Top Dreamcast Moments of 2007

Well it's 2008 and I still don't own a current-gen console. Go figure.

But that's all right because 2007 was a year stuffed with awesome Dreamcast occurrences!

Join me, will you, as I blog about some of my personal favorites...

New Dreamcast games!


Karous, Trigger Heart Exelica and Last Hope. Remember these? What a great year for classic shumps!

Proving once again that the Dreamcast IS the undead console, new games were announced for 2008 as well. This was AFTER the GD-Rom was discontinued!

Redspotgames doesn't want to leave the Dreamcast.

Interview.

Website.

They are coming out with Dalforce and Wind And Water Puzzle Battle this year!

And lets not forget about Dynamite Dreams!


4 players with VMU mode!

http://alicedreams.com/NewsANG.htm

And of course we cannot forget the many homebrew releases and ports from the Dreamcast Evolution site!

http://www.dcevolution.net/

My Favorite?

http://www.dcevolution.net/game_bass.php

Beneath a Steel Sky! If you have a Dreamcast mouse and keyboard you will be all set!

Nick Perry gets a new copy of Resident Evil 2 for the Dreamcast



Just a random youtube video. But I liked it and the Resident Evil 2 Dreamcast version is the best one out there!

The Dreamcast 2 rumour.

Is it possible to crush the Dreams of Sega fans anymore? Yes, yes it is.


Totally official Sega Dreamcast 2 plans. PROOF AT LAST!

http://www.trademork.com/dreamcast/

This trademark renewal led to speculation and many many tears...

Getting a copy of Powerstone 2!


Ok, this was just a personal thing. I have wanted a copy of this game for a long time. I was so lucky to get this game and many other Dreamcast gems in 2007. I made the effort to rearrange my collection this year as well so I got to get some new pics up.

And my personal favorite for 2007?

The Dreamcast guitar.



I don't know why this masterpiece (originally blogged here by Gagaman(n)) caught my attention but it did. Perhaps it's just a nice symbol of how cool the Dreamcast and the Dreamcast community is.

Thank you Flooky from Destructoid.

Here is hoping for an awesome 2008.


May I take this opportunity, on behalf of all of the Dreamcast Junkyard team, Tomleecee, Gagaman(n), Caleb and myself, Father Krishna to wish all our readers and commentors a very Merry Christmas! Let us know what the old guy stuffs down yer chimney...

Back and forth! The New Dreamcast trademark! What does it all mean? Nothing?!!?!?!

From: GameDaily

"SEGA has no plans to get back into the hardware business, but we also want to protect our past and current brands. The trademark application was filed to protect our current and potential future use of the word DREAMCAST and to prevent other parties from using it in a way that could be confused or linked with SEGA," Sega of America PR Director Charlie Scibetta.

Hmm. Well I have personally seen a bunch variations of "Dream Gear" plug and play games on the market in the past and recently that look a hell of a lot like Dreamcast controllers. So I guess protecting the good Sega Hardware name makes sense.

And I suppose if Sega is going to release more Dreamcast titles on the current gen consoles via digital distribution it might spark another round of CYA (cover your assets). It might be cool to have "Dreamcast Brand" digital downloadable games.

...if I had a newer console anyways.

I feel bad that I will not be able to own a Dreamcast 2. Ah well, my North America Dreamcast game collection is not complete yet. And maybe one day I will be able to download some games on another console.

The Magic of Seaman, captured on film.

One of the true gems in the Dreamcast's library and possibly the oddest virtual pet sim you'll ever play, Seaman is not so much a game you play as it is an experience you er...experience. Because the game involves talking through a little green microphone to your mutated fish, ripping footage of the game simply isn't enough to capture what makes this game so special, and it's also difficult to predict just when the game will surprise you with something new.

While I would just recommended buying the game and playing it for yourself, if you're not afraid of being spoiled on some of the events along the way, or have already played the game, there is a great series of videos on Youtube by New Gen Gamers, where you will see the game from when the babies have hatched, up until the point that the fish start to talk well and ask you questions. Have a lookie below for the dull tank dull of miserable crabby fish that will make your life complete.




