Retronauts - 638: Dreamcast Turns 25

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Jeremy Parish and Diamond Feit look back a quarter of a century to the launch of Sega Dreamcast in America and contemplate where the system sits as a part of video game history, Sega's legacy, and the... future of gaming? Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This episode of Retronauts is brought to you by me, Jeremy Parrish. This week in Retronauts, we wear a little stolar flair. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. Sorry, that introduction was not as good as the one that I used 15 years ago, which is an all-timer that people still mention sins of a stolar empire. Yes, it's time, time once again to roll up our sleeves, because my sleeves are very loose, and talk about an anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast. So back in the ancient days of Retronauts, when it was under the auspices of, oneup.com and no one cared about it. We did an episode celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast. And because Time Martizan makes yogurt of milk and fools of us all, it's 15 years later. It is actually more time has elapsed since our Dreamcast anniversary episode than had elapsed between the Dreamcast anniversary episode and the Dreamcast. So it's time to revisit the topic. Now that the Dreamcast is 25, as of today, if you are a patron for Retronauts,

if you are not, then you missed out. You should have been there last week. We had a great party, and you weren't there. Very sad. Anyway, I'm Jeremy Parrish, and this is a Lucy Goosey free-willing episode, and joining me here is the goosiest goose of them all. Maybe not. Hello, Diamond Fight here. Sorry, I just need a battery. It's okay. Oh, did you? That actually got clipped out of Zoom. Zoom was like, whoa, we can't transmit that sound. It's offensive. All right. All right. Well, I'll entrust our crack editing staff to put in the appropriate sound effect. Oh, I'm sure it's there on your local recording. It's just on Zoom. Zoom was like, Zoom, it immediately, like I heard a tiny little blip, and then it triggered. triggered Zoom's PTSD from starting up at Streamcast, and it said, no, no more of that.

You know, they make replacement Dreamcast VMUs now, like FPGA-based, I think, that use very, I think, rechargeable batteries, so you don't have to go through that. And I think they also have, like, long-lasting VMUs now. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. The secondary market and, or gray market or fan market, what do you want to call out of, of merchandise of new equipment for the Dreamcast is very robust. Yeah.

And that's because it is a pretty cool system. And we're going to talk about that this episode. Like I said, this is a Lucy Goosey episode, by which I mean everyone has covered Dreamcast's history. Oh, Katana versus Doral, 999, blah, blah, blah. You've heard all that. We've done that. under a different owner, or actually under an owner, but it's trite, it's old. So, you know, we come across that a lot now that we've been doing retronauts for the better part of 20 years,

where we want to revisit a topic, or, you know, there's a need to revisit a topic, but we can't just do the same thing that we did 15 years ago. So instead of just recounting, here is the Dreamcast's history, and here are our favorite games, which, of course, we'll do some of. I'm actually interested this episode in taking more of a holistic look at the Dreamcast. In the Dirk Gently style, I'd like to talk about what Dreamcast represents in terms of Sega's history and also in terms of video game history as a whole. because I think the Dreamcast really sort of represents, you know, obviously it was a final moment in the life of Sega, but I think also it represents a dramatic turning point or like the final statement for a specific era of video games. I think, you know, in some ways Dreamcast kind of kicked off the generation that was defined by PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, but it didn't really get to participate in that conversation because,

it vanished so quickly. So even though in terms of its power and library, it, you know, kind of fits with those later consoles, it really, to me, feels like the culmination of the pre-PS2 era. And as opposed to like the prelude, it's more like, here it is. This is the synthesis. This is the, you know, the culmination of everything that video games has been. And let's see. Sega launched its first console in 1983. It launched its first arcade game, video game, I want to say, in like 74. So 74 to 99, that's 25 years. That is really, like, at this moment in time, puts Dreamcast smack dab in the middle of Sega's history as a company creating video games. Before that, it made, you know,

electromechanical games such as duck hump that Nintendo totally ripped off and um you know jukeboxes and cigarette machines and things like that sure but once it oh yeah patinko machines all the good stuff but once it entered the video games industry that kind of became Sega's brand um that actually that's that makes Sega unique among people who made consoles companies that made consoles There was no other console-making company besides Atari that was dedicated entirely to video games. Every other company, if you look at them, they were toy makers or electronics makers, you know, home electronics, or textile manufacturers in the case of Colico Leather Company. So Sega was pretty unique, and Dreamcast was kind of their final statement before the way. of changes happening in the industry and just, you know, evolution of the medium kind of caught up

with Sega and said, ah, you're not part of the conversation anymore. And they became a third party. But, you know, there's nearly 20-year run as a first party, I think all led up to Dreamcast. Maybe I'm just talking out my ass, but Diamond, I invite you to refute what I'm saying or to agree with me if and do, if in fact you do agree. I think part of the tragic feeling we have when we think about the Dreamcast is the fact that it seemed like so many things were right. It seems, you know, Sega, the 90s for Sega were a tumultuous time, and the day I got started off looking so strong.

