Dreamcastic Christmas 2023: Heart-warming Tales from DreamPod Listeners

Ahead of recording episode 125 of the DreamPod, which first aired as part of RadioSEGA’s illustrious Winterfest and is now available in all the regular places, we appealed to our listener base to send us their festive Dreamcast-related ideas, memories and musings. And thankfully, in generous Christmas spirit, our mailbag promptly filled-up with a hefty slab of responses ranging from the witty, to the heart-warming, to the downright impressive. Quite a few were discussed on the pod, but many are undoubtedly worth sharing on the blog too, and so here we are. 

Thanks to all the wonderful Junkard-ers (yardies?) who made submissions, tuned into the podcast or are currently reading these hungover scribblings of mine. The Junkyard wouldn't be what it is without you and we are blessed to have such a wonderful community gathered around the site eighteen years on from its founding. 

So, if you'd like to amplify your festive cheer, pour yourself a glass of Creamcast ale, and read on.

 Our guest on DreamPod 125, Pat from Sega Saturn, SHIRO!, lovingly embracing the Dreamcast that Santa brought him as a child.

Christmas Cracker Extravaganza

In typical parochial British fashion, I had assumed that Christmas Crackers were a widespread phenomenon, when in fact, it turns out they are pretty much contained to the shores of the UK. Nevertheless, we had some fantastic responses from all over the world to our call for Dreamcast-themed Christmas cracker ideas, several sent in by folks who had no prior familiarity with the concept (but evidently got with the programme quite rapidly).

Horror host extraordinaire Uncle Clutch knocked it out of the park, delivering a set of eight sublime watercolour paintings. Feast your eyes on their magnificence below, and, if you ever happen to meet the dude in person, be sure to buy him a drink (or three) on us.

Copyright Uncle Clutch, 2023. Not to be reproduced without permission of the creator.

Copyright Uncle Clutch, 2023. Not to be reproduced without permission of the creator.

Drum and Bass superstar Pizza Hotline delivered a detailed pitch for some garish Hello Kitty crackers: “A mixture of pink and blue semi-transparent non-recyclable plastic Hello Kitty crackers, like the consoles. There’s confetti inside that consists of mini plastic hello kitty faces and Dreamcast swirls which gets everywhere, sticks to your carpet and clothing, and no matter how much you brush or hoover it, it won’t come off. The prizes in the crackers are any of the capsule toys from Shenmue 1 or 2. You might get a poorly formed Sonic or Virtua Fighter character, or, better yet some dice or a mini forklift. It’s a Christmas miracle! When you pull each cracker, they don’t go BANG. Instead, they make the annoying VMU beeeep sound, and, instead of jokes you get awful one-liners from Shenmue. However, if you’re lucky you might get the odd inappropriate line from Blue Stinger’s Dogs Bower too. ‘Years ago I was Chinese’, ‘Try asking Chinese people about Chinese’, ‘Ugly like the worst sin’, or perhaps ‘Our jackets are too cool for that scum. I want guys like you to wear them’”. 

Of course, we assume that the emphasis on plastic-heavy construction is in fact a tongue-in-cheek throwback to the excesses of the late '90s and not something for David Attenborough to be worried about. 

The Hello Kitty Dreamcast has certainly become a bit of a style icon in recent years.

Bobby (purveyor of the magnificent Wandering Through Shenmue YouTube channel) provided an equally detailed pitch for some crackers that we would love to see on our tables – and gets top marks for including a bad joke: “I believe the cracker itself should be in the shape of a VMU. They could even come in different colours seeing as we had so many to pick from when the Dreamcast was originally released. To open it, you put your fingers where the finger grip traditionally is and pull the protective dust cap right off. In addition, the VMU screen will have traditional Sega images that are slightly altered. Sonic wearing a Christmas hat. Amy with mistletoe above her head. Nozomi wearing a scarf.

All of the hats will bear the traditional Dreamcast swirl logo. I suppose if the cracker is released in Great Britain the swirl will be blue, whereas if it's released in Japan or North America, it will be the traditional orange. But what's inside? How about some rubber erasers in the shape of different character heads from Sega franchises. One of them could have Skies of Arcadia characters. Another one would have Sonic characters of course. Maybe the other would have Virtua Fighter characters.”

