Bokomu No Tatsujin Translation Project Released!

In my last article I talked about how I discovered a trailer for an unreleased horror game for the Dreamcast hidden within a game called Bokomu No Tatsujin. This is an obscure life sim that released with little to no fanfare in early 2002 by the equally unknown Fujicom Co, creators of only one other Dreamcast game: Bomber Hehhe!

I mentioned that I found said trailer by pure accident while poking around in the games files. The reason why I was doing so was because... I was in the middle of translating the game for a laugh?? I should probably explain how this new found hobby came about, despite actually having next to zero knowledge of Japanese!

Retrospective: Q*bert

Even though I started my gaming odyssey back in the late 1980s with an Amstrad CPC 464, there are some mainstays of the retro scene that just never really resonated with me. Whenever I take a cursory glance at the smouldering hellscape that is Twitter, I will invariably see stuff from people who are of a similar age, frothing about games such as Horace, Jet Set Willy, Manic Miner et al. For me, these titles hold zero nostalgia. I realise their importance as the foundation of what we now view as the vidya gaem industry, but I just never really saw any appeal in them, even at the time. Another title that fits neatly into this bracket for me, is Q*bert.

I do vividly remember being aware of Q*bert when I was a kid, but something about the name and design of the character itself left me cold; and the actual game, with its isometric boxes, bouncing deathy spring things (which I later learned was actually a snake) and fairly simplistic gameplay did nothing for me. I was much more of a Heroes of the Lance or Heavy on the Magick type of urchin. Although I did enjoy a spot of Super Robin Hood every now and then, if only for the high fidelity speech samples. Cough.

Why am I talking about Q*bert though? What's this got to do with the Dreamcast? Well, here's why, dear reader: Q*bert made an appearance on the Dreamcast, his orange tubular schnoz recreated in fully realised 3D texture-mapped ray-traced polytriangulargons™. This won't be news to a lot of people reading this, but as Q*bert was an NTSC-U exclusive, I'm guessing there are at least a few people who didn't know the foul-mouthed, mutated little aberration was given an outing on Sega's final console.

It is curious that a lot of these early 2000s reboots of classic titles were only released stateside. Many of those original titles were quite popular in Europe - the UK especially - back when they were contemporary so why PAL releases were off the table is a bit of a mystery. The Dreamcast releases of Frogger 2, Centipede, Mrs Pacman and the Atari Classics Collections are all missing in action, presumed dead (and don't even get me started on Yu Suzuki Game Works), and I'm at a loss as to why this is the case. 

Indeed, the gaming scene was massive in the UK during the 1980s, plus there was no 'gaming crash' as there was in the US. The aforementioned titles (or their prequels at the very least) were huge hits on this side of the pond. But no, none of these Dreamcast sequels to classic games of yesteryear were released in PAL territories, and you can add to that list Q*bert. Here's the rub though. While some may lament the lack of blue box releases of those aforementioned titles, you need not shed a tear for Q*bert's Dreamcast release, as it is - for lack of a better term - cack.

Retrospective: Bang! Gunship Elite

I love a good sci-fi shooter. The massive scope of interstellar wars, huge capital ships blasting the crap out of each other and swarms of nimble little fighters darting between the carnage. It's every kid's dream scenario and one above being a fighter pilot. Why settle for flying a jet through a planet's boring old atmosphere when you can pilot a warp speed space fighter through the stars, dodging asteroids and putting plasma torpedos down the exhaust chute of a small moon space station? No brainer, really.

I've played loads of these types of games over the years, on an assortment of consoles, and for the most part they all adhere to a familiar template. Usually played from a cockpit view, with a useless 3D radar display, 360 degree movement that can prompt the evacuation of one's stomach via the oral cavity, and some honest to goodness blasting action. Colony Wars, Rogue Squadron, Darklight Conflict, Starlancer, X-Wing, Yager, Spirit of Speed 1937, Battle Engine Aquila, Star Fighter 3000, Elite Dangerous, Star Wars: Squadrons...I could go on. Note I also used the term 'sci-fi' and not 'space' shooter. That's because some of these games take place within the atmosphere of a planet and thus render my opening paragraph null and void. But y'know. I'm just looking out for the pedants among us. And the fighter pilots I probably enraged with my flippant comments on their awesome jobs.

