Have you ever wanted to enter the world of Sonic? Seeing and experiencing it firsthand? Well yesterday, I did. No, I didn't take some mushrooms and play a game of Sonic Shuffle. I visited the real Station Square! Que the theme song: Doo-doo-doo-doooo dee-doo-dee-doo-doo-doo-doo-doooo!
Station Square at night, the perfect time to enter Speed Highway
I discovered Station Square while on a road trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Me and two buddies were heading to the Full Moon Horror Roadshow to meet the guy who created Puppet Master, Ghoulies and the Troll films. The show was being held at a place called Station Square, and being the Dreamcast fan that I am my ears perked up. Blog fodder! Things got even better when we drove in. It really was similar to Sonic Adventure's Station Square.
Like the video game Station Square, the real Station Square was on the edge of a large city next to a body of water. One could easily board boats, just like in the game, although I don't know if they took you to the Egg Carrier.
The real Station Square also featured trains! Although unlike the game they did not take you the mountainous region of the Mystic Ruins...
Oh wait! Holy crap! You COULD take the trains from Station Square into a mountainous region! I didn't have time to check out if there was a real Mystic Ruins over the hills, so I'll just assume there was.
Real Station Square even featured shops, including a burger shop! I swear I even saw Amy Rose shopping for groceries...
There was no announcer welcoming me to Station Square, however there were these signs about. I'm assuming East Warehouse is a Shenmue reference. They failed to point out where the Chao Garden was. I assume it was in the hotel. Oh yeah, they had a hotel too.
Just. Like. In. The. Game.
Okay. So Pittsburgh's Station Square contained just about everything the video game version had, but it was missing something...
I've finally made it. After eleven months of climbing the Sega blog ladder, I've joined the Dreamcast Junkyard. See kids? All it takes to dominate four Sega blogs is a little perseverance, some smart-ass comments, Father Krishna and Tomleecee. The latter of the two accepts paypal, making bribes easy and convenient.
Before I begin my introduction I wanted to set a few things straight. First off, I'd like to apologize to Tomleecee for going off on him for hating on the movie Punch-Drunk Love. I can agree, that as an Adam Sandler movie, it is awful. However, as a piece of modern cinema it's excellent. Paul Thomas Anderson is a filmmaking genius and was nice enough to give a Sega Dreamcast some screen time. Secondly, that British Shenmue video was made by me.
My Dreamcastfandom began in September 1999. The Dreamcast was the first Sega system, since the Genesis, that I dived into on day one. As the Dreamcast debuted in September, and my birthday is in November, I had to bide my time with magazine articles and short play sessions at mall kiosks. When my fifteenth birthday hit, in came the cash from the grandparents. Soon I had enough for a new system, a VMU and Sonic Adventure. I remember the store was sold out of the game, so I had to spend a week playing only the bundled Dreamcast Generator demo disc. Sure I could've rented the game, but then I'd never want to return it! Once Sonic Adventure was in my hands, I was a Dreamcast fan through and through. The Official Dreamcast Magazine was my bible, and I picked up as many games as I could in the console's 2 year lifespan.
My collection has really grown over the past ten years
I remember the day I learned the Dreamcast was being discontinued. It was on Tech TV'sXPlay. I still hate Adam Sessler for breaking the news. Despite the "death" of the Dreamcast, I continued to buy the usual used game until 2003 when I went off to college. I wisely brought my Dreamcast with me, making one of the few dudes in my dorm to own a video game console (I went to an art school, so there weren't too many gamers).
Upon graduating I moved to Philadelphia where I currently live with my girlfriend. She puts up with me owning all this stuff, so shes a keeper. As school assignments were behind me, and I had a steady income, I turned to ebay to fill in the gaps of my collection.
Since 2007, my Dreamcast collection has doubled, with a few more consoles and lots of wacky accessories joining the pile. Gagaman is to thank for making me want to buy a DreamEye.
Yeah, I know the Space Channel 5 soundtrack is a bootleg.
I'm missing issues 0, 2 and 3. If you have them and are willing to sell, hit me up in the comments section.
There is so much more I could say about the Dreamcast, but I'll save it for another article. Happy to be here and looking forward to the future!
I've been wanting this to happen for such a long time, and now finally the stars and planets are in the right alignment, for the arrival of a brand new correspondent here at the Dreamcast Junkyard.
He's no stranger to these parts, you'll have seen his small, blue, rodent-like form scuttling over every post that appears on this hallowed site. Equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Sega, a lightning quick sense of humour and an uncanny affinity with Northern England, despite living in the land of the Liberty Bell (that's Philadelphia to me and you), Barry has been a staunch supporter of the Dreamcast Junkyard for the last year or more.
I'm sure I've seen this guy somewhere before...
