An Interview With Pierre Santino - The Dreamcast Barber

It took us over a year, with countless emails and tweets and hours of internet searching. But we finally did it, we found The Barber. The full story is documented in this series of articles:

• In Search Of The Barber: Part One
• In Search Of The Barber: Part Two
• In Search Of The Barber: Part Three

We know how the tl;dr (too long, didn't read) modern internet works though, so the abridged version is this: a guy played a barber in a Dreamcast commercial. He was the face of the console in Europe and his image was everywhere for a few months in late 1999 and early 2000...then he simply disappeared. No record of his name, or who he was left anywhere on the promotional materials, and internet searches turned up nothing. His identity could have been lost to the digital mists of internet lore...that is until The Dreamcast Junkyard stepped in and decided to find out who he was. If you've been following this whole saga you'll know how we did it (and the assistance we had from the wider Dreamcast community), but if not I urge you to read the previous In Search Of The Barber articles to get a full appreciation for how mammoth a task this has been.

This photo is from Pierre's private collection and has never been published before.

Anyway, it's all come to this. We have found him. His name is Pierre Santino and he is alive and well living and working in France. An actor and comedian with an extensive portfolio of work spanning 40 years, Pierre was only too happy (and possibly a little surprised) when we showed him the previous articles documenting our search for him. As he is French and speaks very little English, we enlisted the help of Arnaud Bonnet (author of 1000 Jeux Vidéo, 1000 Anecdotes published by Pix'n Love Editions) who acted as an interpreter. Huge thanks go to Arnaud for his assistance in the translation of this interview from English, to French...and back again. Enough from me though. Let us turn our attention to the man of the moment - The Barber himself, Mr Pierre Santino...

Power Stone Clone Lastfight Announced For XB1 & PS4

Back in May, we reviewed the excellent Power Stone clone Lastfight, and awarded it a very respectful 7.5/10. We praised its gameplay, style and ability to invoke fond memories of Power Stone, but criticised its lack of content. Check it out here.

At the time of review, the game was a Steam exclusive, but there's good news for all you console peasants out there: the game is making its way over to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later this month.

DC Light Gun Games On Modern Lucuda Tuv...LCD TV

Finally!

This story has been doing the rounds on social media as of late, so it may seem like old hat, but for those who aren't wasting their pitiful existence on this planet posting selfie or pick-up photos and fishing for likes from strangers, this may come as a pleasant surprise to you.

It's a problem many of us faced around a decade ago; plugging in our Dreamcast light gun with the intention of caning through a bit of House of the Dead 2 perhaps months or even years after trashing the old tube TV in favour of a modern flat screen, only to find that wherever we point the damn thing, all that's accomplished is reloading full clips of ammo over and over until we die before even getting the chance to meet G over there.

Being able to enjoy lightgun games again has become one of the many motivations in tracking down a CRT for many, but it isn't exactly the most practical solution for those without the space, or with a wife who no doubt can't stand the idea of a fat grey eyesore in her carefully designed Zen inspired living room. And while you can use a Gamegear, it seems that there may finally be a more practical solution...sorry Caleb!

Shenmue III Kickstarter Update August 2016

It's all been a bit quiet on the Shenmue III front recently. Apart from the odd snarky comment I've heard on various podcasts about how shit it's inevitably going to be* when it finally drops, there's been precious little information forthcoming from Ys Net's headquarters in Japan. That changed today though, with a Kickstarter update titled 'From the Dev Room.' The update only really consists of a short video where several developers are interrupted and asked to show the camera what they're working on though, so don't get too excited.

One guy shows that he's working on a recreation of the river jumping section from Shenmue II and demonstrates some wireframe animations of Ryo trying his best not to get his trainers wet; while a colleague shows off a section in which Ryo is avoiding being crushed by falling rocks. I've taken a few screen grabs of the video and dotted them around here, but you should probably go and check out the video on the Kickstarter page too. Oh, and donate while you're there if you haven't already.

Developer Interview: Tom Napior (guacasaurus_mex)

Tom Napior hit the gaming headlines earlier in 2016 when he successfully ported Flappy Bird to the humble VMU. Later, also under his Instagram name of 'guacasaurus_mex,' he released Street Race, an Outrun-inspired racing game that showed just how capable the tiny memory device could be when squeezed. Most recently though, Tom has been in the spotlight for his attempt to bring Pokémon GO to the VMU, and we thought it was about time we caught up with this talented homebrew developer to see why the VMU holds so much appeal for him...

Street Race features greyscale VMU graphics not seen before.

