Shenmue, Manchester Style...

Whilst killing a bit of time on the fateful day that I met up with TomLeeCee (to hand over Confidential Mission in a desparate attempt to ingratiate myself with the author of my favourite blog and get a foot in the door of the Yard), I happened to find myself in Manchester's famous oriental microcosm... Chinatown.


Rather tragically I began to muse over the similarities of said location and the virtual Hong Kong that I had spent so many hours, days and months in, playing my beloved Shenmue 2. I had 'the three gingers' with me and the biggest one caught the whistful look in my eye. He knew what was going through my mind and began to chuckle cynically, as I adopted my best Ryu Hazuki pose, turning up the collar of my brown leather jacket and slapping another blob of gel into my spikey black barnet.


As I furtively peeped down the alleyways for Lan Di's thugs, and checked my watch to make sure it wasn't 11 O' Clock (when I have to run home for bed and catch up on nine hours sleep no matter what I'm doing...) I happened to feel an unexpected attack. The littlest ginger was tugging on my sleeve and pointing towards a vending machine outside the Tomato Convenience store. Capsule toys! "Should I get one?" I mused, in a monotone American accent, whilst raising one eybrow pensively..."O.K.."


Very slowly I knelt and placed in my $5 HK into the machine... Damn! No Virtua Fighter Figures, no forklifts or crap dice. But there was large headed Marvel characters akin to the VF Kids in Shenmue and Hello Kitty crap that I could waste my money on. In order to replicate the 'thrill' of the game I bought one. It was shit.
Having nipped into an arcade for a quick game of Space Harrier, I decided I better hot foot it towards the allocated hostelry prearranged for the hand over of the first donation of Junk for the Yard. I bought a map for $10 HK and set off, pausing to admire a large chested ginger bird on a red motorbike that seemed to be giving me the eye...

Where's all this toss leading to I hear you ask? O.K. I'll get on with it... For it was then that I saw it... That familiar swirl that causes a rush of bood to my love muscle. For here in the closest place to Dobuita that I was ever going to get, was a Dreamcast mecca. A place I was sure would be an Aladdin's cave of rare Dreamcast games, sought after peripherals and associated 'lost' merchandise!!!
I walked in heart pounding, reaching into my pocket for the Phoenix Mirror that I was willing to trade for said goods...
Only to find... that it had stopped selling Dreamcast games years ago, specialising now in PS2 only... And like a sack of sloppy shit being emptied over my freshly shaven noggin I realised that I was not in Shenmue-Land at all, but in the festering bed-sore that is Manchester. Fuck.
Oh well, back home then to face rain, weasel faced scrotes on mountain bikes in Von Dutch caps and the sad realisation that life is well and truly a motherhumping bee-atch! And that's why we all need our little white boxes to escape into, as we draw our mould infested curtains, fire up a Pot Noodle and slurp on another premium strength lager before sloping off to a sweat stained mattress and closing our eyes until anothr grey day dawns.
Goodnight children wherever you are, until next time...

Everything isn't Illuminated

Last week I made some very bold claims about (maybe) having discovered a new Dreamcast input method, similar to the Soul Calibur fishing rod malarkey. It's taken until now for me to try my theory and realise, like most of you will probably tell me via the comments function, that it was a fanciful and brave research project, but one that was ultimatley flawed due to being fucking ridiculous. It's like this:

While playing Confidential Mission I inadvertantly shot the 'CMF Headquarters' option on the title screen. For the uninitiated, this is the option that dumps you out of the game and tells the console to connect to the Hitmaker website. With my Dreamcast unconnected to the net and the option to do so dead in the water due to my somewhat overpowering lack of interest in the DC's internet capacity, the game loaded up the 'hub' screen for Confidential Mission's web pages - with a pointer on the screen. Imagine my idiotic delight when I discovered I could move the pointer around with the gun and select stuff by firing at it! My eyes glazed over and a smile usually reserved for inmates at Arkham Asylum crept across my face - for somewhere deep inside the shrivelled walnut I laughingly call a brain, a cog turned and a light bulb blazed into illumination:

"If the lightgun can register as a mouse-type device," I thought, "maybe I can use it as a pointer in OTHER GAMES!"

