Happy Birthday Dreamcast! (In America)

The great thing about a console being released at different times in Japan, the US and Europe, is that it gets three Birthdays! Today seven years ago the console launched in America, to which it sold out in the first week. It's launch line up was it's strongest in America, too. Where else could you get Soul Calibur from day one? Also, unlike here in Brighty, the marketing was flawless. Seeing those commercials of all the characters having a party inside the Dreamcast still make me want to rip the console open and stick them all in a tank. The American launch was possibly one of the most exciting console launch’s in gaming history, at least from where I'm standing, thousands of miles away from it. Sega of America really put their all into making an impression. Here are the games that those yanks could get from day one:

• Airforce Delta (Konami)
• Blue Stinger (Activison)
  
• CART Flag to Flag (Sega)
• Expendable (Infogrames)
• House of the Dead 2 (Sega)
  
• Hydro Thunder (Midway)
• Monaco Grand Prix (Ubi Soft)
• Mortal Kombat Gold (Midway)
• NFL 2K (Sega)
• NFL Blitz 2000 (Midway)
• Pen Pen Tri-Icelon (Infogrames)
• Power Stone (Capcom)
• Ready 2 Rumble (Midway)
• Sonic Adventure (Sega)
• Soul Calibur (Namco)
• TNN Hardcore Heat (ASC) -AKA Buggy Heat
  
• Tokyo Xtreme Racing (Crave)
• TrickStyle (Acclaim)
  

That's at least four 9 out of 10 games there, and barely a real dud in sight, except maybe Buggy Heat, although it was a good game to show off the graphics with at the time in shop windows. Also, count how many sequels are in there: Four (Sonic Adventure doesn't count as it was a new Sonic series completely different to previous ones). Even Capcom, the KING of sequels, had a brand new francise with a brand new cast of charaters to beat the snot out of each other which. Good times!


Submitted at Youtube by Kagem.

Oh, just so you know, the DC's Euro Birthday is on the 14th of October, and it's Japanese Birthday is the 27th of November, where it is a year older due to being released in 1998. Huzzah!

This summer I have been mostly playing..

Summer has been very long for me, about three months to be exact, and now it's almost coming to a close as I go back to University at the end of this month. This long time off, however, has given me plenty of time to get acquainted with my Dreamcast and buy new stuff for it. Here I list the top 3 games that I have been the most hooked on those unbearably hot summer days.

3: Puyo Puyo 4

I completely forgot to write about this game here at the Blog, but here it is. Not to be confused with it's follow up Puyo Puyo Fever, which I did write about, this is the last in the series produced by it's original developers Compile, and one of the last to feature the original cast which included the heroine Arle, the green haired devil guy Satan, the tea-obsessed Skeleton-T, and that weird fish with human limbs that has a really long name. I grabbed it off Ebay for a tenner. Anyway, there are many reasons why this game turns out to be a lot better than fever was, despite the language barrier. For starters the graphics are not quite as eye-bleedingly colourful and he artwork is beautiful. Secondly, there are a lot more modes of game play to pick from here, including a endless mode that gives you a choice of 5 different sizes of Puyos from the teeny tiny to the screen-filling huge) and there's even a 4-player mode.

What's had me stuck into it mainly over the summer was the Story mode. While the story in Fever only took a day to complete, the one really long story mode in this took around a month. The fever feature in the follow up made the game a bit too easy, but in this game you get special moves instead, and as you go through the story more characters tag along with Arle, so you get to choose from different specials. Puyo 4 is far more tactical then any of he others I played, and it's all about getting good combos, and the timing of your specials (which you only get a limited few of). I would spend days on some levels later on, as the characters started to get rock hard.

The very final boss, a evil clone of Arle of some sort, has to be one of the most taxing challenges I've come across in a puzzle game. There are two Puyo blobs in the corners worth 500,000 points each, and if the CPU gets one of them, you have automatically lost as rows and rows of blocks fall down on you. If you hit one of the, however, the CPU has 5 shields to stop the blocks falling down for a minute each, and you don't have any specials to use at all! The only way to beat her, after days to trying, was to somehow get both of the 500K blobs AND prevent her from getting anywhere near her two! I got it in the end, and the satisfaction of finally beating the game was overwhelming, especially when I rarely beat games as hard as this one was. Phew.

2: Seaman

No, not that Seaman!

With months of time ahead of me, I decided to start up Seaman again at the start to make up for my poor first attempts at it, in which after a couple weeks I gave p and deleted it. This time, I was determined to get right to whatever kind of ending this game has, if it even had one. Playing it for five minutes every one or two days seemed to do the trick. The questions the miserable sod asks you are very varied, from the simple ("How old are you?"), to the personal ("Do you like yourself?") to the Sega-indorsed ("What is your favourite Dreamcast game?"). It's quite some time before the fishes start to evolve, but after a while (about a month), they start to grow legs, and once that stage of their evolution is sorted, one of them will ask you to help him push a big rock in the corner of the tank. getting him to do this makes the tanks water sink down into a small area, and turns the tank into a beach of some sort.

