Pippin At(black)mark(et)
Virtual On: XBLA
It's Virtual On. On Xbox Live Arcade. Do I need to say more?
Well, actually, yeah. The guys over at Gametrailers fucked up. Virtual On: Ontario Tagram? WTF? It's Oratorio Tangram, you twats...
Eat My Shorts
Radical!
A Dreamcast Flightstick?
I found a new controller that I had never heard of before. Perhaps someone here has seen one before but it doesn't seem to be listed on any of the major Dreamcast sites and is only mentioned in the odd message board post.
Behold the Dreamcast Panther Flightstick:
Apparently this controller was also able to be used with FPS games like Quake 3 and perhaps even the unreleased Half Life.
As it is there are several opinions out there ranging from "Crap it doesn't work on many games" to "Wow this works awesome on Starlancer" to "Ugh Madcatz...". (I personally never had a problem with Madcatz stuff on the Dreamcast My steering wheel works well and my lightguns are good. I actually sold a new madcats controller for nothing because I was told that 3rd party controllers shorted out the Dreamcast's control board...then a first party controller shorted out my control board...)
As soon as I get this and my copy of Starlancer I will give a proper review of this seemingly rare controller. Is it a good controller? Is is crap? Is it worth it as a collectors item?
Only time will tell.
Unveiling a moment in history...
Some Wind & water fan art for ya.
Take this artwork as an apologise for still not getting around to sorting out that video review I promised.Sorry, it might get done one day!
Wind and Water - €12 + Shipping
Dreamcast: A Forensic Retrospective
Any comments on this?
I personally thought that this line made the article worth reading:
"most gamers opting to wait for the sure-to-be-awesome PS2, with its mysterious "emotion engine" and games that would literally emerge from the screen and fellate you senseless."
I am somewhat disappointed that never happened...
In other news I am setting up another classic video game day and the the Dreamcast will play a huge role (Powerstone 2 and Marvel vs Capcom 2 Whoo!). Last time I had hooked up the Dreamcast to the VGA port of a projector and the Soul Calibur matches looked really nice. Perhaps this time I will actually edit some of the footage from the matches and showcase them here.
In other other news Saturnalia is going on at the other Junkyard. So if you enjoy other CD media game devices from Sega check that out.
The Year of the DUX
Given DUX is almost done, it only takes about a month to release this game. Currently end of February is aimed, but perhaps early March becomes more realizable as issues may happen. So gameplaywise the game is already on spot and all important features are implentent - from now it's just about the last bits, and publishing this game. By this opportunity I'd like to thank all purchasers who are patience about their pre-order, and aren't abused by the many delays. The additional development time that the game receives makes it a way better game then it should have been orginally. Taking pre-orders early also assures the quality of the product, as its an active investment to the games development budget. Additionaly, there's going to be a (very) small bonus for all DUX pre-orders on HUCAST.net Btw, the soundtrack of the game is going to be published early February instead of January. |
Monday Morning Reds...
Sunday Night Blues
NTSC vs PAL game storage
Read about 24 hours of Dreamcast
Luckily the rest of our contributors have been doing a much better job of it!
Anyways, I am somewhat pissed off that my job made me miss out on an excellent 24 hour Dreamcast event!
The people over at http://www.ihaveadreamcast.com/ played the Dreamcast for 24 straight hours and did a live feed!
I may have missed out on the live feed but the blog itself is fun reading if you are bored.
I might have to record the next video game event I organize and show off my own dreamcast skills.
Dreamcast Express Videos
Volume 4 contains a Tokyo Game Show '99 disc which is crammed with video previews of all kinds of Dreamcast games, including many that were not released here. Below is two youtube videos of all of these clips on the disc. Be warned; squeaky Japanese narration throughout that may grate on your ears.
What you won't see is how they're presented: you select a stand of Sega's Tokyo Game Show area, and a camera is swooped through that area in live action. As you swim past the set up games, you can hit A to view a video of that game. There are also interviews about Space Channel 5, Virtual On 2 and D2. The D2 video is a special screening in a fancy cinema room. The disc also contains some content to download to your VMU.
