Skin Deep

Ah, Dreamcast racing games. Forgive me if I'm wrong (and I usually am), but to my untrained eye it would seem that the Dreamcast has more racing games than any other type. From the truly awesome (MSR, Daytona 2001), to the middling but still fun (Re-volt, Speed Devils), to the fucking abhorrent (E.O.S., Roadsters). There is, though, a common theme in the vast majority of the DC's racers - they almost all feature cars. Yep, boring old cars. With four wheels. Again, there are exceptions to this rule (snowmobiles, jet skis and motorbikes are hiding somewhere), but for me the most under-represented mode of transport has got to be the futuristic floaty car. Sure, there's Episode One: Racer and Looney Tunes Space Race, but where's the Dreamcast's Wipeout clone?! You know, with cool looking pointy ships, mental twisty racing circuits and amazing explosions? Well, I thought I'd found it. Only it's not the awesome thrill-ride I was hoping for. It's merely 'meh.'

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the newest entry into the Junkyard...it's Magforce Racing!

Thinking about it, the PSX had the aforementioned Wipeout, the N64 had F-Zero X and Extreme G, even the Saturn had the alright-in-a-mid-ninties-sort-of-way High Octane...and the DC has...Magforce Racing. Hmmm.

OK, so we've established through association that Magforce is a futuristic racing game. Twisty tracks? Check. High speeds? Check. Cool looking pointy ships? Erm...no, actually. For some reason, the developers eschewed the usual style of vehicle for some truly hideous designs. Rather than have wedge-shaped formula 12000 beasts, Magforce Racing gives you the chance to strap yourself into the cockpit of one of a number of crap-looking 'tripods.' Tripods! Why? They look pathetic! The story goes that these tripods have a wheel under each 'leg' that is magnetically charged and allows the vehicles to stick to the track when they inevitably travel along upside-down sections of the circuit...and that explains the need for you to drive over the glowing yellow strips dotted about in order to charge up your 'magnet power,' or something. If this power runs out, you can't drive on the ceiling anymore, and if you're on the ceiling when it runs out you fall to the ground below. If this had some kind of effect on your vehicle (like visible damage or the depletion of a shield bar, ala Wipeout) then it might have had more relevance...but alas no such luxuries exist in Magforce Racing. In actual fact, the whole 'magnets' thing does little more than provide a nice title for the game (Magforce...geddit?!).

Moscow. In the future. You can tell because of the Palace in the background.
And the generic industrial - orange sky.

Speaking of a lack of any kind of damage model for the game, the inclusion of a weapons upgrade system seems like little more than an afterthought by the developer (little known VCC Entertainment, just in case you were wondering. They also made Killer Loop for the PSX, which is in effect the semi-prequel to Magforce). This is evident in the way that even though you can collect and upgrade various weapons (lasers, mines, missiles etc), when you fire them at an opponent the result is little more than a loss in speed for the victim. Obviously, this can help you get past them but there's little incentive to use the weapons...because if you collect four in a row without firing them off, you get a 'turbo ram' that makes you invincible and blasts you along the track at ridiculous uncontrollable speeds. Want to win any race with ease? Just keep collecting four weapons and turbo ram everyone else out of the way like a massive futuristic knob in a dodgem. I used this tactic quite a bit once I'd discovered it and you'll need it to unlock the higher class vehicles and tracks because rather than employ a normal 'championship' option, all Magforce offers is a series of one-off races. You know the drill - finish each track in first place in a particular vehicle and you open up the next class and a few new circuits...but the shit thing is that you can only play them with the vehicle you unlocked them with. Again, looks like another lazy design choice on behalf of VCC. Why couldn't they have put in a proper league mode or something? All you get is that single race mode and a time attack.

As mentioned, the 'cars' look a bit gash.

So what you get with Magforce racing is a pretty run-of-the-mill futuristic racer with really crap vehicle designs and very few play modes. It does have one thing going for it though: the graphics are fecking brilliant! When I first started playing it, I was quite overwhelmed by how smooth everything was and how slick it looked. Sure, by today's DiRT 2 standards Magforce looks horribly dated, what with it's lack of real-time shadows and specular lighting...but back in 2000 this must've looked the dogs bollocks. The tracks (whilst slightly generic) twist and turn all over the shop and feature some rather impressive enormous architecture - in places it reminded me of Wipeout on the PS2, with it's cavernous mountainside entrances and underwater translucent tunnels. It's just a shame that the programmers didn't go the whole hog with some over-the-top lens flares and the like - because with a few more effects lavished over the top of the ace track detail and eye-watering pace, Magforce could've been possibly the best looking racer on the Dreamcast. As it is, it's still up there with the best of 'em - but you can't help but ponder what else could've been done with the game engine.

To surmise, Magforce Racing is a generic futuristic racer. It's got a techno soundtrack, minimalist front end, a dearth of play modes...but is damn nice to look at. Oh, and it only cost me £3 from Chips in Gloucester. I believe the phrase is "wOOt." Cough.