Anyway, the point of this is that the Dreamcast played host to a number of sci-fi shooters, with one of them even taking place not in the vacuum of space, but under the waves of some unnamed digital ocean (see Deep Fighter). I did take a brief look at the various sci-fi shooters on the Dreamcast several years ago, but I thought it was a good time to take a more in-depth look at one of those titles, and one which doesn't really get a lot of air time these days. Air time. Space. Geddit? Sigh. Anyway, let's take a gander at the rather oddly titled Bang! Gunship Elite.

I find it interesting that enigmatic developer Rayland Interactive decided to call their game Bang! Gunship Elite, rather than just Gunship Elite. The addition of the exclamation hints that they may have been expecting you to actually shout "Bang!" before pronouncing the rest of the title like a normal human would. To be honest I'm fine with that, and from now on any time I say the name of this game aloud, I shall indeed either be bellowing "Bang!" at the top of my voice (socially distanced and from behind a mask, of course); or inflating a balloon before popping it with a pin. 

If nothing else, that'll cement Bang! Gunship Elite in the psyche of anyone who knows me; or indeed anyone who sees me walking down the street with a handful of balloons in one hand and copy of the game in t'other. Actually, the more boring explanation for the addition of the Bang! bit is that the game was - judging from an early Rayland Interactive page I found on the Wayback Machine - originally going to be titled 'Big Bang' or something similar.

I feel I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here, so let's get back on the correct flight vector. Bang! Gunship Elite is a space-based sci-fi shooter for the Dreamcast and Windows that was only released in North America. This is especially curious because developer Rayland Interactive was based in France. If anything you'd have thought the game would have been a PAL exclusive if nothing else, but no. It was published in the US in December 2000 by Red Storm Entertainment and received fairly average reviews, and to be honest having spent a few hours playing the formulaic campaign it's not hard to see why.

Before we move on to the game itself though, it's worth talking about Rayland Interactive some more, simply because there is virtually no information about the fate of this outfit anywhere online. It seems that prior to Bang!, Rayland developed a vehicular combat title called Mad Trax that was released on PC in 1998. This was followed in 2000 by Bang! Gunship Elite and a nomination for 'best start-up' at the Milia 2001 interactive media expo. According to the remnants of their website on the Wayback Machine, a further title called ZooLooz was also in production, but I can find no information on it or further evidence that this game was ever finished or released. After May 2001, Rayland Interactive simply ceases to exist.

Dreamcast Collectors Unite! Exploring your collections - Part 4

Hello fellow Dreamers, and welcome back to our ongoing 'Dreamcast Collector's Unite!' series of articles, taking a closer look at the collections of Dreamcast fans from across the globe. So far we've uncovered rare controllers, heard people's fondest memories of the console, the game and the merchandise that make up their collections, and seen some of the rare - and not so rare - pieces that make collecting for this console such a passion for so many people.

We're bringing you a quartet of collectors today, with a range of collecting habits, desires and goals - so without further waffling from me - let me introduce you to our latest fab 4, who go by the names of Ser Flash, Chris, Lee and James!

Ser Flash

Hello fellow Dreamer! Tell us a little about yourself!

STG fans around the world know me as Ser Flash. I make up half of Studio Mudprints, and we create and host Bullet Heaven, the world's longest-running shmups review show.

You obviously have a love for the Dreamcast; when did that start?

More or less since it came out. As a staunch Nintendo player, the Dreamcast really captured my interest, especially against the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 at the time. It would become my first-ever Sega console in 2000.

So your current collection – can you give a brief description of what you have, what you collect (i.e. games only, games and console variants etc.) and what your 'end goal' is, if you have one?

We don't really refer to it as a "collection" so much as a "Library", meant to be accessed, not merely displayed. We acquire games from all regions, though North American and Japanese games make up the vast majority of our titles. In the early days, we bought all kinds of different titles, from RPGs to Fighters to shooters. These days though, it has been almost exclusively shooters, which was ultimately my end goal: Acquire and feature every Dreamcast shmup and border-liner.

Why did you start collecting for the console, and if you still are, what makes you continue?

We never really collected for the system per se; we just got games we wanted to play at first, and later just those that we thought would review well on our show. It became a more directed effort when it come to tracking down and procuring a complete set of shooting games for a large-scale video compendium. The only one requirement was that all Japanese games needed their OBI spine-cards. Now that they have been completely obtained, we still get the odd title every now and again as more new titles are made, but our focus is now almost entirely PlayStation One exclusive shooting games.