Elend's Most Fabulous Creations!




If you scroll down a little bit, you'll see a wonderful post by Caleb , about the Dreamcast's 9th anniversary competition, hosted by our most wonderful brothers over in Germany, Dreamcast Scene, in conjunction with Redspot Games (creators of the most excellent Dreamcast 'shmup' Last Hope) and also, quite surprisingly Sega Europe!

In Germany, they do a much better job of keeping our beloved consoles alive, than we do in the UK or USA! Wanna know why? Check out this and this!

I checked into the first competition, couldn't answer the question, then forgot to check out the rest! Oh how I wished I had! For I might have been the luckiest man in the world and won this!!!! elend's most amazing custom Redspot Dreamcast!!! How fucking cool is that???

Gaze on it's awesomeness! Bask in it's beauty! Revel in it's glory! God bless Dreamcast Scene! God love Redspot Games! And God bestow all His ultimate gifts on the genius that is... elend!

Oh! And the most exciting part of the post!? The mighty elend is now a contributor on the Dreamcast Junkyard's little brother, the Saturn Junkyard!

You see? I get all the best people! I got the mighty (if short) Greek wonder of the world, Gnome, I got America's finest, the American Dreamcaster, Caleb, I got Germany's finest graphic artist, elend, and I got "the special one" the awesome NebachadnezzaR!!! Pride of Portugal!!!

...and it's our birthday party on the 13th! And I want to see all of our readers and contributors there!!!! (Yes especially you Gagaman(n)...)

Happy days!!!

Don't get you hopes up, but... (UPDATED)

From Videogamer.com:

SEGA Corporation has filed a new application to protect the trademark Dreamcast - sparking rumours that the Japanese publisher is planning on making a shock return to the console manufacturing market with the Dreamcast 2.

The application, sent to the United States Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval (TARR) dated August 13 2007, relates to:

Home video game machines; player-operated electronic controllers for electronic video game machines; video game interactive controller, namely, hand held pads, and floor pads or mats; joysticks for video games; computer cursor control devices, namely, computer mouse; flash memory cards; video game software, computer game programs".

Web chatter suggests the proof is in the detail of the application - the original Dreamcast didn't have a floor mat accessory and the Dreamcast's Visual Memory Unit (VMU) is far from the flash memory cards we know and use today - although we'd say that the VMU is pretty similar to the modern day memory cards.

The filing could, of course, simply be a further effort from SEGA to protect the Dreamcast name. According to the USPTO the original Dreamcast trademark is still active. However, the two descriptions are very different. You can see the original trademark description here.

We've contacted SEGA UK for comment. We'll update you on this potentially megaton story as we get it.

By the sounds of it, Sega is simply updating their trademark of the name Dreamcast so that no one else can use it for something, but when you compare the new trademark to the old one, you'll notice the description is rather different.

What could this be hinting at? It's probably nothing, but Sega could have something up their sleeves involving our favorite little system, or at least it's brand name. There's a possibility that Sega plan to port Dreamcast games to a download service such as the Virtual Console, X-Box Live Arcade (which is already getting REZ, Trigger Heart and Ikaruga) or Playstation Network. Of course this is only the most rationale reason I could think of other than protecting the name, but if we really wanna let our minds wander...

DREAMCAST 2?
(A dreadful mock up I drew in about 2 minutes)

EDIT: According to Gamedaily, It's been confirmed by Sega that they are defiantly not considering going back into the hardware business, saying they are sticking to their guns of being a third party developer, that has so far been better for them then people realize. HOWEVER, it is still unknown, even to the Sega representative who responded, exactly why Sega of Japan has updated their trademark. While a new console is obviously out of the question, there's a small chance they have something up their sleeve. Remember back when they announced they were moving into the multi platform side of things that they had plans to develop the Dreamcast hardware into a single chip which could be used in other devices, such as set top boxes etc? Just a thought.

DREAMCAST CONTEST!


Dreamcast Scene is having a CONTEST! With STUFF! DREAMCAST STUFF!

"Dreamcast Scene presents - in cooperation with Sega Germany, redspotgames and Van Basilco - a sweepstake that haven't been there in this form. Good Dreamcast knowledge is required and the prizes grow from day to day."

