Des Jeux Sur Dreamcast

Well bugger me. I went into the O'Neill shop in Portsmouth earlier today to see if they had any cheap clobber (they did'nt) and what do I spot on display? In the middle of the store? Only fecking Dreamcast games:

Yes, I got a few funny looks taking this photo with my phone

Granted, it was only 3 (sealed) copies of Championship Surfer and they were probably only there to make up some kind of retro chic display...but c'mon people - DC games in public view...in 2009! Amazing.

Anyway, seeing as it's been an aeon since I last added anything new to my Dreamcast collection, I went on eBay last week and made a few bids for games. Yep, games. Not laser pens or DC branded personal enema machines - games. And you know what? I actually won a few auctions! I was just as shocked, dear reader.

Whilst the games I got are hardly amazing, they're ones I've been after for a while but rarely surface:

The Next Tetris

OK, it's Tetris. On the Dreamcast. There's not much more to it than that - you have to make lines of blocks and they disappear (that description is solely for the 2.5 people on Earth who haven't played the thing in one guise or another). The 'Next' bit in the title refers to the slightly new mode they've tacked on that changes the behaviour of the blocks somewhat. In 'normal' Tetris, the blocks fall down, you make them vanish and the blocks above just hang there in place creating annoying gaps below them. In 'Next' Tetris, the fallen blocks will attach themselves to ones of a similar colour and become a whole unit. If a cluster falls that is made of two different colours, only the colour that doesn't attach itself to blocks already there will fall further down into any gaps. That sounds massively complicated, I know - but it really isn't.

Apart from the two main games ('Next' and normal old Tetris), there isn't much to write home about. There's a Marathon mode where you have to get rid of blocks that are already at the bottom of the screen and a self-explanatory Practice mode too. Annoyingly, The Next Tetris doesn't support VGA (even trying the old cable swap trick won't get you past the intro screens) so if you're using a HD TV expect to play in N64-style blur-o-vision, but the sound track is quite good (especially the techno remix of the classic Tetris tune). To be fair, there's not really a lot wrong with The Next Tetris - it is exactly what it sets out to be and nothing more - a perfectly acceptable port of a classic puzzler. It also appears that the NTSC version featured some sort of online functionality, whereas the option was left out of the PAL incarnation. Not that it makes much difference these days.

There was something slightly more interesting in the box, however:

It's one of those 'future releases' things that you occasionally find in the back section of the jewel case. Fairly standard stuff, except for the inclusion of an intriguing title that I've never heard of before:

Peacemakers? From looking at the tiny screenshot, it could have become what we now know as Conflict Zone, but still quite interesting. Sort of. Oh, and there's Arcatera and Heroes of Might and Magic 3, too:

Alas, it's all in French and I'm an ignorant English pig, so fuck knows what it actually says.

Mr Driller

Another puzzle game, Namco's Mr Driller is something of a diversion from Soul Calibur - and then some. Basically, you play a super-deformed miner who has to dig down a shaft full of garishly coloured blocks. Dig under other blocks and they'll collapse on top of you and smash your pathetic body to a pulp. You also have to collect air tanks in order to stay alive the deeper you go into the crust. Again, my description leaves a lot to be desired, but it's really simple once you get the hang of it, and knowing which blocks to 'drill' becomes a test of strategy...dig in the wrong place and you'll get crushed by the subsequently falling ceiling. As the box-guff says, it takes a few minutes to learn how to play, but it'll take you bastarding ages to master, old chum (sic).

Took this myself. Can you tell?

Graphically, it's pretty basic - in fact at one point my Dreamcast went out for a fag whilst I was playing, but the charm here is in the simplistic nature of the visuals. It's highly stylised and borderline camp, but you can't help but love the overly twee characters and simplistic game play. One thing that slightly puzzled me was the bizarre soundtrack - it morphs from banging bass lines to Tokyo subway jingles in the space of a few seconds and then back again. Like I said - fucking weird. Thankfully, Mr Driller is fully VGA compatible so there's no need to mess about swapping cables over and it features several game-modes, although to be honest there's not much difference between them as they all boil down to drilling holes down the same identical shaft time and time again. Ultimately though, it's a solid puzzler and like Tetris, never promises anything it can't deliver. Good stuff all round.

