Lost Bleemcast video (and more!)

I was sorting through all my Dreamcast videos sitting on my harddrive (some of them take up a lot of space you know), I found a piece of Bleem footage that I had forgot to upload to the youtube account, so here it is: Time Crisis Project Titan running (poorly) on the infamous emulator. You can't use the light gun, the music doesn't play and it crashes after the first area of the first stage...but it's quite amusing to watch just for the skipping voices.



So this post doesn't look quite so meek, here is a collection of some of the best Dreamcast related videos I could find recently.

A Space Channel 5 live dance show at E3 2000. Not just another excuse for seeing a girl dressed up in Ulala gear, honest. Sega's set up at E3 2000 was simply magical, wasn't it?

A Saturn and a Dreamcast slagging each other off. Like that ancient Dreamcast Vs PS2 one, sort of.

A early tech demo that teases us with Scud Race models. Why did we never get a port of that game?

Hot naked Dreamcast porn. Actually, it's a video tutorial on calibrating your GD-Rom drive.

Dreamcast Hip-Hop from 'The Big Cheese' Sure beats that song Mega64 did, even if he is singing in in his kitchen.

A run through the "What's Shenmue?" demo. With narration that points out the subtle differences. Worth watching just for the cameo by Sega executive Hidekazu Yukawa.

Mario Kart 64 (just about) running on the Dreamcast. These emulators are just getting more ambitious, aren't they?

A expansive guide to getting good at Street Fighter 3rd Strike. Brilliantly edited with clips of Shenmue.

Gamma Powered!

Back in May last year, I introduced a website called 'Unseen 64,' a cool little place where they post pictures and gameplay details of games that either never saw the light of day, or were changed radically before being released. For some reason hidden deep within the cavernous emptiness of my pre-fabricated heart, details of beta versions and unreleased games captivate me with some kind of morbid fascination, and as such I often check the hallowed pages of Unseen 64 to see if they've added any new Dreamcast screens. And guess what?

They have:

World's Scariest Police Chases: Deadly Pursuit
Played the PSX version to death with my flatmates when I was at University, and it was a pretty decent craic. Especially after several litres of Lidl cider and a couple of tokes on the bong. The unreleased DC version looks like it could've kicked it's ass though - the graphics are way better:



Thunderboats
Thunderboats appears to be an arcade style speedboat racer very much in the vein of Hydro Thunder. Indeed, if you view the promo video, I'm almost certain you can hear the 'engine power down' sound effect used in Midway's blistering racer...



Galleon
Eventually released on the Xbox, Galleon was intended for an earlier Dreamcast launch and in it's original form probably would have garnered the recognition it deserved. As it is, it's just an also-ran Xbox game clogging up bargain bins around the country:



PBA Bowling 2001
Bowling. The real life game, for me, is just a tiresome way of interrupting a good drinking session so why anyone would want to actually play a computerised version is beyond me. Maybe the developers had the same thoughts and duly pulled the plug on PBA Bowling. Grapics look alright though...



Picassio
Picassio is one of the most enigmatic and simultaneously interesting games that was promised but never arrived on the Dreamcast. You were meant to play a sort of lycra-clad cat burglar who broke into museums and stately homes etc to pinch priceless works of art. A bit like Hudson Hawk, only good. Here's a (slightly grainy) video taken from Unseen 64's YouTube page:

Capconmen

Capcom – undoubtedly one of the Dreamcast’s staunchest allies – brought some superb games to the swirl-shaped table. You only have to look at stuff like the Marvel Vs Capcom fighters, Resident Evil Code Veronica and Power Stone to see that when it came to the DC, they had their fingers on the pulse. It is for this reason alone that I decry Capcom releases like Dino Crisis. Why? Three little words for ya: Shitty PlayStation Port.

Look at Code Veronica. Look at it! It’s frigging awesome! The graphics are some of the best on the Dreamcast, so why does Dino Crisis look like it was dragged backwards through a hedge before being thrown up on and then shat on by Brian Blessed? I’m getting ahead of myself here, but come on people! The DC is capable of so much more and Capcom should be shown up as the money-grabbing twats they are for releasing such a shoddy looking cash-in on our favourite defunct console.

But before I really start laying in to Dino Crisis, let’s view the whole picture.