They had made a huge impact, especially in the United States, you know, I mean, Europe too, but especially the United States, they had a huge impact with the Genesis marketing. Everyone's like, oh, Sega is cool. this is a cool thing. And, you know, essentially what we think of as the console wars essentially started there. And then Sega made some big mistakes. There was some internal fighting. There were, you know, disagreements over where to go next.

And we already did a whole episode about the Saturn, how the Saturn, you know, the Saturn is a perfectly good console, but some choices were made that were incorrect. And it just kind of doomed it, you know, marketing-wise, at least, you know, at least the United States. It did pretty well in Japan. But a lot of other markets are like, oh, we don't want this. We don't want, I'm sorry, we don't want this. So in the case of the Dreamcast, I feel like, everyone was like, oh, this is cool. Oh, I like this.

This is good. There was even a, no, no, that was Saturn. I was going to say there was even a model that said this is cool, but no, that was Saturday overselling itself. Dreamcast actually was cool. And then less than two years, less than two years after its arrival in America, Sega's like, yeah, we're out. This is it.

I mean, not only like this, this console was it. Like, this is, we're not doing this anymore. I'm sorry. We'll make more video games. The company went through, I would say, an adjustment period to get into that, I think, smoothly. I think Sega had some ups and downs as a third party, frankly. It was more like downs and ups, really. It took them a while to kind of find their direction.

But yeah, it's funny how I wonder, how different would it be if we would always feel, I think, you know, for a company that had so many great games attached to it, so many memories attached to it, there would always be some sense. as a melancholy, what we think about, oh, remember when Sega used to make video games at home, you know, like, there would always be that memory, but the fact that they had so much that looked great and felt great, and in many cases, I feel like predicted some trends for the industry, but it just didn't work out for them. It just feels like, oh, oh, really? You know what I mean? It's like, it's like buying a lot of ticket, and then you get hit by a car when you're trying to cash it in. Just like, I'm sorry, you know? Wow.

I feel like... Isn't it ironic? Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like there's a song about that. It's like rain and I dehydration becomes to the wrong. It's a free ride to your bankruptcy trial is the good advice to never listen to me. And who would have thought it bigger? Sega really had, even more so than they do now, they really had a distinctive approach to creating video games. I think, I think it was you I was talking to at Long Island Retro Expo.

Maybe it was Jared, but I think it was you who said the Sega Master System felt like a console that was created in a world where the NES and Nintendo did not exist. Was that you who said that? Or was that someone else? Maybe that was Jared. I didn't say those words, but I'll take credit for it if it impresses you. It does. That was a great incisive comment. No, it's absolutely true.

You know, in my video series, Say Guyden, available now for free on YouTube, but also supported on Patreon at patreon.com. Never mind. Anyway, yeah, in my video series, I'm more than halfway through the Master System's American Library, and it's finally starting to change its shape to feel like, oh, this is what everyone I knew, the kind of games we were playing in 1988, 89, you know, like NES games, basically. But before that, Sega was really leaning into its arcade heritage, its arcade strengths, and trying to either convert their arcade games to console, which they did with varying

degrees of success, like some of their super scalar ports were pretty okay, like Space Harrier, Outrun, not bad, considering the Master Systems limitations. Others, not good, considering the master systems limitations. But the ones that weren't arcade adaptations were generally thrown together by Sega's internal development teams. They had, you know, three or four at the time in the space of a couple of months and really stuck to that arcade design. paradigm. And you only saw a few games before the kind of midpoint of the console's life in America that felt like, oh, they're trying to engage with console game play patterns that had been established, you know, really on Famicom in like 1985, 86, especially once the Famicom disk

system arrived in 1986. It just changed the way people played games at home. And it took Sega a few years to kind of cotton to that and to come around and say, oh, wow, people don't necessarily just want arcade games. They also want games that you can't do in arcades. And, yeah, SIGA just kind of did its own thing. And even when it, when it shifted around to become, you know, a company making games that felt more like they were designed for home play, for long sessions, things like Fantasy Star, they still stood out as different. I mean, I mean, Fantasy Star is a technical marvel on 8-bit systems. It has that dungeon scrolling routine that U.G. Naka created, he programmed for the game.

