The Awesome Dreamcast Kiosks & Display Cases We Never Saw

Kiosks were - and still are - a major part of any console's armoury when trying to woo potential buyers. Go into any game store these days and you'll undoubtedly see a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One set up and running demos. The same was true back in the days of the Dreamcast, and I have fond memories of playing Virtua Striker 2 in HMV one afternoon back in 2000.

Dreamcast Kiosks come in a number of guises, and they vary wildly from region to region. The ones I'm most familar with though, are the UK PAL-styled ones that adorned branches of Electronics Boutique and GAME, drawing me in with their glowing CRT screens and untold promise of 128-bit gaming, the likes of which I'd never seen before. Obviously they worked a treat on me (hence this place existing), but now we have something pretty special to share with you.

Here are some exclusive, never-before-seen computer generated images of the kiosks and in-store display cases that Sega Europe was intending to deploy across the continent with the aim of enticing the average gamer to part with cold, hard cash for a Dreamcast.

Some of them look pretty familiar, but others are new even to me...

A Quick Look At Centipede

Centipede for the Dreamcast is a curious title for a couple of reasons. It's part of what is, for all intents and purposes, a sort of trilogy of retro reboots that includes two other properties with roots in the very early days of gaming - Q*bert and Frogger. While there are several retro collections for the Dreamcast in the form of Namco Museum, Sega Smash Pack, Yu Suzuki Game Works, Atari Anniversary Edition, Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits 1 & 2 and Jimmy White's 2: Cueball, none of these titles feature complete re-imaginings of the classic titles contained therein.

No, Centipede, Q*bert and Frogger are unique in that they introduce updated visuals, new modes and - most notably in the case of Centipede - totally new gameplay mechanics. Interestingly, all three of these titles come from the Hasbro Interactive/Atari mash-up that was borne out of the acquisition of the latter by the former, however for the sake of this being 'a quick look at...' we're only going to focus on the most radically redesigned of the three - Centipede.

Released in 2000 by Hasbro Interactive masquerading as Atari and developed by Leaping Lizard Software, Centipede is a modern take on the classic game of the same name that was released to much critical and commercial success back in 1980. Having only been born in 1982, I don't actually remember the initial arcade release of Centipede, but over the years I've played plenty of variations on the formula and I'm sure you have too. Naturally, coming from an era when hardware was less graphically capable than what we have today, Centipede featured basic visuals but had one very simple premise that was replicated in many titles of the period - shoot the enemies, get a high score...and survive the onslaught.

Dreamcastnoid Gets Mini CD Retail Release

Back in 2016, DCJAM invited homebrew coders to let their imaginations run wild and create a host of new and original games for the Dreamcast. One of these was Dreamcastnoid: 128 Bit Wars from Alfonso Martinez (aka Ryo Suzuki). The game is a humorous homage to Arkanoid, with players controlling a VMU and smashing PlayStation 2 consoles with a ball, and we took a closer look at the downloadable version when it was released for public consumption.

The artwork is great

Mr Yukawa's been hitting the gym, evidently...

Fast forward to the present day, and Dreamcastnoid: 128 Bit Wars has been updated with new graphics, cool artwork, some new music and is now destined to be given a physical release. The most interesting thing about this new release is that it will come on a mini CD, and represents the first time a Dreamcast game has been released in this format (the oddly shaped music CD that comes with some versions of Guilty Gear X doesn't count!).

Segata Sanshiro makes an appearance too

A massive coin...or a tiny disc?

Dreamcastnoid: 128 Bit Wars will be available to purchase at RetroBarcelona in limited quantities for €15 and will hopefully be available to purchase online in the coming weeks. More info as we get it.

For more details (in Spanish), head over to SegaSaturno here.

A Metropolis Street Racer Treasure Trove

OK, this is the third Metropolis Street Racer related article I've posted here in the space of a fortnight, but this time I think you'll thank me for it, rather than shake your head in disgust before falling to your knees and screaming at the sky as dark, ominous thunder clouds gather and threaten to unleash a maelstrom of biblical proportions. After the preceding articles about some of the more interesting track side details to be found in Bizarre Creations' epic racer; and the follow up article detailing the hidden 'missing persons' posters dotted around the San Francisco and Tokyo circuits, comes this third instalment in which I will showcase some images and documents I'm pretty confident have never previously been published online.

A few days ago, I was contacted by somebody on Twitter (a person who wishes to remain anonymous) who asked if I was interested in a Dreamcast-related disc. Naturally I was, and a few days later the disc turned up in the post with no letter and no return address. Very strange, I'm sure you'll agree. Being the kind of person who risks infecting his computer with malware first and asking questions later, I threw the disc into my drive and explored the shit out of it with wanton abandon. I was met with things, most wondrous things...but mainly a treasure trove of Metropolis Street Racer screenshots, artwork, logos, shots of the game's wire frame models and development screens, as well as some press releases and a developer interview.

Personally, I have never seen a disc that looks like this before. I've seen all manner of GDs and prototype discs in my time, but never one of these blue and white Sega Europe branded 'confidential material' discs. That said, I do know that several collectors in the community have these, and their contents vary wildly, and some even contain the Dreamcast SDK on them.

