Dreamcast Supporter Wronged By Next Gen Bullies!!!

Long time Dreamcast Junkyard supporter, friend, appreciator of Retro consoles and hard working blogger Caleb is also a fan of 'webcomics'. Recently he found this 'tribute' to our favourite console mentioned in webcomic 'Punks and Nerds', and featured it in the excellent Hunyak Blog. I then blatantly stole it and posted it here! Enjoy, and thanks again Caleb...

Dreamcast Delights... Daytona USA 2001 vs. SF Rush 2049

It's difficult to know where to start on this post. I wish I could bring you some earth shattering news from the world of the Dreamcast. Some undiscovered nugget of information about our favourite console. A secret development overheard in the Sega boardroom. I wish I'd found a whacky piece of promotional mechandise or some video of a never seen advertisement, but sadly... I can't.

Instead I'll just bring you up to speed with my most recent Dreamcast purchases. Some good, some great and some on which the verdict is still out....

O.K. here goes... first off Daytona USA 2001. As those three of you who regularly read this blog will know, this item was on my Christmas wish list. The last title in a longstanding franchise by Sega, this game originally started as an arcade favourite that was experienced in a double car shaped cabinet, replete with seats, steering wheels and pedals. The best way to play was to sit next to a friend and compete against them, eyes locked on the screen ahead.

Most racing sims are either Rally based or Formula One style competitions. Daytona transports us into the world of Nascar, a sport largely enjoyed by those Americans who's other favourite pastimes include playing banjos, square dancing, going to the rodeo and marrying cousins. Basically it consists of loads of high powered super-cars doing endless circuits of a fairly uninteresting track at high speed. The biggest excitement in Nascar, is caused by metal crunching fatalities, as one car smashes into another causing a multiple pile up.
In Daytona USA 2001, you can race up to 60 other cars, and tactical bumping and bashing give the game a combatative feeling.

Tomleecee has written a comprehensive review of this game, which you can read by clicking on the review section on the side bar of the page. My experience is that it's a nice little title, but is basically a polished re-hash of it's Saturn predecessor. The graphics are smoother, in fact I'd go as far to stay stunning. There are a few new extra tracks as an incentive for those who are loyal to the franchise, but basically there's not a lot that separates it from the original arcade experience. The cars have a little too much 'drift' for my liking and I slide all over the track unless I slow right down. Bah!





I'd waited for ages for this game, which I ordered from Chips, a nice little independent game store with branches dotted around these fair isles. I payed £10, which although a very decent price tag compared to it's seven year old £40 release cost, is still a lot to pay for a Dreamcast game these days. I like it well enough, but I'd hyped it up so much in my own mind, that it was going to inevitably disappoint, and if I'm honest I prefer it's Saturn predecessor. Oh well!

Now having moaned about having payed £10 for a game, I couldn't moan about paying £2...
Particularly as it was for the most excellent San Francisco Rush 2049. This title is quite a rarity, a futuristic racer set in that most hilly of cities. This is a truly fantastic title, one which shows the true potential of the Dreamcast, fabulous handling, breathtaking speed and is graphically amazing...

A nice array of futuristic cars is on offer which can be tweaked to the players tastes in terms of handling, paint job, mannual or automatic transition and so on. Several different circuits are available, all with almost vertical drops, as your car hurtles through the 'Frisco' of 2049. There are a variety of secret shortcuts to discover which are vital to shaving seconds off the car's lap times and a necessity if you want to beat the punishing A.I. racers you are competing against.

By accessing the secret routes you can also collect gold and silver coins, giving the game a nice arcade flavour. Now, I've mentioned that the cars really fly around the tracks. The speeds at which they travel could rival 'Need For Speed' in terms of velocity. But these cars really fly. Literally! As you come over a particularly steep hill, your car can literally 'spread it's wings' and fly for a certain distance and of course, without friction the cars can move faster, again giving the driver an advantage over his competitors...

As well Single Player racing, and Practise Mode, where you can race against your own 'ghost car', learning track layout and familiarising yourself with the secret routes, there is a multi-player option where you can battle up to four friends. But it doesn't stop there. 'Stunt Mode' inan arena that allows you to perform jumps, spins, somersaults and turns to gain as many points as possible against clock.

