Revisiting Grand Theft Auto 2 on Sega Dreamcast

With all the hype around Grand Theft Auto VI at the moment, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to revisit the one game in the series which always seems to get overlooked: Grand Theft Auto 2.

Whilst the much-loved Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City have enjoyed unofficial ports to the Dreamcast in recent times, the series’ first true sequel was the only game which actually received a contemporary port on Sega’s machine.

Released originally in the fall of 1999 on the PC, closely followed by the PlayStation a few months later, the Grand Theft Auto series would eventually make its way onto a Sega console for the first -and only- time in the summer of the new millennium with Rockstar’s GTA 2.

Absolute carnage. It's like Cardiff on a Friday night.

Before GTA became the behemoth franchise it is known as today, it looked very different. The first two games (well, three if you include the “London” expansion that was released after the original title) were not in glorious three-dimensions, and instead all of the action took place from a top-down bird's-eye view perspective. Whilst these games were still pretty vast in size, they were not particularly hardware-intensive; meaning that a Dreamcast port should’ve been a straightforward conversion from the PC game.

Whilst the Dreamcast version of GTA 2 looks the part and runs very smoothly, there is one key aspect that was a little lost in translation which ultimately meant that the port fell a little short of a guaranteed slam dunk; the controls. They’re just a bit rubbish. 

The default controls use the analogue stick to spin your character on the spot, with the A and Y buttons used to make your character walk forward and backwards. There are a number of presets to choose from, but you can’t manually assign buttons and none of the presets allow you to simply use the analogue stick (or d-pad) to move around in all directions freely. Surely that would’ve been much easier?

It just makes moving around a bit of a chore and doesn’t feel natural when you first start playing the game. In their coverage of GTA 2, IGN summed it up:

“The Dreamcast [control] scheme is unforgivable. You're able to choose from among only four preset templates, and your movement can never be controlled by the digital pad. That is a true shame, as the analog movement proves to be too sensitive for its own good and sends you zooming forward in one direction at a pace that defies accuracy.”

Despite the clumsiness of the controls, after half an hour of gameplay, things started to click a little and I was able to move around a bit easier.

The gameplay loop is as you’d expect; it is a GTA game after all. Walk around, find a ringing phone box, listen to the incoming request and then go on your merry way. You can hijack pretty much any vehicle you come across with a simple press of the X button, and its previous occupant will be unceremoniously dumped onto the floor as you hop inside.

Respect is everything and don't you forget it.

It quickly becomes very addictive and before you know it, you’ve just lost multiple hours of your evening. Some of the missions asked of you are brilliant. One particular favourite was the gang member who gets upset that Pizza Cake (the fictitious pizza joint) keeps messing up his favourite order. In a fit of rage, he asks you to destroy one of their restaurants as punishment. Unfortunately the effects of this are so underwhelming, so he orders you to destroy the delivery van instead. Deliveroo drivers beware.

As you proceed through the missions, you will raise your respect with one gang but this in turn lowers it with their rivals. This means they turn hostile against you, so it’s important to balance out your reputation by accepting a range of missions. Each gang has their own territory and with no on-screen map for navigation, as is tradition with classic GTA games, you’re looking at the physical map packaged with the game so you know where to go and where to avoid. 

If you want to take a break from the main missions, there is a whole load of other things that you can do instead. There are multiple hidden tokens to find, dozens of different weapons, secret vehicles to collect and even vehicle modification if you can find the specialised garages. Additionally, if you hijack a taxi or an emergency vehicle, you can take on those roles. As a taxi driver, you can pick up passengers as a way to make some much needed dollars on the side. Who needs Crazy Taxi? With so much content, you could be playing this game for months.

I'm lost already. Time to whip out my physical map.

One of the highlights of playing a GTA game has always been listening to the in-car radio stations. Much like in real life, part of the charm was that the radio is always on when you’re driving around; sometimes you’re listening intently and sometimes you aren’t. In the world of GTA, these radio stations continue to play on a loop regardless of if you’re actually listening to them or not. This loop means whenever you switch channels, it doesn’t start from the beginning but from wherever it was in its “as-live” playthrough. The Dreamcast version lacks this loop, meaning that when you get into a car, the radio station plays from the beginning. It’s not a major deal, but interesting that it’s only the Dreamcast which has this issue. As someone who quite enjoys just jumping in a car and driving around the map aimlessly, maybe I noticed it more than the average person would.