And how about that bad cracker joke? Make sure you are seated for this one folks.

“Q: What do you tell your friend when the laser on your Dreamcast is having a hard time reading a disc because it's dirty?

A: It's thinking”

Celebrating 25 Years of the Dreamcast and the Kaiju Monster it Rode in on

Well, shit. It’s been 25 years…or 300 months…or over 13 million minutes. That’s how long it’s been since Godzilla Generations was unleashed in Japan.

And the Dreamcast, too, for that matter.

In our house, it's always November 27th, 1998.

I was a tween when I first learned of Sega’s swansong console. Undeterred by President Shoichiro Irimajiri’s creepy disembodied head at the initial Dreamcast reveal, it was ultimately Sonic Adventure which ignited my hype for the platform and all the ambitious and imaginative experiences that would come to define it.

(From EGM #112 November 1998)
Don’t tell tween me that middle-aged me kept this tattered mag. He’d think it was weird and sad and he’d probably be right.

But the blue ‘hog was just the tip of the spear. With unprecedented visual and aural fidelity, groundbreaking online capabilities, intuitive hardware architecture, and a supplemental operating system, the Dreamcast fancied itself as both a developer-friendly haven and bleeding-edge forerunner of gaming’s future.

(Preserved by Unseen64.net)

Elsewhere on the software front, Virtua Fighter 3tb, Get Bass/Sega Bass Fishing, and Sega Rally 2 signaled a renewed commitment to Sega’s iconic arcade experiences at home. Blue Stinger, Pen Pen TriIcelon, and Climax Landers (eventually released as Time Stalkers in the West) flaunted their vibrancy and helped crystallize the Dreamcast’s aesthetic. AM2’s Shenmue – known as 'Project Berkley' at the time – promised to help reimagine how players might inhabit dense and bustling virtual spaces. Meanwhile, the presence of Biohazard: Code Veronica and D2 hinted at resurgent third party support from large and small game makers alike. And Godzilla Generations…was also there.

Although most of Sega’s in-house projects had yet to be unveiled in depth, they’d go on to spark a creative and innovative renaissance that continues to endear the Dreamcast to us a full 2.5 percent of a millennium later.

(From EGM's 1999 Video Game Buyer's Guide)
Some of the other games I was looking forward to.

In the meantime, Sega faced hurricane-force headwinds as it prepared to get the thing off the ground. The community has expressed no shortage of anecdotes for all the challenges stacked against the company at the time. Among them, people often blame the following:

• Sega’s dwindling financial resources (i.e. capitalism*);
• A merciless competitive landscape amid Sega’s diminished command of industry trends (also capitalism*);
• The upcoming launch of the PlayStation 2 (capitalism strikes again!*);
• Intracompany divisions over the direction and priorities for the Dreamcast across regions;
• Sega's squandered goodwill with publishers, manufacturing partners, retailers, and consumers through several generations of missteps;
• Minimal time to prepare for the Japanese launch, yielding a meager day one lineup and delays for several would-be launch window titles;
• Shifting tides in consumer sentiment (sometimes people just like other things, you know?)
• Sega being Sega;
• Obama.

* I mean, maybe Sega just sucked at capitalism and that's totally OK. Would we really love the Dreamcast as much today if it had been managed by a more fiscally responsible and risk-averse company?

To me, Sega’s biggest challenges of the era were inseparable from its identity. The company’s deep-rooted stubbornness and rebelliousness – while enabling its uncompromising creativity and ambition – led it to hang its fortunes on innovations the public was not yet ready to embrace (e.g. online console gaming). At the same time, Sega continued to cling to established conventions which had fueled its past success and legacy but were falling swiftly out of vogue, globally (e.g. its arcade-centric ethos). In straddling the future and past, Sega found itself awkwardly out of step with gaming's present.  Sega was a perpetual pioneer yet it struggled to meet people where they were, or adapt enough to counter its competitors’ most basic strategies to woo them. Sadly — insomuch as we can feel sad for a for-profit corporation — the world was growing ambivalent to Sega’s presence and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

(From the What's Shenmue? Dreamcast demo)

In many ways, the Dreamcast’s Japanese launch reflected the history of this turmoil. And charmingly, Sega owned it. The company responded by promoting the platform in perhaps the most human way imaginable. Senior Managing Director Hidekazu Yukawa (R.I.P.) became the literal face of the Dreamcast to the point his image was emblazoned on a later edition of the console’s retail box. People knew him as Mr. Sega.