Lots of respect to all the people and companies that are making this happen.

Go! Go and prove your mettle in the arena of the Dreamcast elite!


All hail the Undead Console!
All hail the Sega Dreamcast!

Happy Birthday Dreamcast! (Again)

The Sega Dreamcast was released on November 27, 1998 in Japan.

And the dream never died.


(Some guys from Syracuse, NY showing the Dreamcast some love)

So 9 years later lets all remember the Dreamcast and play a bit on the off white box today!

And look forward to what might be coming in the future...


(Fake Dreamcast 2 -Dreamcast Scene)

I know that I have recently gotten some cool games that I want to review soon, so look out for that.

I know I am gonna try out my recently acquired copy of Bangai-O and Tetris today.

All hail the Undead Console!

Zombie Revenge!



Cripes! Heck! Blimey!

What does a man do to the fill the gap between Resident Evils? He turns to the House Of The Dead franchise, that's what! I love House Of The Dead on the Saturn, HOTD2 on the Dreamcast and HOTD 1,2,3 and 4 in the arcades! I'm excited about the upcoming HOTD Wii edition, but there is a game in the series that was unknown to me for a number of years and that is Zombie Revenge!

It is reminiscent of Dynamite Cop, in that it's a short and happily frantic game, it's third person and a brilliant HOTD themed shooter/beat'em up. The highlight of the game is finding yourself encountering the monsters you are "oh so familiar with" from the original HOTD in about, Chapter 6.

Obviously you've only ever encountered them before in a FPS Light Gun perspective, but now they're all little and cute, and you can see yourself wasting them! I've actually enjoyed smashing a game in one afternoon, instead of putting hours and days into it.

I'd thoroughly reccomend you check it out, and if you want to know more there's some links for you here:

Zombie Revenge at Wikipedia

Zombie Revenge at IGN

Zombie Revenge at Gamespot

The Reverend Tomleecee's (Frankly Damning) Review Of Zombie Revenge

"S*T*A*R*S!" Resident Evil 3




Hello Everyone! Father Krishna here! You may remember me from such great posts as "Shmup Up The Volume!" and "Father Krishna's Big One" ...

But if the truth be told, I've been a little slack around these parts of late. Sure, I've been checking in for those great Gagaman(n) posts, and adding the odd comment, but I've not offered any insight, thoughts or even my ususal posted bullshit lately... "No shit Sherlock!?" I hear you cry? Well OK... I'll address that right now by hitting you all with a frankly mediocre and inferior post! (Business as usual then?)



The game which has been 'resident' in my Dreamcast recently is Resident Evil 3 (Did you see what I did there?)

2006 (and some of 2005) was the season of Shenmue in the Krishna household. If I wasn't playing it (or re-playing it) I was on the internet looking at websites, wallpapers, walkthroughs, video or reviews/articles about it...

Cut to February 2007... I decided to play RE1 on the Saturn, and just wasn't that impressed... (I hated it) Then an article I'd seen on J's corner of Randomness convinced me to pick up RE4 on the PS2. WOW! That really changed my opinion! Both on the PS2 as a games console and on Resident Evil as a franchise...I played it, completed it, loved it and wanted more...



But what could I play? The most obvious choice was the preceding title in the franchise... Resident Evil:Code Veronica. At the time it was released it was the first RE Dreamcast exclusive. The gameplay and mechanics were SO different to RE4, and yet I found the game to be both enthralling and enraging in equal measure... the main reason for this was the miserly ammunition and save potential. After the luxury of the innovative merchant in RE4, and the liberal smattering of typewriters (that didn't need ink ribbons) RE:CV seemed harsh...



Still, I eventually played through the game relishing every story twist, plot line and cut scene... I loved the graphics, and thought it brought out the best in the Dreamcast. Since then, I've played Resident Evil in it's original glory, - (though not on the Saturn, on the DS, in it's interactive "DS friendly" RE:DS incarnation - .



I followed that by buying RE:CV Gun Survivor for the PS2 (an RE Light Gun game!) followed by re-playing RE4 on the Wii!