When GTA 2 was released for Dreamcast in 2000, the reviews were generally slightly above average, with a few outlets scoring it a little higher.

GameSpot would award GTA 2 a 6.9 out of 10. They had the following to say:

“If you’re looking to commit some virtual crimes on your Dreamcast, then by all means steal a car, drive it down to your local game retailer, and slap around the owner until he gives you a copy. OK, it might just be easier for you to buy one instead.”

Dreamcast Magazine in the UK seemed to enjoy the game more than most, presenting it with a favourable 81% score.

“It might not be very next-gen, but there's no denying the pleasure that can be derived from the various activities, pleasant or not. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some money to collect and some people to kill.”

Part of me thinks that a lot of the reviews were a little harsh on GTA 2 because it didn’t “look like a next-gen game”. Indeed, there seemed to be a theme with 2D games back in the early 2000s being labelled as inferior to those in 3D, because they weren't pushing the latest shiny technology to its full potential. I think nowadays we can appreciate good 2D Dreamcast games a lot more than we could back then.

I've no idea who this guy is, but it's my new favourite loading screen.

So, is GTA 2 on Dreamcast still worth playing today? Well, despite the flaws with this particular version which I’ve outlined throughout this article, I’d have to say yes. It’s by no means a great game, but it still has that addictive GTA gameplay loop and does offer you the freedom of moving around and doing what you want that’s so synonymous with the series. The control scheme puts a slight damper on proceedings, but this is an issue experienced with many other retro games when you compare them to modern luxuries like fully customisable controls, dual-sticks and ergonomic controllers. The controls don’t ruin the experience in my opinion, but they do cause slight irritation.

With the surely epic GTA VI on the horizon -now just a few months away- the time is perfect for Dreamcast owners to revisit this oft-forgotten and overlooked entry in the series to whet your appetite for November.

Ending a game session gives you a summary of the chaos caused.

We Played the Unreleased Game "Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen" for Sega Dreamcast

What could've been. Cover created by Dreamcast Me That.

Developed by Arxel Tribe in the late 90s, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is a point-and-click adventure game that would be released for the PC in 1998. It turns out that the game was supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast a few years later, but ultimately ended up on the mammoth pile of unreleased titles which never saw the light of day on Sega’s console. And no, we’re not talking about The Ring: Terror's Realm, which unfortunately for us, did sneak its way into the console’s release library.

However, thanks to the ongoing preservation efforts of Comby Laurent from Sega Dreamcast Info, this previously unreleased title is now available to download and play via emulation or, even better, on a real Dreamcast with a real controller in your sweaty hands.

But before we get into how this title should’ve ended up on the Dreamcast sometime in the year 2000, let’s talk a little about the game itself.

I asked this chap what he thought about the Dreamcast.

Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is loosely based on Der Ring des Nibelungen; four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. Yes, that’s right, a game based on an opera. I’ve officially heard it all. Indeed, the game itself features music from various performances of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the legendary Georg Solti himself.

I had to Google Georg Solti as well, don’t worry. You’ll find out he’s a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor who’s won countless awards including a British CBE, a knighthood and a whopping 31 Grammy Awards. Bet you didn’t think you’d learn that on a Dreamcast blog, did you?

Even if you’re not an opera fan, you will absolutely know the Ride of the Valkyries score which was featured in Der Ring des Nibelungen. In fact, I’ll give you a moment to go and search for it on YouTube so you can have it playing in the background as you read the rest of this article; it’ll add to the overall experience.

Anyway, back to Der Ring des Nibelungen. The scale and scope of the story told in these works is so epic that I simply don’t have enough time to cover it all here. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. In the game, there are four characters which you assume control of. Alberich (a cruel and sadistic dwarf king), Loge (a fire spirit), Siegmund (the son of the god Wotan), and Brünnhilde (a Valkyrie warrior).

Some of the areas in the game are beautifully atmospheric.

There are loads of additional characters and even a family tree to help you make sense of it all. In fact, the story and puzzles in Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen are so complex that the PC release actually included an entire walkthrough in its own instruction manual! Arxel Tribe clearly had little faith that their playerbase would get their head around it all, either.

As I mentioned, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen did actually get a release on PC in 1998. Whilst it did enjoy significant commercial success -shifting an impressive 600,000 lifetime copies according to Arxel Tribe’s Guillaume de Fondaumière- the reviews were not so favourable. IGN described it as a “complete travesty when it comes to gameplay” on the way to awarding it a 2.7/10 score, whilst GameStop said it was “so utterly uninviting” in their 3.7/10 appraisal.