Sega’s Japanese Dreamcast advertising campaign was unconventionally humble and earnest, a likely reflection of Yukawa-san himself. Abandoning the brutish bluster of Segata Sanshiro’s salesmanship, Yukawa wore a friendlier face and carried a more genuine demeanor. Acknowledging the dire situation Sega found itself in, he made a gentler appeal to players. He was simply grateful for the chance they may invite the Dreamcast into their homes.

(via Advermax on Youtube) 

Yukawa-san was just doing his best.

The Yukawa TV ads rolled with the punches with humility if not grace. In an early spot, demon children haunted Yukawa’s nightmares, exclaiming they didn’t need Sega just before a rift opened and swallowed him into an abyss. And when production challenges hobbled Sega’s ability to produce enough Dreamcasts to meet retail targets, Yukawa-san dedicated an ad to apologizing for the stock shortages while fans pelted him with trash (gamers, amirite?). Meanwhile, his wife wondered when he’d be done with making all these stupid commercials. It was a pitiful ad campaign in that Yukawa-san and Sega actively solicited our pity.

So yeah. Sega was having a rough time even without a new generation of competition looming in the next millennium. As such, the company aimed to seize as much of a head start as possible, hastening the Dreamcast to the Japanese market just to get it out into the world. No doubt Sega of Japan needed to start generating revenue and building a user base sooner rather than later. So as a byproduct of that, there was little time to develop games ahead of the Japanese launch. In fact, the Dreamcast rolled out with four whole titles on day one.

The Dreamcast lobster

I recently revisited those Japanese launch games, so I'll ramble about them next...

Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me - Samurai Shodown Spin-Off for Dreamcast Translated into English!

After nearly two years of hard work, I am absolutely elated to inform you that a team consisting of Derek Pascarella, Duralumin, Marshal Wong and myself have completed our English translation of Nakoruru: Ano Hito kara no Okurimono for the Sega Dreamcast, and today you will be able to play it.

Being a fan favourite character of SNK’s beloved Samurai Shodown fighting franchise (known as Samurai Spirits in Japan), it’s only natural that Nakoruru would get her own spin-off game. SNK granted developer Inter-Let's the privilege of crafting a story that explored her character in finer detail, with the result being Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me (as we’ve decided to dub it), a Japan-exclusive visual novel game released for Windows in 2001, with an improved Dreamcast version releasing a year later in 2002. To take a source material known for its intense arcade fighting thrills and adapt it into a quiet, heartfelt text-based adventure was definitely intriguing, so much so that it made us want to produce an English translation almost two decades later! 

To translate the game into English was no small feat, however. With over 12,000 lines of text, our translation of Nakoruru was going to take us more than a year to produce. But it honestly feels like that time has flown by, because the more we worked on translating the scripts, the more we fell in love with the game's plot and characters.

Mikato meets Nakoruru for the first time.

The game’s story is told from the perspective of seven-year-old Mikato, an orphan who is taken in by the people of the snowy village Kamui Kotan. She is selected by the village's chief to serve as assistant to the shrine maiden Nakoruru, somebody the people of Kamui Kotan admire for her strength, dependability, and outward positivity. Mikato soon realises, however, that deep down, Nakoruru is harbouring an intense sorrow. 

While Nakoruru is based in the world of Samurai Shodown, it can be played without any prior knowledge of the franchise, but if you are a Shodown fan, there are quite a few playful references to other characters in the franchise sprinkled throughout the game's script.

Nakoruru's childhood friends Yantamu and Manari.

The gameplay of Nakoruru is simple, and familiar to those who have played a visual novel before. Advance the story with a button press, and occasionally make choices, some of which greatly affect the game’s narrative.

Also included throughout the story are several basic but charming mini-games. These include quizzes, fishing, dodging enemy attacks, playing music, and more. 

