Rev. Rob

All invoices sent! I was waiting a little longer because one person said he'd make an order if I waited until this week, but he didn't, so forget him!

Ya, one write up per week, for 52 weeks celebrating the 10th year of Dreamcast's launch. I have just one question: Why oh why would ANYBODY want to play Busby 3D?

Time Pilot '84

Ya, it's too narrow to MAME out anyways. Is it really rare? The cabinet isn't like the one pictured at all. It's all wood-grain and has a different banner on the front than in any pictures I've seen. Also, my control panel is completely different. It actually has a joystick and not the left-right buttons pictured.

While on the topic of emulation... Dreamcast Game of the Week, Week 30: Bleemcast! Bleemcast! Platform: Dreamcast Publisher: bleem! Developer: bleem! Genre: Utility Once upon a time when Dreamcast was bursting with success and its future couldn't have been brighter, a little software company by the name of bleem! announced a product that would allow both them and Sega to really stick it to Sony. Sega had beef for obvious reasons. But, you see, back then people would actually pay money for an emulator. No, it's true. bleem! made software for PC called bleem! that allowed for PlayStation games to be run on Windows machines. Sony was not all to happy about this and launched a number of lawsuits against the small company. Back in the day when Bleemcast! was announced, it did a lot of things. It gave Sega yet another reason to gloat, because now Madden, and Metal Gear Solid, and all of those PlayStation exclusives could now be played on Dreamcast with some minor graphical upgrades. It allowed bleem! to grab some nice headlines, sell some product, and rub Sony's nose in it. But most of all, it really pissed of Sony, a lot, who then launched more lawsuits. So, Bleemcast! (what a great name) was in legal limbo for a long time. I remember playing a few games on this at E3 2000 (Gran Turismo and Crash, I think), and I, like almost everyone I knew, really wanted to buy this. As time went by Sony kept suing and their PS2 hype machine was steamrolling Dreamcast's once wonderful future, and bleem! just couldn't get their emulator just right for 100% compatibility. No worries, though, they decided that they were going to release Bleemcast! packs, so that you could get a pack that plays racing games, and one that does RPGs, and another for fighters, sports, and so on. Each pack could perfectly emulate dozens of games in a genre for perfect compatibility. Then more months went by, Dreamcast was by this time losing to PS2 even though the damn thing didn't even exist yet (yay for hype), and Bleemcast! was mostly forgotten. One day, finally, and after eons of waiting, a release date was announced for the damn thing. But alas, there would be no "packs." In stead beem! would release one disc each for only the most popular Playstation titles. After hearing that everyone lost interest, especially with the first game being Gran Turismo. Racing? Meh. And the horrible sales left the company undeterred. Bleemcast! versions were sold seperately for Metal Gear Solid and Tekken 3 as well. Now, Metal Gear I can get, but Tekken 3, really? Soul Calibur was a freaking launch title! With the cost of making software that nobody wanted after not living up to their promises, massive lawsuits from Sony (of which Sony won exactly zero), and Sega knifing all of their fans in the back, bleem! went out of business. The End

Dude, you totally missed out on one of the absolute coolest moments in console history.

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9718 It's not the model in that pic, but is the same game. I'll probably convert it into a MAME cabinet.

The content is being migrated to www.videogameconsolelibrary.com . Darkwatcher is also adding new contributions there. +1 earned!

Last time I saw an Imagination Machine sell, it when for more than $800. I have the M-1000, and I got that for pennies. An Imagination Machine would be cool, but I doubt that I'll ever even see one.

Anyone know what happened to this site? It was way too cool to just vanish.

I thought I had a home DC emulator before Smash Pack was out.

Dude, welcome to 10 years ago.

Welcome!

Okay, that's six! Looks like we're in business. I am going to be sending out PMs now!

Bump.