As well as this he has been the main contributor over at our sister site, The Saturn Junkyardand the sole creator of, and contributor to, the very excellent Nomad Junkyard, which can be found residing in the sidebar of these very pages.
Anyway, that's enough waffle from me, I'm just dying to see what flows from his creative... erm... nib (?) over the next few days, weeks and months. So without any further ado, I give to you, the one and only, Barry The Nomad!!!
Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know I haven't written anything for a while. That's because I've been on 'leave,' and for the most part have been spending my time doing fuck all. Yep, fuck all. Except watching Jeremy Kyle (pictured, yesterday) and drinking the free wine that magically 'appeared' in the kitchen. Hick.
In retrospect though, that's not entirely 100% true, for in between the odd gulp of poor quality, throat-burning vino tinto, I've been buying up some truly great (and some truly sub-standard) examples of Dreamcast software. Unusually though, my purchasing has not been entirely limited to the virtual auction house of ebay. No, this week I discovered not one, but TWO game emporiums (emporia?) literally metres apart that BOTH stock Dreamcast games! This probably won't help anyone who lives outside of the Greater Manchester area, but if you venture to the lovely suburb of Stockport and eschew the harsh, garish window displays of GAME and Gamestop you will undoubtedly stumble upon Game City & Game Zone. Not the most imaginatively named stores, I'm sure you'll agree, but they stand opposite each other on the same street and both of them have a small but perfectly formed assortment of magical azure jewel cases inside. The initial wave of euphoria/cold sweat that washed over me soon evaporated when I discovered that I already owned pretty much every game Game Zone had on offer, but it returned like an aftershock when I ventured into Game City and found A GAME I DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE!
Evil Dead: Hail to the King
Unfortunately, upon getting the game home and playing it, the come-down returned and the ecstasy once again made way for boring old reality. Bah. But - as usual - I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the science bit:
Rather than follow the story of the original Evil Dead movies (of which I have little more than a passing interest, although Evil Dead 3 / Army of Darkness rocked), Hail to the King is a game-based sequel to the whole celluloid series. The FMV intro tells the 'story so far' - you know, the cabin in the woods, the chopped-off hand, the chainsaw replacement, the going-back-in-time and killing witches etc - and then tacks on a rather shitty continuation involving Ash and his new shag-piece going back to the cabin in the woods to help him overcome his nightmares about past events. So they get to the cabin and it all kicks off. Again. I'd also like to add that this is something of a conflict of storylines depending on the version of Evil Dead 3 you've seen, but meh.
So, you get to play as Ash Williams complete with chainsaw hand and basically wander around various locations from the first couple of movies shooting ghosts (?) and gutting redneck zombies with your chainsaw-arm. Oh, and you'll also be required to pick up thousands of random items, look for and then open doors that appear to be part of the scenery, run into walls, run out of ammo, not be able to get away from the randomly spawning monsters, and then die...before starting the whole mess again.
Hail to the King is a 3rd person survival horror, very much in the vein of the original Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark games, but while those two were genre defining (with the exception of the atrocious Alone in the Dark reboot) Ash's adventure is a decomposing mound of cancerous flesh. Graphically, it's not too bad - the pre-rendered backdrops are detailed enough and feature moving textures (curtains blowing in the wind, fires crackling etc), but the 3D model animation is crap and the general design quality of the enemies is abysmal. Gameplay fares even worse - the controls are horribly over-complicated (why is 'run' activated by the right trigger?! surely that's the universal button for 'fire'?!) and what's with the enemies just randomly popping up out of the ground every 5 seconds? In some places they just continually re-spawn meaning that as soon as you've dispatched one badly animated skeleton, another one pops up instantly to take whatever health you had left from the last battle (aka button mashing session).
If ever there was an example of how not to clone Resident Evil, then Hail to the King is most definitely it.
It's nice to see some Sci-Fi flicks doing well though, and one day (fingers crossed) rom-coms will be outlawed by pain of death. Oh, and the 'tenuous' bit? Pandorum is from the producers of the Resi movies, and Hail to the King is sort of like Resi. Geddit? GEDDIT?!?!
***END OF INTERMISSION***
My other recent purchase is about as far away as either Pandorum or Hail to the King as you could possibly get. Why, it's
Kao the Kangaroo
It's a platform game starring a Kangaroo with boxing gloves on. Called Kao. K-O. Do you see? Of course you do, oh hallowed visitor to the Junkyard. I always thought that this particular game was a sort of free-roaming platformer in the style of Mario 64 for some reason, but it's not. It's more like a really dumbed down version of Super Magnetic Neo and Croc (that shitty old game on the Saturn/PSX). That's not to say it's a bad game though - it's just a bit...well, basic. As mentioned, you assume the role of the titular Kao, a young Kangaroo who has been tasked with...well the usual shite actually.