There's over 250MB of stuff on the disc, and for something produced in 2000 that's pretty hefty. On closer inspection, it appears to be the type of high quality, pressed CD-R that would be sent to magazines of the era or other media outlets, and the documentation included reinforces this theory. However, for the preservation of your sanity's sake I'll only be reproducing some of the most interesting stuff here, so the main developer interview and some of the previously unseen wire frame/development screens and hi-res computer generated artwork. If you really want to see the press releases etc., then let me know in the comments.

Are you ready? OK - let's kick things off with some nice shots of the 'behind the scenes' stuff...

When Love For The Dreamcast Dies...

We’ve all got our Dreamcast back story. Some of us bought it at launch, having bought every Sega console since the Master System, including the 32X and Mega CD. Some of us were beguiled by the advertising; cinema adverts between big budget movies, featuring “the Dreamcast Barber”, or the classic “Its thinking…” TV commercial, showing the Dreamcast to be a machine so vastly superior to the existing consoles, that purchase was a necessity. It was new, it was sexy, it was enthralling…

But for me, the whole console launch, the killer apps and the must have games, the wacky peripherals and the arcade perfect experiences, completely passed me by. A proud Sega supporter, I was  first a Megadrive, then Saturn owner, but my kids had rebelled against the Saturn as the “family console”, insisting on a Playstation for Christmas 1998. And not too long after that, my desire to game waned; the chief gamers in the house were now my two eldest sons, (aged 7 and 10 at the time)…we simply 'progressed' to a PS2 (with GTA 3 and a DVD player!) The Dreamcast and indeed Sega as a console maker, was finished before I even realised it had been in the race…

I received my first Dreamcast in the summer of 2004. It had belonged to a nephew of mine, and he thought his younger cousins might be interested in it. Being complete PS2 addicts, they didn’t give it a second look, but I, on the other hand, did. I became intrigued by it, beguiled and charmed by it. I started to use my newly acquired home PC to research the failed enigma that was the Dreamcast, finding Planet Dreamcast, all of the IGN reviews and of course, our beloved Dreamcast Junkyard. I felt gutted that I had missed out on it’s launch, it’s short life and it’s untimely demise…I tried to immerse myself into it’s history, in a vain attempt to recapture something that had been all too fleeting…the Dreamcast burning brightly in the consciousness of gamers everywhere...

Senile Team Launches Intrepid Izzy Kickstarter Campaign

Intrepid Izzy is the latest title from Senile Team, creators of the excellent Rush Rush Rally Racing franchise and Beats of Rage engine. We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Roel van Mastbergen from Senile Team, and now his latest creation has hit Kickstarter.

Intrepid Izzy is a Metroid style platformer featuring some pretty awesome 2D sprite work and animation, and is destined to come to Steam, PlayStation 4 and Dreamcast. The funding goal is set at a fairly modest €35,000 and the different versions do sport some platform-specific features. Obviously, the version most people reading this will be interested in will be the Dreamcast version, and here's a run down of what you can expect:

• 640x480 screen resolution
• 60 frames per second
• Standard controller and Arcade Stick support
• PAL, NTSC and VGA support
• Physical release
• Region free

Naturally, the PS4 and PC releases will be full HD and 60fps and also feature fully customisable controls, but the Dreamcast version is the only one that will be given a physical release as standard. The screens above are from the Dreamcast version, and you can see a video of it running here.

Intrepid Izzy promises to "combine platforming, beat 'em up and adventure elements to create a unique experience with depth, character and above all, fun!" and other promised features include a branching dialogue system and the ability to change the eponymous heroine's abilities with different themed costumes.

Find out more by visiting the Intrepid Izzy website here. The Kickstarter is now live and can be accessed here.

Related articles:

• Developer Interview: Senile Team
• A Quick Look At Rush Rush Rally Racing
• Rush Rush Rally Racing Reloaded Hits Dreamcast

Online Gaming On The Dreamcast Is As Easy As Pi

I'm going to start this post with a confession. I never played online with the Dreamcast during the console's natural lifespan. The main reason was that we only had one phone line in the house and I wasn't ever allowed to hog the line for longer than about 30 minutes at a time to do some web browsing. Plus, it was pretty expensive using dial up, even with BT's 'friends and family' initiative and evening and weekend reduced call charges. Fast forward to 2017 though, and I've finally managed to shake off the shame of being a Dreamcast fan who has never battled with other Dreamcasters over the internet.

This is all thanks to the sterling work of Luke Benstead, Pcwzrd and all of the talented folks working behind the scenes to resurrect the Dreamcast's online abilities through the DreamPi project. After being supplied with a DreamPi unit several weeks ago (thanks Pcwzrd!), I thought it was about time that I actually got it up and running and jumped into one of the regular online gaming sessions organised through the Dreamcast-Talk forum. It was incredibly easy to set up using the instructions and various guides available over at Dreamcast Live, and with the use of an old DreamKey 3.0 disc I had lying around I was able to get my Dreamcast hooked up to the internet with little more than a WiFi-enabled DreamPi and a tiny USB modem.

As mentioned earlier, the whole online gaming thing is one aspect of the Dreamcast I never dipped into back when I had my original console in 1999, and I honestly didn't think it would be so easy or entertaining as it was playing Dreamcast games online in the modern climate. We're all so used to the effortless online multiplayer options offered by current consoles and computers that I feared trying to get online to play Dreamcast multiplayer games would be a bit of a pain. How wrong I was...