Show Report: Nottingham Video Games Expo 2022

The weekend of 17 & 18 December 2022 saw the inaugural Nottingham Video Games Expo take place in...er...Nottingham. The city of Nottingham, England for the uninitiated, is the ancestral home of such luminaries as fictional horse jacker Robin Hood, painfully unfunny comedian Jon Richardson, professional face puncher Carl Froch, and Manchester United legend Andy Cole. It now also has its own gaming festival in the form of NottsVGE.

Naturally, The Dreamcast Junkyard took the opportunity to represent at this brand spanking new event, and it was a pleasure to be able to meet fellow Dreamcast enthusiasts, exhibitors and event visitors to spread the gospel of the Dreamcast to all who would listen.

Punters puntering

Several members of the editorial and podcast crew from the 'Yard manned our small but perfectly formed area, with Tom, Jaz, Andrew, Lewis, Kev and Lozz all taking turns to stand around and bore anyone who happened to wander near on the intricacies of the Dreamcast's genetic makeup or the splendour of the system's library and range of peripherals. Poor souls. The public, I mean.

Lozz, Lewis, Jaz, Andrew, Tom and Kev

It wasn't all fun and games though (or was it?), as we had a rather special competition to run. As alluded to in a recent post, our friends at Bitmap Bureau supplied us with several copies of the excellent Xeno Crisis to give away to those who were hardy enough to register a high score on the superlative Smash TV 'em up using the Dreamcast Twin Stick controller. 

Around 30 people took to the hotseat to test their mettle, including both Dan and Nick of WAVE Game Studios, and Dean Mortlock of SEGA Powered. Alas, the ultimate winner turned out to be none other than Aaron 'The Gagaman' Foster, a man who assisted in the early days of both the DCJY blog and DreamPod. It wasn't a fix, honest.

Elsewhere, anyone who visited our little section of the expo floor was able to sample some lightgun action with Houe of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission, or the traditional delights of Sega Rally 2, Power Stone, Virtua Tennis, Cosmic Smash, Crazy Taxi, Yu Suzki's Gameworks and a range of other titles when they were available/the Dreamcasts were behaving and not throwing up random issues such as controller ports not working or AV ports refusing to play ball with the screens.

NottsVGE was a much more intimate event than previous excursions (Play Expo Blackpool 2018 was probably our largest, with around 15 Dreamcasts available for people to play), but what was especially nice was the abilty for all of us from The Dreamcast Junkyard team to actually hear and engage with visitors, and have some audible conversations (other events tend to be quite loud due to the size of them). 

It was also quite fascinating on a personal level to see how the younger visitors approached the Dreamcast and the peripherals on offer, many of them having never seen the console before. The impressions were overwhelmingly positive, showing that the SEGA brand can still bring a smile to the faces of kids who aren't as au fait with the brand's hardware as us old farts are.

The next generation of Dreamcast gamers.

Paul, Marc and Dean from SEGA Powered.

NottsVGE offered a range of sellers who were hawking their gaming wares, along with a couple of teams you'll no doubt be familiar with if you're in any way interested in the Dreamcast. First up, and as mentioned, WAVE Game Studios were in attendance selling and demonstrating a range of titles from their impressive stable, with Intrepid Izzy, Alice Dreams Tournament, Rush Rush Rally Reloaded, Shadow Gangs and Postal all popular. 

Dean was forced at gunpoint to autograph a copy of SEGA Power.

Our friends from both SegaMags and SEGA Powered were also at NottsVGE and it was really nice to be able to meet the legendary journo/editor Dean Mortlock in the flesh for the first time. Matt and James from Shenmue Dojo were also in attendance, as were Get Well Gamers, YouTuber TootyUK, and community magazines Evercade Evolution and Amiga Addict.

Tom and Lewis with Dan and Nick from WAVE Game Studios.

On the main stage, the team from The Retro Hour interviewed a trio of guests from the golden era of Rare's time as Nintendo's third party development darling; while later a Q&A session was hosted by Paul Drury from Retro Gamer Magazine. 

The Retro Hour introduced guests from Rare.

Tom with Skilljim and Matt from Shenmue Dojo.

A rather popular Mario Kart 8 tournament was facilitated by Nottingham Nintendo, but the real coup de grâce was a battle royale between WAVE Game Studios and The Dreamcast Junkyard. In a true test of guile and skill over the course of two games of three rounds (Power Stone 2 and Virtua Tennis), these two behemoths went toe to toe...only for WAVE to trounce us 2-0. Naturally, the blame was levelled at Lewis' cack-handed Power Stone 2 skills and Tom's controller port only working intermittently. Um.