You've got to save the world or something and in order to do this you have to guide the titular hero around various brightly coloured, predictably themed stages (jungle, snowy, blah, blah, fecking blah) collecting coins and punching floating pigs and spiders. And that's it. It plays a bit like an upgraded Crash Bandicoot and even though there are flaws aplenty (it's ridiculously hard for a kid's game and the 'map' screen is little more than a JPEG showing your progression from level to level), Kao the Kangaroo is a perfectly decent platformer. As I mentioned, it's definalty aimed at the younger gamer which is strange considering it's unfairly difficult in places. It also rather unashamedly takes several cues from other games in the genre (check out the random objects with eyes and cheesy grins glued on, ala Rayman 2). Kao then - a fairly good-looking game that does little to offend.
Then again, it does little to stand out from the crowd but if you can get a copy cheap, give it a whirl.
I've also recently managed to acquire copies of Dynamite Cop and Star Wars Racer for mere peanuts, but both of these games have been featured in past posts so I won't bother dwelling on them myself.
Finally, a special mention goes out to reader 'tdinc' who sent me this link.
Apparently, someone has seen it necessary to turn a DC controller into an iPod dock. Which is quite cool. Although, to be honest, I just prefer to use the little wire that came in the box...
Hello my dear friends, Father K here! (Yes, you remember, the least productive member of the DCJY team...) I haven't posted anything for ages for a number of reasons, but then I've also actually neglected my Dreamcast for over a year, falling into the '360 trap' and have remained bedazzled by the shininess of the current gen... Until now...
Recently, I got my living room floors laminated. This means the filth ridden, piss stained carpets of yore are now vanquished, but also that I had to totally reconsider which consoles I would re-install (and, of course, where I would put them...)
The "old faithful..." until the little bugger started playing up on me...
The "old favourite", green Dreamcast was re-installed, and I decided (on the exciting basis of the last post) that Shenmue should be the first game I played on it. (Shenmue 2 was the second ever game I played on my 360...)
But fuck-a-doo-dah! The little green snot started turning itself off and on, repeatedly as soon as I put it on. I couldn't get past the opening Lan-Di killing Ryo's father! I was about to have a screaming bitch fit, when I realised I've got bloody dozens (well, three) of those little Dreamcasts hermetically sealed in my loft, in case of just such emergencies.
So off I skipped and fetched down a 'brand new' one. You'll see the results of my unpacking below... It was quite marvellous, the feeling of opening a new console and it being a Dreamcast. I also opened a brand new see through controller, and a brand new see through blue VMU. Tomorrow, I'll play Shenmue on it, and party like it's 1999. Happy days, my brothers, happy days!!!!!
Oooohhhh!!!! Bluuuueeee!!!!
Like a virgin, touched for the very first time...
Clean and fresh, fresh and clean....
Wow! This one is easy, the filthy little tramp... Ha ha...
Shiny, plastic, fresh, lots of bits to mess with... Pant, pant!
You don't have to, take your clothes off, to have a good time... etc. etc.
Here's two more videos of the Top 100. This is as far as I've got with editing this together so far. I still need to cobble together footage of certain games before I can really release any more for now, so there's gonna be a short wait for part four onwards.
Right, I realise that I've not done a 'proper' post for a while (that should be rectified later this week when I cast my cybernetic replacement eye over some of my recent Dreamcast software acquisitions), but in the meantime I thought you might like to have a quick look at this.
Yes, yes, yes - It's another link to a feature on another website, but hell - at least this one has had some thought put into it and isn't just another Top Ten list of the DC's best games. Instead, it's a list of games that were great also-rans but were doomed to be lost to the sands of time. Or something. Just go there and have a look.
To be fair, Games Radar have actually published quite a few quality features focusing on the Dreamcast and it's premature demise. Here's two of the best:
Sometimes an item appears on ebay that makes you think "why?"
Here's an auction for such an item. It's a external Dreamcast cooling fan that comes complete with it's own power cord. And there's me thinking just the one fan was sufficient.
Why does this thing exist? Answers on a postcard. Or, erm, the comments page...
Oh, and if the auction ends before you can piss your money away on such a pointless artifact, you can buy one here.
The first part of the Top 100 videos is up, and the 2nd part will be up sometime tomorrow. The rest of the videos are a work in progress, I'm releasing them as I make them so you're gonna have to be patient! This is mainly just to show off bits of the games that made it into the chart, with some facts chucked onto the screen for good measure. This first part features games 100 to 91. Enjoy!
The updated re-release of NG:Dev.Team's indie shooter Last Hope arrived in the mail yesterday. It comes in the brightest pink DVD case you'll ever see, and the manual is still mostly in Japanese despite not coming from there.