Nightmare Creatures 2

Not a game we've ever mentioned here at the Junkyard, Nightmare Creatures 2 is a title Konami brought to our favourite box of wonder in favour of International Superstar Soccer or Castlevania*. Should be mind-blowingly good then, eh? Erm...not quite. Nightmare Creatures 2 is basically a 3D roaming beat 'em up that casts you in the role of a nutter trying to escape a mental asylum. Oh, and you've got an axe to chop other nutters' heads off with. There's some shitty back story attached to it (which probably also explains why the main protagonist is possibly the least likeable character ever to appear in a game), but in all fairness if you ever play this rotting sack of crap you'll be too stunned by the downright hideousness of the thing to care. That's right folks, Nightmare Creatures 2 is putrid.

"One skinny latte, sir. That'll be £2.30 please..."

Where to start? The graphics can only be described as PS One-like in their quality (above), and I'm not exaggerating: the character models are like Lego men, the floors and ceilings morph and tear as you shamble around and the thing is cursed with pixellation that wouldn't look out of place in DOOM running on a 386. Quite simply horrid. There is an option to turn on a graphical filter, but all that does is turn a PSX game into an N64 game. Elsewhere, the sound effects and music are non-existent and the controls are baffling: you run around with the analogue stick - fair enough - but for some reason the trigger buttons only become active when an enemy is in the immediate vicinity meaning you can't scroll through your collected items unless some badly animated box-man is trying to eat your face. Urgh. I could only play this turgid mess for about 20 minutes before I had to throw up, so you probably won't be surprised to read that I now have a new 'worst game on the Dreamcast.' Move over Army Men: Sarges Heroes, there's a new kid in town...

* Granted, Konami only published this dross, but you get the idea.

Neverball

(Yep, another custom cover.)

I guess I'm a little late to the party with this homebrew release, the beta of which came out some time ago, but I've been on a bit of a homebrew high lately thanks to some recent releases like the amazing Counterstrike port below, catching up with games I had not got around to downloading until now, mainly content from DCevolution.

Neverball is a freeware PC game that has been ported over to the Dreamcast and released over at DCemu, and is essentially a Super Monkey ball clone, which is great as if the Dreamcast lasted just a year or two longer it may of got that game. It is a beta so it isn't quite perfect yet: for example the ball which should looks like it does in these screenshots looks more like a ball made of bubble paper and sometimes when there are a lot of objects on the screen things can disappear(though I believe this only happens if you have the polygon settings to high). Still, there isn't many 3D homebrew games about and for what it is it looks the part.

(Take note these are PC screens. It's almost there, though.)

What really makes this worth playing though is how additing it is. There are two games on the disc: Neverball is the Monkey Ball style game where you must collect a certain amount of coins and reach the exit before the time runs out. Just like that game you can fall off the stage and you only start with three lives, but can gain more by collecting lots of coins. You unlock the stages as you beat them, and luckily there is a VMU save state feature, as well as a replay save feature if you want to re-watch a skillful round. There are three sets of stages on the disc, including a set of harder ones all alphabet shaped!

The 2nd game Neverputt takes the same physics and apples them to a crazy golf game. If you ever played the highly additive golf game in the otherwise average 101 Dalmatians game on the DC it plays a whole lot like that, only the stages get just as surreal and topsy turvy as the Neverball stages, with teleporters and traps. Again theres three sets of difficulty stages, and it's great fun.

Another great thing about this game is the ability to add new stages. You can't make them in game, but if you check out the Neverball forums you'll see there are lots of extra stages that can be downloaded, and if you're tech savvy enough you could burn a disc of the game with these stages added. I haven't tried it myself yet, but if I get time I might have a go at it. There is software that will let you develop your own stages too if you really wanna put some love into it.

So if you're looking for something a little different to Beats of Rage mods and first person shooter ports this is a neat little game to pass the time with. It has some sweet MOD tunes as well. This is the only video of the Dreamcast version I could find online (being played terribly), but I might rip some footage myself at some point.

Counter-Strike DC Final 1.0

(borrowed your cover, gagaman, hope you don't mind :P)

Looks like Counter-Strike DC has finally reached its final stage of development. Here's what the guys behind it have to say:

This project has finally reached its final v.1.0 release.
You will find hours of Counter-Strike gameplay, now on Sega Dreamast.
This final release is now very stable, and is fully playable with a standard controller.

And for the record, this project was intended from the begining to be
a great single-player experience. So to answer with certainty,
online/multiplayer will never be possible on Dreamcast.