Where do you get new additions to your collection? Are you still able to find them 'in the wild' or is it online only now?

Almost exclusively online, predominantly on eBay. It sounds lazy, but scouting out and stalking the best deals on specific games can take a long while; all of the ones we have gotten were in great condition for comparatively bottom dollar, but some took time and planning. We sometimes find neat things at local shops though.

What's the favourite part of your collection, and why?

Probably Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol.1. I had no idea it existed, then I suddenly needed it more than anything else in the world. So basically it marked the time I completed a game set with a book. My favourite Dreamcast game is probably Bangai-o, though. So nice, I bought it twice.

We all love bargains, any in particular stand out for you whilst amassing your collection?

Grabbing a bunch of games on $10 Clearance in the early days was definitely nice. The used market was excellent until relatively recently then it suddenly exploded, especially for shmups. This kind of makes it hard to pick out a really good deal for its time. There have been several times we were able to get new, sealed games for well-under the typical used price in the last couple of years, so those would count, I guess.

It's Thinking: An Interview With Brian Bacino - The Man Behind The Iconic Dreamcast Slogan

The Dreamcast's North American launch was one of the most successful console launches of all time. It boasted a line up of games that was unmatched in terms of variety and quality, and an air of untouchable swagger and confidence swirled around Sega that hadn't been seen since the days of the Genesis. Key to the success of the Dreamcast's introduction to the lucrative American market was undoubtedly the bombastic and memorable advertising campaign that supported the console.

The iconic 'It's Thinking' TV commercials and the memorable launch date of 9.9.99 were powerful weapons in Sega's arsenal when waging a marketing war against Sony and Nintendo for consumer dollars. However, these two components of marketing collateral did not come about by pure coincidence. They were thoughtfully constructed prongs of the same pincer movement strategy, and arguably helped to propel the Dreamcast into millions of American homes in those first few months post launch.

Here, in an exclusive interview we talk to Brian Bacino, the man behind the North American advertising campaign. As former Creative Director at respected advertising house Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB) of San Francisco, Brian was instrumental in the creation of the Dreamcast brand and the system's early success...

DCJY: Brian, first allow me to thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. The Dreamcast console really was a game-changer when it was released (pun intended!) and still holds a dear place in the hearts of a lot of gamers. To kick things off, could you give us a brief description of what your role was at FCB and specifically with the Sega Dreamcast commercials?

Brian Bacino: Hi Tom – thanks, I’m totally psyched to talk about the Dreamcast launch. It was an epic adventure in advertising, full of drama, plot twists and explosions! I was FCB San Francisco’s SVP Group Creative Director/Writer in charge of the launch and roll out of The Sega Dreamcast. My partner, Steve Fong, and I conceived and created the ‘It’s Thinking’ campaign and the ‘Apocalypse’ launch film – heralded in 1999 by several video game magazines as “the most epic video game commercial ever created!” Steve and I would not argue.

You Can Now Access The Original Jet Grind Radio Website From Your Dreamcast

While the promise of online gaming was a big part of Sega's marketing campaign when trying to flog the Dreamcast to the masses, many games simply didn't have any online gameplay portion. That didn't stop certain games proudly displaying the fact that they offered 'online functions' on the packaging, though. Usually, what this meant was that high scores could be uploaded to a leader board; or that certain things could be downloaded from a dedicated portal to a VMU that added extra features. For example, ghost car times in racing games, or mini games that could be played on a VMU screen. Some games offered more than others in this area, and one of the best when it came to added online extras was the awesome Jet Grind Radio.

As detailed in this story over at Dreamcast Live, the Jet Grind Radio website has been resurrected in (almost) its entirety, meaning that you can once again hook your Dreamcast up to the internet and browse the various pages that could be accessed from the game's main menu. Hidden away in this treasure trove from yesteryear are a graffiti gallery and ranking page, along with a hints and tips section that actually corrects some of the information printed in the physical manual. This isn't the first time a game's bespoke website has been revived, as the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 sites were both brought back online recently too.

FuZzCasT Home Entertainment - Dreamcast Video Returns!

Cast your mind back to the dawn of the new millennium. Like everyone else, you were probably still happy enough renting VHS video tapes, but at the same time were also covetously envious of those shiny new (and expensive) DVD players displayed prominently in the high street stores. You were keen to kickstart your foray into the digital video future, and even though Sony was promising to deliver DVD to the masses with its looming PS2 juggernaut, your blood bleeds blue and your loyalty to Sega and the Dreamcast could not be shaken. But what to do?