But recently, in a Blue Stinger 'break point', I decided to pick up RE2 and play it on the Dreamcast, swiftly followed by RE3:Nemesis! Oh the joy! Both games were PS1 ports to the Dreamcast, and therefore the graphics were only "tidied up" for it's 128 bit release... But HELL! RE3 is a stunning game! And it's a Dreamcast "must have".

For a start you have all the unlockable content from the original PS1 incarnation, meaning you can start the game with superior fire power and generous save potential. And that makes any Resident Evil game more fun...



Plus you play as Jill Valentine! Feisty (hot) original ginger character from the first installment!



But I didn't play as Jill in her (optional) foxy boob tube and mini-skirt unlockable, I played as Jill in her S*T*A*R*S uniform, it was something of a continuum (spelling corrections welcomed) to my last Umbrella themed outing... RE:DS





The whole adventure was glorious! Getting back to the RCPD hedquaters was fun! Seeing it trashed and burning was great, but seeing more of Racoon City was a revelation! God I loved kicking zombie ass all over the place! But then we have to mention 'him'...

Ol' Nemesis, the skirt wearing, dentally challenged, well erm... Nemesis, that pussies around in his Goth splendour throughout the game, kicking ass, with either his bare hands or on occasion with a rocket launcher.


God he's a pain in the arse! But you know what? He's 'take-down-able,' and, with the right load of ammo and health, that bitch is toast! Which means I eventually, completed the game! And if you want more you can always play the Mercenaries mini-game where you have to shoot as many zombies as you can in a set time...


So that means within 2007, I played five Resident Evil games on various consoles and completed them all. It even led me to posture on the Planet Dreamcast Forum that the franchise was better than Shenmue...

Bollocks! That's mad talk! But being so bowled over by Capcom's odyssey, I was lured into making such a statement...




Shenmue 1 & 2 still remain the defining games for the console... But the Resident Evil titles give my favourite a GOOD run for it's money!!! Buy RE2, RE3 and RE:CV for the Dreamcast and revel in their unique glory... Oh and BTW, I've just been kiling time on my favourite console till the new kid on the block comes around... Umbrella Chronicles on Wii. You can find out more about that... here!

Resident Evil 3 At IGN

Resident Evil 3 At Planet Dreamcast

Capcom's Official Resident Evil Site

Japanese Import Oddness

Sometimes I take a gamble and throw money at a game that has next to no information out there about it other than, well...that's the said game is a bit odd, quirky, bizarre, unexpected, bonkers, and quite unlike anything else out there in a world full of games that want to be part of the "in" by coping each other to death. While you are very unlikely to see any risk taking oddness over here, Japan has, like many they do with many other things, has a habit of putting that exactly the kind of games I'm talking about. The obvious problem with this is the language barrier, which is made even more difficult when some of these games have no info on them online whatsoever, unless you get lucky with a translated guide.

Of course, 'odd' doesn't exactly mean good or bad, so the gamble comes in wherever or not said daft idea actually works, or in this case, can work when you can't read a word of Japanese. Luckily, Dreamcast import games can be picked up pretty cheap, especially compared to Japanese Saturn games which are often far above my budget. The following games will be rated for how playable they are, how much you can manage playing it without any knowledge of the lingo, and of course how bloody weird they are.

SENGOKU TURB

Blew about £6 on this one. First time I had seen it on Ebay and still sealed up so I took the plunge, convinced it'd be one of those "so bad it's good" experiences judging from this video below. What I got was a action RPG that appears to be animated using a bunch of Playmobil toys and Lego blocks, and voice acting from strangled robotic mutant cats with rabies. But hey, at least most of the menu's are in English!

The game starts with the heroine, and anorexic playmobil girl a some floating cat things running away from a bunch of explosions. Your character is sent off to some planet populated by cats that are currently at war with erm...fairies, and you end up becoming a leader of a group of cat troops who are all useless and die within minutes of a battle. This is about all I could make out from the lengthly cut scenes full of text and ear destroying voices.


