A Dreamcast SD Card Adaptor!

The Dreamcast homebrew scene never fails to surprise me. Not content with developing games and game ports for the system, we now have a piece of homebrew Dreamcast hardware on the way via those chaps over at dreamcast.es! Here's the translated article from DCemu:

"After turning several months, we've assembled an adapter to connect an SD card for the Dreamcast port of the link. The truth is that the speed is amazing and we already have a library to use. More info on our wiki.

But for the production of a few adapters and selling, we need to know how many people would be interested. Cost about 20 € with shipping to SPAIN (+10 € for some foreign countries) and sent with a CD with a program that will be able to exchange files with VMU BINS and launch from the SD card.

The prices have been changed to make them accessible to the world, remember that this is not done for profit but for the common good. For this reason we have reset the price originally agreed to cover costs of materials, and assembly time.

Later we will use the library and implemented quickly to a pager for the big games of AES4ALL, load / save snapshots DCaSTaway all emulators and ROMS can be loaded from the SD card.

Reason for development

The Dreamcast has support CD / GD, and visual memory card (VMU). The first one is read-only, and the latter has clear shortcomings: transmission speed and size. For this reason, are always looking for an alternative storage unit that saves the main support (save states) and other files, such as the configuration in our emulators. For a time it was speculated that the port expansion (G2) where the currently connected network adapter (or modem) is ideal for access via the new peripherals. But unfortunately, its architecture and requirements are far beyond our reach. Therefore, the serial port of an alternative that, while not enjoying all the privileges of the port allows for expansion if the most part, our wishes for a new carrier additional capacity and speed. This port allows us to use an SD card adapter that are usually used in mobile devices such as phones, MP3 players, etc..

Key Features

* Good transfer rate in both reading and writing (about 500 KBytes / s).
* Very low average access time for reading (a few milliseconds).
* Support for cards up to 2 GBytes of SDS (not tested with larger cards).
* Loading binary from the card as a backup utility dcload and to / from VMU."

What an amazing development, I wouldn't of thought something like this was even possible! It even uses the extension port at the back of the console that was barely used! Imagine having all of your VMU save files in one place! I know in my case at least it would be major handy as I have around 15 VMU's worth of save files and it's hard keeping it all organized. Imagine being able to run emulators without having to keep burning CD-R's? This is one of the most exciting things to happen to the scene in a long time, and the fact there are going to sell it for rather cheap (cheaper than it'll cost to make) is highly commendable.

Chui is currently looking to see who's interested in one when they're ready, so if you'd like one of these reply at either the Dreamcast.es or DCemu forums. I know I'm putting myself for one!

Bottom. Barrel. Scraping Of...

There have been some blindingly good articles here at the Dreamcast Junkyard lately. Obscure games reviews, downloads of new home brew and modded games, custom made cover art, great videos and amazing collections to drool over.

It's not always been the case though, dear lord no! There was a time when we celebrated the most obscure of Dreamcast related paraphernalia... Towels, boxer shorts, tissues, bikes, even 1980's shower curtains with swirls coincidentally reminiscent of the Dreamcast logo would get a mention. You know, the sort of stuff that the boys over at UK Resistance go nuts for... Stuff like... this...


We, or more accurately I, would be scratching round in vain for post-worthy material. Heck, I was once desperate to post video of the 'Dreamcast episode' of South Park. The makers, (Matt Stone and Trey Parker) weren't happy about their show being shown on the internet without them making money, so they pulled all episodes off the sites that were showing them, and then sued them or had them shut down. (The mingey twats...)
Stupidly undeterred, I decided to post a very un-funny synopsis of the programme from Wikipedia. It was a definite posting low point...

Which leads me nicely into this latest journey into barrel scraping Dreamcast obscurity... In an attempt to reign in my scattered PSP collection, I summoned the ginger children and sent them off to the hidden bowels of Krishna Towers to see what games/boxes/manuals etc. they could find. Virtua Tennis was there (hooray!) but the Powerstone Collection is lost... (DOH!)

What did turn up amongst the chaos ( and I swear I'd never seen it before...) was this though...

Great photography don't you think?

The 2003 GamesMaster Cheat Guide. "The best cheats for the biggest games of the year..." boasts the cover. And would you believe it? That most loyal of publications was still printing Dreamcast cheats a good two years after Sega had pulled the plug on it's final console... Admittedly there are only three games included, (Cannon Spike, Phantasy Star Online Version 2.0 and Rez...) but they proudly printed the Dreamcast logo on the front of their little booklet and gave hope and comfort to devastated Dreamcast fans two years before the birth of the Dreamcast Junkyard became our salvation!