Ooooh, shiny.

You had heard rumours of a video card for your venerable Sega Saturn but you could never find one. Whispers from the orient described some strange voodoo witchcraft involving burning movies to CD-ROM, but after you endured the interminable age that it took to download the file over your 33.6k dial-up modem on your Windows 98 machine, the experience was underwhelming. Watching a movie on your 13" CRT monitor just didn't have the right pop-corn munching vibe. 

Dream Library: The Dreamcast Foreunner To Nintendo Virtual Console

Being able to download games to your chosen platform is a pretty standard feature these days, and one we've all come to expect from our gaming devices, mobile phones and computers. Where would we be without the convenience of being able to simply browse an online store front, be it the Nintendo e-Shop, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live or Steam, and just select a title we want to play and then have it ready to go in a matter of minutes?

While there's a lot to be said for buying physical games, either because you're a collector or you like the option of being able to trade your games in to fund the next purchase, exclusively downloadable software is most likely the future we're heading toward. However, it isn't a new technology. If you look back through the annals of gaming history, you'll find a number of antiquated hardware systems that offered downloadable software as an option and by and large they all worked and only really differed in their availability and hardware. There was the Nintendo Satellaview that offered exclusive titles for the Super Nintendo (some of which have been the subject of admirable preservation efforts); and there was a similar service offered by Sega in the form of the Sega Channel. There are earlier examples still, and you can find a rudimentary run down of some of them here.

The Dreamcast too, offered such a service and it was called Dream Library. Unlike the aforementioned utilities though, Dream Library didn't offer Dreamcast games for download; instead it offered Japanese gamers the option to use their Dreamcast as an emulation device with which to download and play a selection of Mega Drive and PC Engine games right in their browser. Similarities with Nintendo's popular Virtual Console are quite apparent, but Dream Library precedes Virtual Console by six years, give or take; and the main difference is that games were rented temporarily with Dream Library, rather than bought outright.

A fairly short-lived service, Dream Library ran from June 2000 to January 2003, and it did suffer from a few technical issues that meant it wasn't as perfect as it probably initially sounds. Still, it was quite an ingenious service and another example of Sega's thinking outside the box when it came to pushing the Dreamcast as a jack of all trades. Not only was Sega pushing its hardware as a gaming machine, but also a business machine, an affordable alternative to a web browsing computer and also an emulation device. I'm still wondering how the console failed to crack the mainstream during its natural lifespan, but as usual I'm digressing.

A Closer Look At The Dreamcast Internet Starter Kit

In this day and age we kind of take it for granted that the internet is a thing we have at our disposal with almost effortless availability. It truly is a ubiquitous resource of entertainment, learning, communication and screaming at each other on forums. The internet is, I'm pretty confident in stating, one of the most important inventions the human race has ever come up with. I'd even put it up there with the wheel, the microchip, the instant noodle and the screw-top beer bottle. Yes, old Tim Berners-Lee really hit on something back in the early 1990s when he and his motley crew of super nerds at CERN gave birth to what we now more commonly refer to as the t'interwebs. It goes without saying that anybody reading this right now is doing so using the power of said network, be it on a mobile phone, a tablet, their watch, games console or even - heaven forfend - an actual desktop PC or Mac.

Now, the Dreamcast was - as most of you will be aware - the first console to come as standard with a modem and the ability to browse the internet and access multiplayer games right out of the box. Well, unless you lived in Europe for the first few months...but that's a moot point. The fact of the matter is that the Dreamcast was marketed first and foremost as a games machine, but also as a cost-effective way for people to get a taste of the internet without having to buy a computer; and in those heady days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when flannel shirts, Backstreet Boys and Eiffel 65 were still en vogue, that wasn't something to be sniffed at.

For my sins, I did go through a short-lived spell of buying a UK-based magazine called .net after getting my Dreamcast, just so I could sit on the bus reading it looking like I was 'jacked in' to the power of the 'information superhighway.' In reality I still looked like a scruffy, fat nerd. But this is the point I'm trying to make - back in 1999, the internet wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now and people didn't have 3G and 4G enabled smart phones bouncing around in their pockets, getting scratched up by a bunch of keys. The internet for many - me included - was a vast and wondrous new frontier and by God I was ready to ride the wave on my digital surfboard, tits akimbo.