The actual battle is real time like Phantasy Star Online, only crap. You run about at the start with a dingy little sword and swing clumsily at fairies as all your cat troops mass suicide. Every time you kill one of the darn things it releases the most horrific scream you have ever heard. Somehow I beat the first level and now I have two new areas I can go to, both of which I die at within seconds, and this is as far as I have bothered to go so far. There is probably something I have to upgrade or something, but the most unlike the menus, all the items are in Japanese. In between the level I beat and the level I'm stuck at there was this odd scene where some Cat characters catch a small fairy and you have to decide wherever or not to let it free or er...eat it. Hmm.

RANDOM FACT: The game is developed by NEC, who actually produced the graphics processor for the Dreamcast. You would think they would know how to use their hardware well if they developed it, but judging by this game they must of accidentally ported a poor N64 engine over.

So was it worth it? No, not really. The music is darn catchy though, even if everything else goes out of it's way to hurt your ears and eyes. Despite this, Segagaga Domain's description of the mini-game filled sequel is tricking me into thinking that will be worth buying cheap, if just for it's title alone which is the longest and most ridiculous title I have ever seen.

Sengoku Turb - Fanfan I Love me Dunce doublentendre.

Wow.

ROOMMANIA # 203

I had read the odd review of this one, which was also ported and given a sequel on the PS2, apparently it was pretty popular, and there is also some very helpful guides for this game floating around on the Internet, so I gave it a shot. Imagine an interactive version of Big Brother only without the annoying freaks desperate for fame and you're half way there with what this is like. You play as, wait for it...GOD, or at least a deity sent down by god to watch over a lazy waste of space Japanese guy who slumps about in his flat doing nothing with his life, and you have to make his life more interesting by acting as his Jiminy Cricket and leading him into situations he would never get into on his own.

You have multiple camera angles of his apartment in which he'll mostly be sitting in, watching TV (which will sometimes show footage from Crazy Taxi, of all things!) and smoking. To motivate him into looking at something, you have to throw little ping balls at objects in timed succession to slowly ween him over to it. Throw them too fast, and he will do anything but what you want, too slow and he'll not notice you. It takes quite a while to nail the timing.

The real fun comes about from when he leaves the apartment for work. Now you are able to travel all over the apartment and really mess about with his stuff. For example, you can take away objects like his alarm clock, turn the TV on, moves things like his table about, or even lock the front door. Then in the afternoon when he returns from work, you can watch as he freaks out. There's nothing quite like seeing him walk in on a trashed table and panicking that someone may of broke in, or having to climb through the window when you lock his door. fart arsing around with his stuff and seeing his reaction is the highlight of the game.

You have missions set to you, which you are given so many game days to beat, which are given to you with nothing but a visual clue. If you fail most of these missions the guy will lose his job and get kicked out of the apartment, succeed in them and all sorts of truly bizarre events will happen to him, which I'd rather not spoil. Simply put, this is a amazingly unique game easily up there with Seaman that you'll most defiantly need a guide for if you have no Japanese knowledge, but is well worth a try. It;s also full of the kind of stuff that would be impossible to get any kind of intelligible translation from because it's just so Japanese (much like a lot of Segagaga), including this odd puppet show the guy watches. Ii will baffle and confuse you to no end, but you'll still find yourself somehow wrapped up into it.


KIRESTUBOY'S GAN-GA-GAN

What sold me on this one was the fact that it uses the Microphone, which you apparently use to shout at monsters. Other than that I had no idea what to expect. When you first start up the game I presume it asks you you to shout into the microphone, to which based on your voice will pick a little monster for you to play as (I got that little green samurai type thing in the left center of the box art). From there you walk around what appears to be a Japanese house (You're tiny, by the way, so everything is massive) and bumping into things seems to randomly set of battles with other monsters thingys.

This is where some knowledge of the lingo would come in handy. You have a little stage each and you have to shout at each other, producing huge stone words that will smack into your opponent. Obviously though, most of the time I shout gibberish at the mic, I'll just produce a question mark that doesn't do anything, and then I get my arse kicked as huge Japanese words pummel my poor little Samurai. Shouting the same words the opponents say seems to sometimes work, but I think you have a certain saying for your own monster you must use, and of course I don't know what that is. Oddly enough i have lost a lot of battles but never seem to get a game over screen, it just seems to go on forever. I really need a guide for this if I expect to get anywhere at all, me thinks.