Magic frogs. For the diving helmet. Obviously.

News of a Dreamcast port in the UK media at the time was sparse, despite the fact that from what we can see now, most of the game was finished and not far away from being ready to rock. Whilst flicking through some issues of the UK’s Dreamcast Magazine, I did find a small news bite tucked away in the corner of issue four which read:

“News has broken on a forthcoming Dreamcast game from Success. The game is to be a port of the hit PC game Ring: The Legend of Nibelung, which is currently in the midst of conversion and should be with us sometime during 2000.”

No accompanying screenshot or half-page spread. It’s fair to say that this port was somewhat under the radar and so it’s unsurprising that many Dreamcast fans hadn’t heard of its existence before. IGN also reported that “the makers of Rainbow Cotton for the Dreamcast will be bringing The Ring of the Nibelungen to Japanese DC gamers. Currently, this game is listed on the Success web page as being set for release on the PC in Japan on October 29th of this year.” But again, no screenshots or noteworthy details.

The Dreamcast version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was seemingly lost forever at some point after this. Well, I say lost forever but what I actually mean is lost until the efforts of Laurent and his team managed to preserve the title for us all to enjoy.

A prototype version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was actually discovered and dumped a few years ago, but it was only a partial dump. Some of the three discs were missing meaning that the game could not be played in any logical order. But all was not lost. In a recent post, Laurent has managed to obtain dumps of all three discs and additionally some VMU save files which allow for each of the games’ chapters to be loaded and played.

Premier Eleven: A Closer Look at the Lost Atomiswave Football Game

Throughout history there are numerous examples of the story behind the creation of a particular piece of media being more interesting than the final product. Take for example, the 1996 movie The Island of Dr. Moreau. A movie which was based on the 1896 H. G. Wells novel of the same name and which teamed a star-studded cast (Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk) with a hotly tipped up-and-coming director (Richard Stanley). In what is now a notorious turn of events, the final movie turned out to be something of a box office bomb, but the story of what went on behind the cameras spawned such tall and bizarre tales that the production has become infamous amongst movie aficionados. If you’re not in the slightest bit familiar with what I’m blathering about, then I implore you to seek out the documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau and be amazed at just how wild movie making can become.

Poster for the 1996 movie. The on-set drama
eclipsed that of the 1977 rendition.

With this in mind then, let us turn our attention to something much more Dreamcast-centric: Dimps Corporation’s ‘lost’ Atomiswave football (soccer) title Premier Eleven. We’ve covered the storied history of Premier Eleven here at the Junkyard in past, indeed I almost transformed into the aforementioned Dr. Moreau myself while researching it - at one point even visiting an arcade where a cabinet had been trialled back in the early 2000s, hoping and praying that there may be some remnant of it still in situ. Spoiler: there wasn’t. If you’d like to know more than is healthy about my recalcitrant obsession with this previously lesser-spotted arcade kickabout, please do check out our previous articles on Premier Eleven here and here; and you can read about the history of the Atomiswave arcade system (and its fascinating link to the Dreamcast) here.

A photo of the Premier Eleven arcade cabinet installed
at Clarence Pier, Southsea (UK) - Credit: John Baseley.

The long and short of it though, is that Premier Eleven was a football game in development by Dimps Corporation, which was planned for release on Sammy’s Atomiswave arcade system. After some testing in a few select locations, release plans for the game were scrapped, cabinets were unceremoniously slung into the fires of Orodruin, and the few remaining copies of the original arcade board ended up in the hands of private collectors. 

When the Atomiswave library was ported to the Dreamcast back in 2020, it was truly a marvel to behold and many a Dreamcast enjoyer was - quite rightly - overjoyed to finally be given the opportunity to sample such delights as Faster Than Speed, KenJu, Dolphin Blue, Maximum Speed et al. Only, there was a small hole in the collection of games being unleashed onto the Dreamcast - the Atomiswave library was not complete. Several games were missing from the catalogue, mainly due to being unreleased back during the Atomiswave’s heyday, and among them was (you guessed it) Premier Eleven.

Original Premier Eleven promotional flyer.