While Nakoruru may lack the 3D graphics and arcade action many associate with the Dreamcast, it still boasts gorgeous, crisp, hand-drawn 2D artwork, and its beautiful coming-of-age storyline will pull at your heart strings as it deals with topics of friendship, loss and insecurity. The Dreamcast received over 100 visual novel titles in Japan, and in terms of quality, Nakoruru is up there with the best the system has to offer. For those new to the visual novel genre, you can learn more about them in this fantastic video by Bowl of Lentils.

Combat training mini-game where you dodge left or right to escape attacks.

We adopted an assembly line process to translate the game’s script. First, dialogue for an individual scene would be translated by Marshal and Duralumin, then the editors - both myself and Derek, would check over the translations for any spelling or grammatical errors, but primarily to ensure they read as naturally as possible in English. Once the script edits were complete, Derek would insert them back into the game. Working together and seeing the story come to life, and by our own making, was incredibly rewarding. 

Making an important decision in the heat of combat.  

But our translation would have been for nothing if it wasn’t for Derek’s hacking wizardry. The Dreamcast is still in an immature state when it comes to debugging and hacking, unlike other systems, such as PlayStation, which is more streamlined. A project like this for the Dreamcast required a slew of different tools to achieve. Along the way, Derek had to make many tweaks to the game so it worked with our translation, such as modifying mini-games, ensuring the character’s voice audio persisted across multiple textboxes, reallocating where RAM data was written to make room for larger text data, and more. But the biggest challenge Derek faced was implementing a half-width font (as Japanese characters are wider than English ones), which took him months, but felt incredible when he finally pulled it off. The end result of Derek's hard work is fantastic-looking English text displayed in game.

Let’s take a look at Dreamcast: Year Two

Back in July 2020, Dreamcast: Year Two - the sequel to Andrew Dickinson's Dreamcast: Year One book - went to Kickstarter and smashed its funding goal within 64 hours. It took a while to get finished, but is now complete, printed, and gradually making its way out to backers. As somebody who was involved in the creation of this book, I'm really excited for everybody to get their hands on what has been created here.

And with that, I must now insert my obligatory 'conflict of interest' disclaimer. Unlike the first book in this series, which Tom reviewed on the blog upon its release, Dreamcast: Year Two has full involvement from The Dreamcast Junkyard, and even sports our branding on its back cover. When we interviewed Andrew for our podcast, the DreamPod, little did we know it would be the start of a great friendship, and that he'd eventually go on to join The Dreamcast Junkyard team himself. Because of this, you will also find written content from Junkyard members Brian Vines, Kev Mason, James Harvey, Lewis Cox (me!), Mark Williams, Mike Phelan and Tom Charnock in this book. Myself and Tom also assisted with editing and proof reading. Oh, and we all backed the project too. With all of that in mind, this article will not be a review, but merely a "look" at Andrew's new book.

If you would like to have a peek behind the curtain to hear more about the process of this book's creation and the Kickstarter, I recommend you listen to Andrew's recent appearance on The Sega Lounge podcast.

Dreamcast: Year Two and the accompanying DCY Zine.

So, the book. Just like its predecessor, Dreamcast: Year Two again uses the format originally created by Sandeep Rai for his PS Vita: Year One book (with his blessing, of course!) This time, the book covers the events that occurred in the world of Dreamcast between April 1st 2000 and March 31st 2001. This includes the console's cancellation, the advent of online gaming, the appearance of many notable games, and much more. All of this is presented alongside the excellent art of illustrator Dan Tiller, whose colourful style, with its many paint splatter effects, is a stark contrast to the very clean artwork of Dreamcast: Year One. Andrew explains that there was a clear rationale for this design choice: "I wanted something a bit messier, to show how messy the second year [of Dreamcast] was. It was really colourful and bright and amazing, but it was also the end of the Dreamcast and things were going wrong!" He also went for a predominantly blue theming over Year One's orange, ‘cause European blue swirl for life, yo.  

Other than the Junkyard team, the book also contains writing from members of the wider community such as Retro Faith, the Dreamcast Years crew, and Dreamcast Hub, as well as a great piece from the creator of the 'Years' book format, Sandeep Rai.

