfinished stages that make up Geist Force, and also looks at some of the debug levels that exist. Enjoy.

Retro Core gets their mitts on Geist Force

Retro Core (The video series from Segagaga Domain) has received it's copy of the much anticipated release of the Geist Force playable ported build, and shows us all of it's contents in this 22 minute video. As the length of the video suggests, this game is in a very early state and only has some basics to check out. The first level is more or less complete with enemies and a boss, the second is fine up until the boss when it glitches you back to the start of the level, and the rest of the levels are more or less just some scenery and an eventual smack into a invisible wall. Those expecting this to be a full or even close to beta game will be a bit disappointed, but it's still quite something to see this running at all on retail standard Dreamcasts.

Assemblergames.com has the Geist Force Beta!

Embedding has been disabled on the video so go watch it here. The video below is a trailer from before the game was canceled.

Does anyone remember hearing about a game called Geist Force back when the Dreamcast launched? No? Well there wasn't much coverage of it outside of a video showing it off a bit, and soon after it just vanished off the face of the earth. Well a Sega insider joined the forums of Assemblergames.com and sold a beta copy of the game from 1998, and now it is in the hands of those that can not only play it on dev hardware, but will be dumping and releasing it to the Internet as soon as they can! In the video you will see the opening cut scene and some gameplay which is very much like that of the Starfox/Lylat Wars series, but without the talking animals.Looks like quite the interesting game and looking forward to getting a shot at trying it out!

Now where's Dee Dee Planet? Now there's a game I'd love to see leaked seeing as it was near complete supposedly and a beta was spotted in a photo of Sega archive room. Someone get in there and nab it!

Cut Away

You know how I like to rape other websites for DC related shite? Well, I've been at it again. This time, it's our old friend Unseen64. Unseen is one of my favourite websites because it documents unreleased games across the whole spectrum of consoles, and it's updated quite regularly. Now, we all know about the unreleased stuff like Castlevania and the cancelled DC ports of Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and Max Payne, but Unseen64 has produced info on a title I've never heard of before:

It's called Cut Away, and whilst the only info they have on this mysterious title is an advertisement, its always interesting to learn of hitherto unknown games for our beloved undead console. From the promotional artwork shown, it appears that Cut Away may have been an FMV adventure in the style of D or Torico, but after a quick snoop around on Google I found this article giving more info about how the game may have played:

"As a third person adventure, the gameplay will unsurprisingly be similar to both Capcom's Resident Evil and Pulse's Undercover. While specifics are still being kept under wraps, it's clear that the story will take place in San Francisco. Plenty of CG movies are promised, as is an intriguing story to keep you on your feet. Speaking of which, bombs have been planted across the city by terrorists. As the hero, it's your job to stop them from causing complete and utter chaos, whatever the cost may be!"

Sounds a little too much like a press release to be truly helpful, but then again it's the only real info I could find on this highly enigmatic piece of vapourware. Curiouser and curiouser...

Hellgate video footage

As promised here's some quick footage I put together of that recently leaked Hellgate. The first video shows you a bit of the story mode where I show you all the weapons you have access to and generally bump in a lot of walls. Some areas of the game are pretty glitchy (like the 2nd cut scene you'll see). Take note I cut out the load times which are pretty long: anything from 20 seconds to 2 minutes if I recall.

This second video looks briefly at the time trail mode (a racing mode, essentially), where you can beat the clock on two stages (the 3rd crashes the game), and these scores were going to have online rankings, by the looks of it.

This is followed by a death match (much like a first person shooters multiplayer mode) which has options for split screen up to 4 players, as well as online play and link up play (very few games even used this)! Not sure if the link play works, but the online obviously will not.

Finally there's some footage of a glitch I came across. If you save the game in story mode when it prompts you to at one point, loading the game up makes you falls and get stuck for some reason. You can prevent this by holding the R trigger when it loads to fly forwards before you land in the area that makes you stuck.

Another canceled Dreamcast game leaked!

Just spotted this over at the Dreamcast Scene forums. A game called Hellgate that was due for release in 2001 but canceled (like so many games that year) has found it's way onto the Internet. I can't really tell you much about it as of yet (let alone how close to completion it was), except it looks like some sort of combat racing game...in HELL. It's by a company called Jester Interactive.