Now (well, in June 2026), thanks to a Dreamcast-Talk forum user who goes by the monicker ‘dimps’ (I see what you did there, dimps) Premier Eleven has finally been dumped and ported to the Dreamcast. Not only that, but this dump apparently came direct - and with permission to release - from a private collector who had in their possession a genuine Premier Eleven PCB. Even better, is that dimps managed to delve into the game’s code and release versions of the ROM which increase the default game time from a paltry 4-minute game length to both 12-minute and 20-minute game lengths - something which may not sound like much, but actually turns Premier Eleven into so much more than it could ever have been if left in its default state.

A Premier Eleven board went up for sale for $15,000 back in 2022.

The mystique around Premier Eleven, and that it promised so much from the promotional materials released back in the early 2000s, is possibly what led me to obsess over it so much in the past. The Dreamcast’s stable of football (soccer) titles is somewhat lacking when it comes to quality, with releases such as Virtua Striker 2 Ver 2000.1 and UEFA Dream Soccer generally being regarded as the cream of the crop (and cream always rises to the top, right?); but with Premier Eleven’s release, we finally get a chance to experience what could have been another option for Dreamcast-owning football fans. Well, if the Atomiswave games had been officially ported. And Premier Eleven had been fully released. And the Dreamcast hadn't had its life support yanked in 2001. You get what I mean, don’t be pedantic.

So then, what do we actually get with Premier Eleven? Not a great deal in truth. The game was always intended as an arcade experience and as such if you’re expecting something like Pro Evolution Soccer then you’ll be disappointed. No, this is squarely in the Virtua Striker mould (and in some ways it has more in common with the Super Sidekicks games), but hold that thought about PES because there are some similarities to Konami’s title if you look beyond the somewhat basic gameplay and impressive visuals and animation. Firstly, remember that this was an unreleased game that was never intended to be played on a Dreamcast. For that reason, it can be forgiven for featuring only a single play mode: a sort of cut-down World Cup where you choose a team from the 32 international squads available and then enter the tournament at the last 16 stage. You pick a team, get randomly matched against an opponent in the tournament tree, and then it’s game on.

32 international teams are included.

You'll start every run through at the Round of 16.

He's got a foot like a traction engine.

Hitting the post from 25 yards.
As Ally McCoist would say: shenshashional!

There are no options, no other play modes. There are no player names (although there are likenesses) and there is no way to change the camera angle. There is no play-by-play commentary other than a rudimentary International Superstar Soccer Deluxe style announcement whenever the ball leaves the field of play for a throw in or a goal kick. You can choose your team’s formation from a choice of two…but that’s about as deep as the technicalities get. No subs, no messing with player positions…you can’t even pause the action once a game starts. No, this is a totally barebones arcade football experience. But you know what? Premier Eleven plays a bit of a blinder when it eventually clicks into place.

The NAOMI Games That Deserved Dreamcast Ports

Ask your average gamer with a passing interest in the Dreamcast to name their favourite titles for the system, and there is a good chance that you might hear answers like Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, or Resident Evil CODE:Veronica. The console certainly had a healthy crop of long-form, narrative-driven sagas like this which remain an enduring part of its identity to this day. However, it’s probably just as likely that the answers you’ll receive are replete with brash, high-tempo classics such as Crazy Taxi, Power Stone, or The House of the Dead 2. Titles in this vein, which were so obviously shaped by their arcade roots, also played a huge role in making the Dreamcast what it was – and some of them shifted big numbers too (OK, big numbers for the Dreamcast).

In retrospect, given what was just around the corner for video gaming, it is not uncommon to hear the opinion that Sega’s swansong console was overly reliant on arcade ports. If it were to serve evolving tastes, so the argument goes, perhaps it needed to have attracted more games that were divorced from the arcade scene. Considering the multitude of factors that coalesced to make the Dreamcast a commercial flop, it is impossible to say with any certainty whether this theory holds much weight. Personally, I suspect it may have the tiniest grain of truth to it. If so, then daydreaming about how the console’s release library could have been packed out with even more arcade titles is perhaps a little bit perverse, but this is the Dreamcast Junkyard after all, and pontificating on this type of nonsense is our jam.

The NAOMI-Dreamcast Connection

For the uninitiated, I should probably explain that, in the same year that Sega launched the Dreamcast to the home market (1998), they also launched the New Arcade Operation Machine Idea (NAOMI) system for the arcade market. And, barring a handful of differences which made the arcade system marginally superior, the two were practically twins. 

The front page of a NAOMI press release from 1998, with the Dreamcast swirl incorporated into the logo (later to be dropped in favour of clarity). Image courtesy of Sega Retro.