At least someone was having fun...

Liberties were taken to be honest.

The final insult of the event came when James 'Jaz' Harvey unironically subjected several hundred paying event-goers to a disgusting display of hubris, with gameplay from Spirit of Speed 1937 being displayed on a giant projector screen. If NottsVGE don't invite us back again, I'm confident this act of wanton terrorism will be cited. Oh, and there was Kev wandering around offering people cupcakes of questionable origin.

Would you take a free cupcake from this man?

Congratulations and thanks to both James (ItsMuchMore) and Alex (gamesreup) for inviting us to be a part of their successful debut event. It all ran smoothly and they should both be immensley proud for putting on such a great expo and generally just being top blokes. 

Overall though, it was just really nice to meet people and talk face to face with fellow gamers who either have a passion for the Dreamcast; or who had never even seen one before. Here's to the next Nottingham Video Games Expo, whenever that may be.

DCJY welcomes former SEGA Europe Marketing Director Giles Thomas

In this episode of the DreamPod, regular hosts Tom and Andrew are joined by former SEGA Europe Marketing Director Giles Thomas. During his time at SEGA Europe, Giles oversaw the European launch of the Dreamcast after effectively being headhunted by SEGA from his role at MTV. 

In this episode Giles explains how he was pursuaded to join SEGA, his vision for the European TV advertising campaigns, meeting the SEGA Japan hierarchy, being grilled by Anne 'Weakest Link' Robinson on the BBC's consumer affairs show Watchdog, the European Dreamcast launch event, the influence of Sony's PlayStation, Robbie Williams, blue swirls, PAL game cases, how the delay of the European launch affected sales of the console, SEGA Europe's relationship with the US and Japanese arms of the business, and also what - if anything - he would have done differently if given the chance to launch the Dreamcast all over again.

Remember you can grab the latest DreamPod and all of our previous episodes on Buzzsprout and pretty much anywhere else you get your podcasts from. Huge thanks to Giles for joining us to chat about all things Dreamcast. Giles now runs the branding consultancy Mimo Brands, who work with many of the most well-known companies around, so we really appreciate the time he took out to speak with us.

Maximum Speed: A closer look at the Atomiswave Daytona USA clone

Maximum Speed is a white hot racing game that will thrill all your senses. Not my words - the words of whichever advertising guru came up with the guff adorning Maximum Speed's European marketing materials. And who am I to argue? Absolutley nobody, that's who. Right, let's get crack-alacking.

Maximum Speed was released in arcades in 2003 on the Atomiswave platform, and represents arcade racing in its purest form: there's you, a load of thick-as-mince AI adversaries, a plethora of tracks of questionable design quality and an ever-ticking clock. Thanks to the incredible development efforts of Megavolt85 et al over at Dreamcast-Talk in the recent past, Sammy Atomiswave titles are now playable on the Dreamcast, and we thought it was high time we took a more in-depth look at some of the games that have made the leap from the coin-op to the home and expanded the Dreamcast collection even further. 

If you aren't familiar with the Atomiswave story, it's worth taking a look at our guide to the short-lived Sammy arcade format here, and the story of how these lesser-spotted arcade titles ended up being ported to the Dreamcast here.

The two marquee racers for the Atomiswave platform were Faster than Speed, a sort of Need for Speed: Underground style street racing title stacked to the gills with neon strip lights, garishly painted hot hatches and more night racing than you could shake a Tokyo Extreme Racer at (check it out here); and Maximum Speed, a more traditional stock car style racer very much in the vein of Daytona USA. Its the latter of these two (obvs) that we'll be poring over here, to discover why, even though its not really up to the standard set by SEGA's own stock car racing series, Maximum Speed is probably still worth a look if arcade racing is your bag.

From the outset, it is clear that Maximum Speed is a game that's meant to be played in short bursts. Because this is essentially the very same code that would be played on a coin operated cabinet with a steering wheel and pedals (of which there were stand up and sit down variants), probably secreted away in the darkest reccesses of some brick and mortar arcade somewhere, there is no championship mode, no career mode or owt even hinting at anything more than "please put your money in dickhead, play for 5 minutes and then kindly piss off." The only real quality of life improvements for the home console are that the controls have been helpfully mapped to the standard Dreamcast controller, complete with analogue stick and trigger support (which is important - more on this later).