But herein lies the conundrum. Sega probably knew that the pseudo tech-savvy among its target demographic for the Dreamcast would be onboard with this idea of web surfing and online gaming. How then, would the Japanese firm entice the average person? The outliers in this new digital wonderland? The ones who didn't know a byte from a flimflam, or a googolplex from a Yahoo!? Here's how: by devising a 'starter kit' for the unlearned, one that was created with basic and easy to understand instructions and a guide to what this whole 'internet' thingy was all about. And to top it all off, by including an internet guide...for housewives.

A Beginner's Guide To Aero Dancing & AeroWings

Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height! Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring...Up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear - oh, let's go fly a kite!

So sang the patriarchal Mr Banks in Walt Disney's 1964 classic horror Mary Poppins. And, oh how we flew our kites and wore the shit out of our pinstripe suits while we did so (I for one can't wait for the upcoming sequel, which reportedly features a dubstep remix). But let's be honest - while kites are fun, they aren't a patch on F-15 Aggressor fighter jets; and happily, the Dreamcast has those in abundance. Yes, the Dreamcast is a console that wasn't left wanting when it came to flight games, both of the simulation and arcade varieties. Indeed, some of the first games I ever played on Sega's final console involved two-winged harbingers of death - namely the Japanese releases of Incoming and Air Force Delta.

Alongside those two, others came: Toy Commander featured some aerial combat missions, while Iron Aces/Imperial No Taka - Fighter of Zero was a pseudo World War II flight sim, complete with a totally fictional theatre loosely based on the events of 1939 - 1945. Later, Propellor Arena promised pure arcade dogfighting thrills before being cancelled - allegedly - due to the horrific events of 9/11, although it's available online if you know where to look. The one series that really grabbed the genre by its horns though, was undoubtedly CRI's Aero Dancing franchise. A series that began primarily as a skill-based jaunt through the clouds as an aerial acrobatics pilot; but which ended with players earning their wings as full blown combat pilots, engaging in aerial dogfights, taking out warships and destroying ground units with well placed missiles and bombs. Quite the turnaround, no?

Join us as we dissect this intriguing and well regarded series of flight sims, and take a look at the dedicated hardware released for the Aero Dancing games; as well as the individual entries in this rich and engaging franchise. Dig our your flight suit, don your helmet and strap in as we get ready to engage in some Aero Dancing at supersonic speeds...

A Quick Look At Free-DC

As you're no doubt aware, the Dreamcast was served by a plethora of online services depending on the territory. In Europe we got the Dreamarena service; the US got SegaNet and in Japan Dreamcast owners were treated to the Dricas service. Dricas - to me at least - looks like it was by far the most feature rich of these three services, and offered such delights as video calling (through the Dreameye) and the ability to spam your friends with nonsense in the form of Dreamflyer. Dricas itself is a truly vast topic of discussion but due to the nature of the internet I fear much of the features and functionality that users enjoyed is lost to the mists of internet lore. No amount of internet archaeology or Wayback Machine plundering can bring back a service that just cannot be accessed anymore because the servers are now in landfill (probably).

Dreamarena went through a flamboyant midlife crisis.

Dreamarena was totally serviceable for web browsing; and SegaNet was fine for gaming (at 56k speeds) over in the US as far as I can ascertain...but Dricas was the real deal. Going from the scant details I can find trawling the internet, Dricas offered Japanese Dreamcast owners some really intriguing features, including something called Dream Map which was powered by Japanese mapping firm Zenrin and allowed Dreamcast owners to locate each other on a Google Maps-style thing and connect with people in their locality. It sounds a bit like the Near function incorporated into the Sony PS Vita...but y'know, actually used by people.

Garish enough for ya?!

There was also a thing called MailChum!, which - and I quote - "...provides you with an instant e-mail penpal, from a variety of characters ranging from beautiful girls to mythical animals." Erm. Anyway, the reason I'm banging on about Dricas and other long-dead internet services for the Dreamcast is that I wanted to discuss something I knew of previously...but just didn't think anyone else would be interested in reading about: Free-DC.

Guest Article: Was The Dreamcast Released Too Early?

Daniel Major is a gamer who has been twiddling his thumbs since 1989. Not happy with the direction of the industry in the mid 90s, he decided to quit trying to pretend the Amiga hadn't died and moved to a woodland to sacrifice Atari STs by fire ritual. Also plays Super Famicom & Megadrive. Here in this guest article, Daniel takes some time out from hitting broken JAMMA boards with a stick in his local park and asks the question: was the Dreamcast simply released too early?