Standard half-life dc codes work from the menu, for example:
"Otis Loves Dreamcast" --> God mode
"Dreamcast Gives Firepower" --> Infinate ammo

Also, huge credit goes to original authors of the content that has
been borrowed with or without permission for this release.

Looks good to me. You can download it here, and here's a gameplay video:

Custom covers for Homebrew games/ports

I've set up a folder on the Dreamcast Junkyard Photobucket of custom box art I've put together, so far all in the PAL style (might make American style versions soon). Quite a few are just edits of DCEvolution covers to make them look a little more official while some are completely made up designs like the Marathon trilogy cover using the highest res artwork of the game I could find, the Counterstrike one based on the X-Box cover art. Lot's of covers I made for the Dreamcast Forums scene years ago, mainly of Bleemcast releases. I like to make these from time to time so I can print them up and put them with the discs in their sleeves. All credits to whoever drew what in each image, these are just for free fun. :)

Hellgate video footage

As promised here's some quick footage I put together of that recently leaked Hellgate. The first video shows you a bit of the story mode where I show you all the weapons you have access to and generally bump in a lot of walls. Some areas of the game are pretty glitchy (like the 2nd cut scene you'll see). Take note I cut out the load times which are pretty long: anything from 20 seconds to 2 minutes if I recall.

This second video looks briefly at the time trail mode (a racing mode, essentially), where you can beat the clock on two stages (the 3rd crashes the game), and these scores were going to have online rankings, by the looks of it.

This is followed by a death match (much like a first person shooters multiplayer mode) which has options for split screen up to 4 players, as well as online play and link up play (very few games even used this)! Not sure if the link play works, but the online obviously will not.

Finally there's some footage of a glitch I came across. If you save the game in story mode when it prompts you to at one point, loading the game up makes you falls and get stuck for some reason. You can prevent this by holding the R trigger when it loads to fly forwards before you land in the area that makes you stuck.

VGV: Jet Set Radio

At first I was sceptical but the end cracked me up

Another canceled Dreamcast game leaked!

Just spotted this over at the Dreamcast Scene forums. A game called Hellgate that was due for release in 2001 but canceled (like so many games that year) has found it's way onto the Internet. I can't really tell you much about it as of yet (let alone how close to completion it was), except it looks like some sort of combat racing game...in HELL. It's by a company called Jester Interactive.

There's a megaupload of the game over at the forum, which is about 290MB. A website called Superior Version has artwork and screens of it. I remember the official Dreamcast magazine previewing this (a scan of which is also at that link). I'm going to be giving this a shot, and I might even get a video of it up at some point if I get the time. With all the unreleased games that have some how snuck out of the woodwork and onto the internet over the years, I hope we'll get a leak of Dee Dee Planet one of these days..

EDIT: First Impressions! Well it's different, a sort of mix between a first person shooter with a huge rocket powered motorbike to fly about with, not a racing game at all. The bike is very twitchy, if you thought Daytona 2001 was hard to steer you've seen nothing. Good thing there's a analog sensitivity option then. You can make the bike jump and you have a whole bunch of weapons to flick through from a standard machine gun to rockets and these ice blade thingys.

I'm not really sure what the objective is yet, I must be in a hub world or something which I keep going around in circles in, killing the odd creatures walking about that spit explosive booger at you, and some rock monsters and rocker launcher machines. It has a story mode, time trial, a deathmatch mode and a gallery for unlocking artwork. It also has a rather interesting FMV opening. The cut scenes in game seem to fluff up a bit though.

EDIT 2: Here's the opening video of the game, uploaded to Youtube by Dreamcast.es.

Dreamcast collections to make you GASP.

Some sweet videos I found yesterday that may possibly be too much for some to bare, so make sure someone is standing behind you ready to stop you from fainting while watching. Either these guys are very rich, or just decide not to eat for a year or two to put the money towards all this stuff.

This first video is of one blokes complete PAL collection. That's every single game released in Europe.

But this guy's collection not only takes the cake, but the whole bloody picnic. Just about anything and everything worth owning is here: including a Jet Set Radio box art I've never even heard of let along seen before and loads of the many different special edition consoles. If you check out his account on youtube he also has equally gigantic Saturn, SNES, Neo Geo, Mega Drive and master System collections, all displayed wonderfully in a bizarre room that looks like one of those crazy Akihabara shops.