I am not at all technically minded, and plenty of other articles by highly knowledgeable authors have been written about the affinities between the two systems, so I won’t feign expertise and start talking about chips and memory. For now, it is sufficient to say that because of the similarities between the NAOMI and the Dreamcast, porting games from the former to the latter was a fairly simple affair. Naturally then, masses of NAOMI titles were brought over to the home market using this route - or were they?

Relying on the data assembled by the wonderful archivists of Sega Retro, by my count 159 titles were released for the NAOMI, either on ROM cartridge or GD-ROM, but only 60 of these made it over to our beloved Dreamcast. Sure, among those 60 there are many, many, stone cold classics, ranging from blockbuster hits like Crazy Taxi through to lower-profile titles that have garnered a cult following over the years, such as Ikaruga. As thankful as I am for ports like these, those numbers mean that 99 NAOMI games didn’t make the jump over to the Dreamcast, and indeed, many never left the arcade full-stop.

In certain instances, this is understandable. The Dreamcast had its fair share of bizarre accessories, but would anyone out there really have wanted to cram a StarHorse terminal into their living room? Probably not.

OK lads, back to mine for a few hours of StarHorse?

For other reasons, games like Dragon Treasure, where players sought out ‘medals’ in a thinly veiled gambling loop, were probably not well suited to the home market either. You can’t lose money to yourself after all. Yet there are plenty of other games that could have feasibly made it onto the Dreamcast, brightening up its library, bringing us hours of joy, and getting savaged by a grumpy and short-tempered reviewer in the Official Dreamcast Magazine. So, in no particular order, here are the NAOMI games that I feel should have been blessed with releases on the Dreamcast.

Monkey Ball

Landing in arcades with aplomb in July 2001, Monkey Ball had that upbeat, blue-skies aesthetic that Sega development teams of the era seem to have mastered. On the face of it, rolling a twee monkey character around maze-like platforms to collect bananas and reach an end goal is very simplistic, but the combination of platforming and puzzle elements proved to be a big hit, and the opportunity to master the controls and beat prior scores lent the game a degree of depth and replayability. 

Monkey Ball screenshot courtesy of the Video Games Museum.

Before the end of the year, the game was ported to the Gamecube as Super Monkey Ball - the first game Sega published on a Nintendo home console following their exit from the hardware market. To the delight of an ailing Sega, it was a commercial hit, spawning a quick sequel and a franchise that has remained active to this day. But really, this game’s first home console destination should have been the Dreamcast, and had it hit the arcades a year earlier, I don't doubt that I could have been clasping a well-used copy of Monkey Ball in a battered PAL case right now. Fortunately though, thanks to the dedication of Memorix101, an unofficial port is in the works, and we may well see a fully working version in the near future.

Intrepid Izzy & Rush Rush Rally Reloaded are now available on ZOOM Platform

Well this is a nice little surprise. Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded (or R4, to those in the know) - two of Senile Team's most highly regarded Dreamcast titles - are now available for the PC via ZOOM Platform, while a third Senile Team release, HypnoTiles, has also made the jump to everybody's favourite DRM-free storefront.

If you've been around the Dreamcast scene for any length of time, you'll no doubt be familiar with Senile Team's pedigree. They are the studio responsible for some of the Dreamcast's finest post-mortem moments, with the Beats of Rage engine signalling their arrival in the indie space on Sega's final console back in 2003; before going on to release Polyko's Super Jelly Bean Quest in the Sketchbook of Illusion in 2012, and more recently Rush Rush Rally Racing in 2009 and 2017 (in the form of the updated Reloaded) and Intrepid Izzy, also in 2017.

We were/are big fans of both titles, stating in our glowing review of Izzy: "...the game has everything a great action platformer should have: great gameplay and controls, charming artwork and beautiful animation, varied and well-themed levels, and a great sense of humour...The many years of development experience that Senile Team have under their collective belts shines through here - resulting in an incredibly polished final product."

Similarly, we gushed the following about R4: "Rush Rush Rally Racing is a fantastic title even if you don't have the option of playing the multi-player games on offer. The vehicle handling is amazingly intuitive, it sounds great and the game is peppered with numerous imaginative details (just don't hit the cows!); and while it's very difficult if you're generally shit at games like I am, with perseverance there's a lot of fun to be had." We even spoke to the man himself Roel van Mastbergan, Senile Team's lead designer, artist and programmer back in 2017 - check out the interview here.

Intrepid Izzy launched to overwhelming critical acclaim on Dreamcast.