DCJY: Hi Tom, thanks very much for taking the time out to speak to us. First things first - your Instagram name, guacasaurus_mex...are you a fan of guacamole?

Tom Napior: Haha! I’m a fan of all Mexican food...and dinosaurs, so it seemed like a good fit.

I did wonder. Now we’ve got that cleared up, let's discuss your fantastic endevours with the Dreamcast, and more specifically the VMU. What’s your history with the Dreamcast? Did you have one when they were contemporary hardware?

I sure did! I picked one up back in 2000 from a local game store and have never looked back really. I got Soul Calibur (which to this day is one of my favourite games of all time) and have always been fascinated by the VMU…such a cool idea!

In Search Of The Barber: Part Three - We Found Him

Recently we published the second part of our series in which we've been searching for the identity of the mystery man who fronted the European Dreamcast advertising campaign. There is almost nothing online detailing who this guy was, and considering his face was everywhere during a brief period in late 1999, it drove me to distraction that it was documented nowhere. Until now.

I can't accurately convey how much time I've spent trying to find the actor who portrayed The Barber (you could check out In Search Of The Barber: Part One and Part Two to get an idea, though), but now I'm overjoyed to announce that yes, we've found him. And the way we found him was every bit as interesting as the rest of this whole saga, to be honest - a true tale of the Dreamcast community coming together to overcome insurmountable odds. It goes a little something like this...

DreamPod - Episode 38: Platforming Special Featuring DreamcastGuy

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If you'd like to know more about DreamcastGuy's channel, please head over to YouTube and check out his content (or just click here!), or give him a follow on Twitter here. As stated, if there's anything we got wrong or any games we neglected to mention, don't hesitate to contact Mike via email and/or on his personal mobile phone - preferably at around 3am.

I knew I'd seen Sonic's fangs!

Music in this episode is from Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 and Super Magnetic Neo. As ever, if you like what you've heard, please feel free to leave us an iTunes review or a thumbs up on our YouTube version - it all helps! Lastly, a huge thanks to all of our lovely Patreon supporters, we love every single one of you.

The Hidden Dreamcast Light Gun Game

How many light gun games are there on the Dreamcast? As I sit here staring at that rhetorical question, I recall about five if memory serves: House of the Dead 2, Confidential Mission, Death Crimson 2, Death Crimson 2 OX, and Virtua Cop 2. But wait. There's actually another I didn't even know about until today: Infogrammes and Pitbull Syndicate's Demolition Racer: No Exit.

Now, you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd had one too many bottles of strong ale before writing this (and you'd be right, in most all cases), but hear me out. Demolition Racer: No Exit is a stock car racing game very much in the vein of PlayStation classic Destruction Derby (we don't mention the Saturn atrocity), and while it looks very pretty I don't particularly like it because of the downright stupid rules in the championship mode. Try as I might, I can't even get past the first couple of races due to the ridiculously random nature of the scoring system - coming first in a race tallies up with damage given to other cars...or something. And there are weapons. Basically, it's a clusterfuck of confusion so I'm just going to leave it there for now.

Anyway, I'm in the process of moving house (for about the 8th time in 3 years) and as I was stacking up my beloved Dreamcast games ready to be boxed, I noticed something funny on the back of the Demolition Racer case:

A 'Light Gun' compatibility icon. Which is very odd, especially considering Sega didn't even release the gun in the USA. That, and Demolition Racer is an NTSC-U exclusive racing game..

In Search Of The Barber: Part Two

Several months ago I published an article here titled In Search Of The Barber. In case you missed it, go here and have a quick scan to familiarise yourself. If you can’t be bothered, allow me to briefly recap the gist of the previous chapter in this seemingly unsolvable missing persons case.

During the early period of the Dreamcast’s brief lifespan in Europe, Sega promoted the console through a series of TV and cinema adverts where multiplayer gaming was pushed as the system’s key unique selling point. I’m sure you’ll recall the whole ‘6 billion players’ controversy. The adverts in question featured two scenarios - one was titled ‘Buoy’ had a load of kids stood on a shoreline trying to hit a buoy with stones; the other was titled ‘Shave’ and involved a group of French foreign legion conscripts having their heads shaved by a trio of military barbers. It was the latter of these two promotional films that was chosen as Sega’s flagship advertising tool and the victorious barber (named Player Two in the advert) was depicted on a host of posters, billboards, in-game leaflets and even on the Dreamarena European online portal.

The Barber. On Dreamarena.