A Dreamcast "What if?"

Sure, this is The Dreamcast Junkyard, but did you also know that we are also Earth conscious? Why waste precious digital letters when you can reuse and recycle! What follows is an article I wrote over at The Nomad Junkyard earlier this year:

Had the Dreamcast lived on, would we still have had Sonic Heroes? This was a question I asked at the Sonic Stadium. I think its an interesting question, just as interesting as asking "In Back to the Future, what would happen had Marty knocked up his own mother?" Food for thought.

I received some interesting replies. Some thought that Heroes would have come out on Dreamcast (exclusively, of course) and the rest of the games we have now would have followed suit. Sonic Riders Zero Gravity would have been the last Sonic game to appear on the Dreamcast, and we would have been treated to a much better Sonic '06 as a launch game for the Dreamcast 2 or Sega Cyclone or Sega Infinity (basically Sega's next step after the Dreamcast).

Others believed that we would have been treated to a Sonic Adventure 3 with a plot similar to Sonic Heroes and gameplay that was more in line with Sonic Adventure 2. This led to a bit of complaining over how some Sonic fans believe that Sonic Adventure 3 is just a fanboys answer to the perfect Sonic game that never happened. Those who think a third entry in the Adventure series would have saved us from "the dark times" are complete loons who are better off wishing Sonic & Mario would team up (wait, nevermind that last part).

This discussion inspired me to design boxart for Dreamcast games that might have been, had the console and Sonic series lived on together. Enjoy!



Exclusive Rush Rush Rally Racing Wallpaper! Ooh!

The reason it's exclusive is pretty simple: I drew it. I was going to hold off on releasing this until the Rummage review was ready (will be at the start of the video), but instead I thought it may tide you over until the review is ready, which I'm not sure when that will be because I haven't started recording it yet, want to get decent enough at the game to show plenty of it! I've provided the wallpaper in plenty of shapes and sizes: find them below!

DCJY InsideOut: Rush Rush Rally Racing



Here's what showed up in the post yesterday! I've played it for a couple hours so far now (I recorded yesterday morning) and it's fun though it maybe could have done with more than just one 1-player mode, or at least the multiplayer modes vs the cpu as well. Of course I'm only saying that because I've got no friends.The presentation is very slick though, with neat animated cut scenes and a brillaint soundtrack. This regular edition of the games only costs about £15-20 (a lot cheaper than previous indie releases from RedSpotGames I believe) so it's worth a look especially if you enjoyed top down 2D racers in the past, and unlike Micro Machines there isn't pits everywhere!

Lawsuit Imminent Part 4: Ker-azy Copyright Infringement

Went to the gym the other day. Not been for a while as I have recently discovered the liberating past time of long-distance road running. That, and the fact that 'working out' in a stifling mirror-filled room full of narcissistic, impossibly muscled grunting wankers makes me feel physically sick. Getting back to the point though - I went to the gym.

So there I was, sweating away with the rest of the cunts and when I could stand no more of the red-faced screeching buffoon checking out his bicep in the mirror next to me - I decided to leave. Now, you know how in gyms there's always a table near the entrance that is strewn with random pamphlets and leaflets advertising yoga classes, Indian takeaways, ultra-max beefcake shakes and all that sort of shite? Well, there was one in the gym I visited. And d'you know what? Upon that very table I found something Dreamcast related! YES! How fucking random is that?! Check out this flyer created and circulated by Somerset County Council that advises people not to use unliscensed taxis:


Notice anything strange? Apart from the obvious copyright infringement and image theft from the movie Taxi Driver, look a little closer. Look at the TAXI. Look crazily familiar?!


Here's a clue:



It's Axel's motor! And if you look closely at the back of the flyer, you can see that the photoshop wizards down at the town hall haven't even bothered to remove the 1NOM155 licence plate from the front of the cab. Interestingly, the helpful garb states that 'pirate taxis are unlicensed, uninsured and very unsafe,' yet makes no mention whatsoever of the shortcuts they take across rooftops, under the sea and through subway tunnels whilst expecting tips for not killing you in a multi-car pile up.

There are some slightly more sinister things on the flyer too - the 'issuer' on the mock-up taxi liscenses is 'SS,' and the driver I.D. has a little picture of Joseph Goebbels on it.*

If I were Phoenix Wright, I'd be on the blower to Sega HQ asap. Sadly though, I'm not a high-powered cartoon attorney with an improbable quiff. Sigh.

*This is a lie.

Dreamcast rated as One of the "Best Toys of All Time"

http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/280/the-best-toys-of-all-time/

This list was created by Good Houseskeeping.

Sega Dreamcast
In 1999, the season's to-die-for item was the Sega Dreamcast Console ($199). The chip inside this 128-bit system processed graphics four times faster than a Pentium II. Plus, the unit played CDs and had a built-in 56K modem, so kids could surf the Web on the TV with the optional keyboard. Forty games ($39.95 to $49.95) will be available for the holidays. We featured Sega in a December 1999 story, "Buyer's Guide."