This Seaman you twat.

I won't spoil the rest of the game for you, as FatherKrsihna appaers to be playing through the game as well, but after almost 3 months of five minute or so sittings, there is an ending to this game, in which you dion't have to look after him anymore. You can, however, still go back to the file and check up on him, and see if he has evolved some more. It may not sound all to eventful, but trust me when I say this is one of the most bizarre yet interesting experiences I have had on the Dreamcast, and the only virtual pet game I've played with a real award to it. Who needs Nintendogs when you can have a real dog? Well, where can you get a real talking fish or frog? No where. Well worth the patience of playing it at the start to get to the later parts.

1: Sega Marine Fishing

Yes, the most played game of the summer for me was a fishing game. Don't look at me like that! I've actually had this game for a long while from where I picked it up while in America, but didn't really want to play it until I got my mitts on a fishing controller, which I did just this year for 3 squid in a Gamestation. Playing this along side Sega Bass Fishing, I've come to the conclusion that this game is at least 10 times better than that one was. For starters, you have more than 1 type of fish to catch: you have around 20, including sharks, stingrays (No comment.) and all sorts of tropical type fishes. Also, while Bass Fishing was a port of a crusty old Model 3 game from 1997, Sega Marine Fishing was the latest from Sega's Naomi arcade line up and looks the bees knees.

Now I'm not in the slightest bit interested in fishing, but this game is a big exception. Instead of sitting around waiting for the miserable sods to bite, in this game you quite often have multiple fish fighting over your lure, and catching the buggers, thanks to the fishing controller, as always hella fun. The real reason I've been playing this game for the last few months almost religiously is because of the Original Mode. Here you get he choice of the Mini-Games, where you gain items, Free Fishing where you have no time limit and must catch fish to win these gained items, and the Aquarium where a lot of the items go, such as fish, ruins, submarines and even a UFO! Other items you can gain include more specialist lures to catch certain fish, new clothes for your crew (of very bad taste, I might add) and even a Labrador to bark away at the fish you catch. You can even eventually swap your boat for a raft, a wobbly plank of wood which appears to have nothing to move it with.

I've almost got to the end of this very long game now, as I've now gained all 266 items and now just need to win about 30 of them. The only problem is as you go along through the game you end up with less and less fish to catch: once you've caught a particular fish a few times, catching it again wins you nothing. It's now starting to get to he point where almost everything I catch I've already caught, and yet they still insist on biting, sometimes the same fish a few times in a row. Still, my Aquarium is almost full now (just one type of fish to go, I have everything else), so playing through this game is well worth the time. Completing the Arcade mode about 4 or 5 times also unlocks more levels to catch the last items on, such as Hammer-head Sharks. Judging from the reviews this game got, this is a real under rated gem in my opinion, and miles ahead of that rusty old Bass Fishing.

Bonus! This summer my dad has been mostly playing...
Virtua Striker 2

My dad is completely hooked on this game. Whenever he gets a spare half-hour his there, playing as England and trashing his way through the arcade mode, and often getting frustrated with the fact that he always hits the goal post or misses the goal miles because you can actually see it when you kick it from a distance. His technique seems to involve knocking over everyone in sight and walking the ball into the goal, and he never uses the formation button. Most matches he plays end up going into penalties, in which he finally wins. He did actually manage to get Team Sega to pop up once (you have to beat arcade mode with no continues to play against them). That dreaded "GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!" sound now is permanently drilled into my skull thanks to all those penalties he has taken, and often I hear it when his not even playing the game.

Fishy Tails...

So my first post... And which of my manifold DC tales should I regale you with dear reader? Ah yes. How I created life and then quashed it in a cruel act of murder. Murder most foul I tells yer... THREE TIMES! But I'm getting ahead of myself, lets go back to the beginning. As the blessed six week holiday approached (ah Education... doesn't that just suck to all you bank holiday watchers in normal employment?) I found myself at my usual holiday destination, a solitary derelict light house off the coast of Birkenhead, with only my trusty DC collection and sullen, pimply, scowling sons for company. Having been thoroughly thrashed by them at a variety of fighting games (Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom and Capcom vs. SNK amongst them...) I decided I needed a more solitary gaming experience to engage in. One where I would be master and one where I would have absolute power... "MWUAH HA HA!"
And what better 'game' could the aspiring creationist despot recourse to than... 'CAUTION SEAMAN'?

Having purchased a microphone without knowing its use, I stumbled across an IGN blog featuring a picture of a fish-man creature, like the ones in Monty Python's 'Meaning Of Life'. On further inspection I discovered this to be the US/Japan only 'Caution Seaman' (At one point the most popular and eagerly awaited piece of software in that particulary technologically advanced of nations- Japan that is...)
So with time on my hands and money to burn, I scoured Ebay, got my Utopia disc and ordered 'Seaman' from a US software company. I then whisked it away to my Lighthouse and started to explore... The first delight was that Mr. Spock was included in the box... That's right the wonderful Leonard Nimoy, actor, bon viveur and well frankly...Vulcan, was to be my guide in giving birth to and nurturing my fishy friend.


