B+Q = Keanu!

That title will only make sense to you if you a) reside in the UK and b) are familiar with D.I.Y.

But your loss if your don't / aren't. Moving on:

Ever since it's epoch making release, it seems EVERYONE has been ripping off Jet Set Radio. But that's only natural considering it's a classic mix of funky music, great gameplay...and fucking astounding visuals. Yep - I'd go as far as saying JSR is possibly one of the best looking videogames I've ever played - even to this day. To illustrate this further, one of my housemates remarked at the brilliance of the Xbox whilst I was playing it...until the fucking cretin realised that the Xbox was lying dormant and it was a goddammed DREAMCAST I was playing on!!! DIE MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!!!

But why do I wax lyrical about Jet Set Radio you ponder...

It will all become clear very soon, but first, let's have a little gander at some games that have blatantly plagerised our old pal Jet Set for his/her (delete as applicable) unique cel shaded graphical style to earn kudos (K):

Wacky Races

(which is, in it's own right a simply brilliant Mario Kart style game, and one of the Dreamcast's better racing offerings by the way)

XIII

(that's Thirteen for the Roman Numerally-challenged reader. A really great game, and even better now it retails for 2.99!!)

Cel Damage

(Never played it, but apparently it sucks more ass than Jonathan (W)Ross interviewing a Lord of the Rings cast member. The tosser.)

Jet Set Radio Future

(OK, not a rip off as such - but originally intended as a Dreamcast sequel. If only twats had bought more Dreamcasts. Tut. But still, a great game nonetheless)

You may be wondering why I am bringing this bullshite to your attention when it could so easily be preoccupied by a) making another round of cheese on toast; b) cracking open another can of Carlsberg (which is what I'm about to do...please excuse me); c) cracking one off to that new Christina Aguilera video (which is what I'm also about to do...thank GOD I got that tissue box holder); or d) cracking one off to a David Hasslehoff video...which is your own business. Cough.

Whatever your taste in (wo)men, the reason I bring JSR (or JGR for the NTSC crew) to the table after so many years of entertainment is that a new film that uses a familiar cel shading effect has just come to my attention.

Ladies and Germs - A SCANNER DARKLY:



OK - it doesn't feature a band of futuristic 'sk8ers' graffiti-ing up some lovely neighbourhood and being chased by a fat cunt with a dog (which is what generally happens to me when I don my turbo-skates and spray my 'tag' on next door's living-room window), but it looks remarkably familiar and also (whisper it) very good. Well done Keanu - although, sadly, it still takes a bit of fancy animation to stop you looking like a plank of 2 by 4.

Irony

Ladies and Gentlemen, when you purchase something from that eBay nonsense, you expect certain things. You expect to pay over the odds for postage just so the greedy twat selling the thing can get a bit more cash out of you. You also expect to be waiting ages for your item to arrive in the post. What you don't expect, is for your item to be covered in so many dog hairs, cat hairs and pubes that it resembles Captain Caveman. But that's what happened to me when I bought this:

Yes! It's a Dreamcast themed tissue holder!

I left the tea ring on the right to give you a sense of scale.

I managed to get most of the hairs off (after projectile vomiting several times in the process), but due to the simply stupid dimensions of the thing, and the bits of fire encouraging foam inside, you can't actually put any kind of tissue box inside it! The question remains - why does this thing even exist?- it's like the games merchandise equivalent of the wasp. More troubling is the follow-up question: WHY THE FUCK DID I PAY FOUR POUNDS FOR IT?! That's 4 cans of Carling I could have been supping right now.

Damn you, cruel fate.

Anyhow, since mankind can create such marvels as the space shuttle; perform sextuplet (sex...hehe!) heart bypasses; and build towers that reach to heaven (probably), yet do not have the capacity to invent a tissue box that fits inside the Dreamcast Tissue Box Holder(tm), I have taken it upon myself to discover what other everyday items could prove to be a worthy substitute (unlike Owen Hargreaves):

A Shoe!

