The Original Quake and Doom are soon to be playable Online with DreamPi

The man responsible for bringing the vast majority of Dreamcast games back online with DreamPi, Shuouma has announced, he will soon release versions of Quake and Doom compatible with dial up online play via DreamPi.

While fan-made Dreamcast ports of both Quake and Doom have been around for years now, and Dreamcast Online has helped support Doom online play via the broadband adapter, this will be the first time our community is able play Doom via DreamPi, and Quake online in any form.

The World's Tiniest Astro City Arcade Cabinet

OK, so this isn't exclusively Dreamcast related, but it does involve the Dreamcast and so that's all the reason I need to knock up a little news peice about it. For those who don't know, the Astro City is a model of arcade cabinet introduced by Sega in the early 1990s and is pretty prevalent in Japanese arcades, even today. Seems one talented chap named Adam McAmis decided to turn a 1/12th scale model Astro City cabinet into a working one designed for ants...sort of:

Yo whatup, here’s my 1/12th scale Astro City model running Third Strike via a Dreamcast that has another tiny Dreamcast on top of it. pic.twitter.com/JgeukizorT

— Adam McAmis (@Sega_AM2) April 2, 2018

In truth, the model is running off a Dreamcast that's connected to a tiny screen installed into the Astro City, which in turn was salvaged from a dashcam, and (as you'd expect) the teeny tiny controls on the Astro City aren't actually controlling the game...because they aren't real controls. Still, it's very cool to see this type of thing and while Adam states that his creation seems to get nothing but derisory comments from people passing his desk in real life, we have nothing but admiration for this little project. Well done Adam - haters gon' hate, but we love it!

Source: Twitter

Don't Pelorian!

We return to our regularly scheduled programming...

Red vs. Blue: The Definitive SG-1000 hardware guide

**UPDATE** This article has been cross-posted on our new sister site: The SG-1000 Junkyard

Did you know that Sega's logo used to be red? Back in the 60's and 70's, it used to look like this, and was proudly displayed on their early electro-mechanical arcade machines.

While the blue Sega logo we all know and love would be introduced in the late 70's and early 80's, the first version of the SG-1000 would eschew a blue colour scheme, and instead featured a bold black, red and yellow motif.

This design featured in the early promotional material, and first went on sale on 15th July 1983 (although it was rumoured to have been test-marketed in isolated prefectures as early as 1981). The original SJ-200 joystick originally came hardwired to the console for player 1, with a port for a second joystick for Player 2 (sold separately). 

The original packaging for the first black-stripe model

The Beginning of the End? Or the Start of the Dawn of a New Age of Junkyard?

We here at the Junkyard have been doing some serious navel gazing recently. After over 12 years of bringing you all the latest news, reports, stories, interviews, reviews, features, rants, opinions, podcasts, videos, and random inane musings about all things Dreamcast, we've realised two things.

Is that a Dreamcast swirl?

Reaperi Cycle - A New Indie Game For Dreamcast

Another day, another new Dreamcast game is announced. This time, it's the ambiguously titled Dreamcast exclusive Reaperi Cycle from the even more ambiguously titled Ancient Hermetic Developers Guild. This new announcement comes by way of a pretty - you guessed it - ambiguous teaser trailer that appeared on YouTube recently, along with a pretty bare bones micro site.

The trailer doesn't really give much away bar for a few shots of surrealist landscapes and some rather intriguing dialogue, although the website hints that Reaperi Cycle will be an 'isometric alchemical tale about fire, magic, merchants, statues and a temple.' So probably an isometric puzzle game then. With light RPG elements? And some nice statues dotted about the place, maybe a tasteful pot plant? Just an educated guess on my part, and probably totally wrong like most things I hazard a guess at. Either way, it's nice to have another Dreamcast title to look forward to, however ambiguous it seems. Did I mention it's all a bit ambiguous?

We'll keep you updated as and when we learn more about Reaperi Cycle. Not too sure on that name though...you know what I'm thinking, don't deny it. Reappear-y cycle? Why, what were you thinking? Filthy minded urchin.

Source: Pcwzrd on Twitter

New Book Documents Every Single Tony Hawk Game

We love a good book here at the Junkyard, especially if there's some interesting and original Dreamcast specific content contained within said tome. Naturally, due to this we're eagerly awaiting the upcoming Dreamcast books from Pix 'N Love and Read-Only Memory, but here's something you may not have heard about previously: a brand new publication that goes deep on the entire series of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater releases, which also includes the two awesome Dreamcast versions.

Tony Hawk's Gaming Domination: The Rise and Fall of the Hawk Franchise (website here) features in-depth investigations on all 17 Tony Hawk games, across 25 different platforms and promises to be the most comprehensive examination of the Tony Hawk series ever laid down. The fact that it's written by the most knowledgeable Tony Hawk expert around - Trevor 'Slateman' Esposito, founder of Planet Tony Hawk - only adds extra weight to this lofty claim.