After some introductory pages (including a foreword by the Junkyard’s founder Tom Charnock!), the book begins with a detailed breakdown of the events of Year Two, written by Andrew. First, he covers why many consider it to be the Dreamcast's "golden year", before hitting us with the one-two punch of reality that in the grand scheme of things, the Dreamcast wasn't doing quite as well as we thought. Not only was there the looming threat of the PlayStation 2, but poor attempts from Sega to quash rumours that the future was looking grim for the Dreamcast and that Sega were to become a third-party developer wasn't doing much to reassure fans. 

Andrew then takes us back to that devastating moment when the news of the Dreamcast's discontinuation reached the masses, and reflects on how fans at the time handled the news, excellently summed up using Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' five stages of grief model. This analogy-based chapter is definitely one of my favourite pieces of writing I've read from Andrew. Well done, sir.

This segment is then followed by a collection of interviews. One of Dreamcast: Year One's strongest suits was its interviews, and the interviews in Dreamcast: Year Two are excellent too. The selection of interviewees is nicely varied, each hailing from a different creative background, but with an appreciation for the Dreamcast in common. The interviewees are as follows:

• Corey Marshall (voice actor, English voice of Ryo Hazuki in Shenmue)
• Darren Jones (Retro Gamer magazine editor-in-chief)
• Adam Koralik (YouTube Creator)
• John Linneman (YouTube Creator, Digital Foundry)
• Iain Lee (TV Presenter, Channel 4's Thumb Bandits)
• Forbes Longden (Dreamcast Today founder)
• Mickaël Pointier (developer, V-Rally 2's Dreamcast port). 

It was particularly interesting to hear many of these guys reflect on their memories of first hearing the news of the Dreamcast's cancellation. Even more harrowing than that news, however, is Adam's story about losing a red Code: Veronica Dreamcast controller at airport customs. That tale is going to haunt me for a while...

After the interviews come some longer form articles covering a range of topics. These articles are a new addition for Dreamcast: Year Two and fit naturally within the page order. Dreamcast and Saturn Junkyarder Brian Vines' piece "Beyond Saturn" explores the many ways in which the Dreamcast picked up where its ill-fated older brother, the Saturn, left off. Brian's article is followed by Sandeep Rai's, in which he waxes lyrical about the Dreamcast's many excellent Capcom fighters. After this, Retro Faith provides some great insight into the origins of online gaming, and how the Dreamcast introduced this now hugely popular feature to a generation of console gamers. Finally, our very own Mike Phelan talks about the Dreamcast's many weird and wonderful peripherals (there's a lot).

Review: Andro Dunos

I did consider labelling this post as a 'retrospective' as opposed to a 'review,' and that's because Andro Dunos is not a new game for the Dreamcast. It's not a new game, period. Indeed, this latest release physical for the venerable old console represents something of an enigma in that it's an officially sanctioned release of a game that was previously released a long time ago in an unofficial guise. Are you confused yet? I know I am. But allow me to attempt to unpack this little conundrum.

See, Andro Dunos is a Visco developed side (and occasionally vertical) scrolling shooter that was originally released for the Neo-Geo AES and MVS platforms back in 1992, and which was subsequently made available for the Dreamcast using the Neo4All emulator in the mid 2000s. Indeed, you may have even seen (or possibly own) a copy of the lesser-spotted physical release of Andro Dunos that was previously available, which was essentially a printed CD-R containing Neo4All and an Andro Dunos rom file, presented in a rather nice folded cardboard sleeve. There was a similar Neo Drift Out release too, if memory serves (found them!)...but I digress.

As far as I can tell, this latest iteration of Andro Dunos for Dreamcast is almost identical to the aforementioned (it even displays the Neo4All icon on the VMU screen), albeit with a few subtle differences; the main one being that this is an officially sanctioned physical release with full license from Visco Games and limited to just 2000 copies, all of which come with a rather nice certificate of authenticity and a choice of PAL or NTSC jewel cases, professionally printed manual and case inlays, and the same type of top quality printed CD that you would expect from veteran Dreamcast publishers JoshProd and PixelHeart.