The game has definitely had improvements: most important of all being that it now has a lot more difficulty settings and has been re-balanced so not so expert gamers like me can actually play it through! In the original It's far more forgiving this time around, and as the title suggest the enemy bullets are now pink so they don't blend in with the explosions and your own bullets like they used to.
If they decide to do the same with a more forgiving version of Dux, can I trade my old one in? I still can't beat the first level in that! XD
Now how did I manage to miss this? Not only did RedSpotGames reveal the release date and pre-orders for Rush Rush Rally Racing on 9/9/09, but Goat Store has something new due for release too! Above is the trailer for the iPhone version, but pre-orders are up now for a Dreamcast release of this puzzle game for $22, and pre-orders include a poster and free download of the iPhone one. Goat Store a few years back started the indie commercial Dreamcast thread with games like Feet of Fury, Cool Herders and Inhabitants (which i have yet to catch up on, need to pick them up sometime me thinks). More info over at it's official website and you can pre-order at Goat Store.
It seems that everyone is having a crack at lamenting the Dreamcast's demise on this, the 10th Anniversary of it's (US) birth. It's mostly all crocodile tears, I hasten to add - where were these so-called 'supporters' when the DC still had a weak pulse and the tiniest of sections scrunched into an unlit corner of Electronics Boutique? Bah! Fucking hypocritical Judases. It seems that even MSN is getting in on the act though, featuring the Dreamcast in it's 'Dead Tech we would Resurrect' feature. Go and have a look.
Did you read it? Did you cough your half-chewed toast all over the fucking keyboard? I almost did - where the hell did they dig up the cretin who wrote that load of bile? Well, more on that later, but I for one didn't realise the DC was the follow-up to the Mega Drive (apparently, the Saturn never existed); and check out this quote:
"...A combination of mistrust with game developers and the emergence of the PlayStation spelled an early bath for the Dreamcast. Even the brilliant Virtua Fighter could not save it..."
Now, I'm not one for abbreviations or text speak - indeed, I believe it to be a grisly mutilation of the English language - but W.T.F.?! This horse shit would be acceptable (just) on some nomark blog written by a 15 year old wanabe games journo in his bedroom, but this is on MSN - one of the biggest and most widely read web portals on the fucking planet! Wanna know what's even more noose-preparingly depressing? The guy who wrote it is called Michael Sawh. And he works for T3.com.
As I've said before, looks like everyone joined the party. This particular top 10 actually surprised me in a positive way. I love screwattack, but I got to admit they're a bunch of nintendo fanboys at heart, and sometimes they just make weird choices for their top 10's (the no. 1 in this top is no exception), but overall this list is very well done and they showed a lot of devotion to the system that I felt was truly sincere. Enjoy.
Have you ever wanted to enter the world of Sonic? Seeing and experiencing it firsthand? Well yesterday, I did. No, I didn't take some mushrooms and play a game of Sonic Shuffle. I visited the real Station Square! Que the theme song: Doo-doo-doo-doooo dee-doo-dee-doo-doo-doo-doo-doooo!
Station Square at night, the perfect time to enter Speed Highway
Like the video game Station Square, the real Station Square was on the edge of a large city next to a body of water. One could easily board boats, just like in the game, although I don't know if they took you to the Egg Carrier.
The real Station Square also featured trains! Although unlike the game they did not take you the mountainous region of the Mystic Ruins...
Oh wait! Holy crap! You COULD take the trains from Station Square into a mountainous region! I didn't have time to check out if there was a real Mystic Ruins over the hills, so I'll just assume there was.
Real Station Square even featured shops, including a burger shop! I swear I even saw Amy Rose shopping for groceries...
There was no announcer welcoming me to Station Square, however there were these signs about. I'm assuming East Warehouse is a Shenmue reference. They failed to point out where the Chao Garden was. I assume it was in the hotel. Oh yeah, they had a hotel too.
Just. Like. In. The. Game.
Like the video game Station Square, the real Station Square was on the edge of a large city next to a body of water. One could easily board boats, just like in the game, although I don't know if they took you to the Egg Carrier.
The real Station Square also featured trains! Although unlike the game they did not take you the mountainous region of the Mystic Ruins...
Oh wait! Holy crap! You COULD take the trains from Station Square into a mountainous region! I didn't have time to check out if there was a real Mystic Ruins over the hills, so I'll just assume there was.
Real Station Square even featured shops, including a burger shop! I swear I even saw Amy Rose shopping for groceries...
There was no announcer welcoming me to Station Square, however there were these signs about. I'm assuming East Warehouse is a Shenmue reference. They failed to point out where the Chao Garden was. I assume it was in the hotel. Oh yeah, they had a hotel too.
Just. Like. In. The. Game.