To celebrate the re-release of both Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded on ZOOM Platform (and the release of puzzle title HypnoTiles), there's currently a special offer of 25% off the asking prices. Naturally, we asked Roel for his thoughts, alongside ZOOM Platform's Jordan Freeman, who is a former colleague and business partner of the late, great Bernie Stolar and someone who is known to enjoy a bit of Dreamcastic action in his down time:

"Well, what can I say? It's always exciting to bring a game to a new audience, and now it's three games at once! Thrice the fun! Jordan and ZOOM Platform in general have been a pleasure to work with, so I hope this marks the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration."

- Roel van Mastbergan, Senile Team

"It is our pleasure to announce that Senile Team’s legendary catalog has come to ZOOM Platform. Roel and his team, like us, hold Dreamcast near and dear to their hearts. It’s a match made in Heaven. Tremendous classics such as Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded combined with exciting new releases like HypnoTiles are exactly why the incredibly fertile Dreamcast indie scene remains alive and well to this day!"

- Jordan Freeman, ZOOM Platform

If you enjoyed 16-bit Micro Machines, you'll love Rush Rush Rally Racing.

If you've never played either Rush Rush Rally Reloaded or Intrepid Izzy on your Dreamcast (there's no excuse, to be honest), then now is the perfect time to give them both a whirl on your computing device of choice. As long as it's a Windows PC. And don't forget HypnoTiles, which looks like a fun variant on the Tetris formula with a bit of Lumines thrown in. Find out more over at ZOOM Platform.

Disclaimer for anyone interested: this isn't a paid or sponsored post or anything like that. I just like Intrepid Izzy and Rush Rush Rally Reloaded so if more people get to experience them, that's a bonus. Cheers me dears!

Show Report: Nottingham Video Games Expo 2026

Back in 2022, The Dreamcast Junkyard travelled to the fair city of Nottingham to take part in Nottingham Video Games Expo '22. Nary four years later we were back to our old shenanigans, once again gracing Robin Hood's stomping ground with our collective odious presence. That's because on Saturday 18th July 2026, NottsVGE returned with gusto, in a plush new city centre venue to welcome hoards of rabid enjoyers of electronic games to the hallowed event space hidden within the bowels of the (actually pretty nice) Crowne Plaza hotel.

Armed with a plethora of slightly dodgy display screens (some of which were salvaged from charity shops), and an overflowing Lidl carrier bag of Dreamcast consoles, we trudged through the back alleys of Nottinghamshire to set up our encampment in a small corner of the event space. The scene was set, the hangovers were negligible and the monitor connection issues were overcome by the crack team of weary Dreamcast apologists which staff this very blog. Eventually, the doors were flung open at 10:00 and we greeted our expectant audience.

Early drama during the setting up process, as Lewis and Brian discuss whether Jaz should be allowed to run another Spirit of Speed 1937 competition.

Multi-player Mario Kart 64 running on a Dreamcast seemed to go down well. 

Marvel Vs Capcom 2 was a particular crowd favourite while I played Suzuki Alstare. Um.

To be fair, there were probably far too many of us manning the 12 foot table as myself (Tom), Lewis, Andrew, Lozz, Brian, Kev, Jaz and Harvey (aka Pizza Hotline and composer of our podcast's epic outro tune) were on hand to bellow uncontrollably at anyone who dared come near our stand. But by the grace of Zeus we were there to spread the Gospel of Dreamcast™ to all who would heed our words...and I don't believe anyone was left disappointed.

The event was very popular with those seeking gaming goodies.

One of the talks, this one being an interview with Ocean Software's Gary Bracey.

Sega Bass Fishing was popular with everyone. Because it is class.

Throughout the day we welcomed all and sundry to experience the delights of Under Defeat and Radirgy in proper TATE mode; unreleased Atomiswave gems such as Kenju, Maximum Speed and Faster than Speed; CRT-enabled joy in the form of House of the Dead 2 with light guns; slightly unhinged prancing with Samba De Amigo and maracas; and a whole host of competitions with titles such as Crazy Taxi, Sega Bass Fishing, Power Stone 2, ChuChu Rocket!, and Virtua Tennis 2. 

There was an online-enabled Dreamcast showing off Phantasy Star Online, Quake III: Arena and web browsing functionality through the unbridled power of DreamPi; and we also managed to showcase some of the work of the Dreamcast community, with the excellent ports of GTA III, Mario Kart 64 and Super Monkey Ball all going down a storm.