Interesting. This was for the 90's. One could say that the MegaDrive/Genesis was actually the big thing for the 90's (especially in the UK).

Of course this list also has an "Ultimate Planetarium" listed as a toy so we might want to take this with a grain of salt...

More on that Hypertension game!

Just in time for...no wait..just a little late of Halloween more details and a new trailer of TDGmods' Dreamcast FPS/PRG hybrid HyperTension. The gory trailer is just below, this time we get to see plenty of gameplay of this elaborate Doom mod. It even has Voodoo dolls! Oh yeah, it gets a bit noisy about 2 minutes in, just in case your volumes up to 11.




Better yet, there is a nice legthy interview with the guys making this over at Diehard GameFAN which you can read here, and there is also a Wiki set up for the game and you can hear more of the soundtrack at their blog.

Speaking of brand new Dreamcast games one just arrived in the post this morning. Expect a video soon!

Orange Swirl


Happy Halloween from the Dreamcast Junkyard! Thought we forgot? Of course we did....n't.

Reader Aaron Boone reminded us in the comments section of the last post that there wasn't a Halloween post, so now I've made one. Aaron also pointed to last year's Halloween post:
Dreamcast Games to Play on Halloween. To continue that tradition, here are a few more Dreamcast games to play on Halloween (I've got a World Series game to watch so I'm keeping this brief):

Sonic Adventure 2
While not a complete Halloween game, Sonic Adventure 2 includes quite a few spooky segments. The Pyramid Cave levels feature creepy little ghosts, Pumpkin Hill boasts an "impressive" lyrical accompaniment and last but not least there is King Boom Boo. BLARGH!!!!







Zombie Revenge
An, in my opinion, under-appreciated spin-off from House of the Dead. I wonder how many people actually even know that this is a House of the Dead game?



Shadowman
A dark platforming action game (sometimes too dark, I can't see what I'm looking at!) with the ability to shift between two worlds. Sounds like Soul Reaver's ugly cousin, and it sort of is. Still, it's a great game and I love that voodoo vibe.



So kids, what are your picks?

Rez - The Core

Hello world. I was recently contacted by a fellow by the name of Tjerk Otten about his Rez inspired, abstract short film on Youtube.

In his words:

"The story on this trailer is about humanity trying to hack into creation itself.
We try to unravel the great mystery of life itself all the time. We are creations on our own and
we try to expand our lifecycle in many different ways and try to know the human itself."

Tjerk is a self confessed Rez nut, and this is quite evident in 'The Core.' Wanna see what he's on about, fellow Dreamcaster? Cast your eyes downward and all will be revealed:



It's best viewed in HD and full screen, so if like me you have to rely on a pathetic mobile broadband dongle with equally pathetic GPRS connection, you could be waiting the best part of a decade for the whole thing to load...but it's worth the wait.

Zombies and the Dreamcast. A perfect match.


Zombies have been a big theme in my life lately.

I am going to be participating in a Zombie Walk tonight. (That's where a bunch of people dress up as zombies and walk around town, self explanatory really.) If there is a chance, I am also going to be shooting some footage of the event for my public access cable TV show.

I have also organized a free movie night at the library where we will be showing some great movies including "Nosferatu" and "Night of the Living Dead".

And therein lies the tenuous connection to the Dreamcast...

Go to the DC Evolution site to get your very own copy of "Night of the Living Dead" to play in your Dreamcast!

Yes, the famous 1968 film by George Romero (which was never meant to be released into the public domain so soon) is perhaps the most awesome movie available in the public domain! It has been called the first modern horror film and the first and greatest zombie movie of all time.

So now the Undead Console can play one of the great undead films of all time! All for the cost of a CD-R!

DC Evolution has three other awesome public access horror movies formatted to play on a Dreamcast. So visit their site.

http://www.dcevolution.net/

IMDB Night of the Living Dead.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

Wikipedia about Night of the Living Dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead

All Hail the Undead Console!

Station Square, Pennsylvania?!

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...


Ah yes! The SEGA logo. Station Square is complete.
Visit Station Square today!

I'm Thinking.

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 Dreamcast fandom 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's XPlay. 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!

Small, blue, spikey and fast as lightning... It's Barry The Nomad!!!


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 Junkyard and 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!!!


Stop Press! Slow News Week Ends!

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.

***TENUOUS INTERMISSION***

I watched that Pandorum at the cinema the other day. I also watched District 9. District 9 was good, but not 6/5 good as some critics would have you believe; and likewise, Pandorum was not the 1/5 as others have said. Here's the trailer for what I thought was a superb (if a little clichéd) movie:



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...

Out with the old, in with the new...

All this crap has to go somewhere...

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.


Say my name, say my name!!!


Now that's just rude....


Job's a good 'un!