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.

Yahoo Games talks about the Dreamcast's "Resurrection".

The undead console has risen! Quite a few online shops have been selling (out of) brand new Dreamcast's and this has led to the video above from Yahoo games. "It's a good thing consoles can't eat brains, because it's certianly the first time we've heard of one coming back from the dead!" Wahahaha!

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).

DCJY Rummage: Wind and Water Puzzle Battles

Finally I've sorted this review out! I had a lot of bother with it when I ended up losing all my editing and voice work for it a couple months ago, but dedicated yesterday to finishing it off. Take note the footage was recorded back in December so my gameplay stats shown are quite old! Also note the new intro I animated for the Rummage series, and it's in widescreen (sort of)! That artwork I made a while back was for this video too.

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.

Dreamcast collections to make you GASP.

Some sweet videos I found yesterday that may possibly be too much for some to bare, so make sure someone is standing behind you ready to stop you from fainting while watching. Either these guys are very rich, or just decide not to eat for a year or two to put the money towards all this stuff.

This first video is of one blokes complete PAL collection. That's every single game released in Europe.

But this guy's collection not only takes the cake, but the whole bloody picnic. Just about anything and everything worth owning is here: including a Jet Set Radio box art I've never even heard of let along seen before and loads of the many different special edition consoles. If you check out his account on youtube he also has equally gigantic Saturn, SNES, Neo Geo, Mega Drive and master System collections, all displayed wonderfully in a bizarre room that looks like one of those crazy Akihabara shops.

Let's Play Dynamite Cop!

I don't know if anyone here keeps an eye on my personal youtube account, but I've been doing rather a lot of play throughs of games lately, mainly of Mega Drive and arcade games (because they're nice and easy to emulate), and my latest one is of one of my favorite Dreamcast games Dynamite Cop. It's not the Dreamcast version being played, rather the original arcade Model 2 version on the rather excellent M2 emulator, but it's nigh on identical to the Dreamcast one bar the cut scenes not being pre rendered (and as you'll see, the emulation for these parts isn't quite perfect yet). Either way, if you ever wanted to watch someone laugh and shout at one of the silliest games on the Dreamcast here you go! The first part is below, click here to find the rest of the videos (of which there will be a total of 8 of by tomorrow).

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.

Darn, beaten to the first Wind + Water Video Review!

Just spotted this on 'That Guy with the Glassies' and man is it a good video review for the recently released Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles. In fact it makes the one I was working on look a bit shit, because it's not just informative, but darn funny too. It even has an animated segment about the history of the Dreamcast and how the public screwed it over because they wanted to wait to play the matrix on DVD on a PS2 instead. What's not to like? Apoloies again for still not getting my review sorted, so enjoy this one instead for now!

Top 10 Dreamcast Games show from G4TV

Now here's something I haven't seen before, and it's just shown up on Youtube by 'TheDarkStation88'. This is a half-hour show called "the Filter" from the channel G4TV (who also did that great History of Dreamcast show that everyone must of seen by now), that charts the top 10 all time Dreamcast games based on the votes from a message board, which I'm guessing dates around 2004 (judging how they reference Soul Calibur II being "last year") with the host even dressed up as Ulala (which is alright until she starts talking). Worth a look even if almost everyone that talks about the games is from one magazine publication and all the wonderful in-game sound is replaced with stock music. It's spilt into 3 videos below:

DCJY Rummage: Rainbow Cotton

I promised I'd try to keep bringing you Rummage videos, and here we are with another new one. Now I have discovered a way to record footage of 60HZ games I will start doing videos of lesser known import titles like this one: Rainbow Cotton, a Japanese only release in which you fly about as a red-head witch hunting for candy with the aid of a bunch of busty fairies.

It's a game that could have been great but is sadly let down a bit but some control flaws. It also perfectly demonstrates how terrible I am at playing at it, as you only get to see three levels and I die a lot. Oh well! Speaking of imports, I today received Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon DX and it is brilliant, another one of those hidden gems there is next to nothing about on this here Internet. Once I've played it more you'll hear more about it.

Play Value looks at the Dreamcast

Not too bad. I disagreed with some points they made. Others were acceptable.

Powerstone was a 2 player game though. It was Powerstone 2 that was 4 player.

In the end I STILL think it was the rampant price slashing during the Dreamcast launch that really screwed stuff up. $250 vs $199? The same amount of people would have bought the Dreamcast for $50 more.