As you can probably appreciate, many a conversation about the awesomness of Dreamcast was had and many a round of Soulcalibur was lost and won. We even managed to rope gaming royalty like Wil 'Super Play and N64 Magazine' Overton into a doubles tournament on the aforementioned Virtua Tennis 2/Tennis 2K2.

Several generations of Dreamcast enjoyers in one shot.

That is one sexy modded Dreamcast system, I think you'll agree.
Ignore the yellowed controller on the right. Cheers.

Wil Overton is actually pretty good at Virtua Tennis. Who knew?!

Away from The Dreamcast Junkyard's set up, there were numerous traders hawking their glittering warez. YouTuber TootyUK and the ever-present Sore Thumbs Retro Games were selling hardware and software; our good friend Marc Jowett (aka The Gaming Newsagent) had a massive assortment of games magazines and books on sale - I even grabbed a copy of Chris Scullion's excellent Dreamcast Encylopedia for an unbeatable price.

Elsewhere, the Derby Computer Museum had a whole array of classic consoles and computer hardware on display which were fully playable; Arcade Club had a range of classic arcade cabs availiable set to free play mode; Debug and Secret Mode had a pretty massive area showing off a range of brand new indie games (I was quite partial to SUPER 56 from Onion Soup Interactive - think WarioWare, but even more unhinged); and the UK Amstrad Group had an entire room filled with Amstrad games, hardware and slightly musty nostalgia.

I grew up with an Amstrad. Not this one. I had a proper
CPC 464+ though, not a CPC464+ monitor connected to a povo CPC 464. Cough.

Roland Perry (right, obvs) is royalty in the Amstrad scene.

Obligatory Atari Jaguar mention. This one was £300, 
but can you really put a price on being able to play Club Drive on native hardware?

The UK Amstrad Group's area was of particular interest to me, as my very first gaming device was an Amstrad CPC 464+, so speaking to people who are as passionate about the Amstrad platform as I am about the Dreamcast was very, very cool. I even got to meet Roland Perry, the visionary architect behind the whole Amstrad CPC range. Not sure he was too thrilled when I said I wasn't a fan of his eponymous Roland series...but I digress/cringe.

Look at it! It's pure art. The thing in the middle, I mean.

Is this basically Inception?

Back at The Dreamcast Junkyard's area, we welcomed one of the OG members of the editorial team, Aaron 'The Gagaman' Foster, where he was presented with one of the amazing objets d'art created by VGNYsoft - an acrylic sign of his own artwork, a visual representation of the beginnings of this very blog. By all accounts he was very humbled, but that was short-lived as he was press ganged into a session of Samba de Amigo. On the topic of VGNY though, we also had on display some of the very special, very limited edition Dreamcast Junkyard 20th Anniversary Dreamcast console shells...and they looked (look) absolutely superb, even if I say so myself.

Old favourites like Crazy Taxi still command so much attention.
Note the DCJY console shell on the left, courtesy of VGNY.

ChuChu Rocket! 4-player went down a storm.
We won't talk about the fights that ensued after a Cat Attack.

Soulcalibur on a crisp CRT won't ever not draw a crowd.
The Pokemon toys weren't ours, btw.

I think it's safe to say that NottsVGE 2026 was the biggest and best yet, and full respect goes to Alex (aka The Sega Guru) and his team for putting on yet another stellar event. Personally, my thanks go to the DCJY team for their outstanding efforts throughout the day, and also to the people who came to speak to us, share their love for the Dreamcast and play some quality games. 

Never, ever accept a donut (or a cupcake) from this man.

Had to keep a tight watch on Jaz, lest he sneak off and subject
the entire event to more janky racing games.

Another highlight was that Jaz didn't get to re-run his disgusting Spirit of Speed 1937 competition on a giant screen (see the 2022 event for that blasphemous display of hubris); meanwhile Kev forgot to bring his customary petrol station cupcakes to hand out to unsuspecting event goers. He did go to Wendy's and buy some tiny donuts (most of which he consumed himself while grunting feverishly under a table), but to be honest I think the less said about that, the better.

From left to right: Pizza Hotline, Lozz, Kev, Jaz, Andrew, Brian, Tom, Lewis and Aaron

So there we have it. NottsVGE 2026 was a resounding success, and no doubt we'll be there again in years to come. See you there!

Were you at Nottingham Video Games Expo 2026? Did you encounter any of the reprobates in the image above? Are you mentally scarred? Let us know in the comments!