So what you're essentially getting, should you plop Maximum Speed onto your GDEMU (other optical drive emulators are available) is the authentic arcade experience with no home conversion improvements whatsover. Mainly because, y'know, Maximum Speed was never (officially) ported to anything. What you're confronted with when starting Maximum Speed is the ability to play a single race, in any of the initial three classes of vehicle, on any of the six circuits. There are 23 other vehicles also vying for the top spot during each race, and there's a clock counting down that replenishes by varying dwindling allotments each time you reach the next lap checkpoint. So far, so 'as you'd expect.'

The vehicle selection boils down to three different classes, with stock cars, trucks and open wheel variants being slectable, and then each type of vehicle being further sub-divided into three distinct flavours; one being an all rounder, one having better acceleration and the other having a higher top speed. Once you've selected your whip you get to select a track, of which there are six and these are, again, further divided into easy, medium or hard difficulties. 

The game explains these difficulty levels using a series of stars to denote how tricky they are, but the operations manual that I managed to scrape from the remnants of the now defunt SEGA Amusements USA Inc. website goes a little further, actually labelling the tracks as easy, medium or hard. Thanks Wayback Machine. For ease, I have now uploaded this operations manual here so you too can view it, dear reader. As an interesting side note, I did find that the preserved website for Maximum Speed appears to exhibit the text for SEGA Clay Challenge rather than the correct copy for Maximum Speed. Not sure why that is, maybe someone absent mindedly pasted the wrong paragraph in there when the page was created. A hangover maybe? Or just plain old incompetence? Who knows...but I digress.

DCJY welcomes The SEGAGuys

The Dreamcast Junkyard DreamPod welcomes The SEGAGuys in the latest episode, as regular hosts Tom and Jaz sit down with James 'The SEGAHolic' and Dan 'The Mega' Driver to discuss a whole load of random SEGA-themed goodness. From how James and Dan became fans of the SEGA ecosystem, to earliest memories and some hypothetical Dreamcast sequels and memories of football/soccer games from the back streets of history across multiple SEGA platforms, this episode covers a veritable smorgasbord of gaming topics. Oh, and there's also a quiz. Everyone loves a quiz...especially when the host takes full responsibility for the answers potentially being wrong!

Are you ready? Then feel free to listen to this episode of the DreamPod using the player below, or you can find it on Buzzsprout and all good podcatchers.

If you'd like to know more about The SEGAGuys check them out at the links below: 

• The SEGAGuys on Twitter 
• The SEGAGuys on YouTube 
• The SEGAGuys on Apple Podcasts

Retrospective: 90 Minutes: Sega Championship Football

The final rendition of the beautiful game to be released on the Dreamcast, 90 Minutes: Sega Championship Football was a title that many Dreamcast owners - me included - had quiet optimism for. We had already seen the likes of UEFA Striker; the Silicon Dreams World League Soccer based revival of the Sega Worldwide Soccer franchise; and the 'it's football Jim, but not as we know it' shenanigans of Virtua Striker 2 all come and go with not much in the way of fanfare. 

90 Minutes represented one final throw of the dice for a platform that didn't have a FIFA or a PES, but one which also had its logo plastered all over the football highlights every weekend as players from Arsenal, Sampdoria, St Etienne and Deportivo were banging in the goals. It was quite an odd juxtaposition that a games console that was trying to elbow its way into football culture (see also the Dreamcast Beach Football Challenge) didn't really have a killer app in the genre.

90 Minutes was going to change all that though. See, the big guns were on the case now with Smilebit, the same studio behind the incredible Jet Set/Grind Radio entering the chat. FIFA? PES? Ha! Sega is back and they're bringing their own ball. Anticipation was high for 90 Minutes, and it was only natural that with such pedigree in the driving seat that many were expecting Smilebit's first foray into football to play a blinder. Sadly, upon release it became painfully clear that rather than being a contender, 90 Minutes was little more than an embarrassing own goal.

On the face of it, 90 Minutes seems to have everything you could possibly want from a football game: decent visuals, a multitude of play modes, a pseudo-official license (player names, but not clubs) and the promise of a new game engine created from the ground up for the Dreamcast by one of Sega's most revered first party studios. Upon firing 90 Minutes up, all of the above seem to start slotting into place. The menus are practically bursting with modes and options; everything you would expect is present and correct. Want to create your own club with its own strip? Head out onto the training pitch to practice your drills? Select national squads? Tinker with gameplay speed and sound effects options? You can do all of this and more, all the while traversing some pretty well laid out menu screens as inoffensive background muzak soothes the lugholes.