The next was a delightfully entertaining piece of bullshit in the shape of the mannual, which spun a well thought out yarn about a French Scientist/Archaeologist called Dr. Jean-Paul Gasse having discovered a living Seaman in Alexandria, Egypt at the turn of the century. Although the specimen had died before the good doctor could attain fame or recognition, now, through electrickery, the good folks at Vivarium Software and a bit of DC magic, I too could raise and evolve a living Seaman (in the telly of course, not in real life.)

I eagerly loaded up the game, verily stiffening "downstairs" with anticipation. I was met with a food store, a pleasant aquarium environment (in which I had to maintin, heat, light and oxygen levels.) With a little hand, (much like Jeremy Beadle's), visually floating outside of the Aquarium, I could drop in food, tap the glass and most importantly drop in my Seaman egg. After a bought of pulsating and squirming several little sperm like creatures known as 'Mushroomers' burst forth from the egg. These spermy globules just bobbed about until they were fucking eaten by a previously unnoticed squid like creature laying dormant at the bottom of the tank, hidden in a shell. Bastard! I thought the whole experience was over, until the hapless crustacean started to jerk and convulse and in floods of ink, spat out half a dozen little Seamen (known as Gillmen) and then promptly died! HA! Sqidkind 0- Krishna 6! Take that you murderous Octopede!


Leonard (we were getting pretty tight at this juncture) told me I should converse with the little fishies, which replied in a babylike gurgle, but after what seemed like literally days, (it was literally days...) they began to respond in a child-like American voice (creepy.) The first thing mine said when I was tickling them with my little cyber hand (stay with me..) was " Stop or I'll fart!" and then even more alarmingly "Bad Touch! Bad Touch!" (You're meant to tickle them honest- read the mannual before you call the NSPC/RSPCA... )
Over time my fishy-boy pets evolved into a weighty carp-men with deep and laconic baritone voices. My favourite, Robbie (named after the iconic Robbie Fowler) asked me my age, birthday, occupation and other facts which he remembered and recounted to me. He was rude and obnoxious, sarcastic and cynical. He called me "skinbag" and "fuzzy", told me to "Go away!" said he was mad at me and when I asked him for a kiss ( I was alone on a light house for chrissakes!!!!) He replied "What? Put this tongue in that mouth?!" Fucking charming....

Eventually the 'game' presented me with a Vivarium (insect hatchery) to breed caterpillar things to feed my greedy pike, and I felt that it was getting intense (or as intense as a game played over a month at five minute intervals can get) and then just before it was about to grow legs and evolve into the frog like silhouette seen on the sign on the game box, I murdered it! Killed the fucker stone dead! Well how was I to know that resetting the timer on my DC would cause the games internal memory to think I hadn't fed it or heated up the tank for six years? Jesus! Thanks for the pointer Leonard! I repeated the process another two times utilising my Treamcast when my TV at home wouldn't accept the Utopia disk. But it just wasn't the same... In the end I just let it die for a third time and called it a day. But my memories of spanking my seamen, tickling my trout and letting my spermy shroomers float about on the top of my bath water will live with me forever. Oh well, that's it. I'm off to play something quick, easy and that only lasts a lunchtime...my beloved Shenmue 2.

P.S. This is only a hasty recount of the epic tome that was my original post before I clicked on the wrong option on the Blog and wiped out about an hours worth of typing and uploading pictures forever. Bastard! This posting shit is not as easy as TLC and the Gagaman make it look! Adieu Yardites...until next time...

And you are...?

Well, will you looky over there! Over 20,000 hits on the 'Yard since the whole thing crawled out of my ear, slopped off my pillow and infested the internet all of 9 long months ago. Nowadays, the mere thought of an internet without the Dreamcast Junkyard makes me shudder. The kind of shudder that ripples through the body when taking a particularly satisfying piss. Anyway - today's post is more of an introduction than a proper DC related journey through the surreal. As regular visitors will have gathered, the 'Yard is currently maintained by myself and the multi-talented Gagaman. However, in a matter of mere weeks, I - the all-powerful Warlock known simply as Tomleecee, will be temporarily departing from the comfortable confines of this pastel hued asylum for an unknown period of time. As such, I have taken it upon myself to enlist a new Team Member to assist The Gagaman in continuing to deliver the good word to the masses after my passing. Like a band of Dreamcast branded Jehovah's Witnesses, but without the sinister, birthday-less undertones. Ahem.

So without further ado, Ladies and Gents, please welcome The Dreamcast Junkyard's newest team member - Father Krishna!

Father Krishna promises to bring reviews, tales of Dreamcasting adventures and (hopefully) a whole truckload of bullshit to the 'Yard. So, business as usual then.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Whilst taking the aformentioned piss earlier this evening, I noticed something familiar about the bog-roll holder next to the shit throne:

eh? eh? EH?!?!?!