*Voice of Rolf Harris* "Can you tell what it is yet???"

It is now that my little post would have ended, if it were not for a most miraculous discovery....

On the back of the book, was a full page advert for a business entitled, "The CheatMistress Presents: Cheats Unlimited" apparently "compiled by gaming experts". Again, the Dreamcast logo was proudly displayed. Now believe it or not, as recently as 2003, many people did not have Broadband or even 'dial up' Internet. People phoned "cheat lines", listening out for hints on a pre-recorded tape and furiously scribbling them down, missing something and having to phone again at premium rate, before finally being able to move forward towards completing a game... And we were fucking grateful for the privelige...

Yeah? You saying my pictures are shite??? Step outside yer bastards!

I looked at the number... Surely it must be discontinued now? - Perhaps they had sold the number on to one of those sexy chat lines - I might be able to ring it, and 'crack one off' whilst some over-weight, 56 year old trollop smoking a fag, pretended breathlessly to be a 21 year old Thai student whose clothes had just fallen off - (and when Mrs. K checked the phone bill and saw the incriminating number, I could 'innocently' state that I was checking out it's integrity for DCJY research purposes... heh, heh, heh!) *Harumph!*

But instead I found myself weeping with joy as the number proved to be a still active 'cheat line', with FAQs, hints, cheats and walkthroughs for - you guessed it - the whole fucking A-Z of Dreamcast games!

In 2009!!!!

I tried it for 'survival tactics' to use in 'Alone In the Dark-The New Nightmare' and the advice was great! (The voice of the lady on the other end of the phone talking about the game, was probably sexy enough to 'crack one off' to as well, but *Ahem!* I digress...)



To the evil, fan-hating, tightwad, soulless, killjoy bastards that closed down the Dreamcast servers and technical support elements of the Sega website not too long ago, get with the programme! THAT IS REAL SUPPORT!

(Surely the Jedi-like, 'Gamesmaster' spirits of Dominik Diamond, Dexter Fletcher and Patrick Moore must have combined to keep this business afloat throughout the turbulent first decade of this new Millenium!?) Halle-fucking-luia!



Cheats Unlimited, we at the Dreamcast Junkyard salute you! Now has anyone got a post more tenuous, vaguely linked, piss poor and unlikely than that?

Ever wanted to own over 500 mostly sealed Japanese DC games?

Well now you can for only 7,499 Euros (that's £7014, or about £13 a game) plus 149 Euros shipping! I spotted this insane buy it now on Ebay from a French shop there. Oh, and the seller isn't taking any offers. There is only one small photo of the massive lot, but the auction also has a list of everything featured in order of their release, phew! Even with this lot not everything is there: I noticed Trigger heart Excelcia's not there, oooh!

Apparently many special edition box sets are not pictured but included, though. Wouldn't it be great to just sit on a floor with this lot like a little kid at Christmas, unwrapping all those seals and sticking it online just to piss off all those hardcore collectors who don't like to play their games! Well ok, there are probably at least 100 games in there that are just anime schoolgirl dating nonsense, but still!

I found some other pretty bizarre auctions on there, including a job lot of 50 rumble packs. What in the hell could you do with 50 rumble packs? Actually, don't answer that.

You know what the real crazy part is, though? If this set of games was the equivalent of a couple quid a game, I'd be very tempted.

Des Jeux Sur Dreamcast

Well bugger me. I went into the O'Neill shop in Portsmouth earlier today to see if they had any cheap clobber (they did'nt) and what do I spot on display? In the middle of the store? Only fecking Dreamcast games:

Yes, I got a few funny looks taking this photo with my phone

Granted, it was only 3 (sealed) copies of Championship Surfer and they were probably only there to make up some kind of retro chic display...but c'mon people - DC games in public view...in 2009! Amazing.

Anyway, seeing as it's been an aeon since I last added anything new to my Dreamcast collection, I went on eBay last week and made a few bids for games. Yep, games. Not laser pens or DC branded personal enema machines - games. And you know what? I actually won a few auctions! I was just as shocked, dear reader.

Whilst the games I got are hardly amazing, they're ones I've been after for a while but rarely surface:

The Next Tetris

OK, it's Tetris. On the Dreamcast. There's not much more to it than that - you have to make lines of blocks and they disappear (that description is solely for the 2.5 people on Earth who haven't played the thing in one guise or another). The 'Next' bit in the title refers to the slightly new mode they've tacked on that changes the behaviour of the blocks somewhat. In 'normal' Tetris, the blocks fall down, you make them vanish and the blocks above just hang there in place creating annoying gaps below them. In 'Next' Tetris, the fallen blocks will attach themselves to ones of a similar colour and become a whole unit. If a cluster falls that is made of two different colours, only the colour that doesn't attach itself to blocks already there will fall further down into any gaps. That sounds massively complicated, I know - but it really isn't.