Just taking a moment to appreciate the physical presentation of Andro Dunos (I went for the PAL cased version as the NTSC flavours are not yet - at the time of writing - available), it's really quite hard to fault the level of care that has gone into the package. As mentioned above, you get a nice (if slightly threadbare) instruction manual, some excellent original box art, a little holographic sticker on the back of the box denoting which of the 2000 numbered copies you have acquired (mine is 0332 - what's yours?), and then there's a signed cardboard insert vouching for the authenticity of the copy in your possession. It's a nice touch, I must admit.

But what of the game Andro Dunos itself? Well, it's a pretty bare bones affair in all truth. Set against the backdrop of an alien invasion of Earth, players are thrust into the cockpit of the Yellow Cherry fighter ship and tasked with battling through 8 levels of increasingly more difficult enemies, many of whom seemingly only exist to waft onto the screen, fire a shot and then either exit or propel themselves at your ship, kamikaze style. Naturally, you are armed with a complement of weapons systems which are actually quite similar to those seen in Sturmwind, and these are used to blast your way through the unending swarms of baddies and the numerous multi-staged end of level bosses.

I never played the original Andro Dunos back in 1992, simply because I didn't own a Neo-Geo. I did have a school friend who professed to own one of SNK's mythical systems, but when I went to his house to see/play on it, he claimed his mother had thrown it in the bin because - and I quote - "she didn't know what it was." Because that's something that happens in reality, Chris. You know who you are. 

The upshot of these blatant school boy lies, is that the Dreamcast release of Andro Dunos is my first real experience playing it, and when compared to the other shooters available on the platform, it leaves me a little cold.

Staff Picks: Top 21 Dreamcast Games

With our 2022 Top 200 Dreamcast Games poll coming to a close at the end of March, coinciding with the 21st anniversary of our beloved console’s discontinuation (I would say RIP but she is very much still alive and kicking, if you've been paying attention to anything we've been reporting on in the last few years!), I thought it was time for a peek into the minds of the staff here at The Dreamcast Junkyard. What did WE vote as our top ten Dreamcast games, and how does that look when compiled into a list? Well, let's find out shall we?

Along with myself, I asked Tom, Mike, Brian, Lewis, Kev, James H, James J, Mark and Rich to list their ten favourite Dreamcast titles in order. I took these and did what I seemingly love to do now as I approach my forties - I made a spreadsheet! Everyone's top picks received a score of 10, 2nd place got 9, and so on. I then employed some magic formulas to tally up the totals to give us a definitive top 21 games, using the number of times a game was voted for as a tie-breaker where necessary.

The end result is very interesting! We think there's something here for everyone, and if these were the only games in your collection most people would be pretty happy! There are some surprises, and a few things that, if you've ever listened to the DreamPod, you will not at all be surprised about. 

I'll link you to the spreadsheet itself at the end of this article so you can see the full list of games and how everyone voted, for your agreement or ridicule, but first let us count down these games from last to first. Our first entry is the only joint entry, seeing three games share 19th place...

19. Blue Stinger, San Francisco Rush 2049 & Spirit of Speed 1937 (Joint)

A trio of titles start us off, a couple of which often split the opinion of fans. One thing they all have in common? A commitment to a particular time. Blue Stinger takes place in the year 2000, so each represents a very different era, though released within a short space of each other in reality. Let's hear what some of the team had to say about these games.

Upon its release, Blue Stinger was widely misunderstood and critically dismissed under the umbrella of its survival horror contemporaries. In the decades since, it has emerged a cult classic in its own right. Blue Stinger is Shinya Nishigaki and Climax Graphics' endearing homage/parody of Hollywood action and sci-fi cinema, and it plays wonderfully as a B-movie beat-em-up today. - Brian on Blue Stinger

Rush 2049 embodies everything an arcade racer on Dreamcast should be. It looks great, the tracks are full of inventive shortcuts and hidden nooks and crannies, and the actual racing is tight and exciting. A true Midway game that doesn't take itself too seriously, Rush 2049 is easily one of the best racers on the platform. - Tom on Rush 2049

Spirit Of Speed 1937 is the Dark Souls of racing games. The sad truth is that 99% of people won't play it long enough to experience where its strengths really are. It's a true to the era racer which rewards forward thinking and careful driving - something sim racers will appreciate. - James H on Spirit of Speed 1937