RUMMAGE: Dynamite Cop

Blimey, has it really been a year since I last did a Rummage Video review? Either way, here's a new one for a favorite of mine: Dynamite Cop. I actually started working on this one way back in February/March, but coursework made sure it didn't get worked on for months until just this week where seeing all those Classic game Room videos inspired me to finally finish it off. It may or may not be obvious that the narration throughout was made at completely different times of the year, and while some of it was planned out before hand (like the previous videos), most of it was made up as i went along. Also, this is the longest of my Rummage videos to date: twice as long as any of the others in fact at six and a half minutes. Enjoy!<

Screwattack and Classic Game Room show their DC love

Screwattack's Video game Vault tends to focus on NES/SNES games, but recently they've gone into a couple Dreamcast games: 18 Wheeler and Space Channel 5, the latter of which is above. I haven't posted the 18 Wheeler one because I can't find myself agreeing that it sucks, because it doesn't. The Space Channel 5 vid is pretty good though, even if it spoils the ending which I'm still no where close to getting near. Oh well.



Elsewhere, the Classic Game Room has returned with a new series on Youtube, which has already featured some quality Dreamcast lovin' in the form of a review for Le mans 24 Hours (one of my personal favorite racers on the system), a THREE PART review of the bat shit mental shooter that is Mars Matrix, and a review of the Dreamcast controller and VMU for good measure.

Mark is doing these on his own now (well, except for his dog who occasionally joins in to nibble on the odd NES controller), but he does an excellent job of showing off what made the Dreamcast so great in these new videos, and taking you back to what owning one back when it released was like. They're all essential viewing especially if you haven't played Le Mans or Mars Matrix before, both of which are rather underrated games. Below is the controller vid and the first part of the Mars Matrix review.

Guru Larry's Retro Corner - Shenmue

Do you know where I can find some sailors?

The Dream On Archives @ Dailymotion

You may of noticed in the sidebar I've added a video wall of some sort from the Dailymotion account. This is so you can see all the latest videos uploaded there. What's more, I'm trying to have a quality over quantity thing going on with the video accounts so this week I have put together a complete archive of every Dream On demo video preview they ever did, split into a total of 13 ten minute videos, in chronological order so you can get a rough idea when said games were released.

At time of typing this I have six uploaded with another seven to go. When they are all up there will be over 2 hours worth of Dreamcast footage, from a total of 74 different games! Mind you, for every game that brings back memories of sitting at awe watching them for the first time like Shenmue, there are sleep inducing bore-fests like Sydney 2000, Deep Fighter and WWF Royal Rumble, videos that feel like they go on forever (in fact I would recommend avoiding Part eight completely, it is very boring). Still, this way there doesn't have to be 70-odd videos for each and every trailer, and no one will have to request certain videos from them anymore as they're all here.

Next In plan to upload these to the Youtube account, removing all the separate little ones, just to tidy things up a little. I also plan to do something similar with all those Bleemcast videos, maybe by having a video feature that has small clips of them all rather than ten minutes videos of each. When I get time I also have some Rummage videos to finish off and upload too.

Collection Video! Oh god.

After Caleb made his video showing off all the Dreamcast stuff lying around his house, it inspired me to make a similar video of my own. Of course, that was over a year ago and now I've finally gotten around to it now that for once I don't have Dreamcast stuff waiting in the post, although you'll see a fishing controller in the video I received the day I filmed this.. which I believe was Thursday.
I may not have any of the charm, wit and skill at video blogging as the American Dreamcaster has, but hopefully you'll be able to make out all the mumbly crap that blurts out of my mouth here. I cut it down to just under 10 minutes and added music in a hope that it may be slightly more watchable so er...enjoy?

Just so you know, I have a couple more videos in the works as we speak so er, hopefully they;ll show up at some point if I get around to finishing them. Whoo! And all that.

Some guy attempts to experience Shenmue in real life.

"I went to Yokosuka, more specifically, Dobuita, to the locations where the Sega Dreamcast game Shenmue were based on. Shenmue is one of my top 10 video games of all time, and I was able to discover some of the same locations that were adapted into the game."

He also wants Shenmue 3, but hey, who doesn't?



Ok, I was a bit disappointed. He said right at the beginning of the video he was going to do everything that Ryo did in the game but I saw no quest for vengeance, no forklifts and no martial arts against random gang members.

And no kitten...there was no kitten...

The Gaming Historian takes a look at the Dreamcast - part 1

I think we have all heard this before, but still, it's always fun to watch a new Dreamcast themed video. He does a decent job editing his videos which is more than most can say.

Plus it's always fun to point out all the stuff people get wrong!

For example the graphic he sets up says that the Dreamcast only had 56k modem and did not have broadband capability. Wrong. You could buy a broadband adaptor for the Dreamcast just like you could buy a broadband adaptor for the PS2.

See if you can spot any other errors.



Oh and the other thing that bothered me is that he mentioned Bernie Stolar but didn't mention any of the horrible mistakes he made, including needlessly cutting the initial Dreamcast price in the US by $50. People would have paid the extra $50 and Sega could have got a ton of extra profit. I dunno. Why drop Stolars's hated name if you are not going to discuss any of that stuff?

(Not to mention all the mistakes Stolar made with the Sega Saturn)