As explained in my previous article on this subject, this guy’s characteristic face, bare chest and distinctive tattoos* were all over the place for the first six months of the Dreamcast’s life - in magazines, on bus stops and even splashed across cinema screens before some of the biggest movies of the time (well, Star Wars Episode 1, anyway). He was literally everywhere. The thing is, there is no record of who he actually is. No credits on the Dreamography VHS tapes given away with pre-orders of the Dreamcast, no crew listings or location photos anywhere on the internet…and believe me - I’ve looked.

What my life now looks like.

Is he an actor? If so, why can’t I find anything else he’s appeared in? Hell, why can’t I find a single image of him anywhere, other than the few uploads of the Dreamcast ‘barber’ picture (most of which have been uploaded by me)? It's this complete erasure or nonexistence of The Barber that is the driving force behind this whole saga, and using the power of the internet I've decided to pick up the case and dig further into the mystery of this bloke's true identity.

The Murky World of White Labels

While I do consider myself to be a collector of all manner of Dreamcast related tat, I’m far from what most people would consider 'hardcore.' I do not have a full complement of any region’s library for instance, and while I do have around 95% of the PAL releases in my collection, I refuse to pay over the odds for the remaining few (mainly shit) titles required to call it a 'full set.' Furthermore, many of the peripherals and consoles I own are unboxed and or in 'used' condition – I generally buy Dreamcast stuff to play with it, examine it, record its existence in an easy to digest manner and upload it here for people to enjoy…or take it to events for other people to play with/destroy and cover in hand slime.

What I'm trying (and failing) to convey is that I'm not one who only collects sealed or mint condition stuff, and I'm not overly precious about stuff being kept in a nuclear bunker where radioactive dust clouds, sunlight or curious hands cannot get to it. Nor am I one who feels he has to collect absolutely everything with a Dreamcast swirl on it...and that's the point I'm meandering toward with this wholly unnecessary, rambling introduction.

One aspect of collecting for the Dreamcast that has barely shown up on my radar until recently is the collection of white labels. I have been aware of the things for as long as I’ve been aware of the Dreamcast itself but collecting these PAL-centric preview discs has never really interested me for some reason. For those who aren’t familiar with white labels, they were special sample versions of Dreamcast games that were predominantly sent out by Sega Europe to the press for preview purposes and – as far as I'm aware – also used in Dreamcast demo pods in stores such as GAME and Electronics Boutique in the UK. As I said, I’ve never really been very interested in collecting these preview discs, but Mike Phelan included a very comprehensive list of them - complete with serial numbers - in our recently outlawed collectors guide (you can still download it for free here); and several friends randomly donated a selection white labels to me over the last few weeks.

Rez Infinite Merchandise & Launch Date Revealed

Rez Infinite looks awesome and it's coming to the PS4 and PS VR on October 13th 2016. Initially a digital download, the game is also scheduled to receive a limited physical release...but that's not all. According to a PlayStation Europe blog post by Rez producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Rez Infinite's launch will be bolstered with a whole barrage of merchandise, including vinyl records, t-shirts, an art book, pin badges and a holographic kitchen sink.

We're big fans of Rez here at the Junkyard and we've featured the game extensively here in the past. From Ross's video hands on and first impressions with the PS VR version he recently tried out at the Game On expo in Tokyo; to the fan-made Dream Trance vibrator created by Scott (and reviewed by me here), we can't get enough of the music-based acid trip-a-thon.

Retropocalypse 2016 Show Report

Saturday 13th August 2016 saw the first Retropocalypse event held in Bournemouth, UK. While the seaside town on the south coast of England has played host to some fairly large comic, TV and film conventions in recent years, a dedicated gaming event has never graced it...until Retropocalypse that is! In truth, this was something of an experiment to see how much interest a retro event would generate and as such was held in a fairly small venue - The Four Horsemen pub in the town centre.

Supported by gaming sites Noah's Arcade, RetroCollect and - naturally - The Dreamcast Junkyard, Retropocalypse saw the modest venue turned into a cornucopia of retro gaming delights. It wasn't exclusively a Dreamcast-themed event, but there were a couple of consoles available to play alongside the Saturns, 3DOs, N64s and Jaguars. This event was in no way on a comparable scale to recent shows such as Revival Solstice or the upcoming Play Expo Manchester (which we'll also be at!), but throughout the day over 100 people ventured into the downstairs room, attracted no doubt by the melodious sounds of antiquated gaming goodness and promise of twinkling CRTs.