The book includes comparisons of the Hawk games

The Dreamcast played host to a number of skating titles, but the Tony Hawk ports are regarded as the very best not only on the Dreamcast, but the finest versions of those respective titles; with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 singled out in particular for how good a conversion the Dreamcast received.

Cross Platform Online Multiplayer Added To Doom For Dreamcast

Not content with dragging large swathes of the Dreamcast's official library back online with Ooga Booga, POD 2, NFL 2K and Monaco Online (to name but a few), all-round programming genius Shuouma has turned his attention to an unofficial Dreamcast release and managed to bring it online for the first time. That game is DCDoom, an unofficial port of id's seminal first person shooter, and now Dreamcast owners can play cross platform with PC owners. Sounds pretty awesome, right?

Naturally, the pool of gamers still playing multiplayer Doom is quite small these days, and even smaller if you factor in the number of people who own a Dreamcast, a DreamPi and a copy of DCDoom...but still, the fact that this is an option is pretty interesting. Shuouma has confirmed that cross platform gaming works, stating:

"I looked at this and I have now added modem support for DCDoom. I have also tested to play
from my DC after dialup against my Linux machine running SDL Doom. Works fine. So the network-code is working. People just need to be careful when setting up the network variables."

- Shuouma

It's worth noting that you will need a specially modded version of DCDoom which Shuouma says will be released soon as a downloadable CDI file. We'll update this article when it's available and we've tested it out ourselves, but in the meantime you can find out more about this fascinating project by visiting the DC-Talk forum thread on the topic here. Thank's to Luiz Nai for the heads up on this.

Source: Dreamcast Talk

Okinawa Rush Heads Up New Dreamcast Releases

As recently reported over at Dreamcast News, the latest batch of new Dreamcast releases from Josh Prod have been revealed via some great detective work. These new titles follow in the footsteps of Flashback, 4x4 Jam and Breakers et al which were released throughout 2017, and there are some pretty tantalising titles included. Heading up the lineup is the Kickstarter originated Okinawa Rush, a frantic 2D side scrolling beat 'em up with RPG elements and some outstanding action sequences.

Further to this, we can expect Dreamcast ports of the underrated 3D sequel to Flashback, Fade to Black, obscure Amiga adventure game The Escapee and vertically scrolling shmup Battle Crust. Of all the games in the list, Fade to Black is the one which intrigues me the most, and it'll be interesting to see whether it is a port of the PC release of Conrad Hart's continued struggle against alien invaders, or if it is based on the PlayStation version.

Battle Crust is a vertical shmup first released on Steam in 2015 by Picorinne Soft, a small indie developer based in Japan. It has a similar aesthetic to PC Engine shmups like Armed Formation F and looks like it will fit in rather well with the Dreamcast's existing stable of sublime shooters. We do have access to an early beta version of this Dreamcast release, so we'll let you know how it plays very soon. Finally, there is The Escapee from Invictus Games - a very Flashback-esque 2D adventure with a fantastic intro sequence and some of the most deliciously difficult puzzles ever seen in this genre. I know, because I'm one of the three people on Earth who have played it.

JoshProd are yet to officially announce these releases or the dates that they'll be available to order, although we have spoken to Philippe at JoshProd and it looks like there will be more concrete information in late April 2018. We'll have reviews of all of these titles as and when we can get our hands on them. Exciting times, eh?!

Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments, on Twitter or on Facebook.

Source: Dreamcast News / JoshProd

The Great Dreamcast BMX Off: Mirra Vs Hoffman

Recently I collated all the games I’ve never played for even a second, Dreamcast and non-Dreamcast alike, into a massive crate of shame. A shameful pile of things I had impulsively purchased and had then shown zero willingness to play. My goal and desire for this project was to spur myself on to begin playing at least two of them a week. For a minimum of 27 minutes and giving a sort of commentary on those first 27 minutes. A quick-fire thoughts and feelings if you will. The idea being to not only alleviate my sinful hoarding ways, but to also begin forcing my favourite pastime back into my weekly calendar.

Having collated all the Dreamcast games into one separate pile, I was confused as to why I owned Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX twice - one copy fully boxed, and one disc only. I then wondered where my copy of Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX was. Anyone who has ever seen my games room will know I possess the organisational skills of your average Womble, and so I quickly decided I must have misplaced it and resolved to look up the cover to assist finding it in my junk shop of a games room.

The reason it appears I couldn’t find it seems to be that unlike the US we never received the game, so I don’t actually own a genuine copy of it. Research (or one Google search to be exact) didn’t bring me a concrete reason for its lack of a blue edged version, although it did lead to a sort of breakthrough in that it is Mat Hoffman, not Matt. The fact that the dude can’t even spell his own name is sadly not a mystery I can solve for you, but what I can bring you is Mat Hoffman vs Dave Mirra. The battle of the Dreamcast BMX-ers! Gnarly! - just what 2018 was crying out for I hear you say…

Getting the chance to shred up some BMX arenas, without putting my actual aging body at harm, seemed ideal. And would give me a chance to test Dave Mirra’s box marketing claim that it is ‘The number 1 Dreamcast BMX game.’ So without further hesitation: riders ready, watch the gate. Go!