A Spider Plant! (note to self: it needs watering before it dies.)

If you remove the foam and add a hand, you get a rather spiffy hand puppet! At last, a real friend!!!

A REAL DREAMCAST! Oh, the irony:

HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Anyway, I'm just nipping to the shed to shoot myself in the face with the antique Remington shotgun I got from a car boot at the weekend for 80p. Gagaman, the car boot bargain hunt has just been blown wide open... :-D

Totally Ridiculous Comparisons: No. 3

I figured that after Totally Ridiculous Comarisons: No. 2, enough was enough because, just like a bird who is that fat she also has tits on her back, you simply can have too much of a good thing. But fear not! There are no fat birds here - in fact, there are no females here whatsoever...but I digress.

In the past we have seen Super Runabout trade haymakers with Charge N' Blast; and we've witnessed the spectacle of F355 Challenge take one hell of a Maggie Thatcher-style beating at the hands of Star Wars Episode 1: Racer - but now it's time to stop fucking about. It's time for the big boys to step into the ring...

So, without further ado, gents and gents, put your wank mags and pot noodles down - and give a warm Dreamcast Junkyard style welcome to the new contenders (drumroll please):

"Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's GET IT ON!"

Daytona 2001 Versus Shenmue








Round 1: Graphics

Whoa...where to begin? Daytona's visuals are something else. It's simply arcade perfect - you know, if Daytona 2001 had actually ever been in the arcades. But first things first - the vehicles. Each car is really well modelled and super shiny. There aren't any real-time reflections going on, but you get the idea as the clouds glide over the bodywork like Swiss Tony(above left)'s hands might glide over the soft thigh of a 19-year-old blonde. Cough. The framerate is consistent and the draw distances are pretty spectacular at times - check out the entire track laid before your eyes as you disappear down the hill and under the bridge on the Mermaid Lake track - it's a really impressive sight, especially with 39 other vehicles battling for position all around you. Trackside detail on some of the courses is a little sparse (Circuit Pixie and National Park Speedway for example), but on the whole, Daytona 2001 is an almost perfect example of the Dreamcast's technical superiority.

A totally different visual style to Daytona, Shenmue is again arguably one of the best looking games on the DC. Everything is modelled with such meticulous detail you have to wonder about the sanity of the developers. Go into a shop and look at the shit on the shelves - it's all labelled up - no N64 style masses of colour here, guv'nor. Peoples faces, bikes, doors, kettles...even the inside of the freaking bus to the docks...it's all immaculatley modelled. And it's not just the things you interact with either - the actual environment looks so realistic due to the overbearing use of drab colours. Where Daytona jumps through the retinas with overbearing joyful garishness, Shenmue heaps on the atmosphere with a colour palette similar to the one used in the Grim Reaper's bedroom. Don't ask how I know - just take my word for it. And then there are the little things you don't notice at first, like the proper shadows and the real time lighting. It ain't perfect (some slowdown and the way shadows don't fall on snow(odd)), but it's still an exceptionally good looking title.

Winner: It's a Tie, folks.

Round 2: Sound

Daytona on the Saturn featured music so cringeworthy that it is said one unhappy punter stabbed knitting needles through his own ear drums just so he could play it without breaking down in tears. Bit drastic, I know - but apparently he'd lost his TV remote and couldn't turn it down. That is probably a lie, more than likely concocted by me - but who can forget "Blue, blue skies..." AAAAARGH! It's worse than Eurovision. Daytona 2001 isn't quite as bad, you'll be pleased to hear, although the soundtrack is made up of remixes. They're nowhere near as offensive as the original choons, but still, not really up to scratch - and what happened to the top notch menu music from CCE?! Oh well. Elsewhere, sound effects are pretty much by the numbers - the odd throaty engine growl here, the odd tire screech there - all perfectly acceptable, but hardly amazing. One nice extra I noted is the way you can now hear the crowd as you whizz past the grandstand corner on 777 Speedway, which is nice, but overall Daytona is pretty average in the speaker/ear collaboration department.