And so the touch paper was lit, an idea was formed...and then I did nothing. For a week. Because I couldn't be bothered. But yesterday I mustered the mental strength to dig out Quake 3 Arena and Outtrigger (I'm still convinced that should be two words, btw), loaded them up, and attempted to play them using a Keyboard and Lightgun set up!

Alas, it didn't work - but, just imagine how cool it could have been! Another Dreamcast shaped punch in the eye for the Wii. I had visions of controlling movement with the keys and aiming around with the gun: INSPIRED! Both have net options and stuff, and are mouse compatible so theoretically...you get the idea.

But it failed, and with hindsight it's not hard to see why. PLEASE NOTE: All smug/smart-arsed/stating the fucking obvious comments will be ignored with extreme prejudice. Cough.

Apart from that, this week has also seen me usher several new items into the 'Yard's ever growing collective...erm...collection:

A Fission Fishing Rod
Bought for the bargain price of 5.95 from an independant games shop in Stockport, the Fission Fishing Rod is perfect for, well, Sega Bass Fishing. Not the biggest fan of fishing I must admit, but it's a great curio. Not new to the Yard by any means - The Gagaman's aforementioned Soul Calibur stuff has given the rod as much attention as it probably warrants, but it's still great. Oh, and it was boxed in nearly perfect condition, so that's nice.

Shadowman
Got this off eBay for about 70p. Bit of a mixed bag really, this Dreamcast port. I originally played it on the N64 some 7-8 years ago and was awe-struck by the great visuals (with the Expansion Pak) and very un-Nintendoish story line (voodoo, murderers, violence etc). However, this Dreamcast version fails to impress really. For a start, Acclaim have taken out the brilliant menu music (why?!) and the graphics just don't do the system any kind of justice as it's little more than a direct port of the N64 game, albeit one with a higher resolution. The game engine seems to jerk about quite a bit as the console accesses the the disk, too. A bit of a dodgy one, if truth be told. If you really must play a dark, sinister adventure - go for Soul Reaver. And yes, these really are the lowest quality screenshots on the net:


Maken X
Very wierd. It's one of only a handful of story driven FPS games on the Dreamcast (Infact, only smelly old Soldier of Fortune springs to mind as another non-deathmatch FPS) but doesnt really feature any guns - just swords. The story is a bit fucked up and revolves around an ugly as sin AI creature that lives inside a sword (!) and you have to travel around various stages 'brain jacking' peeps and kicking ass with combinations of jumping about and stabbing them. It gets a bit dull after a while, but it looks really good and is one of the rarer DC titles floating about at the mo. All in all, a fairly decent game - and I only paid a fiver for it.


Scart Lead
Not a major haul, I know. But it's summat I've been looking for for ages: the standard RF cable is horse-shit and VGA boxes are ridiculously overpriced. So Scart is the answer and it does what it says on the tin. Simple.

I wonder if I can play Maken X with the Fishing Rod like a sword?! Red Steel? Pah! On second thoughts...

...that's enough random bollocks. For now at least.

Phase Two of Junkyard Domination

First there was this here Blog, then the YouTube account and now we bring to you...

The Dreamcast Junkyard Wiki!

That's right, you lucky little buggers you, an entire Wiki (that's a web page Dictionary of sorts for those not in the know) all about our favourite little white box. I set this up just yesterday, and kind of wish I thought of it a day earlier for the console's birthday, but never mind. I've already made a start with the sections as you will see on the front page, with an almost complete list of games released for the console in every region. The Japanese only releases list proved to be he hardest to put together (and is no where near complete) as unlike the US and UK releases, there are no complete lists out there, for all those extra games those Japanese have had over the last few years, to work from. I've also made a start profiling the development studios that made games for the Dreamcast (and what games they were). Capcom sure did do the most!

There's much, much more planned, though. I plan to get up separate profiles of EVERY Dreamcast release, including box art, screenshots, and a Youtube video to stream from it. It's going to be a long task, but I've been preparing this for months now, and just need to get the load I've done so far online. There will also eventually be profiles for every piece of hardware released, and what games each of them work with.