So you've selected your teams, messed about with formations and substitutes, chosen one of the five beautifully rendered stadia to play in, and your choice of weather and time of day. So far, so good. And then you head out onto the pitch and the whole house of digital cards comes crashing down.

Come and see us at Nottingham Video Games Expo and win cool Xeno Crisis swag!

It's been almost four years since The Dreamcast Junkyard last attended a live gaming event, and that is definitely four years too many. It was back in 2018 that we attended Play Expo Blackpool and hung out with those lovely chaps Adam Koralik and Dan 'DJ Slope' Ibbertson; and to be honest it seems like a lifetime ago. This is set to be rectified in December 2022 when The Dreamcast Junkyard attends Nottingham Video Games Expo in...erm...Nottingham, UK.

Adam was impressed with Kev's home made T-shirt.

Taking place over the weekend of 17th & 18th December (which is also the weekend of the 2022 World Cup final, footy fans) at the Richard Herrod Centre, NottsVGE is a fairly intimate event but one which is bristling with the cream of the UK gaming scene. Amongst the confirmed attendees are WAVE Game Studios, SEGA Powered, gamesreup_, It's Much More, SEGA Mags, Rare, and The Retro Hour and many others too; alongside a whole host of special guests and traders selling gaming gear. There's also a bar. Important detail, that.

Tried to make this lot look as sexy as possible.

Alas, this thing was a lost cause.

As mentioned, several of the Junkyard's podcast and editorial crew will be there manning our dedicated stand (where you can play some Dreamcast games or just generally loiter and chat if you so wish), and we've teamed up with those lovely folks at Bitmap Bureau to run a pretty cool little competition. 

The rules are simple: play a game of the excellent Xeno Crisis and record your highest possible score using the Dreamcast Twin Stick controller. If you place among the top scorers on the day, you'll bag an awesome prize! We have Xeno Crisis T-shirts and 6 copies of the game to give away on several formats (Mega Drive, Dreamcast and Neo-Geo CD), as well as a copy of the Xeno Crisis OST and a wad of Xeno Crisis promotional postcards.

If you're not familiar with Xeno Crisis, we reviewed it here at the Junkyard upon release for the Dreamcast in 2020, and Mike Phelan was pretty impressed with what the sci-fi themed top-down shooter had to offer:

"I'll be playing Xeno Crisis for some time, and I look forward to each and every re-entry into that damned colony and it's ugly denizens...Because it's fun. Bloody, silly, exciting fun. And that, really, is the greatest compliment I can pay any game. Indie Dreamcast developers - a new challenger has arrived in the arena, and it's here to show you how it's done."

Big thanks to Mike Tucker at Bitmap Bureau for supplying these prizes. If you haven't got your tickets already, head over to the NottsVGE website or give the event a follow on Twitter. 

We're only in attendance on Saturday 17th December so if you want to be in with a chance of either meeting Kev and seeing/touching/sniffing his glorious bootleg T-shirt, or bagging one of our Xeno Crisis prizes, then you know what to do. We look forward to seeing you there!

There's gold in them there Dreamcasts (apparently)!

Did you know that every Dreamcast's CPU contains about 50 milligrams of gold? I didn't, but apparently that's true...not that I can find a source to back it up. Turns out there is also a community of people in this big old world who extract gold from CPUs for the purpose of making money. Although, according to this website: "there is very little profit from extracting the gold content found in most computer chips and electronic components yourself unless you have significant quantities of recyclable material to be processed." So fret not my fellow Dreamcast fans, if you are lucky enough to own multiple Dreamcasts, you could extract enough gold from them to afford some fries at McDonalds or something.

If you fancy some of that Dreamcast gold goodness for yourself, and can't be bothered retrieving it from your own console, 'Retroldtech' has just the product for you: an engraved gold bar of Dreamcast gold - or a 'lingot' - as it is listed, for the bargain price of €75.00 (£65.68/$77.19)! It is apparently the "finest gold on earth," has a purity of "9.9.99" and comes in at a mighty 128 karats.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this product is completely in jest. If you take a quick glance at the product's page, you will soon realise this is not actual gold, and is merely a joke/novelty product.

