Dirty Dark Secret...
I don't know how to tell all you faithful Dreamcast enthusiasts out there about my dark and dirty secret. Something I feel so much shame about, that it its almost ubearable. So, in order to purge myself of this guilt and self-loathing, I'm going to expose myself on the Yard. (No, being a flasher is not my secret, or at least not one that I would choose to disclose just at this moment...)
No I am going to tell you my secret.... OK, promise you won't hate me or boycott my posts? I have been... playing OTHER CONSOLES and LOVING IT. There! I said it...Now before you all gather yourselves into a big posse, equipped with flaming torches and bail round to my gaff with cries of "Burn the cheating whore!" Let me explain...
A confession of this magnitude is like being caught having a sly 'tug' over pictures of Vanessa Feltz in Woman's Weekly by your mum. So in order to clear things up as quickly as hiding those crusty tissues... Everything I have been playing is in someway related to the Dreamcast. Am I excused m'lud?
The first is Sega Heroes on (cough, choke) the PS2. Utilizing the Eye Toy gizmo you can actually find yourself on the TV screen slapping zombies in House of The Dead, dancing along with Ulala in Space Channel 5, playing along erm...without maracas to Samba De Amigo and knocking out Akira in Virtua Fighter. (Plus heading in balls in Virtua Striker), all of which I actually found very good fun!(Nice polished graphics too.) Now before you gripe to me about the PS2's lack of originality and riding off the back of the Dreamcast's former glories, I know all this. Yes I am a fickle twat! Plus the afore-mentioned console was in the house anyway, belonging to the three gingers that live with me. (Honest...)
The next guilty pleasure came at my brother-in-law's, courtesy of Microsoft's Dreamcast rip-off the Xbox. Whilst thumbing through the Dreamcast section of my local Gamestation, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, in the two for Twenty Pound section, House of the Dead 3.
Now, not being available (sadly) for the Dreamcast, but the third game in the only franchise that I sometimes pay to play in arcades, I felt compelled to try it out. I bought the sucker and then hunted for a light gun on eBay. Result! a £2.50 steal at 'Buy Now' price. I clicked on 'confirm bid' only to find the fuckers were charging £12.50 for postage (Doh!)
Anyhoo, having found an excuse to go round and give my bro-in- law a 'present' The gun and the game were really for him. No really... I set up his 'Box, calibrated the gun and got ready to play! The graphics were lush and even (dare I say it) a fair bit of a step forward from the Dreamcast HOTD2 (yes I know I should have a red hot poker shoved up me jacksy for even thinking it but it's true...) Having said that, the gameplay was no different and as usual with HOTD all the character and monsters from the original game were replicated. Stil buckets of red blood (as opposed to green) was refreshing.
At my Light House over the summer, one of the ginger's mates turned up with a PSP. Now all those who know me well, will understand that the Treamcast is my favourite 'portable' games console, (which deserves a post of it's own) but I thought I would give the PSP a whirl. The main reason was that the game he had for it was Virtua Tennis. Despite being a tad small and fiddly for an old duffer like myself, it was a fairly straight forward port, and let's face it, a great game is a great game, whether its been ported to another console or not. When I allowed him to play VT2 on the Dreamcast, he was so impressed he pledged to pick up the console and original game from Gamestation.
Thus, I had restored my Karma, tweaked the balance of the Cosmic Order and enlisted a new Dreamcast fan from a generation who only knew about the Sony/Microsoft bastard's fare!
Still racked with guilt about cheating on my little white box, I decided to pledge to exclusively to never cheat again and buy (the much viewed on Youtube, but never played on the Dreamcast...) Space Channel 5. And guess what? I LOVE IT! And on that slightly gay bombshell, I shall bid you farewell and wait over night and see whether my house is torched by angry Yardites...
Big gay love to you all!