18. Rez

Art? Hacking? No this isn't the latest goings-on over at OpenSea, but instead best encapsulates Rez (besides, this is actually nice to look at). Tetsuya Mizuguchi's rail-shooter may have been minimalist on visuals, but it was heavy on trance beats and addictive gameplay. A gem in the Dreamcast's library and its influence is still felt to this day. - Rich

17. Jet Set Radio

Ahead of it's time in so many ways, Jet Set Radio is held up as one of the shining beacons of unfettered creativity that the Dreamcast is so well known for. From its art style to its music, its gameplay to its reverence for hip-hop and Japanese street culture, JSR is a masterclass in what a video game can be. This is Sega at their most zany, but in the best possible way. Strap on your in-line skates and grab that spray paint can, it's time to get funky! - Andrew

5 Dreamcast Fan Translations You May Have Missed

In DreamPod Episode 86, where we discussed what we'd like to see from the Dreamcast scene in 2021, I was quite vocal about my desire to see more English fan translation patches produced for Dreamcast games. If you're anything like me, you're too lazy to learn Japanese, but absolutely long to play many of the very intriguing text-heavy Japanese Dreamcast releases. I've covered the Evangelion typing tutor translation by Derek Pascarella, and James also wrote a great retrospective on Taxi 2, going over Derek’s patch for that, but today I wanted to shine the spotlight on some completed translation projects that we (perhaps criminally) haven't covered here on the blog before. 

Blue Submarine No. 6: -Time and Tide-

Blue Submarine No. 6 started out as a manga that was first published in 1967, with an OVA (essentially a straight-to-video anime) adaptation released in 2000. The story of BS6 is set in a post-apocalyptic future, where the sea levels have risen and flooded most of the land on Earth. What remains is being attacked by half-animal hybrids, which are fought back by humanity's submarine forces, including the titular Blue Submarine No. 6. Time and Tide was developed and published by Sega, and released in December 2000. 

This very cool game mixes some excellently-presented visual novel-style sections (that utilise cel-shaded animation to present the game's characters), with 3D underwater segments in the submarine that control really well. While this game is playable without knowing Japanese, it is vital to understanding the plot. Thankfully, over the space of year, a team comprising of Rolly, RafaGam, esperknight and Eyl put together an English translation patch for this awesome game, and released it at the tail-end of 2020, to celebrate the game's 20th anniversary, as well as the 22nd birthday of the Dreamcast console. 

All in-game text is now understandable to non-Japanese speakers, anime cutscenes now have English subtitles, and pesky spoken dialogue during submarine missions where the translators couldn't insert subtitles have been overdubbed with English text-to-speech voices. The Blue Submarine No. 6 -Tides of Time- website was also restored and translated into English as part of this project, allowing players to download the game's original DLC to grant bonus items in the shop. To download the patch, check out the project's page on SEGA-SKY.

Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream

Developed by a largely female-orientated development team, Napple Tale released to Japan in October 2000, and was never brought over to the West for... some reason. This colourful adventure combines a 3D hub world with 2.5D platforming stages, complete with an absolutely terrific score by acclaimed composer Yoko Kanno. Similar to Blue Submarine No. 6, Napple Tale is perfectly playable without the need to know Japanese, but its whimsical, fairy-tale inspired story is definitely something worth experiencing. 

In October 2019, a team led by translator Cargodin released an English patch online, allowing non-Japanese speakers to experience Napple Tale's story 19 years after the game's initial release. The game's original website was also restored and translated into English, allowing the game's DLC to be downloaded, unlocking a bonus stage called "paffet rally". If you fancy a trip to Napple World in all its English-translated glory, you can download the patch at Romhacking.net.

 

12 great punk albums featuring songs from Dreamcast games

There are many reasons to love the Dreamcast. We assume you agree with us, as you're currently reading a blog entitled the 'Dreamcast Junkyard'. Arcade perfect gameplay? Check. State of the art graphics (for it's time)? Check. The last great 'hurrah' of the Sega of old? Possibly controversial, but check. Some of the best music ever committed to a video game library? Oh, you're damn right.