Apart from the two main games ('Next' and normal old Tetris), there isn't much to write home about. There's a Marathon mode where you have to get rid of blocks that are already at the bottom of the screen and a self-explanatory Practice mode too. Annoyingly, The Next Tetris doesn't support VGA (even trying the old cable swap trick won't get you past the intro screens) so if you're using a HD TV expect to play in N64-style blur-o-vision, but the sound track is quite good (especially the techno remix of the classic Tetris tune). To be fair, there's not really a lot wrong with The Next Tetris - it is exactly what it sets out to be and nothing more - a perfectly acceptable port of a classic puzzler. It also appears that the NTSC version featured some sort of online functionality, whereas the option was left out of the PAL incarnation. Not that it makes much difference these days.

There was something slightly more interesting in the box, however:

It's one of those 'future releases' things that you occasionally find in the back section of the jewel case. Fairly standard stuff, except for the inclusion of an intriguing title that I've never heard of before:

Peacemakers? From looking at the tiny screenshot, it could have become what we now know as Conflict Zone, but still quite interesting. Sort of. Oh, and there's Arcatera and Heroes of Might and Magic 3, too:

Alas, it's all in French and I'm an ignorant English pig, so fuck knows what it actually says.

Mr Driller

Another puzzle game, Namco's Mr Driller is something of a diversion from Soul Calibur - and then some. Basically, you play a super-deformed miner who has to dig down a shaft full of garishly coloured blocks. Dig under other blocks and they'll collapse on top of you and smash your pathetic body to a pulp. You also have to collect air tanks in order to stay alive the deeper you go into the crust. Again, my description leaves a lot to be desired, but it's really simple once you get the hang of it, and knowing which blocks to 'drill' becomes a test of strategy...dig in the wrong place and you'll get crushed by the subsequently falling ceiling. As the box-guff says, it takes a few minutes to learn how to play, but it'll take you bastarding ages to master, old chum (sic).

Took this myself. Can you tell?

Graphically, it's pretty basic - in fact at one point my Dreamcast went out for a fag whilst I was playing, but the charm here is in the simplistic nature of the visuals. It's highly stylised and borderline camp, but you can't help but love the overly twee characters and simplistic game play. One thing that slightly puzzled me was the bizarre soundtrack - it morphs from banging bass lines to Tokyo subway jingles in the space of a few seconds and then back again. Like I said - fucking weird. Thankfully, Mr Driller is fully VGA compatible so there's no need to mess about swapping cables over and it features several game-modes, although to be honest there's not much difference between them as they all boil down to drilling holes down the same identical shaft time and time again. Ultimately though, it's a solid puzzler and like Tetris, never promises anything it can't deliver. Good stuff all round.

Nightmare Creatures 2

Not a game we've ever mentioned here at the Junkyard, Nightmare Creatures 2 is a title Konami brought to our favourite box of wonder in favour of International Superstar Soccer or Castlevania*. Should be mind-blowingly good then, eh? Erm...not quite. Nightmare Creatures 2 is basically a 3D roaming beat 'em up that casts you in the role of a nutter trying to escape a mental asylum. Oh, and you've got an axe to chop other nutters' heads off with. There's some shitty back story attached to it (which probably also explains why the main protagonist is possibly the least likeable character ever to appear in a game), but in all fairness if you ever play this rotting sack of crap you'll be too stunned by the downright hideousness of the thing to care. That's right folks, Nightmare Creatures 2 is putrid.

"One skinny latte, sir. That'll be £2.30 please..."

Where to start? The graphics can only be described as PS One-like in their quality (above), and I'm not exaggerating: the character models are like Lego men, the floors and ceilings morph and tear as you shamble around and the thing is cursed with pixellation that wouldn't look out of place in DOOM running on a 386. Quite simply horrid. There is an option to turn on a graphical filter, but all that does is turn a PSX game into an N64 game. Elsewhere, the sound effects and music are non-existent and the controls are baffling: you run around with the analogue stick - fair enough - but for some reason the trigger buttons only become active when an enemy is in the immediate vicinity meaning you can't scroll through your collected items unless some badly animated box-man is trying to eat your face. Urgh. I could only play this turgid mess for about 20 minutes before I had to throw up, so you probably won't be surprised to read that I now have a new 'worst game on the Dreamcast.' Move over Army Men: Sarges Heroes, there's a new kid in town...

* Granted, Konami only published this dross, but you get the idea.