Dino Crisis was originally a PlayStation game very much in the vein of Resident Evil – you know the sketch: fixed camera angles, badly animated characters, appalling voice acting and laughable cut scenes. These things are all present and correct in Dino Crisis, but where Resi had shambling zombies and stuff, Dino Crisis has been out and employed a gang of immigrant dinosaurs. Possibly for below minimum wage, judging by the game’s production budget. And that’s about as complex an explanation I can give: it’s Resident Evil with dinosaurs. You play as a sassy female member of a sort of rescue team (hmmm…S.T.A.R.S, anyone?) dispatched to a remote island to investigate the disappearance of an undercover agent who has vanished whilst trying to infiltrate a dodgy laboratory. Once there (and after the team gets – surprise! – split up), you get to explore the deserted facility, find keys, open doors (by using the most contrived key/code set up I’ve ever encountered in a game, I hasten to add), stumble across half dead lab workers who hand you vital items before kicking the bucket, and shoot/run away from various time displaced dinosaurs.

The old Resident Evil-style loading screens also make an appearance, but you get the added bonus of being able to see your character now, instead of being a disembodied head clunking up the stairs.

Quite why Capcom decided to release Dino Crisis on the Dreamcast is something of a mystery to me. From the outset you can tell it’s a direct port from an inferior platform with virtually no attempt at making use of any of the extra system resources available. The options screens are bargain basement, the music and sound effects akin to what you would expect from a Megadrive game and the graphics…well, lets have a looky…

The game is viewed from a third person perspective, but the locations switch from fully rendered 3D to 2D pre-renders depending on where you are. For example, in some rooms the camera will follow you as you wonder about, ducking under pipes and around corners; whilst in other rooms it just stays static because the background just appears to be nothing more than a low-res drawing. I may be wrong here (as I usually am in these matters – as I’m sure some smug cunt will gladly tell me via the comments thingy), but that’s just how it looks to me. The characters themselves are bereft of any real detail and are generally quite angular – nowhere near the standard of Code Veronica or even Blue Stinger’s protagonists. Pick-ups take the form of rotating floating boxes no matter what they are, so health, ammo etc all look the same until you acquire them and can see what you’ve got in the ‘items’ subscreen. It’s a bit like Deal or No Deal but without the Lovecraftian horror of Noel Edmonds’ goatee and strange tattoos. The map too is very antiquated – you just get a basic line drawing of the floor plan of the facility and whichever room you’re in glows blue whilst your destination glows red. Your character (who goes by the improbable name of Regina) isn’t actually shown on the map though, so it can get confusing and annoying when you’re trying to work out which door you’re meant to open to get to where you’re going. Especially when two of the three exits have raptors lurking behind them and your health and ammo are both minimal.

Look! A floating, rotating box! Wonder what's inside...

One of the remedial class puzzles. Put the fuses in the right order and press the button. Krypton Factor it ain't.

The dinosaurs don’t actually look too shabby – they move quite well but they’re just as dense as the zombies were in Resi so you can just run past them if you can’t be arsed standing there popping caps into their leathery green asses. To be honest, running past them is probably the best course of action in most cases considering the relative scarcity of ammunition and pathetic stopping power of the weapons at your disposal.

There are a few nice ideas in Dino Crisis – such as the branching storyline, the way you drip blood after being attacked and the way dinosaurs can follow you through doors so you can’t just keep being a cowardly be-atch by running away.

On the plus side, Regina's quite fit. Wonder if she's a natural red head.

However, as you’ve no doubt gathered, I’m not Dino Crisis’s biggest fan. On the 32-bit consoles it’s probably par for the course, but not on a console that has stuff like Shunmue, Nomad Soul, Code Veronica, Headhunter or even Carrier knocking about. If you want a decent adventure game, go and seek out one of those badboys. If you want a by the numbers Resident Evil clone with a shit, cliché-ridden story, poo graphics (it’s even got that weird texture-warping thing going on that most PSX games have), and acting straight out of the Barry Burton Academy of Drama and Dance then by all means have a crack at Dino Crisis.

40%

Verdict: More Barney the Dinosaur than Jurassic Park.

In the next gripping installment? Why it’s a double header! F1 Racing Championship and Spec Ops: Omega Squad. I can almost feel the testosterone welling up inside me. Fast cars AND guns? Lock and load, people – Lock and Load.

The Lost Golem is a Lost Gem

Now here's a game you most likely won't have heard of. I was going to include this as part of 'Japanese Import Oddness Part Two' (read the first one here) which i will be writing in the near future, but this game really deserves an article of it's own. I have actually owned this game since November, but have only really got around to playing it recently.