The Tragic Fate of DC-UK Magazine and Its Unreleased Issue 21 — Four Lost Reviews Found!

These days, typing "DC-UK" into your search engine of choice will lead you to the UK web stores for an American comic giant, a classic skate shoe brand, or even a company that makes delightful wooden duck sculptures. But for British Dreamcast fans of a certain age, those four letters still spark memories of one of the best unofficial magazines to ever cover Sega's final console. DC-UK was Future Publishing's cheeky, offbeat stab at covering the Dreamcast, and it struck the perfect balance between solid game coverage and creative features, without ever taking itself too seriously.

In 2026, Future stands as one of the few remaining large-scale UK magazine publishers, having gobbled up many of its competitors over the past decade. But back at the turn of the millennium, many more publishing houses were vying for a slice of the magazine market, and for a time, a magazine dedicated to Sega's exciting new Dreamcast console seemed like a fair punt. We previously had the pleasure of chatting about the creation of DC-UK with its first editor, Caspar Field, on our podcast, but today we're fast-forwarding to the end of its run.

How DC-UK introduced itself in its debut issue.

Echoing the fate of the console it was created to celebrate, DC-UK would end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Just like Dennis Publishing's Official Dreamcast Magazine, DC-UK would be killed off seemingly overnight — no final farewell within its pages, and a promised next issue that would never materialise. 

If you, like me, believe a magazine as great as DC-UK deserved a more dignified send off, then read on, because I've found out why it didn't get one. I even spoke with three former members of the DC-UK editorial team, whose insights help shed light on the circumstances behind the mag's untimely end. And, as you may have noticed from the title of this article, I've also managed to recover and preserve four unreleased reviews that were originally intended to appear in DC-UK's cancelled issue 21... Pretty exciting, right? It only took 25 years for them to see the light of day!

But before we get into all that, let's first see how DC-UK bowed out. The magazine's final issue, issue 20, hit shelves on the 15th of February 2001...

All scans in this article were sourced from Sega Retro.

The front cover of what would turn out to be DC-UK’s final issue would certainly look good, but the game featured so prominently was an unremarkable one: Fighting Vipers 2, the often-forgotten sequel to a Sega Saturn fighting staple. Considering the online multiplayer-RPG phenomenon that was Phantasy Star Online was also getting a review inside, you'd think that might have gotten pride of place over fiery helmet guy (or whatever he's called) from Fighting Vipers, but it was instead demoted to a secondary coverline just below it. With Official Dreamcast Magazine running a big PSO cover that same month (issue 17) and promoting its own review as "the first in the UK", it appeared that DC-UK's response was to counter by securing a UK-first review for Fighting Vipers 2 instead.

The editor for the issue was Lee Hart, as long-time editor Keith Stuart —who'd been in the role since issue seven— had moved on to greener pastures (although he did provide some freelance writing for this issue). And greener pastures they were, as Lee's first port of call as the new editor of DC-UK was to announce that Sega was to become a third-party developer.

Despite the change of editor, and a reduced page count (100 pages, down from around 130 pages at the magazine's peak), issue 20 of DC-UK was still a decent read, although the kind of off-the-wall features and cutaways the mag had become known for were largely absent. Where were Nostradamus' Dreamcast predictions? The hungover fishing trips? Instead, readers got four pages at the front of the issue dedicated to Toy Commander developer No Cliché's then-upcoming Agartha — and that game didn't even release! Surely that space would've been better filled with a spread showcasing photos of the DC-UK team's body parts? (That was actually a genuine reoccurring DC-UK feature. I'm not being weird!)

All jokes aside, the Agartha feature is certainly interesting, and offered a staggering amount of behind-the-scenes content considering the piece's short page count, including screenshots, concept sketches, work-in-progress renders, and a conversation with former head of No Cliché, Frédérick Raynal. Reading it in 2026 feels somewhat surreal, knowing what ultimately would (or wouldn't) become of the game.

Being that the issue released in February of 2001, there were still enough upcoming releases on the horizon to give worried Dreamcast fans reason to keep the faith. Previews this month included Sega heavy-hitters Daytona USA 2001 and Skies of Arcadia, alongside a number of titles that would ultimately end up as Japanese and US imports for us here in old Blighty. The Last Blade 2 and Giga Wing 2 promised niche thrills for arcade connoisseurs, while The Typing of the Dead and Illbleed lay in wait to deliver their own uniquely quirky brands of horror.