Happy Birthday Dreamcast! (In America)
- Airforce Delta (Konami)
- Blue Stinger (Activison)
- CART Flag to Flag (Sega)
- Expendable (Infogrames)
- House of the Dead 2 (Sega)
- Hydro Thunder (Midway)
- Monaco Grand Prix (Ubi Soft)
- Mortal Kombat Gold (Midway)
- NFL 2K (Sega)
- NFL Blitz 2000 (Midway)
- Pen Pen Tri-Icelon (Infogrames)
- Power Stone (Capcom)
- Ready 2 Rumble (Midway)
- Sonic Adventure (Sega)
- Soul Calibur (Namco)
- TNN Hardcore Heat (ASC) -AKA Buggy Heat
- Tokyo Xtreme Racing (Crave)
- TrickStyle (Acclaim)
Submitted at Youtube by Kagem.
Oh, just so you know, the DC's Euro Birthday is on the 14th of October, and it's Japanese Birthday is the 27th of November, where it is a year older due to being released in 1998. Huzzah!
This summer I have been mostly playing..
What's had me stuck into it mainly over the summer was the Story mode. While the story in Fever only took a day to complete, the one really long story mode in this took around a month. The fever feature in the follow up made the game a bit too easy, but in this game you get special moves instead, and as you go through the story more characters tag along with Arle, so you get to choose from different specials. Puyo 4 is far more tactical then any of he others I played, and it's all about getting good combos, and the timing of your specials (which you only get a limited few of). I would spend days on some levels later on, as the characters started to get rock hard.
The very final boss, a evil clone of Arle of some sort, has to be one of the most taxing challenges I've come across in a puzzle game. There are two Puyo blobs in the corners worth 500,000 points each, and if the CPU gets one of them, you have automatically lost as rows and rows of blocks fall down on you. If you hit one of the, however, the CPU has 5 shields to stop the blocks falling down for a minute each, and you don't have any specials to use at all! The only way to beat her, after days to trying, was to somehow get both of the 500K blobs AND prevent her from getting anywhere near her two! I got it in the end, and the satisfaction of finally beating the game was overwhelming, especially when I rarely beat games as hard as this one was. Phew.
I won't spoil the rest of the game for you, as FatherKrsihna appaers to be playing through the game as well, but after almost 3 months of five minute or so sittings, there is an ending to this game, in which you dion't have to look after him anymore. You can, however, still go back to the file and check up on him, and see if he has evolved some more. It may not sound all to eventful, but trust me when I say this is one of the most bizarre yet interesting experiences I have had on the Dreamcast, and the only virtual pet game I've played with a real award to it. Who needs Nintendogs when you can have a real dog? Well, where can you get a real talking fish or frog? No where. Well worth the patience of playing it at the start to get to the later parts.
Now I'm not in the slightest bit interested in fishing, but this game is a big exception. Instead of sitting around waiting for the miserable sods to bite, in this game you quite often have multiple fish fighting over your lure, and catching the buggers, thanks to the fishing controller, as always hella fun. The real reason I've been playing this game for the last few months almost religiously is because of the Original Mode. Here you get he choice of the Mini-Games, where you gain items, Free Fishing where you have no time limit and must catch fish to win these gained items, and the Aquarium where a lot of the items go, such as fish, ruins, submarines and even a UFO! Other items you can gain include more specialist lures to catch certain fish, new clothes for your crew (of very bad taste, I might add) and even a Labrador to bark away at the fish you catch. You can even eventually swap your boat for a raft, a wobbly plank of wood which appears to have nothing to move it with.
I've almost got to the end of this very long game now, as I've now gained all 266 items and now just need to win about 30 of them. The only problem is as you go along through the game you end up with less and less fish to catch: once you've caught a particular fish a few times, catching it again wins you nothing. It's now starting to get to he point where almost everything I catch I've already caught, and yet they still insist on biting, sometimes the same fish a few times in a row. Still, my Aquarium is almost full now (just one type of fish to go, I have everything else), so playing through this game is well worth the time. Completing the Arcade mode about 4 or 5 times also unlocks more levels to catch the last items on, such as Hammer-head Sharks. Judging from the reviews this game got, this is a real under rated gem in my opinion, and miles ahead of that rusty old Bass Fishing.
Virtua Striker 2
Fishy Tails...
And what better 'game' could the aspiring creationist despot recourse to than... 'CAUTION SEAMAN'?