'Battle Mode' sees your car equipped with such things as battering rams, guided missiles, plasma cannons, rocket launchers, and so on. Racing against friends is fun. Blowing them up as they are about to pip you to the post is even better! If you ever see this game, buy it. Scour eBay, Gamestation or whatever trade in game shop is in your area. You won't be disappointed.
Plus let's not forget the on-line capacity of this game. Let's not forget that this essential feature of the Wii, XBox 360 and the PS3 was happening back at the dawn of this millenium, courtesy of Sega, courtesy of the Dreamcast.

O.K. what about a £1 Dreamcast bargain? This little baby is the MP3DC. It allowed the potential of the Dreamcast to be explored further, and back in the day if you had your Dreamcast up to your stereo, this neat CD would allow you to store up to a hundred tracks in a personal playlist, meaning that the Dreamcast could DJ at your party...

How fucking great is that?

He Gave His Life...So That The Dreamcast Could Live....

Now those of you who are aware of my other blogging endeavours will know that I completely plagiarised this great website by creating the 'Saturn Junkyard'. No more needs to be said about this blatant inferior copy, because it was a cowardly rip off of Tom's excellent idea. However, it has spawned one wonderful discovery... That of the man who gave his very life for the Dreamcast. Introducing Segata Sanshiro, the actual humanised form of Sega's next best console, the Saturn. Yes this living, breathing, greasy haired ninjitsu LEGEND, gave up his very being so that the Dreamcast might light up our dreary worlds.
What you see above is ACTUAL documentary footage of Segata Sanshiro saving the headquarters of Sega Japan on the eve of the launch of the Dreamcast. Those eagle-eyed watchers amongst you will notice the familiar orange swirl, which allows me the tangential link to post this video within these hallowed walls.
But for those of you who, like myself are moved to tears by the heroic act of this great man, need not worry.
For at the end of the video you will see actual footage of Segata Sanshiro in heaven, with the baby Jesus and Buddha.
Right now I bet he's chilling out with such departed loved ones as Jimi Hendrix, Ghandi, Plato, Lady Diana and Fred Elliot. We love you Segata Sanshiro, you will live in our hearts forever.

(P.S. For a full rendition of Segata's wonderful theme tune, visit the other Junkyard).

New games, new sticks, new buttons.

It's been quite a while since I've posted here hasn't it? That'll be because last week was give-us-all-your-coursework week at Uni, but now I have some time off, which = quality time with what is currently the most modern console in my household (since I sold my GameCube, and haven't got a Wii yet), along with the new bits I have brought back for it from my trip to New York over the last week of 2006.

So how did I even find any Dreamcast stuff anyhow? Pure luck, actually. Th 1st day we woke up in New York, after pissing about with the hotel who had lost our suite, we popped down to Greenwich Village, our favorite area of the city. Unlike the Rolex selling tramps and bright lights of Times Square, this lower down area is not only a lot quieter, but has a lot of great unique shops tucked away. After popping into an small Irish bar for a proper Breakfast, walking down one road I spotted a sign about an import retro shop, with a little map of where it had moved to. For those who may be interested, the address is 202 East 6th Street.

Anyway, we finally found the shop, which was rather small but very well packed with potentially thousands of games stacked up to the ceiling, and an old Mario statue standing out front, that some Japanese family were having heir photo taken with. The first thing you see as you walk in is NINTENDO WII ONLY ONE IN STOCK BIG FAT BUNDLE $500, but as soon as you went around one of it's many corners you came across a wall with about 5 shelfs of hundreds of American Dreamcast games. Yikes! On closer inspection, about half were 2nd hand and half were sealed, but a lot of them were multiple copies of the same game. For example, they must of had at least 50 copies of Coaster Works. Basically, most of it was junk. I did however fish out 3 games I did want which were cheap: Atari Anniversary Edition for $15 (about $8), Illbleed sealed for $10 (£6), and Floigan Bros for just $8 (about a £4).

They also had a shelf of DC games behind glass that were all gooduns, like Typing of the Dead and Outrigger, but were all $25, which is roughly more than I could get them on Ebay anyway. Lastly, there was a glass cabinet full of Japanese games, including one shelf for Dreamcast ones, which were mostly games you can get cheap anyway, like Sega Rally 2, or games that were pretty darn expensive, such as Under Defeat for $90! Ouch. I at least got one thing from this cabinet, and that was Puyo Puyo Sun for my Saturn for $20 (£12), because I wanted to try out that import cart I have had for years.