Let’s pretend that the Dreamcast didn’t actually exist. Imagine the sixth generation without the Dreamcast. Let’s all forget that the sixth generation started with Sega’s dream machine and begin to ponder how different the rest of the sixth generation could have panned out. If you can imagine this then can you imagine Sony or Microsoft actually bothering with some of the included specs of their consoles? Online play for example. If Sega hadn’t bothered introducing this to the Dreamcast, would Sony have been inclined to do this? Let’s face it, did we all play online when the PS2 hit? No not all of us. Maybe that changed slightly when Xbox hit, but even then it was a well-known fact that this wouldn’t be the sixth generation's most potent or show stopping feature.

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.

Developer Interview: Orion

Orion has been creating indie games for retro consoles for quite some time, and is behind the latest title to be announced for the Dreamcast: Zia and the Goddesses of Magic, out in September 2016. Orion's impressive back catalogue also includes recent Atari Jaguar to Dreamcast ports such as point and click adventures Elansar and Philia, and platformer Alice's Mom's Rescue. The Dreamcast Junkyard recently caught up with Orion to find out a bit more about this elusive indie dev and ask what is coming next from the French outfit...

DCJY: Hi, thanks for taking the time to speak to us and the Dreamcast community at large! Could you explain just who makes up the Orion team?

Orion: There is no team - just me! Orion is my internet nickname, I'm just one guy on my own trying to create games as a living.

Zia comes to Dreamcast in September 2016

A true one man outfit then! How did you get started in indie game development, and what are your earliest memories of wanting to be a developer?

My earliest memories are when I was playing games on my Atari STe computer at the age of 8, looking at those nice graphics and thinking to myself "I want to do the same!" From there, I quickly began to learn the Basic language by myself, and finally made my first 'game' when I was 12 years old. When the internet became popular, I started learning other programming languages, and continued making small games as a hobby. Later, I worked for 5 years at a small game company in Paris, and finally I decided to go solo and start my own company. It's been 3 years now that I've been creating commercial games on my own for various retro platforms.

A Different Type of Football: NFL on Dreamcast

With the Euros just around the corner (for our American readers, that refers to a soccer competition, not piles of European cash...although both definitions have some validity), and with our finger on the pulse of the public as always at the Junkyard, what better time to look at one of the worlds most beloved sporting activities than now?

Actually though, the Dreamcast's 'round ball' football output is particularly laughable. I mean, there are only so many articles you can read which basically state they're all crap, with the familiar "oh why couldn't we be blessed with a PES or FIFA?" thread running through them. Instead, allow me to take you on a tour of the very best examples of a sport played in one country, whose very name makes no sense to those raised passing a ball around a muddy field at school lunchtime. Allow me to present, on the eve of the European Soccer Championships 2016...The Dreamcast Junkyard's ultimate guide to American hand egg, American carry-the-rugby-ball American football!

The England defence was no match for the Italian striker...

Unlike many of my compatriots, I do follow the noble sport of American football (henceforth to be referred to as 'football'), and when I'm not following my beloved New York Yankee Men or the fearsome Denver Buffalo Bill Packer Patriots, there's nothing I like more than to indulge in a bit of rugby-for-cowards in digital form (last joke, honestly). And my word - doesn't the Dreamcast have a solid line up of games representing the sport? A total of 8 titles replicate NFL on Sega's little-machine-that-could and whilst the quality varies, US gamers could at least take solace that none of them was quite as poor as 90 Minutes and it's butchering of our beloved Association Football code...right?

Broken Dreams: The 10 Worst Dreamcast Games

I realise I touched on this subject in my recent retrospective look at the Kalisto/Konami car crash Nightmare Creatures II, but I thought it about time that we temporarily suspended the blinkered praising of our beloved Dreamcast and investigated the pungent underbelly of the system's library more thoroughly. As Dreamcast fans, I suppose it is all too easy to look back at the console from an artificially rose-tinted perspective; and while there's nothing wrong with that it doesn't help those gamers who may be new to the system or those who perhaps didn't get the exposure to online game reviews or print magazines in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

You see, we can easily recall the monumental highs of Shenmue, Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi and the other genre-defining software titles that make up the star-studded top tier of the software lineup; however just like every other console, the Dreamcast has a number of sub-par titles. Games that are just plain bad for any number of reasons. Games that should really be avoided unless you're one of those 'full set' collector types (you know who you are). To this end, we thought it was about time that we looked to the other end of the spectrum and brought you a run down of the most insipid and downright reprehensible games ever to 'grace' a Dreamcast. And by 'grace,' I mean be deposited onto the console through the weeping anus of a particularly unpleasant and malodorous giant.