Whether it's the funky beats of Jet Set Radio, orchestral magnificence of Shenmue or Skies of Arcadia, eclectic soundtrack of MSR or the pure joy of the Marvel vs Capcom 2 character select screen...well maybe not the last one.. the musical magnificence of the Dreamcast can not be overlooked.

With that, we also had a fairly large number of games featuring licensed soundtracks. Ever since the compact disc became the games medium of choice in the 90's, games have not been shy about popping on some killer tunes to please their consumers. The Playstation was the epitome of this new gaming frontier, as a Sony product was always likely to be, and the merging of games with music was an integral part of the cultural impact the console had on a whole generation.

Thing is, whilst many of my fellow Junkyard writers were probably spending that period in their lives chilling out to the latest trance hit, or techno rave masterpiece (or whatever it's called, it's not my area of knowledge!), I was happily indulging in my own musical journey - one that very much consisted of a bunch of sweaty gigs, slam dancing lunatics and a healthy disliking of authority. Punk. A misunderstood genre, if ever there was one, was in many ways my first love, and it is a love that is well catered for on that little Sega made mistress of my dreams. Whether it's a nod back to the spit covered, pogoing era of the 70's, the DIY led revolution of the 80's or the ska and skate infused 90's revival, there's plenty for the discerning punk fan to enjoy whilst indulging in some Dreamcast gaming.

But I'm not just going to list a top ten of DC punk songs. Anyone who has read anything else I've ever written for the Junkyard knows that ain't my style. Being a punk fan that just about remembers a time before streaming services were king, it's always been about the mighty album for me. Punk albums are wondrous, beautiful things - full of unheard delights, musical experimentation and just plain weirdness, far beyond the narrow view that some have of punk rock. They're often overlooked, criminally so, dismissed as having just one or two good songs - but nothing could be further from the truth. And I think it's time to start setting the record straight.

So come join me as I take a look at a dozen great examples of punk albums, all of which feature songs from Dreamcast games.

Bad Religion - No Control (1989) 

(featuring 'You' from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2)

Bad Religion, more so than probably any other band, were responsible for helping shape the sound that punk became in the early 90's. Whilst they were part of the early LA hardcore scene (the fantastic 'How Could Hell Be Any Worse?' standing right up there with the best of that cities output), they didn't truly come into their own until they ended the 80's with a trio of masterpiece albums, 'Suffer' came first, 'Against the Grain' rounded them off, and this, 1989's 'No Control' is slap bang in the middle. It builds on what came before, 'Suffer' being the template of what the band's sound would become, but everything is that touch quicker, that touch harder, and that tad better sounding (although 'Suffer' remains one of my all time favourite albums). Greg Gaffin's lyrics are always a level above the often simple anti-authority
diatribes, and on this he effortlessly melds philosophy, politics and the human condition, all laid on top of a melodic, fast southern Californian hardcore punk sound. Bands like the Descendents, Adolescents and D.I. had done similar things before, but it was Bad Religion who perfected this sound. Songs from this album still make appearances in the bands live sets, and there's a very good reason for that. No Control is one of the very best US punk albums ever recorded.

'You' featured in Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2, and is a favourite amongst many, it's upbeat, high speed skate punk sound perfectly fitting the game.

Stand out songs:
- Big Bang
- I Want to Conquer the World
- Henchman

You can listen to 'No Control' on Spotify here.

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.

Insert Coin launches new Shenmue range

It may be the 20th year since the Dreamcast launch. However 2018 is proving to be one of the most bountiful years for merchandise and Dreamcast related gear. The launch of the official Sega shop in Europe bought with it a host of DC related goodies, and this has now been complimented with an additional collection from UK designers Insert Coin.

No strangers to either Sega or Shenmue wear itself, having previously released Shenmue branded t-shirts and coats in the past. The new range comprises a Ryo inspired Leather coat, as well as a themed hooded zip up coat, before finally being rounded out by a classic looking white Tee emblazoned with the Shenmue tiger on the back. The coats both look perfect for avenging your fathers murder in, keeping warm in the British drizzle or for just generally showing your nerdy Sega fanboyism as you strut about your retro gaming life, no doubt filming yourself reacting to all and sundry.

Check out the images below and let us know what you think in the comments. And check out the range on Insert Coin here, as well as their other Dreamcast range that Tom previously spotlighted here.