In recent years, there has been a surge of independently-crafted joke toys. Most likely inspired by parody artists such as Obvious Plant, creators across the internet have took to making and selling their own ironic homemade toys, all presented rather smartly with cardboard backings, just how the old Star Wars 3.75 inch figures were presented. 

Probably the best way to demonstrate the lengths of absurdity this trend has reached to, check out Ben Gore's 'Saturn's Son' figure. Inspired by  Francis Goya's infamous painting of Saturn Devouring His Son, you receive his son, devoured, presented as if you could've walked into Toys 'R' Us back in the day and found it amongst the action figures. Products like this aren't really meant to be taken out of their packaging and are intended as a novelty, the kind of thing you'd display in your house to make your friends chuckle when they visit, provided they have a very specific sense of humour.

Retroldtech has some intriguing products on their website, including cool miniature replicas of Sega consoles and some awesome (but very pricey) Nintendo 64 fairy lights. It appears they have now moved into gag/novelty gifts with their recent Dreamcast 'gold lingot,' and it appears there potentially may be more to come, as the product is marked as '#001' of 'RetroLOLTech'.

Now you know this isn't real gold, perhaps the price seems a bit on the steep side, but I guess you just have to remember that this won't be a mass produced product, and is most likely made in someone's home just for the fun of it. Still, 75 euros though…

Will you be purchasing a novelty Dreamcast lingot? Let us know in the comments below!

Let's take a look at Generations - the Dreamcast compatible music album from Remute

As recently reported here at The Dreamcast Junkyard, the latest album from electronic artist Remute - titled Generations - is a little bit special. That's because, as well as coming with two free balloons, it features MIL-CD functionality. What this means is that if you pop the compact disc into a compatible Dreamcast console (later systems had MIL-CD compatibility removed, so check your system before buying), then you'll be able to enjoy some lovely visuals which accompany the audio tracks.

Rather interestingly, these visuals are created by none other than Duranik - the mastermind behind stellar shmup Sturmwind. This isn't really a music review as such, as I'm not really qualified to give an informed opinion on whether the particular tracks on Generations are instant classics (I'm more of a Jimmy Eat World fan to be honest); however what I listened to was definitley the type of thing I was expecting when I learned of Remute's preferred genre. 

Let's just say that all the tracks are definitley of the 'electronic' persuasion, and most certainly the type of music someone of advancing years might tut/tsk at before uttering something along the lines of "the music was better in my day" or "kids don't half listen to some rubbish these days" and hobbling away as fast as their walking stick can carry them.

Regardless, the trippy visuals match the 15 electronic choons perfectly and are rendered in real time by the Dreamcast. It's worth mentioning that you can't really do anything but look at the visuals as they play in the background during each of the tracks, so don't expect to actually be able to 'play' anything - this is a music CD and not a game afterall, and the Dreamcast features are simply an added extra. 

Some of the tracks and visuals are more engaging than others, with the Tempest inspired 'Versions,' Asteroids-esque 'The Known Unknown,' and the Sturmwind flavoured 'Tentacle Love' being particular favourites of mine. Anyway, here's a very brief video showing some of what you can expect should you slap Generations in your MIL-CD compatible console:

It appears that the visuals simply repeat during the music and aren't really 'generated' by the tracks or are influenced by them (the big heart on the screen during 'One Heart' does beat in time with the music, but I suspect that the visual is hard coded to do that rather than being reactive); however they're a varied bunch of vignettes, and if perchance you happened to find yourself in an altered state of mind while watching, could possibly become quite mesmerising. If...er...you get my drift.

Top marks to Remute for trying something new and interesting with this latest release, but as it stands Generations is probably a purchase recommended only for the Dreamcast completionists out there; or those who have a particular interest in electronic music. If you're a Dreamcast completionist who also enjoys electronic music then Generations is a must buy...but if you don't fit into either of those camps, then I fear this is little more than a curio you may only really put in a Dreamcast once or twice in order to see the (admittedly excellent) visuals for yourself.

If you're not perturbed and still want to sample this impressive and intriguing release (and get your free balloons while you're at it!), then you can purchase Generations from Remute here. At the time of writing the album is priced at €24.99.

Have you also bought Generations? If so, are you enjoying your free balloons? Let us know down there in the comments!