Developer Interview: Orion

Orion has been creating indie games for retro consoles for quite some time, and is behind the latest title to be announced for the Dreamcast: Zia and the Goddesses of Magic, out in September 2016. Orion's impressive back catalogue also includes recent Atari Jaguar to Dreamcast ports such as point and click adventures Elansar and Philia, and platformer Alice's Mom's Rescue. The Dreamcast Junkyard recently caught up with Orion to find out a bit more about this elusive indie dev and ask what is coming next from the French outfit...

DCJY: Hi, thanks for taking the time to speak to us and the Dreamcast community at large! Could you explain just who makes up the Orion team?

Orion: There is no team - just me! Orion is my internet nickname, I'm just one guy on my own trying to create games as a living.

Zia comes to Dreamcast in September 2016

A true one man outfit then! How did you get started in indie game development, and what are your earliest memories of wanting to be a developer?

My earliest memories are when I was playing games on my Atari STe computer at the age of 8, looking at those nice graphics and thinking to myself "I want to do the same!" From there, I quickly began to learn the Basic language by myself, and finally made my first 'game' when I was 12 years old. When the internet became popular, I started learning other programming languages, and continued making small games as a hobby. Later, I worked for 5 years at a small game company in Paris, and finally I decided to go solo and start my own company. It's been 3 years now that I've been creating commercial games on my own for various retro platforms.

The Video System Enigma Machine

Special edition systems are nothing new when it comes to the Dreamcast. There are a multitude of officially-commissioned commemorative and promotional models that are well documented over at Sega Retro; with franchises like Resident Evil, Gundam, Seaman and Hello Kitty all being celebrated with their own bespoke consoles. Further to this, the number of other special editions, fan-made custom jobs and competition prize one-offs is difficult to actually quantify. Put simply, the Dreamcast customization scene is a subject of internet and pop-culture lore that could spawn an entire thesis if somebody was brave enough (and had the time) to devote themselves to it.

That person is not me, thankfully but with this post I wanted to investigate an oddity I found online and pose the question - is this an ultra rare, officially licensed promo Dreamcast...or simply the work of an over zealous F1 World Grand Prix II fan?

Dreamcast Magazine Issue 16

Issue 16 of Paragon Publishing's unofficial Dreamcast Magazine hit shelves on the 30th November 2000 and was stuffed full of the latest Dreamcast previews and reviews. The cover featured first person shooter Unreal Tournament - a game that was billed as an online multi-player showcase...but which eventually launched in PAL territories with all of the online components removed.

Issue 16 is notable in that it was amongst the first of the magazines at the time to report on a Dreamcast port of PlayStation and PC favourite Driver 2, but alas that never materialised. Other non-released games to be featured in issue 16 include Commandos 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell Conspiracies and Woody Woodpecker Racing.

Interestingly, there are several reports in this issue that point towards an upturn in fortunes for Sega's little white box, with sales in both Europe and the US being touted as looking very healthy. In Europe Sega announce over 1 million systems sold and a Dreamarena user base of 400,000; while in the US a $50 price cut leads to monthly sales in October 2000 to double those of September 2000.

DreamPod - Episode 37: Featuring Dreamcast Hub

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Massive thanks to Stephen from Dreamcast Hub for joining us on this episode, please make sure you check out his site here, and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Music in this episode is from Yuan Works' awesome Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles and Duranik's utterly amazing Sturmwind. The event discussed was Revival Solstice 2016 and the show report is here, and the Tivola cases mentioned by Tom are these:

As ever, if you like what you hear please consider leaving us an iTunes review (or just a rating) as it all helps when it comes to getting exposure for the podcast. Once again, massive thanks to all our Patreon supporters - we love each and every one of you as if you were our own S.T.A.R.S. special edition Dreamcast consoles. Enjoy the podcast folks!

Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs Screens Revealed

Just a quick one this. You may be aware of the recently crowd-funded indie title Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs; we covered it recently but had a few reservations due to the lack of any gameplay footage or screen shots. It's saying a lot when a game with a fully playable demo (Xenocider) can't get funded but one without so much as a screen shot can...but hey ho. That's all changed now though, as the Saber Rider Kickstarter page has recently been updated and now includes a couple of in-game shots that hint at a game with more than a passing resemblance to 16-bit favourite Sunset Riders.

Further screens show some of the aerial manoeuvres the playable characters will be able to pull of, and these hint that the game may feature gameplay similar to Gunlord. The update goes on to explain that a lack of progress on Saber Rider was down to the lead developer having some health issues, and naturally we wish him a speedy recovery. For the time being though, these screens should tide any backers over and reassure you that work is continuing on the game.

Source: Dreamcast News / Kickstarter