Those first-person perspectives, like, they could have built an entire line of first-person dungeon shooters around that. You know, things like games in the vein of, I totally forgot what it's called. But, you know, those kind of quarter-based shooters that preceded Doom, they totally could have just, you know, farmed that out. But instead, they were just like, let's not milk this. Let's just put this into a component of this role-playing game and never think about it again. That was the kind of like over-the-top approach that SIGA took. It was like, let's impress everyone. And now it's moving on to the next thing because

you know, arcade goers' tastes are very fickle, and they want a new exciting experience very soon after they've, you know, pumped a few dollars into an arcade machine and gotten their thrill. So they took that kind of like rapid-fire approach. And I think you still see some of that with Dreamcast. There are a lot of the first-party games for Dreamcast, they feel very different than the kind of games Nintendo and Sony were putting on their platforms as first-party titles. I mean, Nintendo was giving us the Marios and the Zelda's and the Mario Carts and things like that. And Sony was giving us the ape escapes and the Legend of Dragoons and the Parapa, the Rappers.

And Dreamcast, you know, Sega, they just, they did their own thing. They had fishing games and they had games where you used cookie instruments to shake Maracas in real life and play music. and they just, you know, they had Seaman. It was just, Sega was just doing its own thing. And yet, and yet the Dreamcast was essentially the same as the company's Naomi Arcade Board. So you still had a ton, a ton of excellent arcade ports of some very good late 90s, early 2000 arcade games that, you know, people like them. People like them then, people still like them now, but it's also like because they arrived so soon on the Dreamcast, it's almost like, it's almost like the Dreamcast was burning its own candle, you know, or cutting off its own legs. It's like, oh yeah, we got those arcade hits, but because the arcade hits are coming here inside of six weeks of the arcade release, you're not really going to have any more arcade games to play, are you? Because no one wants to go to the arcades at this point if they can just buy them at home, you know, or in my case, buy them in Chinatown as an import from across the ocean. Were they actually from Japan?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I was getting, yeah, at that time... Oh, yeah, in New York, Chinatown, they used to have some pretty legit import shops, yeah. Oh, yeah. In fact, I think... J&L, J&M, what was it called? J&L, which they relocated, they're still open,

but I believe the Dreamcast was the very first console I actually modded because I could tell. I could tell right away that there was a lot of games I wanted from Japan, and I didn't want to have to wait for... you know, a U.S. release, if it was even coming. So that was a, that was a, when as soon as I got my, my Dreamcast, I went down to Chinatown pretty quickly, got it modded, and then I even got it a custom shell, which was just, you know, just for fun. And then, yeah, then I was able to play any region games. Technically speaking, I could have played Pirate games, but I

promised I did not pirate any during those games. I was a good, responsible Dreamcast owner. I bought everything from a retailer, a licensed retailer, just not selling the same. region where I was supposed to be. Yeah, the piracy issue I know was a problem. SIGA tried to countermand that by creating their special one-gigabyte disk format, the GD-ROM, which, you know, a standard CD is like 770 megabytes. So it was a CD, but more. And one of my favorite, like, that's really slimy anecdotes about video gaming history,

is that, like, the day after Sega announced they were discontinuing Dreamcast, Sony released or announced plans to create GDROM as, like, a re-writable format. You'd have to look that up. But basically, they were like, yeah, we're going to be selling one gigabyte disks now that you can rewrite. So it kind of felt like, and maybe this wasn't the idea, because corporate plans move slowly and require a lot of processes. But the timing sure made it seem like Sony was just kind of doing a little jig on the grave of Sega's console, first-party ambitions. And again, that probably wasn't the case.

But perception counts for a lot. But yes, good call on the Naomi connection there, because Sega's ambitions, starting with really SG-1000 in 1983, was bring our arcade experiences home. And I really feel like Dreamcast was the first time they could try. truly realize that. Their home console hardware was always a generation behind or two. So, you know, the SG-1000 was basically a Colico Vision. And so they were porting games for like System 1 to SG-1000 by the end, which just no. Yeah, if you've ever played Wonderboy on SG-1, I'm sorry. And two, you understand like what a bad idea it is to try to recreate the very powerful system-1 hardware on a Kaliko vision. And then, you know, by the time the master

system launched, it was basically a system one board at home, like in terms of its horsepower and its graphical processing capabilities. But Sega was on to say System 16 and before long the super-scaler line. Actually, I want to say super-scaler hardware made its debut like three months before the Mark 3 launch in Japan. Hang-on showed up in arcades in summer of 1985, and then Mark 3 launched in October, 1985 with Hang-on. And that was pretty damn impressive. But again, you know, even though they had, by far,

