9 New Bleemcast Videos!

It's been a while, but here's a new collection of videos showing off Playstation games running in the infamous Bleemcast beta emulator. I've been picking up a lot of dirt cheap Playstation games recently from boot sales, particularly this weekend when I got a bundle of 8 discs (all with no manuals or covers) for 50p, for example, which mainly consisted of rally games, and half of them worked in the emulator. In fact, there are only a select few games that I've bought that haven't worked.

I've been buying all these not because I care for a lot of the games (I find a big percentage of the PSX's game library to be rather boring, excluding all those rare games I'll never find, like Vib Ribbon) but simply to see what one's work via the Dreamcast, and I've come to the conclusion that the emulator especially likes games by Namco, what with Klonoa, Time Crisis, Tekken 1 and 3, Ridge Racer 1, High-Spec and Type 4 and Soul Blade being on the "playable" list.

So to make up for not making one of these Bleem posts for a while, here's a heap of NINE new videos! Of course, if you own these games, don't bother watching them...just try them for yourself!

Crash Bandicoot

Now here's something you may of never expected to see: Sony's unofficial mascot (until he went multi-format some time after the Dreamcast was out of stores) on a Sega console! Crash games ain't all that original, but the first trilogy of platformers by Naughty Dog weren't too bad, really. The game works pretty darn well, too. The graphics, bar for some glitches at the title screen and company logos and some semi-transparency on the pits, are close to perfect. The sound effects are missing (which is a shame), but at least the music is intact so the game isn't completely mute. Definably worth a shot considering I paid 50p for it! I hope to hunt down Crash 2 and 3 eventually to test on it too (I already know Crash Team Racing doesn't work, however).

Compatability Rating: 4 and a half out of 5

Crisisbeat

A 2000 budget release, Crisisbeat is a scrolling beat em up with four playable characters, one of which has a slight resemblance with Ryo from Shenmue. The game works really well except for the fact that the cut scenes consist of some terribly irritating voice skipping. Also, after playing the game on the Playstation I noticed that most of the time the game runs a whole lot faster on the emulator, and when your characters runs to the next area Benny Hill music might just pop into your brain. Still, it's a mildly entertaining game that only cost me a quid.

Compatability Rating: 4 and a half out of 5

Tekken 1

Seeing as Bleem! released a disc for Tekken 3, I figured: why not try the previous installments? First off, the one that started it all. This game really hasn't aged well, at least not as well as Virtua Fighter has (as blocky and simple as it was, VF1 has a certain retro charm to it. Tekken 1 is just ugly). Still, Bleemcast seems to like it: the game's graphics are 99% perfect: all that's wrong is that the sky is always black in the very top half. There's no music either, but all the grunts and smashy effects are there. The game's not really worth it, but it's nice to see the emulator run it well..

Compatability Rating: 4 and a half out of 5

Tekken 2

..which is more than can be said for it's sequel, unfortunately. Everything seems fine enough until you get into an actual fight..and then it hits you with one of the oddest glitches I've seen in this emulator yet: the characters polygons are stretching out all over the place turning good old Heihachi into a mess of scrambling spikes. This is a real shame as everything seems to be in place: the backgrounds, sound effects, even music (although it's choppy). Oh well, some arty farty type might like it's abstractness.

Compatability Rating: 2 out of 5

Bomberman

Good thing you can always rely on Bomberman to cheer you up, especially when even a Playstation game of his works so well on this emulator. This exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin title is such because this is a remake of the original NES game, and much like Crazy Climber 2000, it lets you choose from 'modern' graphics and the original 8-bit visuals (except unlike Bomberman, Crazy Climber is shit). here's the great part: the graphics are nigh-on perfect, the sound effects are all there, and the music is there too, although it is choppy. Still, 2D games rarely work in Bleemcast, so this is darn impressive. I picked this and Tekken 1 up for £1.50 the pair.

Compatibility Rating: 5 out of 5

Soul Blade

Soul Calibur: we all know it's the greatest thing to happen to the human race since toasters were invented, but games like this can't just happen out of the blue: they have to start somewhere. Hense there was Soul Blade, the prequel to our much loved fighter on the Playstation about 3 years prior, and it still holds up well enough. As far as this emulator goes, however, it's so close but so far. Thankfully the music and sound effects are all fine, at least until you get to those dreaded cut-scene voices (which loop in a similar fashion to that in Crisisbeat, but not as severe), but while the game is perfectly playable, the textures are just not having it: most of them refuse to load until a match is over, in which as soon as the replay begins they all decide to finally show themselves...too late. If you really don't mind playing on a blank white stage with blank white characters most of the time, you have the option, but really your betting off staying with Calibur.

Compatibility Rating: 3 out of 5

Colin McRae Rally

At the time this was being prasied as the best rally game ever. I can't see what the fuss was all about here: Sega Rally was way better, but each to their own. The emulator runs this game very well, with just some texture issues here and there that mainly stand out. Instead of not loading textures, though, this game oddly loads the wrong textures. For example: some of the gravel and trees get replaced with lumps of random numbers and letters, and the Start and Finish signs are now a map of a stage. How odd. Otherwise, perfectly fine to play.

Compatibility Rating: 4 and a half out of 5

Colin McRae Rally 2.0

Now this is more like it. I can see why people loved this one, it's a huge improvement on the first installment. McRae Rally 2 was actually penned for a Dreamcast release, but was canceled, so here's the next best thing. The games music and sound effects are all there, but much like Soul Blade, the emulator has trouble loading the textures at the start of a race, it takes about 30 or so for it to adjust, and even then textures will pop on and off here and there. It;s perfectly playable, though. Just pretend it's been snowing a lot.