Shenmue is a game that has had hundreds, maybe thousands of man hours poured into it. You can see this in the graphics - and the sound is no different. Again, you don't really notice it while you're playing, but the little incidentals that chime in, and the atmosphere building crescendos during cut scenes should be applauded. There are some areas that are marked out by their music (for example, I know for a fact that everyone reading this who has played Shenmue for any length of time will remember the music in Ryo's house and garden - that sort of drummy, slow melody). The voice acting of the NPCs (and Ryo, for that matter) can be a bit grating in places (especially that cretin Tom at the burger bar, with his faux Jamaican twang), but lets look at the bigger picture - it's head and shoulders above most games in this genre. Individual character's personalities can be picked up through how they speak and emotion is well conveyed through the dialogue. So, pretty good then.

Winner: The Hero of Time...er...Ryo Hazuki's Shenmue

Round 3: Gameplay

Daytona is one of those games you'll either love or hate when it comes down to gameplay. By gameplay, I primarily mean how the cars handle, but will also wax lyrical about the other aspects of the way it plays. But first: handling. You can tweak vehicle set ups in Daytona 2001, but in truth it doesn't really make much of a difference to the car's classification: some are fast with shit cornering, some are slow with good cornering. The generic Hornet car (let's be honest - it's the one we all use, all the time) bobs about under the strain of the engine like it's got a see-saw underneath it and cornering can be a nightmare unless you get a feel for the way the game wants you to play it. Daytona, believe it or not, is a game in which braking is essential - if you don't, you'll be seeing that comedy car flip more times than is healthy. To successfully navigate the more hideous turns, it is imperitive that you know how to drift the cars without spinning out and unless you can do it, you'll probably think Daytona is an unplayable, difficult and ultimatley shite game. Give it time and you'll see the error of your ways - mark my words, young Jedi. Elsewhere, there is a generic championship made to battle through and the usual array of single races etc. Cars are unlocked by winning championships and, wierdly, by playing for set periods of time. The overall concensus with Daytona 2001 though is this: have patience.

Shenmue is very much something of an aquired taste in gaming. The slow, but ultimatley intriguing plot takes time to bear any real fruit and many people may lose interest before the story really kicks off. As with most RPGs (although, Shenmue is more of an action-rpg), the very nature of the adventure is plodding. But lets talk about controls first. I didn't really like the control set up - using the D-Pad is a nightmare at times and I was forever pushing the analogue stick by mistake and fucking the camera up. The fighting controls are OK, but again, using the D-Pad is a bit wrong, and you can never really execute the move you want to becuase button presses and actions being taken is so inconsistent. I'm nit picking, I know. Another thing that really annoyed me was the constant waiting around for the time to pass - sometimes you have to wait till 7 in the evening to meet someone or go somewhere...when Ryo gets up at 8.30am, that's a long time to wait around. It's a storming game, but sometimes you have no choice but to leave it running while you go off and do something and then come back when the virtual time has passed sufficiently to progress the story. Bah.

Winner: Due to the infuriating D-Pad and waiting around, it's gotta be Daytona

Round 4: Longevity

Daytona has 8 tracks, a minimal numer of initial cars (although as mentioned, some more can be unlocked) and only a few different play modes. Nevertheless, you can play the tracks in reverse, mirror or reverse mirror so it jazzes things up a bit. However, you have to consider that Daytona is an arcade racer at heart and is intended to be played in short, hi octane stints - it ain't Forza Motorsport afterall. That said, beating lap records and perfecting your drive is still a lot of fun, so there is some longevity here.