Obviously, I can't do all of this myself, so I'm going to be hiring staff to help me out. Want to help out on this massive project? Sign up to wikispaces.com and E-mail me with your username, and I'll sign you up to the Wiki's member list, where you will be able to add and edit articles. Before you start writing up game profiles, however, wait till I have mine all up. Here comes the naff propaganda poster!

Dirty Dark Secret...

I don't know how to tell all you faithful Dreamcast enthusiasts out there about my dark and dirty secret. Something I feel so much shame about, that it its almost ubearable. So, in order to purge myself of this guilt and self-loathing, I'm going to expose myself on the Yard. (No, being a flasher is not my secret, or at least not one that I would choose to disclose just at this moment...)
No I am going to tell you my secret.... OK, promise you won't hate me or boycott my posts? I have been... playing OTHER CONSOLES and LOVING IT. There! I said it...Now before you all gather yourselves into a big posse, equipped with flaming torches and bail round to my gaff with cries of "Burn the cheating whore!" Let me explain...
A confession of this magnitude is like being caught having a sly 'tug' over pictures of Vanessa Feltz in Woman's Weekly by your mum. So in order to clear things up as quickly as hiding those crusty tissues... Everything I have been playing is in someway related to the Dreamcast. Am I excused m'lud?
The first is Sega Heroes on (cough, choke) the PS2. Utilizing the Eye Toy gizmo you can actually find yourself on the TV screen slapping zombies in House of The Dead, dancing along with Ulala in Space Channel 5, playing along erm...without maracas to Samba De Amigo and knocking out Akira in Virtua Fighter. (Plus heading in balls in Virtua Striker), all of which I actually found very good fun!(Nice polished graphics too.) Now before you gripe to me about the PS2's lack of originality and riding off the back of the Dreamcast's former glories, I know all this. Yes I am a fickle twat! Plus the afore-mentioned console was in the house anyway, belonging to the three gingers that live with me. (Honest...)




The next guilty pleasure came at my brother-in-law's, courtesy of Microsoft's Dreamcast rip-off the Xbox. Whilst thumbing through the Dreamcast section of my local Gamestation, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, in the two for Twenty Pound section, House of the Dead 3.
Now, not being available (sadly) for the Dreamcast, but the third game in the only franchise that I sometimes pay to play in arcades, I felt compelled to try it out. I bought the sucker and then hunted for a light gun on eBay. Result! a £2.50 steal at 'Buy Now' price. I clicked on 'confirm bid' only to find the fuckers were charging £12.50 for postage (Doh!)
Anyhoo, having found an excuse to go round and give my bro-in- law a 'present' The gun and the game were really for him. No really... I set up his 'Box, calibrated the gun and got ready to play! The graphics were lush and even (dare I say it) a fair bit of a step forward from the Dreamcast HOTD2 (yes I know I should have a red hot poker shoved up me jacksy for even thinking it but it's true...) Having said that, the gameplay was no different and as usual with HOTD all the character and monsters from the original game were replicated. Stil buckets of red blood (as opposed to green) was refreshing.


At my Light House over the summer, one of the ginger's mates turned up with a PSP. Now all those who know me well, will understand that the Treamcast is my favourite 'portable' games console, (which deserves a post of it's own) but I thought I would give the PSP a whirl. The main reason was that the game he had for it was Virtua Tennis. Despite being a tad small and fiddly for an old duffer like myself, it was a fairly straight forward port, and let's face it, a great game is a great game, whether its been ported to another console or not. When I allowed him to play VT2 on the Dreamcast, he was so impressed he pledged to pick up the console and original game from Gamestation.
Thus, I had restored my Karma, tweaked the balance of the Cosmic Order and enlisted a new Dreamcast fan from a generation who only knew about the Sony/Microsoft bastard's fare!
Still racked with guilt about cheating on my little white box, I decided to pledge to exclusively to never cheat again and buy (the much viewed on Youtube, but never played on the Dreamcast...) Space Channel 5. And guess what? I LOVE IT! And on that slightly gay bombshell, I shall bid you farewell and wait over night and see whether my house is torched by angry Yardites...
Big gay love to you all!