A Closer Look At The Dreamcast Memory Card 4X

There are tonnes of third party memory cards for the Dreamcast, almost all of which don't feature the same monochrome LCD display and internal wizardry of the official VMU. There are also a plethora of third party cards that offer an advantage over the official memory unit in that they contain more storage space, and multiple 'pages' that can be switched between using a little button. I have several of these made by Joytech and while they look a bit garish with their blue/green plastic shells, they do the job just fine. Offering four times the capacity of a regular VMU but omitting a screen and face buttons, they are cheap and cheerful alternatives.

What you may not know, is that Sega actually released their own official multi-page non-visual VMU in late 2000, imaginatively titled the Dreamcast Memory Card 4X. This multi card was only released in Japan and the US (in the US, it was called the 4x Memory Card), and never made its way to Europe, like so many other cool devices for the Dreamcast. Anyway, I recently saw one of these Memory Card 4X things on eBay for the bargain price of £20, and having never seen one in the flesh (plastic) I snapped it up. A few days later it found its way through my letterbox in a scrunched up brown envelope and here for your delectation are my thoughts and closer inspection of the thing.

Resurrecting DcVD: Dreamcast Video Disc

What if DVDs never existed? Maybe Sega would have followed through with their speculated plans for a Dreamcast Video Disc (DcVD) - an alternative video format similar to Video CD, but one which exploits the Dreamcast's natural affinity with the Sofdec video and ADX audio codecs and the extra capacity of the proprietary GD-rom format.

Scott 'DocEggfan' Marley recently looked into the history of DcVD here at the Junkyard and he's been eagerly working away behind the scenes to bring the dead format back to life. Now, for your enjoyment we are proud to present the teaser trailer for Scott's endeavours. Turn the lights down, the volume up and prepare to be wowed by the dulcet tones of our very own Caleb in the trailer for the upcoming DcVD Dreamcast Video format!

We hope to release several copyright free movies using this resurrected format in the near future, movies that can be played directly in a Dreamcast GD-rom drive with no extra hardware required. Watch this space!

DreamPod - Episode 40

[iTunes][Stitcher][Buzzsprout][UK Podcast Directory][YouTube]

You can find all of our previous episodes of DreamPod here, and there's more information regarding our exploits at Play Expo Manchester 2016 here. If you'd like to grab HankyAlienDC and play it using your SD card reader, be sure to head over to Simian Zombie and click the download link. Further information on In The Line Of Fire can be found here, and below you'll find me (Tom) and Rob in Maych TV's YouTube video which we took part in during Play Expo. Finally, if you like what you've heard on this episode of DreamPod (or not - we know the sound quality was a bit shit due to using Skype and a free recording app I found literally 5 minutes before starting the podcast); please feel free to leave us a rating or review on iTunes. Cheers!

A Quick Look At Former Managing Director Yukawa's Treasure Hunt

Mr Yukawa. The man, the myth, the legend. But who was he, really? Well, Hidekazu Yukawa was the  senior managing director of Sega Japan during the early part of the Dreamcast's reign, and he was used as the main character in a fairly successful series of TV adverts. You can find them all on YouTube, but the TV commercials in question tell the story of Sega's boss on the eve of the Dreamcast's launch, where he is besieged by thoughts of self doubt and nightmares of the console's failure. He is harassed by children who want PlayStations instead of Dreamcasts, and even gets beaten up at one point.

Naturally, Mr Yukawa's fears are allayed when the Dreamcast becomes a success and everybody lives happily ever after. The series of TV ads catapulted Yukawa into semi-stardom in his native land, and his image was used on Dreamcast console boxes and in print adverts, such was his popularity. What you may not know is that he also starred in his very own game on the Dreamcast - Former Managing Director Yukawa's Treasure Hunt.

HankyAlienDC: A New Homebrew Space Invaders Clone

This one kinda came out of nowhere, but there's a new Space Invaders clone available for the Dreamcast and it can be downloaded for free. The work of a lone hobbyist coder known as ant512 on the DC Emulation forums, HankyAlienDC is available as a free file that can be run on either your choice of Dreamcast emulator, on Dreamcast hardware using an SD card reader, or burnt to a CD and played in the Dreamcast's GD drive. It's a pretty accurate recreation of the Atari original and is also available for Nintendo DS, should you have an R4 card to play it through.

"The archive contains a .elf version that will run in lxdreams, and presumably other emulators, and a .bin version that will run via an SD adaptor and DreamShell RC4. It will presumably run if you somehow burn it to a CD, but it’s been so long since I’ve made a CD of Dreamcast homebrew that I’ve completely forgotten how to do it. Plus I’m on a different OS and don’t have an optical drive any more."

- ant512

Having recently got a new MacBook, I know exactly how ant512 feels! Anyhow, before this becomes an Apple-bashing humblebrag circle jerk, check out VasiliyDC's video of HankyAlienDC in action:

And once you've finished, be sure to head over to Simian Zombie to download the HankyAlienDC game files for free. Thanks to VasiliyDC for sharing this information with us.

Play Expo Manchester 2016 Show Report

The weekend of the 8th and 9th of October 2016 saw Replay Events' huge Play Expo gaming event return to the north west of England, with Play Expo Manchester. The event has been a staple of the gaming calendar for many people in the UK and European gaming communities for the last few years as it blends retro, current, PC, console and board gaming; and supplements them with cosplay competitions, indie game showcases and more arcade and pinball machines than you can shake a stick at - all set to free play. Oh, and there are hundreds of sellers on hand to offer event goers the opportunity to pick up all kinds of gaming paraphernalia, should their budgets stretch to it.

Naturally, The Dreamcast Junkyard was there and our booth in the community zone was the biggest one we've put on yet, featuring 8 Dreamcast systems of all different flavours and a whole range of games and peripherals for the public to experience. The turn out at Play Expo was stunning and was quite possibly the largest and busiest to date, with thousands upon thousands of gamers and collectors flooding the Event City venue over the course of the two days.

As exhibitors, it was amazing to see so much appreciation and love for the Dreamcast, and our little corner of the event hall was barely ever empty and on more than one occasion it was absolutely teeming with people keen to play on the games we had on offer.

The DCJY Top 200 Games 2016: Your Vote Counts!

It's that time again folks. As the DCJY family has grown in the past few years, with listeners to the DreamPod, members of a Facebook group and new Twitter followers coming onboard to enjoy the tripe we concoct; we thought it was about time that we updated our Dreamcast Junkyard Top 200 games list, and allow all of our readers and listeners, new and old alike to have another say in the endless question of just what the very best titles on our beloved little console really are. Aaron 'Gagaman' Foster did a fantastic job on our last Top 200, but in the fast-moving world of the Dreamcast, we've seen many new titles, new found appreciation for old classics, and old friends falling out of favor. Plus, who doesn't like a shiny new list?

So what do we want you to do? Simple! Simply scroll to the bottom of this article and click on the voting link. You'll then be whisked away to our sparkly form, where you can enter up to a maximum of 20 of your favourite game titles (in no particular order) and then we will get our hired team of professional stat bods/shaven monkeys to do the hard part.