Sin & Punishment

I'm slightly pissed off right now. I found this bizaare item on eBay last week and I tried so hard to win it - even going to the lengths of outbidding myself on a daily basis just incase some cunt snuck in at the last moment and snatched it away from me. Guess what? Some fucking uber-cunt snuck in at the last minute and wrestled it from my virtual hands. I was powerless to stop it because I was in the pub watching Man United get thrashed 4-1 by Liverpool at the time. The price we pay for having psuedo social lives, eh?

Anyway, here's what I'm on about:

It's only a Dreamcast branded laser pen, complete with batteries and presentation box. 

To the winner of the auction: I will find you, and I will kill you. Then I will piss on your wife's decapitated head and burn your house down with your kids locked in an upstairs bedroom.

Headhunter Completed

Like many a reader/contributor to this hallowed site, I love my Xbox 360 and this bastard Dreamcast progeny takes up a large part of my gaming time. Having spent literally 100+ hours playing Fallout3 on that sucker, however, made me hark back to the simpler, more linear gaming experiences from the last generation...



My first choice was to finish God Of War on the *cough!* PS2. Whatever your feelings are towards the PS2, you can't deny that God Of War is one of THE best videogames ever. It shows what can be delivered from a console by developers if enough time is given for development on that console. If games like Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure and Shenmue could be developed for the Dreamcast within it's short lifespan, think what could have been acheived if it had the eight years of life that the PS2 was blessed with... But I digress.

I decided following the joy of God Of War, to finish a Dreamcast game I had previously played half way through, before abandoning it. That game is the mighty Headhunter. The game is set in a not to distant future, where the government is all pervasive, fascistic and working hand in hand with global multi-national corporations. (Sound familiar?)

As well as the rather worrying scenario mentioned above, there is a rather unhealthy trade in human organs, both sanctioned by the government and criminals via the black market. The world in which we find ourselves is beautifully illustrated through out the game via "news bulletins", videos interspersed throughout the game, which tie up the game's back-story and provide a humorous distraction after tense missions!



The character you play is Headhunter Jack Wade. Headhunters are future cops, stealth assassins and all-round bad ass dudes. And who's the baddest bad ass of 'em all? Why YOU of course! Only at the start of the game, you've lost your gun, your license and your memory.
Does this hinder our hero? Fuck no!! That's because Jack is a hybrid of Dirty Harry and Snake Plisken. I'm not gay, but I could swing in that direction for Jack, he's THAT fucking cool!


Fortunately, your former chief and a wealthy heiress who's father has just been murdered are there to set you on your feet again and restore you to your former position as Headhunter number 1. In order to regain your license you need to go through a series of virtual training missions in cyberspace, facilitated by the L.E.I.L.A virtual reality computer.

Oh and did I mention that you travel through your futuristic city-scape on a whopping motorbike? The better you ride your bike, the more experience points you acquire assisting your progress through the game.


The game plays like GTA (the bike-riding bits) and Metal Gear Solid (the stealth bits). The game really shows the potential of the hardware it was produced for, being one of the best games on the Dreamcast and delivering some stunning graphics for it's 2001 release. Unfortunately it never merited a release in the USA on the Dreamcast, as the console was already doomed to obliteration by the PS2 when the game came out. However, it did get a PS2 port, which you can pick up for a pittance if you're silly enough to not have a functioning Dreamcast in your house.

The save system, health regeneration and weapon/ammo upgrades are all conducive to a satisfying gaming experience, although some of the boss battles are bloody difficult! The soundtrack, by Sega stalwart composer Richard Jaques is amazing, so good in fact that I've thrown it up in the videos at the top! Overall I'm glad I delved back into this game and would say it's an essential Dreamcast purchase/experience. Father K rating 9/10.

Dreamcast mods

I picked up a bit of a scuzzy PAL Dreamcast on eBay. Nothing really wrong with it, just some yellowing:

I had a can of spray paint that was left over from when I sprayed some wood for something years ago... and I remember how much I loved the smell of solvents. Anyway, I got spraying. Paint that is.

So, all-in-all, I recommend it. Here's the finished article:

Share your modded Dreamcast ideas/pictures/stories!

New Dreamcast 2 details!

Look at those specs! HD-GD ROM! A 1 Terabite Harddrive! Erm...what ever those other features say! Ok, not really, this is just some art I found over at Pixia. It's a pretty neat place to find odd Japanese fan art like that, and this rather excellent piece below. Click it to full view and see if you can recognize everyone on it!