Yep - LJN returned from the grave for one last troll on the Dreamcast

I understand that there are other terrible games that may not be on this list, but I'm not listing titles that I can't play due to either a language barrier or a lack of functionality due to internet services being discontinued. No - I'm looking at games that were deemed fully functional by testers, but were unleashed on the games buying public in states not fit for human consumption. Horrific frame rates, terrible controls, broken game engines...these are all criteria that have helped to get the following titles onto this most unholy of lists. Now, please get comfortable and allow us to take you on a rather unsettling journey as we reveal the very worst games the Dreamcast has to offer...

ElysianVMU - A Brand New VMU Emulator From Elysian Shadows

Elysian Shadows burst on to the Dreamcast radar in 2014 with little more than a dream and a Kickstarter pitch for a revolutionary new role playing game. The project was funded in less than a week and since then lead developer Falco Girgis and his team have been working away behind the scenes to bring what is perhaps the single most ambitious independent title yet to Sega's system. Featuring graphical techniques not yet seen on the Dreamcast, and an adventure that promises to engage players for hours upon hours, Elysian Shadows is easily one of the most exciting upcoming prospects for many Dreamcast gamers.

The game is also launching on PC and Mac however, and due to the game's reliance on the humble VMU for certain aspects of the adventure, Falco took it upon himself to develop a brand new and totally bespoke VMU emulator for Elysian Shadows; thus allowing computer-based players to get the full experience. Not only that, the emulator - titled ElysianVMU - will allow gamers to take the myriad mini-games away from their computer and play them on Android and iOS devices. To this end, I'm extremely excited to allow Falco Girgis himself to explain in his own words what this new VMU emulator is all about and what it means for the Dreamcast indie dev community going forward. Falco, over to you...

Dreamcast Vs Wii U: Which Failed Harder?

Nintendo has finally revealed that the successor to the Wii U will be released worldwide in March 2017. This is good for two reasons. The first is that my birthday is in March so I might try to coerce my nearest and dearest to contribute some cash towards an NX as a present. That said, I usually don't get much more than a card written in feces/blood and a voicemail reminding me that I owe somebody a tenner when the anniversary of my birth rolls around, so I won't get my hopes up too much.

Update: we now know this console will be called Switch, so probably ignore the NX logo below. Ta.

The other good thing about this announcement is that finally, the Wii U has been handed a respite and the agonisingly slow death of the console looks to be coming to an end - euthanised, even.  Let's not beat around the bush here - the Wii U has been a bit of a disaster for Nintendo in comparison to past hardware releases, and while the system does play host to some fantastic games that simply ooze typical Nintendo quality, no-one can deny that the thing clearly occupies the 'also-ran' spot in both of the console generations it straddles.

For me, the Wii U was cursed from the start simply because it confused the fuck out of the casual market Nintendo was aiming it at; those people who bought the original Wii thought it was an add-on, and those who had Xbox 360s and PS3s were shown a system with a dinner tray for a controller and a bunch of launch titles that were already available (for the most part) on the console they already owned. Now though, Nintendo has pretty much signalled its intent by announcing the NX (or whatever it ends up being called) and so, just four years after introduction the Wii U looks like it'll be put out to pasture quite soon. Inevitably this has lead to forum threads such as this one, where the question is asked: which system enjoyed a better time during it's contemporary lifespan - the Sega Dreamcast or the Nintendo Wii U?

Source: ZhugeEX Blog

The news came out recently that it took the Wii U nearly 3 years to match the 10 million Dreamcasts Sega flogged in 18 months, and there have been many, many comparisons drawn between these two glorious console failures. However, we wanted to go step further and take a more in-depth look at the Dreamcast vs Wii U topic. While it's obvious that the Wii U hasn't really made a dent in Nintendo's $10 billion fortune (whereas the Dreamcast pretty much killed Sega), the question remains: which console pushed more boundaries, had a better games and excited the gaming world the most?