PRO YAKYU TEAM DE ASOBU SERIES

The least 'odd' game of the bunch but odd enough as these kind of cartoon baseball games have been all the rage in Japan for yonks while we're stuck with the boring realism of World Series Baseball and the like. This particular series by Sega started on the Saturn, and is not quite as popular as Konami's similar series which is still going with it's latest edition on the Wii and PS2, whereas this Sega series stopped a after one or two PS2 installments.

In other words, this game is wonderful, if only for the HomeRun mode for me, as I haven't really figured out the controls or all the rules of the main game, but once you know what you're doing you've got yourself a fun and additive game with some of the bounciest most fun cartoon graphics I have seen on the Dreamcast, up there with the visuals in Florigan Bros. The muppet like characters with their daft high pitched voices are a right laugh, too. "PLAYBUUUU!"

There's about 4 or 5 versions of this game which are mostly the same, and from I've seen the one with the box above is your best bet as some of the others are management sims with a feck load of Japanese text. Dreamcast Doctor, a Youtuber who shows of quite a few unusual Japanese Dreamcast games at his account (he's pretty hardcore, he even has the big Segagaga box set which he shows off in one video), has a video of one of these games which may or may not sell you on it.



There are many other strange games out there that I will, one day, find cheap enough to risk buying for a few hours of confusion and bafflement, and if my attempts so far are anything to go by, at the most half of these will actually be good games. We shall see..

Dreamcast Junkyard @ Photobucket


It's been up for a little while now, but there's enough content there now to let everyone know about it. I've set up a Dreamcast Junkyard account on Photobucket where I will be placing as much official Dreamcast related images as I can find, so long as they are of high quality. The bulk of the account so far is something I've been working on for a little while now, getting high resolution scans of every Dreamcast game cover. Some of them are 600X600 pixels but a majority of them are a whopping 1400X1400 pixels a piece, the biggest available scans of these game covers that I know to exist on the Internet (of course, I could be wrong, but you'd have to do some deep searching to find any bigger than that).

I'm providing this as a resource for anyone to use. For example for articles on this very blog you could just go straight here rather than having to hunt for them on Google image search where you'll most likely find crappy small scans with nasty watermarks on them. There is also a bunch of artwork and wallpapers on the account in from the likes of Samba De Amigo, Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5.

You'll notice this rather huge scan above in the covers section of the rare gem Cosmic Smash, one of the few games to come in a DVD case. This will be because I recently got my hands on it via good old Ebay, and I'll be writing an article on it sometime soon. =)

While I'm at it, here's some of my favorite covers from the games in my collection. Admittedly most of them are the Japanese covers as they always seem to be the most artistic to me. The PAL Crazy Taxi cover is a minimalist work of art, though. Click on them to see them in all their high-res glory.



That last one? I'll have to explain what that game is at some point as well..

Another Samba De Amigo post?

Looks like the announcement of the Wii Samba De Amigo has brought the fans of the original out of the woodwork, all showing off why this game always has and always will rock your socks off. here's another Youtube video of someone doing essentially the same as I have just done only far more professionally: he has someone filming him for a start, with a better camera that can actually show the TV screen without going all white. I could probably kick his arse at the game though, if that is not the hard mode he is playing, that is..



So are you running about on Ebay looking for this little beauty yet? I'm sure you're getting sick of hearing about it for a full week. XD

DCJY Video Feature: The Samba De Amigo Boxset

While I'm still on a Samba De Amigo high here (the annocement of the new Wii version has made me go back to the game, playing it for a good few hours over the last week) here's a brand new video feature showcasing the contents of the Maraca boxset as well as showing some gameplay (complete with flailing about and shouting at the telly, looking like a right tit. Sorry about the sound quality that is quite a bit of the loud side at times (the mircophone I was using wasn't that great to be honest), and the picture quality isn't up to scratch because my parents have taken the camcorder with them on holiday so I'm using my EyeToy, funnily enough. Turned into another 9 minute video, this, but hopefully it's an enjoyable 9 mintues..