Having purchased a microphone without knowing its use, I stumbled across an IGN blog featuring a picture of a fish-man creature, like the ones in Monty Python's 'Meaning Of Life'. On further inspection I discovered this to be the US/Japan only 'Caution Seaman' (At one point the most popular and eagerly awaited piece of software in that particulary technologically advanced of nations- Japan that is...)
So with time on my hands and money to burn, I scoured Ebay, got my Utopia disc and ordered 'Seaman' from a US software company. I then whisked it away to my Lighthouse and started to explore... The first delight was that Mr. Spock was included in the box... That's right the wonderful Leonard Nimoy, actor, bon viveur and well frankly...Vulcan, was to be my guide in giving birth to and nurturing my fishy friend.
The next was a delightfully entertaining piece of bullshit in the shape of the mannual, which spun a well thought out yarn about a French Scientist/Archaeologist called Dr. Jean-Paul Gasse having discovered a living Seaman in Alexandria, Egypt at the turn of the century. Although the specimen had died before the good doctor could attain fame or recognition, now, through electrickery, the good folks at Vivarium Software and a bit of DC magic, I too could raise and evolve a living Seaman (in the telly of course, not in real life.)
I eagerly loaded up the game, verily stiffening "downstairs" with anticipation. I was met with a food store, a pleasant aquarium environment (in which I had to maintin, heat, light and oxygen levels.) With a little hand, (much like Jeremy Beadle's), visually floating outside of the Aquarium, I could drop in food, tap the glass and most importantly drop in my Seaman egg. After a bought of pulsating and squirming several little sperm like creatures known as 'Mushroomers' burst forth from the egg. These spermy globules just bobbed about until they were fucking eaten by a previously unnoticed squid like creature laying dormant at the bottom of the tank, hidden in a shell. Bastard! I thought the whole experience was over, until the hapless crustacean started to jerk and convulse and in floods of ink, spat out half a dozen little Seamen (known as Gillmen) and then promptly died! HA! Sqidkind 0- Krishna 6! Take that you murderous Octopede!
Leonard (we were getting pretty tight at this juncture) told me I should converse with the little fishies, which replied in a babylike gurgle, but after what seemed like literally days, (it was literally days...) they began to respond in a child-like American voice (creepy.) The first thing mine said when I was tickling them with my little cyber hand (stay with me..) was " Stop or I'll fart!" and then even more alarmingly "Bad Touch! Bad Touch!" (You're meant to tickle them honest- read the mannual before you call the NSPC/RSPCA... )
Over time my fishy-boy pets evolved into a weighty carp-men with deep and laconic baritone voices. My favourite, Robbie (named after the iconic Robbie Fowler) asked me my age, birthday, occupation and other facts which he remembered and recounted to me. He was rude and obnoxious, sarcastic and cynical. He called me "skinbag" and "fuzzy", told me to "Go away!" said he was mad at me and when I asked him for a kiss ( I was alone on a light house for chrissakes!!!!) He replied "What? Put this tongue in that mouth?!" Fucking charming....
Eventually the 'game' presented me with a Vivarium (insect hatchery) to breed caterpillar things to feed my greedy pike, and I felt that it was getting intense (or as intense as a game played over a month at five minute intervals can get) and then just before it was about to grow legs and evolve into the frog like silhouette seen on the sign on the game box, I murdered it! Killed the fucker stone dead! Well how was I to know that resetting the timer on my DC would cause the games internal memory to think I hadn't fed it or heated up the tank for six years? Jesus! Thanks for the pointer Leonard! I repeated the process another two times utilising my Treamcast when my TV at home wouldn't accept the Utopia disk. But it just wasn't the same... In the end I just let it die for a third time and called it a day. But my memories of spanking my seamen, tickling my trout and letting my spermy shroomers float about on the top of my bath water will live with me forever. Oh well, that's it. I'm off to play something quick, easy and that only lasts a lunchtime...my beloved Shenmue 2.
P.S. This is only a hasty recount of the epic tome that was my original post before I clicked on the wrong option on the Blog and wiped out about an hours worth of typing and uploading pictures forever. Bastard! This posting shit is not as easy as TLC and the Gagaman make it look! Adieu Yardites...until next time...
And you are...?