the coolest, fastest, most impressive racing game ever created for a console right there at launch of the Mark 3, AKA Master System, that was a generation behind or two. Um, the, the super scalar hardware was basically, you know, in the early days was pretty much like a beefy Sega Genesis. So when Sega Genesis launched three or four years later, the system of the super scalar hardware had expanded and grown. They had the X board and the Y board, which had like three processors plus a graphics processor. It was like, you know, it was like bolting three Sega Genesis together. And the Genesis was based on like the low end spec of the super scaler. So. right from the start, Super Thunderblade, not on par with the arcade game Thunderblade. You know, it was all the way through Saturn, you know, trying to do Model 3 games and try to get, like, Virtua Fighter on there, Virtua Fighter 3. And it was pretty unimpressive. But then Dreamcast launched with Virtua Fighter 3 Team Battle, and all of a sudden you had this home experience, and it was really hard to tell the difference between that and the arcade.

Like, an arcade experience is always going to be different. It's like listening to a song on the radio versus listening to it at home. Like, you might have better fidelity and more comfort at home. But, you know, they very carefully tune things for radio transmission. They, like, compress the signal. It just has more punch, more volume. It just sounds different and more energetic than, you know, you necessarily will hear at home where they take care with the dynamic range and try to give you, like, the full

experience. It's the arcade versus home experience, really. And Sega's arcade games, especially, were always like listening to a song on the radio because, you know, big monitors, flashy graphics, booming sound, Virtual Fighter 3, awesome on Dreamcast, but still a little more awesome in arcades. But the gap was so narrow by the time Dreamcast came along that I don't think you would look at Virtual Fighter 3 in the arcade and say, oh, I can't, I can't play the one on Dreamcast. it's just too crappy. Oh, Soul Calibur, I don't know. I'd really rather play the arcade game. No, you wouldn't. You would rather play the Dreamcast game because it has all the extra modes and features and extra characters and stuff. And maybe it doesn't look quite as good as the arcade game, but it's so close. Don't be a snoot. You want to play the Dreamcast version and you know it. Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone. It's Jeremy with another intrusive ad breaking up your podcast experience.

But wait, don't hit that. fast reward button just yet. I'm not here to stump for a corporate service or product. This time I'm just promoting something that I've made. I've just launched a new book for pre-order over at limited rungames.com. Well, it'll be three books, actually. You know how Lord of the Rings was supposed to be a single novel that ended up being so long that they had to print it in three parts to prevent the spine from self-destructing? This is just like that. As it is, these have to be hand-assembled because the oversized page format is too big for the printer's machines to automate safely. The books are called collectively, the

NES era, but they're not just about the Nintendo entertainment system, they're about the rebirth of the entire U.S. console industry thanks to the NES' launch in 1985. And they offer a comprehensive, holistic visual journey through all of that era's console releases. That includes the NES, yes,

but also all of the competing systems too, like Sega Master's System and Atari 7800, and even survivors from the early 80s, like Intellivision and 2,600. If you've seen my YouTube channel's complete chronology playlists, which collect all the game retrospectives I've created in chronological order, you can think of these books as the printed

version of that, gigantic 12 by 12-inch coffee table books stuffed with larger-than-life packaging photos, screenshots, and text. The first volume, which is up for pre-order now at Limited Run, actually goes back to the prehistory of the NES by exploring the Japanese console industry in the first half of the 1980s. That's obviously anchored around the very successful Nintendo Famicom, which gave rise to the NES. But it encompasses every... Japanese console game released from 1979 through October 1985, from Bandai's Supervision 8,000 and Epox cassette vision to Sega Mark 3, this is the most complete chronology ever put into print of an era of gaming that rarely sees much discussion outside of Japan

or even inside, considering how rare some of these games are. You probably have never wondered what was up with the Gokin TV Boy or Casio PV-1000, but once you see their games lined up side-by-side with the Famicoms, you can better understand understand why Nintendo's system became such a powerhouse back in the day and how it set up the NES for success here. I'm afraid the real appeal of the NES era volume one, Japan of the road to the NES, sadly doesn't come across in podcast form since this will be an oversized book centered on photography. But you can check out a bunch of page samples at limited rungames.com and pre-order the book now through October 13th. Good news is that each pre-order comes with a $5