Volume 7 contains two disc with a whole bunch of playable demos and heaps of VMU game saves. One of the discs contains a bunch of videos, which I have a video of above. Blue Submarine No.6 looks particularly interesting, with stunning cel shaded graphics for it's age. Looked it up and the game is mega rare and expensive. I remember seeing the anime of that once.
There is also a video on there all about the Dream Eye, that sweet digital camera we never got over here, which gives you a good insight into how it works and what you can do with the software. Web cam chat on a console in 1999. Mental. As a further tease, the video also has footage of 'presents' you could obtain if you were part of the same club you would get these demos from. Virtual On soft toys! A D2 figure! An Afro Thunder T-shirt! I want it all! :(
To get a good read up on all of the Dreamcast Express demo discs, check out Segagaga Domain's write up on them.
The Segagaga Box set: Inside Out
I've been wanting to own this game ever since I heard about it, even if it's all in Japanese so I probably wouldn't get that far in it, considering it's an RPG of sorts. Particularly I wanted the box set that contained some rather fancy goodies. For years now I've been attempting to get one on eBay when they rarely pop up, getting outbid left right and center by people willing to blow more cash on it than me. Recently I found one by searching for 'SGGG' rather than 'Segagaga' that had a starting price of £50, and in a stroke of sheer luck, no one else even attempted to outbid me for it! Even better: the item was located in the UK so the postage wasn't as high as all the ones coming from Japan before it. It showed up at last the other day, and here it is!
The T-shirt at first glance looks just as minimalistic as the box, which nothing more than a logo on it. Take it out of it's re-sealable package and check out the back however..
..and you get this fantastic black and white image of Sega's many console controllers dangling and a huge Sega 'S' along with the words 'Generation S 21st century, Sega control the world". Of course they do. Ahem.
Finally there's this little black organizer book. The first pages include the lyrics and a music sheet of the 'Segagaga March' theme tune. The next two pages include some info about some of the oddball characters you'll fight in the game (including Alex kidd). After that it goes into normal organizer pages of dates, phone numbers, addresses etc. Oddly enough all these pages are in English.
As for the game itself. I've played it before via a CD-R copy of it, although on that to fit the game on a CD many of the cut scenes were removed. There is a translation guide for the first chapter of the game on gamefaqs which I used but once you get to that point you get into the game development simulation which is far more complicated as you have to manage your staff while they tap away at their computers programming games for you (the results of which turn out to be classic Sega games from all their consoles or parody games like 'Mortal Wombat' and 'Sega Lolly'). With the CD-R I could also rip a bunch of artwork from the game and screenshots from the cut scenes (the ones on it, that is)
To see more of the game I dug out my trusty DC Tool disc which contains hundreds of VMU Save files, including a complete save file for this game. You can't technically play the game with this, but you can check out all the wonderful cut scenes, the games that your staff develop and best of all the unlockable mini-games.
I'm sure you've all seen this footage of a scrolling shooter where you fight each of Sega's consoles that spit out sprites from Golden Axe, Fantasy Zone and Space Harrier II amongst other things, but what you might not know is this mini-game is pretty much what the canceled Thunder Force VI for the Dreamcast could have been like. There is a mode with just the bosses one after the other but also a mode where you get a full stage of enemies (which include pink Playstation controllers, CDs and Mark III controllers) before fighting each boss. This mode is almost like a full scrolling shooter in itself, and is more fun to play than quite a few full shmup releases on the Dreamcast, even if it is a bit short. This mode also features some stunning remixes of classic Sega music, even Vectorman is represented!
The other mini games include one where you have to push Dreamcast boxes into a lift which is essentially a clone of Soko-ban, that also features music from Pengo. There's 40 puzzle in total to solve, which get rather tricky. Finally there's a game that requires you clean dirty Sega arcade cabinets before the time runs out by rapidly bashing the A and B buttons. It's amusing for a bit and has rankings to beat. To me the game was worth buying for the shmup mini game alone, it's amazing. I'm going to rip some footage of these which I'll upload later. If you missed it before check out this great video review of the game by the Happy Console gamer.