Modern Vintage Gamer checks out the Dreamcast BBA

The current trend of Dreamcast games being brought back online shows no sign of slowing down (in some cases, totally new online games are being developed for the console); and if you have a DreamPi and a selection of online-enabled titles then you have no reason not to get fully involved. Just go to Dreamcast Live and follow the instructions and you'll be fragging, slam dunking, and racing with single analogue-sticked cramp in no time flat.

But what of the previous, more contemporary methods of connecting a Dreamcast to the world wide web? Those 33k and 56k modems may be a little dormant these days, but the Dreamcast Broadband Adapter is still quite operational with a modicum of effort, and YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer (MVG) has done a deep dive into BBA game compatibility and web browsing functionality in 2022:

I've been a fan of MVG for some years now, his dulcet tones effortlessly deciphering even the most complicated of topics when it comes to many aspects of gaming and game development. In short, the man is a something of a genius (this is not a paid post, I should add). 

So yeah, even though MVG in no way needs a boost from this inconsequential little blog to help his astronomical viewing figures, I thought it might be nice to share his video here in case you somehow missed it. Also, if you dive into the comments over on YouTube, you'll spot some familiar names from Dreamcast-Talk and the wider Dreamcast community. Lovely stuff.

The Band that Played the Dreamcast - an Interview with Adam Demirjian of Brave Little Abacus/Me in Capris

At the beginning of this year, I was doing some early research for an article I wanted to write for my personal blog. As part of that piece's intro, I wanted to explain how now-defunct band Brave Little Abacus were able to escape the cruel fate of obscurity thanks to file sharing and a passionate cult fanbase... I think I wanted to prove some grand point about the importance of music preservation in the modern era of music streaming. Y'know, stick it to the man, or something. Like I said, that research was early.

While searching the internet for information about the band, however, I stumbled upon the following quote attached to a YouTube video of them performing live back in 2010:

"For some reason around this time we stopped playing backing tracks off of a Dreamcast or Playstation/Small CRT and started rocking the much more regular laptop."

They performed live… with a Dreamcast?! I'd heard of game consoles being used as part of musical performances before, such as the Game Boy being used by chiptune artists, but the idea of a band lugging a television to a show and hooking a whole console up to it for the purpose of playing backing tracks was definitely something I'd not heard of before. We're no stranger to the unconventional here at the Junkyard, though - so of course I instantly wanted to know more. 

The next thing I knew, I had contacted Adam Demirijian, who was the lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for Brave Little Abacus, and now plays in the band Me In Capris. I wasn't sure what to expect back at first, but Adam did reply and was actually really stoked to talk all things Dreamcast with me!

Before I dive into mine and Adam's chat, some background on Brave Little Abacus. For the uninitiated, they were a band from Sandown, New Hampshire, USA that existed from 2007 to 2012. Writing for Sputnik Music, staff writer Trebor described them as "hard to pin down. They were eclectic, energetic, experimental, odd, off putting, and above all else, they were remarkable." While their music was very experimental, many consider BLA to fall under the genre of 'emo.' They were also known for their abundant use of video game and pop culture samples in their songs. 

Their cult status can be attributed primarily to the online popularity of their final album, 'Just Got Back from the Discomfort - We're Alright' which was quietly released onto Bandcamp in 2010, initially to limited fanfare. This was the album that would go on to earn them the reputation as one of the most important bands of the emo revival. Spin Magazine even placed the album 27th on its 30 Best Emo Revival Albums, Ranked list... but because the band was disbanded by the time their fanbase really started to bloom, and had no real online presence, they retained an air of mystery about them for the longest time.

For this same reason, a geek like me looking for something as specific as photo or video evidence of a Dreamcast or a CRT television present at a BLA performance before 2010 had me coming back empty-handed... so I appreciate Adam for being so gracious as to fill me in on this intriguing part of the band's history, as well as taking the time to dig up some photographs taken at a show on February 21st, 2009, that feature the setup in question! Thanks, Adam! Also, thanks to James Gentile, the individual who snapped the photos a whole thirteen years ago!

"Just Got Back from the Discomfort - We're Alright" album cover

If you want to know more about BLA, I highly recommend 108 Mics' video about them, as well as Adam's interviews with podcasts i might go to the beach and The E Word. Those interviews are the real meat and potatoes when it comes to unravelling the lore surrounding Brave Little Abacus. This interview, however, is about Brave Little Abacus and their love for video games, in particular, the Sega Dreamcast. It's the interview the core fans never knew they wanted! Let's get into it...