EDIT: Another one, why not? This one is probably the only time I've ever seen anyone illustrate Seaman and Ulala IN THE SAME PICTURE.

More DC fan service from Sega themselves!

Sega hasn't forgotten about the Dreamcast, as seen when it made a brief appearance in two cut scenes of their recent game Sonic Unleashed (the best Sonic game on consoles since the last DC one), and it also appeared in a couple shot of that short film 'Night of the Werehog', sitting pretty on a table. Well in a recent Japanese Sonic Unleashed blog post it was revealed that for that film they started animating a scene in which Sonic and new character Chip were actually playing the Dreamcast, though sadly the scene had to be cut before it was finished. But we do have this shot above of what it would have looked like (sans all the fancy pants rendering, of course). How cool would that of been? Read more about the making of Night of the Werehog here.

Space Channel 5 part 2: Special Limited Edition Boxset

Everyone knows about Space Channel 5. Everyone has now seen the lovely SEGAGAGA Boxset (which I also own). Not everyone has seen this though; the limited edition boxset, only on sale in Japan, comprising headphones, pouch and game. Here are some pictures to enjoy.

The box is in fantastic condition. Arrived from Japan in just a jiffy bag - I was a bit scared!

The back of the box has some excellent blurb about the headphones. Worth paying attention to...

Well displayed here; game and headphones. It's obvious what this game is all about - the music.

The headphones are actually really good. They have a strong dynamic range and a good bass response. I must say though, I reckon I look like a right twat with them on. More than normal. It does come with a pair of black pads rather than the fluffy white ones... but... *they keep you so warm!*

Not opened the bag with the pouch - this boxset is minty fresh and it is staying that way. 

This is possibly the rarest thing I own...? Possibly...

Advantages of DUX delays

Taken from the DUX blog:

"Given DUX is receiving many delays since its first release date announced at april 2008, I'd like to explain a bit how these delays have been occurred and how its all for the good of the game.

Originally DUX has been intended just to be side-project with only 5 stages and simple scoring system. During the development our quality bar to meet has been increased from time to time, so upgrading and expanding is what we're using the delays for. Now the game is a full-scale project with 6 instead 5 stages. Additionally, most stages are longer and featuring way more enemy types then before. The game also now features a more advanced scoring system, given the bullet soaking ability of your pod. The difficulty settings are more balanced as well, to make the game a fair but still challenging experience. All in all the game has a lot of advantages from its extra time given, which is of course a good thing for players.

To give an exact release date is currently hardly possible, because this depends on very hard to estimate factors. From now on I'll report how thing going with the release of this game once a week, so more on this in the next week."

I am actually pretty excited about this one chaps...

Let's Play Dynamite Cop!

I don't know if anyone here keeps an eye on my personal youtube account, but I've been doing rather a lot of play throughs of games lately, mainly of Mega Drive and arcade games (because they're nice and easy to emulate), and my latest one is of one of my favorite Dreamcast games Dynamite Cop. It's not the Dreamcast version being played, rather the original arcade Model 2 version on the rather excellent M2 emulator, but it's nigh on identical to the Dreamcast one bar the cut scenes not being pre rendered (and as you'll see, the emulation for these parts isn't quite perfect yet). Either way, if you ever wanted to watch someone laugh and shout at one of the silliest games on the Dreamcast here you go! The first part is below, click here to find the rest of the videos (of which there will be a total of 8 of by tomorrow).

Pippin At(black)mark(et)

OK, so it might be slightly old news by now, but some dude has ripped the decrepit G3 processor, shite memory and 'daughter card' (or something equally alien to us normal*, PC using people) out of an old iMac - and replaced them with the innards of a 200MHz, Windows CE-powered, NAOMI-based behemoth. Kinda like sucking Barry Chuckle's guts out through his mouth and squirting Brett 'The Hitman' Hart's vital organs up his ass to fill the void. Pictures? Why, yes:

An iMac. And a Dreamcast. In same body. Just think what Brundle could've achieved if only that pesky fly hadn't got into his teleportation pod...

Pippin Atmark? Possibly - but I digress.

Speaking of bizarre shit, how would a NES look if it was dressed up like a moderately successful early nineties console and sold in flea markets in Peru?

Erm, like this:

* By 'normal,' I mean people who can't afford to buy a crate of branded lager, let alone an Apple Macbook. Fucking Ikea catalogue-reading, scatter cushion owning CUNTS. Cough.