So without further ado, Ladies and Gents, please welcome The Dreamcast Junkyard's newest team member - Father Krishna!
Father Krishna promises to bring reviews, tales of Dreamcasting adventures and (hopefully) a whole truckload of bullshit to the 'Yard. So, business as usual then.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Whilst taking the aformentioned piss earlier this evening, I noticed something familiar about the bog-roll holder next to the shit throne:
Dreamcast Megamix (and YouTube onslaught)
Until I get time to actually write up another article here, here's a video I made just last week out of all the clips of DC game footage so far. There are 52 games featured in this video (53 if you count the one you can hear but not see at the start), and none of them are of FMV scenes, just the in-game goodness. The music used is from Sonic Rush, which sadly is not a Dreamcast game, but would have been if the DS was in fact a Dreamcast in a very clever disguise.
And because I constantly check the Search:Dreamcast in order of last posted age of Youtube, here's a link collection of the most interesting posts by people recently:
Power Stone has it's own Japanese cartoon, complete with naff theme tune. What, you didn't know?
Just when you thought you'd seen it all with Soul Calibur, here comes a documentary on how the game becomes a natural reflex. "It's the true test of manhood." Kudos, Dr. Rek, Kudos.
Remember any good British commercials for Dreamcast games? neither do I, but I never saw this one.
Ulala lives. I'm serious, there is no why this girl can NOT be Ulala herself.
Not exclusively DC related, but this Sega tribute inspiried me to make Dreamcast Megamix. Will bring a tear to your eye (or was it just me?)
Would you believe that this Homebrew game (which has a DC port) is in fact based on the Quake engine?
Someone playing Shenmue music on a Piano. Nuff said.
Girls play Dreamcast too! Well,it IS Bust-a-Move.
Because closing the Dreamcast lid takes SO much effort, someone has modded one with a close function.
Let There be Light(guns)
And lo, House of the Dead 2 was spewed forth unto the world like so much bile from the gullet of a 16-day old corpse, and it was good. So good infact, that Sega didn't give us another lightgun game for about 3 millennia...
At this juncture, I'd like to share with you a small musing I had earlier on. Bear with me. Anyone played Knife Edge on the N64? It was a pathetically bad 'lightgun' game...on a console without a gun. Now - if I had a) the intelligence; or b) the inclination to invent an N64 lightgun, and plug it into said 1920's themed console (it's pure art deco), would Knife Edge have the ability to recognise the lightgun? Hmmm. It's like that shit about the tree falling in the forest and nobody being around to hear it. Anyway, back to the real world (sigh).
Yes, after all the zombie blasting and enduring the horrendous dialogue of HOTD2 (who can forget such ambiguous gems as "Die - like G did," and "Don't come" (Snigger)), Sega rewarded us with:
Confidential Mission!
Yep, the newest entrant into the Junkyard is here - gleaming and shiny like a new 2 penny piece cast adrift in a particularly watery dollop of dog shit. However, in direct contrast to the evil, murderous, death-dealing shennanigans that go on within Confidential Mission, the circumstances surrounding the game's arrival in the 'Yard bring a tear to the eye. For, you see, Confidential Mission was donated to the cause by long time reader, supporter, and indeed commentator of this very blog - Father Krishna. Father Krishna - fellow Mancunian, Dreamcast lover and owner of the only Dreamcast collection visible from space - discovered that he, in his all knowing omniprescence, actually owned TWO copies of CM...and the rest is (recent) history.
But how does CM play? As you've probably already guessed after reading all the preceding guff, CM is - gasp - a lightgun game! The second one after HOTD2 infact. And it's a fucking stormer. After completing HOTD2 something like a bazillion times, it's refreshing to actually get to shoot some real-life peeps, and not already-dead buffoons with Sugar Puffs for teeth. But I'm jumping the gun (arf!).