Compatibility Rating: 3 and a half out of 5

Intelligent Qube

Finally we have a game I don't own (it's too rare) but burnt, a puzzle title called Intelligent Qube that has you clearing blocks that are slowly rolling down the screen. It's pretty clever and well worth a look, especially when the emulator can run it so well. he graphics are very simple so they are all 100% there, and so are the sounds. Once again, the only issue is with the voice in the tutorial section, although it doesn't loop forever luckily. As the game so brilliantly says it, this game is about as "PERRRRFECT!" as emulation is gonna get on the Bleemcast beta!

Compatibility Rating: 5 out of 5

Red Ringer? Bum Stinger? Poo Finger?

Add your own title to this "Lavendar" tribute to one of my FAVOURITE Dreamcast games... Whilst this was obviously a piss take of the game, highlighting the gay relationship between Elliot and Dogs...

I loved it! Despite the homo erotic overtones, the only thing this clip did was make me want to play this horror-survival classic!

YES! I want to see Dogs in a Santa Claus suit! Yes! I want to complete this game! I'll use my *Hallowed* Blue Stinger strategy guide (Bought off eBay for a snippance).

At the end of the day, I'm open minded... If Elliot and Dogs are 'Friends of Dorothy' so be it...

If their 'man love' can help me defeat their mutual six armed mutated foes then so be it!

BRING IT ON!

Cripes! Heck! Blimey!

Fideo Friday! #4

I only went and completely missed last Friday's weekly video didn't I! Oh well, here's this weeks one, of a pair of puppet Godzillas playing Mortal Kombat Gold or something. I dunno, I'm starting to run out of content that isn't game play footage now, but this is bloody funny, with great voices. Wouldn't it of been great if there was a limited edition Godzilla Dreamcast that says "Dreeeeamcast" like that puppet does in this video? No? Oh, it's just me then.



I've been pretty busy recently mucking around with TV's and junk, and haven't gotten around to writing the articles I have planned, including one of my trip to Canterbury earlier this week where I picked up six games from their brand new Gamestation. I'll come back to you on the other stuff I've been doing..so er...wait.

Logo Painting and Loft Finding

When I got me that lovely blue cabinet to hold all my Dreamcast games, one thing sprung to mind: what if I could give it a little more Dreamcast identity? being stuffed full of games and featuring zombies and crazy taxis on top simply wasn't enough, I wanted the logo slapped along the side of it. Having not long broken up from Uni, I now have time to do all sorts of time wasting things, like make my own multi game discs (I'll come back to you lot on this), make loads of custom covers for Bleem games, and go back to some games I still haven't completed. Last week I decided to have a go at painting the Dreamcast logo on the side of my blue cabinet. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of he steps I took, so you'll just be seeing the final thing.

Now I may be a slightly arty type, but I'm no expert at painting things, so I only had a rough idea how to do this. printed off the logo nice and big, then cut it out into a stencil. Then I taped this onto the side, and with acrylic paint tried to paint into the stencil. The stencil, for a start, was on tracing paper, so it flopped all over the place so the final result was a complete mess, so I had to clean that off.

Clearly that idea didn't work, so this time I went about getting me some spray paint to do it, and stronger paper while I was at it. I waited for a sunny day, dragged the cabinet into the garden and spayed a bunch of layers into the stencil. After about 4 or 5 layers it looked white enough. The stencil was still only paper, though (I really should have used cardboard or something) so quite a bit of spray creeped through and I ended up with what looked like a ghost of the logo, all glowy. This would of been fine if it wasn't for the blobs of blue left behind by the blue tack I used to keep parts of the stencil down! I let it dry, though, and decided to tinker with it the next day.

To finish the job off, and make the logo look almost as if it came off of the side of the box art, I got some white spirit, dripped some cotton buds into it and rubbed around the letters and swirly thing until it looked a lot nicer. here is the final result of about two days work. It's not perfect but it looks fine enough for me, especially from a distance. It's the first thing you see as you walk in the room, too.

In other not very exciting news, I found some bits and bobs in the loft I forgot all about. Usually all the console boxes are kept on one side of the loft, but while sorting out boxes for video players we're going to sell, a black sack full of Dreamcast boxes was found that I didn't realize was even up here! These included one for a controller, a arcade stick, a VMU and and a keyboard...with the keyboard still in it. These were boxes for the first pieces of Dreamcast kit I brought along with my system way back in 1999. The keyboard was my original one and had been stuffed up here for some reason and is in nasty shape from so much use back before I had a PC and used the consoles internet connection to write on my old website Segagaga, which was essentially a blog (before the term 'blog' existed) about my Dreamcast purchases only without any kind of layout (literally, it was just text). I would go onto the Chu Chu Rocket chat rooms, set the web address and a shortcut key, and just plaster the link everywhere. People naturally ignored it. Memories~

I'm taking photos of boxes! I must be bored!

But Dreamcast boxes weren't all I found. Also stuffed up there long forgotten about were some HUGE Sonic promo cut outs from the good old days when Sonic was hugely popular with real people, not furrie FREAKS who want to have sex with him. These probably date date back around 1992/93. I plonked a Dreamcast and Sonic figure next to them to show you the sheer scale of them. They are now sitting in my room, where I can wake up to them staring at me everyday. Just like my childhood. No, I never wanna grow up.

36 inches of AWESOME.

The good old days. Sega ruled the world in 1993.

The Sonic 2 board still has it's flap at the back, so you could sneak this into a shop, kick that Playstation 3 sign out of the way and make the public believe shops have started to stock good games again. The other board had it's feet ripped off, so I crudely taped them back on. I remember when a Sega bus visited my scouts club, and gave us Sonic toddles for our ties. That was the scale of how massive Sega were back then, they made Sonic TODDLES.
More coming soon from the Gagaman: New Bleem footage, the wonders of VGA and custom multi-game disc making.