There's a megaupload of the game over at the forum, which is about 290MB. A website called Superior Version has artwork and screens of it. I remember the official Dreamcast magazine previewing this (a scan of which is also at that link). I'm going to be giving this a shot, and I might even get a video of it up at some point if I get the time. With all the unreleased games that have some how snuck out of the woodwork and onto the internet over the years, I hope we'll get a leak of Dee Dee Planet one of these days..

EDIT: First Impressions! Well it's different, a sort of mix between a first person shooter with a huge rocket powered motorbike to fly about with, not a racing game at all. The bike is very twitchy, if you thought Daytona 2001 was hard to steer you've seen nothing. Good thing there's a analog sensitivity option then. You can make the bike jump and you have a whole bunch of weapons to flick through from a standard machine gun to rockets and these ice blade thingys.

I'm not really sure what the objective is yet, I must be in a hub world or something which I keep going around in circles in, killing the odd creatures walking about that spit explosive booger at you, and some rock monsters and rocker launcher machines. It has a story mode, time trial, a deathmatch mode and a gallery for unlocking artwork. It also has a rather interesting FMV opening. The cut scenes in game seem to fluff up a bit though.

EDIT 2: Here's the opening video of the game, uploaded to Youtube by Dreamcast.es.

Gamma Powered!

Back in May last year, I introduced a website called 'Unseen 64,' a cool little place where they post pictures and gameplay details of games that either never saw the light of day, or were changed radically before being released. For some reason hidden deep within the cavernous emptiness of my pre-fabricated heart, details of beta versions and unreleased games captivate me with some kind of morbid fascination, and as such I often check the hallowed pages of Unseen 64 to see if they've added any new Dreamcast screens. And guess what?

They have:

World's Scariest Police Chases: Deadly Pursuit
Played the PSX version to death with my flatmates when I was at University, and it was a pretty decent craic. Especially after several litres of Lidl cider and a couple of tokes on the bong. The unreleased DC version looks like it could've kicked it's ass though - the graphics are way better:



Thunderboats
Thunderboats appears to be an arcade style speedboat racer very much in the vein of Hydro Thunder. Indeed, if you view the promo video, I'm almost certain you can hear the 'engine power down' sound effect used in Midway's blistering racer...



Galleon
Eventually released on the Xbox, Galleon was intended for an earlier Dreamcast launch and in it's original form probably would have garnered the recognition it deserved. As it is, it's just an also-ran Xbox game clogging up bargain bins around the country:



PBA Bowling 2001
Bowling. The real life game, for me, is just a tiresome way of interrupting a good drinking session so why anyone would want to actually play a computerised version is beyond me. Maybe the developers had the same thoughts and duly pulled the plug on PBA Bowling. Grapics look alright though...



Picassio
Picassio is one of the most enigmatic and simultaneously interesting games that was promised but never arrived on the Dreamcast. You were meant to play a sort of lycra-clad cat burglar who broke into museums and stately homes etc to pinch priceless works of art. A bit like Hudson Hawk, only good. Here's a (slightly grainy) video taken from Unseen 64's YouTube page:

Beta Overload

Long time readers and visitors to the 'Yard may, quite possibly, remember a post I knocked up some time ago that introduced a site called X-Cult. If not, go here now.

Had a look? Good.

Now you're up to speed, I'll crack on. Whilst perusing the net, which is something I've gotten quite good at in recent decades, I found another interesting little site that sort of does the same as X-Cult - reveals details of cancelled games for a multitude of formats...including our beloved Dreamcast. Before you groan, listen up: Unseen64 features previously...er...unseen pictures and screens of a few forgotten gems that would have been a credit to the DC had they been released, and even grabs of a few games I've never actually heard of...

Take the Bullet


Quark


Shrapnel: Urban Warfare 2025


Spiral Nightmare Type X


Jump Runner


Akolyte

Boarder Zone

Innocent Tears
Ecco 2: Sentinels of the Universe

Dark Angel


Gorka Morka

Agartha

Of course, this little collection is just the tip of the iceberg - there's even more beta action at the actual site, and that includes some rather interesting shots of an early Metropolis Street Racer and a massive Shenmue archive. Granted, explanations of the titles shown are either non existent or written in Italian (which is fine if you can read Italian...which I can't) so you have to make assumptions about how some of the games may have played by sight alone. Still, very cool, if that's yer bag.