In CM, you play as the decidedly un-heroically named Howard Gibson - a recent graduate from the James Bond school of smoothness. Armed only with a pistol, you set off (with your lovely blonde partner, Jean Clifford) on a 'confidential mission' to stop an evil genius (Agares) holding the world to ransom with a hijacked military satellite laser. Playing like Virtua Cop on anabolics, CM is big, brash and loud. It has great visuals and the game takes you through some really cool environments with loads of stuff to shoot and civilians WHO GET IN THE FRIGGING WAY. Ahem. Similarly to Virtua Cop, it features terrorists to cap and also the familiar green reticules that appear around an enemy and slowly turn red before he fires. An interesting feature in CM is the 'Justice Shot,' whereby if you manage to blow the gun out of an enemy's hand, he will surrender, thus furnishing you with more points. I don't bother with that though - I just shoot to kill. Maybe I'll try to get a job with the Metropolitan Police...
Confidential Mission is fairly short lived compared to HOTD2 and doesn't feature alternative routes through the levels (of which there are only 3), but it does offer some brilliant variations on the usual 'shoot, shoot, shoot' mentality of the genre. For example, during the second mission you hang upside down from the roof of a speeding train and as such must play that section from an upside down point of view. Also, to break up the monotony Confidential Mission throws in the odd time-limited task, such as firing blobs of glue at air vents to stop deadly gas from filling the room. Ace.
Like I said, CM isn't a massive game, but it features a great training academy filled with Point Blank style mini-games (above), and also a mode called 'Another World' where you play through the arcade mode but enemies appear randomly. An added bonus also appears in the manual - the page footer reads "The last trump for the peace of the world." Righty-ho.
So, all in all, a fantastic post-pub blast that breathes new life into the old dual Dreamcast lightguns (Health Warning: Playing with dual guns is only for the most hardened Dreamcaster. Do not attempt if you are of a weak disposition). Sadly, upon inserting the Microphone you still can't take Private Hudson's advice and use 'harsh language,' but you can't have everything:
And once again, many thanks to Father Krishna for supplying it to the 'Yard.
Oh, and through playing Confidential Mission, I think I may have stumbled on something that is as Earth-shatteringly amazing as playing Soul Calibur with a fishing rod. Watch this space...
Inferiority Complex
Now, we've mentioned the embryonic Nintendo Revolution (or Wii, as I refuse to call it) previously here at the Dreamcast Junkyard - namely in The Gagaman's superb hit-attracting Soul Calibur-with-a-fishing-rod experiment. Now I'm going to mention it again. To be totally honest, the Wii (cringe) is definatley the console I'm most looking forward to in the Next, Next, Next Generation of hardware simply because of that brilliant controller/remote thingy, and the fact that the system's overall appearance is - let's face it - cool as fuck. Cooler, infact, than Samuel L. Jackson sitting in a deck chair made of ice whilst sipping a Bud Ice and staring out over the perfect and untouched Ice Deserts of Ganymede. A first for a Nintendo system, I'm sure you'll agree. But enough waffle. Look at these shots:
They're of a game entitled 'Elebits,' that looks to me like some sort of Pikmin style affair but set in a giant house. The striking thing is that it all looks a bit Toy Commander to me (in that it...erm...features small things in a kitchen)...but with graphics THAT AREN'T AS GOOD:
That's right folks - a game on a console TWO generations after the annihilation of the Dreamcast...with INFERIOR GRAPHICS than a 1999 LAUNCH TITLE!!!!
Put that one in your pipe and smoke it!
***Disclaimer: If you are a Nintendo fan boy, please don't leave messages on here about how I'm a cunt/idiot/fuck head etc. I know this already. Thank you for your cooperation.***
The Dreamcast Rap
Sega Lass Phishing
Today though, imagine my suprise when I discovered this in my inbox:
Not quite sure what this add-on does, but I'm pretty certain it wasn't released in the PAL territories.
Oh, and kudos to DK for finding it :D
Common Themes in Dreamcast-Land
San Francisco
Ah yes, the city with all those steep roads and palm trees. Firstly, we have the superb Crazy Taxi. Super Runabout, a game that plays very much like Crazy Taxi (only with more modes of transport and lousy controls) is also set there. San Francisco Rush 2049 is set in a futuristic (and somewhat void of human life) version of the place, but is still San fran none the less, and then there’s the first level in Sonic Adventure 2, which was also directly inspired by the city. I've also been reminded that the city also features (in great detail, but like Rush 2049, rather empty) in MSR.