Kind of, right? lol

Dreamcast Game of the Week, Week 29: Phantasy Star Online P.... S.... Ohhhhhhhh!!!!! Phantasy Star Online Released: January 30, 2001 Platform: Dreamcast Publisher: SEGA Developer: Sonic Team Genre: Online RPG DB Link This was one worth waiting for, and we all did. Yuji Naka said he had something special cooked up, and I believed him. Of course, he was right. Dreamcast wasn't the first game console to have online play. The concept of connecting internet to a game console has been around since the Atari 2600. Sega, however, was the leading pioneer. Beginning with the Sega Saturn NetLink, Sega got serious with Internet and online gaming. It wasn't really a smash success, but it laid the ground work for Dreamcast. Sega's brilliance was to make the console Internet ready on day one. Thanks to coming packed with a 56K modem and web browser courtesy of Planetweb. It took quite a while for games to start being released that were online ready. First there was Chu Chu Rocket, or prototype of sorts, followed by games like NFL 2K1, which proved that this online console gaming thing was going to be big. But Phantasy Star Online (PSO) was going to be something altogether different. This wasn't just going to be two players connecting for a match. It was a "MMORPG." It was supposed to be a persistent world, like EverQuest, but with action based combat, not point and click. It was to be hundreds of hours, and have the ability to communicate with people who speak other languages. Characters, we were told, would be so customizable that no two would look the same. So, not everything was true. The game was extremely linear. The max party size was just four. The combat took place in small corridors or little plains connected via small corridors (a la Halo 2), the world really wasn't persistent. Sure, they came up with their own time system, but who cares? And the translator didn't work extremely well. It was based on having to pick from preselected phrases. Kind of clunky, but I recall that it won some technological achievement award. The most important thing to remember about PSO is that it was fun. The soundtrack was amazing; standing in a lobby with lots of other players was impressive. Who doesn't remember the first time battling the dragon? Hack, and slashing, and shooting your way to higher levels, and therefore better armor,weapons, and spells, was addictive. If someone did a game like this today with the scope of WOW, I'd totally be into it (because point and click RPGs are gay). I personally put well over 100 hours into PSO with my friends. I remember we used to hang out somewhere and then decide to all go home to play more PSO. GameShark kind of ruined it. Before long everyone had a Spread Needle and infinite money. Still, I enjoyed it. Sega came out with a few variants of PSO over the years. None of them really held up to the original. I doubt they'll ever get it right again, but I'll never forget this game or the great times I had with it. Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcLXOMNIsqE Box Front: Box Back:

I'm surprised none of the news articles call it "Pac-Moon."

He died in a car accident.

Really? If I boot my system without a Genesis game in it a screen pops up like this: (sorry, I couldn't resist! ) WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!? LOL

No freaking way! :!:

Dreamcast game of the week, week 28: Sega Smash Pack Volume 1 Sega Smash Pack Volume 1 Released: February 7, 2001 Platform: Dreamcast Publisher: SEGA Developer: SEGA Genre: Compilation DB Link This was some shit that I was really looking forward to. This is something that could've and perhaps should've been available since the Dremacast launch. It was delayed over and over again, and it had some serious potential. Unfortunately it turned out to be about as appealing as a nuclear turd drenched in diarrhea sauce.* How could it be bad? I mean it had twelve awesome classic Sega Games, right? Which twelve? These twelve**: Sonic the Hedgehog Altered Beast Columns Golden Axe Phantasy Star II Revenge of Shinobi Sega Swirl Shining Force Streets of Rage 2 Vectorman Virtua Cop 2 Wrestle War That's right, fucking Wrestle War. Remember the long nights when all your friends would come over to play a rousing game of fucking Wrestle War? I sure as shit don't, because I've never even heard of this fucking game! Sega Swirl is really kind of wasting space. It should be twelve games and then Sega Swirl, since it was already a free release and everyone pretty much had it. That makes this really just eleven games. What's with Sega pulling out Altered Beast every single chance it gets? It was impressive in 1989 when all it was up against was the NES, but even compared to the Genesis' own 1991 library, it looks and plays like shit. How about the rest of the games? Sure, there are some good titles there, like Sonic 1, Streets of Rage 2, Shining Force, and the rest. What where the fuck is Sonic 2, Sonic 3, or Sonic and Knuckles? Sure they've got Phantasy Star II, but where's III and IV, and more importantly the first one? Every hear of anyone ever wanting to pick up an RPG series not at the beginning? The same goes for Streets of Rage II, but not III, Revenge of Shinobi, but not Shinobi III, and so on. Sure, Virtua Cop 2 was a great addition, but what about some other Saturn games? Virtua Fighter 2 anyone? I'm sure a million Dreamcast owners would've loved to have had that. There was plenty of room on the disc. Dreamcast games came on these things called GD-Roms. The "GD" stood for "Gigabyte" disc. And I know that more games could've fit because I have every single Genesis ROM on just two regular old CD-Rs.*** To add insult to idiocy, the Genesis emulator that SEGA themselves wrote for the Dreamcast completely blows. The sound isn't right, and there are graphical glitches. Homebrew efforts which were already available at the time were actually better than what Sega's geniuses could come up with. The game really should've featured more "complete" series, not just samples of games. And there's really no excuse for putting less than 25 games on a disc. What I love is that this is called "Volume 1" because there were plans for a "Volume 2." However, Smash Pack did so bad that they never made one, and turned it into a pack-in game instead. What an awful idea. Someone buys a next-gen console and the free game is a comp disc of games from two generations ago. Brilliant marketing right there. In short, pass this up. If you really need to play some Vectorman, then get it for Genesis. Box: *Inspired by AVGN **Inspired by the works attributed to Siddhartha Gautama ***Buying the actual game and playing it on the system that it's made for is better than any emulation experience can be

I don't have any of mine hooked up right now, but I thought some models do the "Produced by or under license from Sega Enterprises LTD" text.

Sony and Microsoft already proved that this is irrelevant. How about... 12. How to fuck up so bad that you go from being number one to bankrupt.