The shop had a lot of stuff I wanted (including just about every good Neo Geo Pocket game ever), but they were far too over priced with a lot of their games, obviously basing them on the highest prices they go for on Ebay.

One last Dreamcast thing I did actually pick up was a fighting controller for $15. It's third party, but the only time I had seen a controller like this for the DC was one released in Japan by ASCII, which sells for a lotta money. This one is pretty much the same thing, but a lot cheaper. Score!

For starters, it is laid out just like the arcade stick, with the shoulder buttons replaced with the Z and C buttons at the front. This makes the controller very useful for six button fighters like Street Fighter III,. hence the name. It also makes it look a lot like the controllers for Sega's earlier systems, especially thanks to the shape and size of it. Example below (sadly I don't have a six-button Mega Drive pad to compare with, but it's good enough):

Also notice how the VMU sticks out of it. It has one slot, so what about if you want rumble? It's built in! Oh yes. And if you don't want to use the rumble there's a switch to turn it off, if you like. There is also a turbo and clear button, although I haven't tried these out yet. The plastic feels a bit cheap, and the d-pad isn't on par with the arcade stick for fighting games, Also, games that use the analogue stick only won't work with it. It's still a good alternative if you can find one, and also quite nice for playing emulators. Reconfig the controls on Smash Pack and you could have the excat same layout as on the original Mega Drive controller!

Speaking of arcade controllers, I now have two of 'em. I didn't drag this 2nd back from America, however, but it was the first thing I saw in the window of GameStation as I visited it not long after arriving back home, and it was boxed for a measly £13. The one I've had since 2000 didn't have a box and cost me £30, but even that's cheaper than you'd have to pay for one online, because they're so heavy the postage goes through the roof. This new one isn't in as nice condition as mine, but at least it hasn't rusted up at all like mine. Here's a photo of the two sitting together in harmony:

Elaborating on the games I brought back, Atari Anniversary is a complication of about 13 of their old arcade games, all with plenty of options and features, and a bunch of artwork and interviews to round it all off. It's a very nicely made collection, with all the games perfectly recreated. Tempest is additive as hell, too.

Illbleed is a unique take on the survival horror genre in which you are in a horror theme park where you win money for not dying, which isn't easy as they throw just about everything they can at you, from mad chainsaw men to a huge, vampire Sonic that vomits rings. I'm NOT kidding. The game has you keeping track of all six of your senses (yes, you do see dead people), pumping yourself with pain killers, popping to the hospital now and hen and even listening to a cassette of whales to calm your character down from everything that's out to make you jump. It's pretty hard stuff, and features voice acting that rivals that of the first Resident Evil, but it looks great for it's age and is yet another reason why the Dreamcast is the most "dare-to-be-different" console of the last generation. Well worth a go, I've posted a video to give you an idea of it's awesomeness. You know, there was a plan for this to be remade for the Box, along with Blue Stinger, but they got canceled, so there both still Dreamcast exclusives! HA!



Oh, and that purple haired girl in the trailer? You play her wearing nothing but mud near the end of the game. ZOMG NAKED CHEAT. Again, I'm not kidding.

Floigan Bros, as Tomleecee has previously pointed out, is absolutely fantastic. Even now, this is probably the most cartoon like in game graphics ever produced. You can cel shade all you like, but if you really want that classical Looney Tune look in your game, make it bouncy, which this is in spades. In a medium where everyone is striving for realism, it's takes real innovation to do the opposite and take game visuals into a direction that has rarely been done in 3D without resorting to pre-rendered footage (as great as those cut scenes in Stupid Invaders looked, it wasn't ingame). Gameplay wise there is a lot to take in, and Moige is always craving for attention. I swear I've played that high five game with him too many times to count now. It still is, however, a must buy.

Remember that tutorial mode that Tom mentioned? Well, thanks to the game running at 50HZ (which is a first for a NTSC game), I've recorded it and plopped it on YouTube for you to see in all it's cartoon glory!



With those three new American games added, my collection of imports is looking rather healthy now, and almost filling a whole row on me shelf! I can fit 15 PAL games in a row on there, but 30 NTSC, because of tthe thinner, regular CD cases. Lovely.