Ah. Here Shenmue shines. The overall quest in this first installment of the Hazuki revenge story isnt overly long - but it kept me going for a good while. The game spans 3 GDs (the fourth is a graphics showcase/mess about disc) so you do get an idea of how long you'll be playing - but the real clinchers are the side quests you'll often be asked to complete, but don't have to. For example, helping an old codger find a particular address. Other sidelines include collecting toys from the slot machines and finding the audio tapes and Saturn games for the console under the telly in Ryo's gaff (you'll save a pretty penny in arcade trips y'know). I personally didn't even bother with all that stuff, but I still got a lot of play out of it. Just don't mention the slightly gay handing out of prizes after the forklift truck race at the docks. Shudder.

Winner: It's gotta be Shenmue again - if only for the sonic toys.

Overall Winner: Shenmue

Scores on the boards: Daytona 2001: 2 Shenmue: 3

There it is. The scores don't lie - it was a tough one, and the closest match up thus far, but Shenmue took it. Daytona needn't be down hearted though - it was a mammoth task. Like England winning the world cup. But what the HELL am I talking about? They're inanimate bits of pressed plastic. I need to lie down.

And on that (slightly surreal) bombshell, here's a picture of a prototype Dreamcast that hasn't already been copy and pasted to death from some other, inferior website or blog:

Cool eh?

Soul Calibur + Fishing Controller = Wii!

, hRemember the "wii-style" game play made possibly by combining the Maracas with World Series Baseball that turned out to be a mistake on my hand? Well, this time it's real. The closet thing to game play like what you get on Nintendo's Wii has been available for six years. Good old Dreamcast.

This isn't a new discovery. In fact, being able to play Soul Calibur with the fishing controller was revealed back in issue 2 of Official Dreamcast Magazine UK in their review of the game. They even interviewed a Kendo expert who was impressed with the accuracy possible with the controller. Here's the scoop, click 'em:

Now, I've been meaning to try this out for a long time, but only just got myself a fishing controller (the third-party "Fission" one, from Game Station for £3) recently, and only just this weekend finally got my hands on a working copy of Soul Calibur from a boot sale, as I played my original copy so much that it wouldn't even run anymore. I've missed this game so much, as it's easily the best game on the Dreamcast full stop, but the first thing I did when getting the game home was plug my fishing controller in with it.

The controls work pretty darn well, I must say. Unless you want to block attacks, you don't have to press any buttons in-game, and the analogue to walk about is not a problem to use. It depends on the character, but certain swings of the fisher' do register directly into the game, albeit flashier. Only thing in the controls you will want to change is the R buttons config. You will want the default "free style" setting, but change the R button setting to anything but P+A+K , which makes you charge up a whole lot, which ends up with you getting a pummelling. The most realistic setting is to change it to A+K, as this makes it so most characters will spin their weapon about if you spin the reel.

Certain characters with this setting use the reel for different moves. Taki uses it to somersault over the opponent, where as Yosimitsu uses it to stand on his blade which he jumps on by flicking the Fisher upwards. Pushing the analogue in different directions while swinging will give you even more moves to work with.

To save me describing all the things you can pull off, I've gone to the bother to filming footage showing how moves can be pulled off with some characters. The quality isn't brilliant (I really shouldn't of picked the lighter levels, as this caused those annoying black lines) but it should give you an idea of how it works, and yes, you do look like a prat when playing this, so only my hands are seen =P



So the best characters to play as with it seem to be Yosimitsu, Kilik, Seung Mina, Hwang, Cevanties and Mitsuragi, although it works pretty well enough with all of them. On the subject of Wii style game play on the Dreamcast, check out this early Dreamcast concept controller design found at Kotaku:

Hmm. Now all I need to complete this post is another "old hat!" image.
Eh, I'll just use the same one again.


UPDATE! Found another clip showing the game running with the fishing controller on Youtube. It comes from a DVD given away with the infamous Japanese magazine Famitsu, and shows some guy playing the game in ultra hard mode with it. I'm a bit dubious about this one though, as all he appears to be doing is shaking the controller up and down the whole time. No skill whats so ever, I could wupp him at this. However, it does show a much better demonstration of how it works at the start.



Edit: Forgot the Kotaku image I meant to post. Oops. It's in there now.