Michael Jackson
Until Sega's last console came and went, the freaky ex-pop star had only made an appearance in one game, the Mega Drive title Moonwalker, based on his film of the same name. On the Dreamcast, however, he has popped up a few times in very unexpected places. He first popped up out of nowhere near the end of Space Channel 5, in which you save him from aliens so he can join your posse. In Space Channel 5: Part 2, he is part of your team from the very beginning, and has more of his trademark moves. He also begged Midway to add him to the line up of Ready to Rumble: Round 2, although I can’t really imagine him being all too tough in a real fight, to be honest. Finally, he had a unofficial appearance in 102 Dalmatians. Well, I think it’s him.
Fish
Yes, there have been fishing games in the past on many other formats, but thanks to Sega's rather clever Fishing controller, the Dreamcast sports quite a big collection of them. It all started with Sega Bass Fishing. followed by it's much superior follow-up Sega marine Fishing, as well a aproper, but dull as hell, sequel in the console's dying days with Sega Bass Fishing 2. While us Brit's only got one of these titles, the rest of the world not only got these 3 Sega games, but a few third-party titles as well, although these were more of the simulator breed, so they would be no interest to anyone under the age of 60 anyway. These games included Reel Fishing Wild and Fish Eyes Wild, for the record. Who wants to sit there waiting for the miserable sods to bite when you can have Mako sharks falling over each other to have a nibble of your bait in Marine Fishing? It doesn't' end there though, as Fish have popped up in two more games. Sonic Adventure featured the excruciating fishing levels starring Fat-Arse the cat, that may of been a bit mode enjoyable if you could play them with the fishing controller, and finally we have the only fish on the system that you don't have to yank out of the water to weigh, Seaman, the talking, (eventually) walking fish with a miserable boat face and additude to boot. Thought fishing was sad? Try talking to a mutant fish about Evolution and Politics! Speaking of Sonic and Fishing, look below for images of Sonic being tossed out for the fishes is Sega bass!
Bruce Lee knock-offs
This is actually a trend I’ve noticed in most popular fighting games series’, not just on Dreamcast, but I need more than three common themes in over wise this post will look rather spineless. We’re talking about the characters with the same squawky voice, same muscle-bound but skinny body, same eyebrows and sometimes even a pair of nun chucks, all of which the king of kung-fu were known for. On the Dreamcast alone we have Capcom’s Fei-Long in Super Street Fighter IIX and Street Fighter Alpha 3, Jann Lee in Tecmo’s Dead or Alive 2, Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat Gold, and Maxi in Soul Calibur. That’s not even including characters that share his same fighting techniques, just the ones that act and look a bit like him as well.
Note to self: never write an article in Word processor then try to copy it into Blogger. This post took so long to tinker with it should be illegal.
www.thedreamcastjunkyard.tk
www.thedreamcastjunkyard.tk
into your browser! Or just by clicking on the above link. The 'Yard is still being hosted by Blogger.com and as such will also retain the usual blogger URL, but I just thought it'd be easier if I got a proper domain name. As .tk was extremely cheap (read: Free), I just thought I'd claim it.
If you wanna register your own free .tk domain, check out www.dot.tk for further info. Peace out.
*Update: I removed the Hyphons!*
Money to burn...
Before you wander into your local tatoo parlour with a page ripped from a magazine and demand the artist copy a 1:1 scale schematic of the Dreamcast onto your face, have a little look at this beauty:
It's a wristwatch that is modelled in the shape of a Dreamcast! When closed, it resembles a little chrome coloured console, but pop the GD-lid and inside you'll find a fully functioning analogue clock face, complete with Dreamcast logos!
You can sort of get an impression of the dimensions of the thing from the photos, and I think it's quite a cool bit of kit - but why launch it now, so long after the console's mainstream demise? Even more puzzling...why make the thing in the first place?! You don't see people walking around wearing chrome PS2s or Xboxes on their wrists...
According to Playasia.com, it costs about $130 (which is about £70 in real money). If you want one, you clearly have more money than sense, but go there now to avoid inevitable disappointment. It looks like it's only availible from 29th September, but i presume there's some kind of pre-order list.