Competition: Win a Sealed Copy of Shenmue!

We've teamed up with online store Retroplayers and Shenmue super site TeamYu (or rather, they've teamed up with us...or something) to offer you - yes you - the opportunity to win a brand new and sealed copy of PAL Shenmue. This is totally unopened so if you win, the first greasy finger prints that will ever be laid on that glorious sparkling GD-Rom will be yours!

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is go to the official entry page here and enter the competition. That's it! No questions, no tests, no 'tell us your favourite Dreamcast moment' nonsense. Just go to Retroplayers and enter for a chance to win this awesome prize. And while you're at it, you could also go and check out the Retroplayers store, where (and I'm not just saying this) you'll find a ton of really well priced retro gaming deals. I'm probably going to get a Neo Geo Pocket Colour next week from them, so don't go and buy them all. Cheers.

The Dreamcast Junkyard - Now on Ubuntu Phones and Tablets

Yep, that's right. I'm one of those annoying bores who got themselves a new phone - a Meizu Pro 5 - and can't stop telling people how awesome it is. And I'm also doubly annoying because I opted for one of the very few commercially available Ubuntu phones, so I can look down my nose and sneer at all you sheeple trapped in your walled iOS and android gardens... ahem.

Keep on drinking that GoogApple duopoly Kool-Aid sheeple - I'll just sit quietly over here with my smartphone that has a completely unnecessary but super cool command line terminal.
That's right: Terminal. On a smartphone. 

Hidden Palace Releases Ecco II: Sentinels of the Universe

Well this is pretty incredible news. Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future is widely known to have been given the go ahead for the sequel treatment, and until now the only real evidence of this has been some YouTube footage of the game running on a dev kit. Thanks to Hidden Palace though, you can now download and play Ecco II: Sentinels of the Universe yourself. On a retail Dreamcast. This is not a drill. Repeat, not a drill.

The game is in no way complete, features no sound and has a debugger menu enabled by default, but here's a quick run down of the features:

• This game was cancelled around the time Sega went third party
• Possibly the last build created
• Contains no music or sound
• Has an active debugger enabled
• An anonymous contributor has made a self-boot CDI so that the game can be burned and played on a retail Dreamcast.

Thanks to drx of Hidden Palace and Nik Thorpe of Retro Gamer Magazine for the info. If you're going to steal this story for your own site at least give those guys credit if you aren't going to credit us. Go here and download the self-boot CDI right now. Right fucking now. Amazing.

A Quick Look At Looney Tunes Space Race

When it comes to cartoons, I’d choose Warner Bros’ Looney Tunes over their Disney counterparts any day of the week. The characters and the humour just appeal to me in a much broader sense than anything old Walt could conjure up. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the talent and the genius of Walt Disney and the countless classic cartoons and world famous characters the studio has given to the world (and of course, mainstream animation in the first place); but the slightly more adult-themed humour and overtly violent nature of the Warner Bros stable strikes more of a chord with me.

Hello? Is this thing on? Reminds me of the average DreamPod recording session...

That said, I don’t consider all of the Looney Tunes to be palatable by default. For instance, I can’t stand the Sylvester and Tweety Pie stuff (although that’s more down to the latter character than the former), and Bugs Bunny’s wisecracking does my head in; but for the most part Warner’s cartoons just hit the right balance of ‘entertainment for the kids’ and ‘there’s something here for the adults too.’ For a prime example of this, see the Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian cartoons. In more recent times though, stuff like Animaniacs, Tiny Toons and (shudder) Space Jam have also become synonymous with Warner Bros, but in 2000 the original gang got back together and hit the Dreamcast in pretty spectacular fashion with Looney Tunes Space Race.

Composer Spotlight: Philippe Vachey

When writing about video game music, one should start with beloved and favorite games. I'd previously looked at the music of Sonic Adventure, so for my first 'composer spotlight' article, why not look at my second favorite game on the system?

Toy Commander is a fun romp through a child's house and imagination. How do the tunes stack up? Developed by No Cliché, Toy Commander's music was composed by Philippe Vachey.

Compared to other composers and bands I've seen, Vachey's discography is fairly short; however it does include the famous survival horror title Alone in the Dark. Other games he's scored are Little Big Adventure and its sequel, a Cthulhu game, and Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals. With a few exceptions, most of Vachey's work has been for adventure games.

Probably not a Dreamcast keyboard

DCJAM 2016: Dreamcast Homebrew Game Jam Starts September 2016

Are you a homebrew developer? Got an idea for a new Dreamcast game? Then this could be for you. Starting in September 2016 and running until January 2017, DCJAM 2016 is aiming to kick start (excuse the pun) the creative juices flowing through the dreamcast homebrew scene in an attempt to get more bedroom coders putting their ideas into action to create a whole new Dreamcast game jam spread across a period of several months. For those who aren't familiar, a game jam is generally a brainstorming and programming session where coders and designers can collaborate to create new and original software for whatever format the game jam is aimed at...and as you've already read, DCJAM 2016 is aimed squarely at those who may want to have a go at putting a game out on Sega's final system.

"Although there have been games released by independent developers on a commercial scale, there hasn't really been that large of a homebrew presence as there was before 2010. In the hopes of getting people interested, I thought that it would be wise to start a Dreamcast Game Jam. The Dreamcast is a great system to develop for, and it's relatively cheap to purchase.

The competition will run from September 09, 2016 to January 9th, 2017. Voting will last between the 9th and the 16th of January 2017. After the games are voted on, a compilation disk(s) will be created so that we have a nice collection of homebrew to play with."

- DCJAM 2016

We've seen some stunning homebrew titles hit the Dreamcast over the years and the community's appetite for new software is as voracious as ever; so if you think you're up to the challenge, why not get involved in this exciting jam session?

Check out the rules and join the jam by visiting the DCJAM 2016 site here.

The Haunting D2 Music Box

D2 is a game that famously never received a PAL release, and the Japanese and NTSC-U versions are highly sought after and represent one of the late developer Kenji Eno's finest moments. While it's true Warp also went on to develop another Dreamcast game in Real Sound: Winds of Regret, the Japanese outfit never really revisited the Dreamcast - much to the disappointment of many.

Now, while randomly wandering the annals of YouTube the other day though, I stumbled upon a fascinating video from fellow 'tuber FatalistDC that shows off a rather brilliant yet lesser-known piece of Dreamcast merchandise: a wind up music box that plays the haunting theme tune from D2:

We've looked at myriad examples of Dreamcast-related merchandise in the last couple of years, but I'd never seen (or heard of) this music box prior to a few days ago. To this end, I contacted FatalistDC and asked about the history of the item and he was able to supply the following:

"I got it years ago, searching Yahoo Japan Auctions for items related to D, D2 and Enemy Zero. I found this music box and some D2 mangas too. I quickly bid on them using Shopping Mall Japan. I don't have more info about the item itself or why a D2 music box was released or if there are any more very rare items of D2 memorabilia."

- Fatalist DC

Thanks to FatalistDC for allowing me to share his video here - check out his YouTube channel for Dreamcast centric videos. He did also point me to this article from Gamesniped that details a pretty spectacular Enemy Zero collector's edition, but alas had no more info on the D2 music box. Do you know any more about it or have any similarly lesser known Dreamcast-related collectables? Let us know in the comments or in the Facebook group!