I first heard of this game while browsing through Segagaga Domain's Dreamcast write ups. Always a great place to get info on Japanese Sega releases, that. Described as a simple but clever puzzle game, I was intrigued as I do love me a good puzzle game.

So I tried to serach for more info, and came back with nothing. That was until I tried seraching for it by it's Japanese title Golem No Maigo, which gave me two excellent articles about the game by a Jeff M at his blog gogamego. The first claimed it to be "The Dreamcast's Best and Rarest Puzzler" with only around 500 copies sold, that gave a good description of the game play and features.

This was later followed by an interview with the games' developer who revealed that he was a student while producing the game, did a large lump of the work himself, and that the studio who put this out CaramelPot (who's logo looks like the Dreamcast logo stretched out) only ever made this one game before closing.

Now I just had to see this for myself. I was expecting when a copy did eventually show up it would cost a bomb like other rare games like Lack of Love, but it popped up on an Ebay shop for no more than £10, so I bought it.

Graphics wise the characters are very blocky crude models, much like those seen in Sengoku Turb, only in this case we're talking about a small team of student programmers and not the company that produced the Dreamcast's graphics chip. It makes up for the lack of any technical prowess with a very charming art style, including a beautiful colour scheme and characters you will find yourself warming up to, despite how simplistic they are. Even the instruction manual is full of cute child-like drawings of the characters. This charm comes across in the story as well, which I found a translation of at Gamefaqs...

"A Golem got his existence from sorcery conjuring the rocks and soil. The
masters of magic has come to an agreement that there would be only one of
them, nothing more. There were two peaceful countries, Pipiria and Mabel.
The kingdom of Pipiria was composed almost entirely by plains, with some
forests at the northern tip of the land. The magic sorcerers lived in that
forest during the peace time. Mabel, south of Pipiria, had an enormous lake.
On the lake, there was a wizard composing wizardry for Mabel, up on a tall
tower. One day, Pipiria was attacked by goblins and the people of Pipiria
lived in uncertainty and fear every day ever since."

The game manual also suggests that if you are the emotional type, you should get a handkerchief while playing the game. I haven't played enough of the game to see why this is yet and such emotional scenes might end up being lost to those who can't read Japanese, but with the exception of the text in the cut scenes this game can be easily played without any knowledge once you know what menu is what.

So what do you do in this game then? Well, you play as the rock golem with it's big square body and beedy little eyes, who has to guide a king who seems to be lost and has no sense of direction. In each stage you have to guide him from one door to another using walls you can push around to change his direction. You see, much like the Lemmings series of games, every time the king comes across a wall he will turn in the next possible direction, either left or right, and he will do this no matter what. Even if he is about to walk straight towards a hole.

But getting the king into the exit is not all. You also have to make sure all the walls on the stage are linked to the red wall when the level is over, so the Golem can knock them all over in one push. This is where things can get complicated as you need to adjust the walls to move the king towards the goal and link them all together once he is heading in the right path.

There are many stage elements that will complicate matters more such as pole that will make walla rotate 90 degrees, and various types of enemies that will break down walls, get in the kings way or even attempt to kill him. half of the fun comes from seeing just how many ways the king can be bumped off. If a level is driving you mad you can push a wall into him, knocking him off the stage and landing on his fat arse.

There are about 100 or so levels in total with cut scenes inbetween every 10 or so of them. Once you have conqured all of those however the game is not over. Considering what a low budget, small staffed game this was, Caramelpot sure did utilize a lot of the Dreamcast's features. There's also a two player battle mode (which I have yet to try out) but the real life expansion for this game is the stage creator, which gives you free realm to produce a level using any of the games elements and save it to your VMU, as many as you like as far as I can tell. What's more, there is a link to caramelpot's website on the disc where you could download new stages and upload your own for others to play. It's a shame the website has long since vanished as i would have loved to try out some of the user created stages.


A note must also be made for their use of the VMU screen while playing. While it has no real purpose in-game, the animations displayed throughout the game are a nice touch, with a close up of the king's face in which ever direction he is facing, as well as death and victory animations amongst other things.

So if you ever manage to come across this rare but cheap game and like a good puzzle game that will get your brain going, I would defiantly recommended this, so long as you can get over the basic visuals.