off discount code for the subsequent volume. This has been a massive, long, long-term, large-scale passion project for me since before the pandemic began, so I hope you'll check it out. The NES era, Volume 1, Japan, and the Road to NES at limited rungames.com. time the Dreamcast launched, I feel like we were getting used to the idea of having essentially arcade-perfect ports. And as you said, you can never quite recreate an arcade experience at home because it's a different thing. You're not, you know, you're in your home. You're not in an arcade. But, you know, I remember playing a lot of the Tekans on PlayStation and those, you know, those PlayStation versions of Tekken were almost identical to the arcade

version, or indeed, as you say, improved because they threw so much stuff extra, you know, in the home versions. You couldn't fight as Gone in Tekken in arcades. So with that in my head, I was kind of like, oh, yeah, this is cool. I'm glad Sega is really on board here, and we've got so many arcade games here, but also not just Sega games, but games by other arcade companies. And in some cases, they were making a little different. Like, I'm thinking about S&K.

S&K and Sega clearly had some kind of relationship going on because, you know, some mad person decided, oh, let's have a cable that connects the Neo Geo pocket to the Dreamcast. That's a product that was in stores, you know, and I love them for that, but I don't think it was for many of you will be on me and my friends. So I also remember you got a lot of Neo Geo arcade games, especially King of Fighters, ported to Dreamcast, and those ports weren't arcade perfect. They were actually a little different. They purposely said, okay, we already have our Neo Geo, so if they want the arcade's experience at home, they can just buy the NeoGeo cartridge, which costs a lot of money, but that's not here, they're there.

So when these games came to Dreamcast, they would get tweaked in another direction. They would introduce, say, maybe 3D backgrounds. Like the characters, it was still a 2D fighting game, and, you know, that experience didn't change, but maybe all the backgrounds were in 3D, you know, maybe the soundtrack was rearranged. Maybe there were added characters, or at least added assist characters that didn't require that much work as far as sprite work goes, but, you know, definitely. changed the game as far as how you played it. So for me and my friends, you know, as far as our

specific, our very specific needs went, you know, the Dreamcast overdelivered in that sense. We, like, we got, we couldn't believe, you know, the riches we could experience as far as games that, you know, we can play, we can play NeoGeo arcade perfect ports on the Neo Geo, but then we can play these Dreamcast ports, which were just different and we love them for them because, oh, now we can do this. Oh, we can, we can map an entire super move to one, button. That's cool. That means I can do all kinds of combos I couldn't do on my NeoGeo cartridge because I can't do those motions. But now I can do them here on my Dreamcast stick. And the Dreamcast had good sticks, too, by the way. I feel like, I don't know what those things

were called. But whatever those gray and green, bulky things were, you know, were. Oh, you mean the arcade sticks? Yeah. Yeah. With the disc called Arcade sticks? Because they were really good. I guess. Yeah, I mean, sure. But yeah, I had one even though I never really played arcade-style games. just because it seemed so good. And yeah, they really felt like, are these Sanwa buttons? You know, like it's, it's got the click to it, you know, just like the NeoGeo Pocket Color clicky stick. It's just that tactile, you know, understanding. Like, this is what people want. They want something physical, visceral that they can connect with. You know, and I suppose at least part of that thinking was also part of the, I'm going to say, 90s poison brain opinion that. 2D is old and 3D is modern and everything should be in 3D now. So at least part of that was someone, you know, deciding, oh, well, we make all these 2D video games.

We can't just make them in 3D, so let's just make the backgrounds 3D. You know, we'll put 3D elements behind our 2D sprites. And I do think that's a look. I don't think it's a bad decision. I think it's a look, and I think it works in many cases. I think it looks very strange in some cases. Like, for example, another game I put a lot of time into a Dreamcast, Marr v. Capcom, too.

You know, that is a game with hundreds, maybe thousands of sprites, you know, frames of animation for all those different characters. But you're playing on this very clean, very pristine 3D background, and these backgrounds don't seem to come from anywhere or have anything to do with what's happening in the foreground. You know, you've got cable and servbot and Akima and Anacaris and Strider Hear You and Ken and your father. riding in front of a big clown face or a frozen wasteland. I knew you were going to say clown because, yes. What the hell? I just, and then you have the soundtrack on top of that, too. And the soundtrack is, let's be honest, it's been 20 years now.

The soundtrack is good. That's good music. It's people, you know, took very care, great care in making this music. It just wasn't what a lot of people wanted, you know, myself included. Like, I don't want this. It doesn't fit the game. It's phenomenal music. It's so good.

But it's like, what is this doing? here. It needed to be for a completely different kind of game. Yeah. And we'll talk more about this in an upcoming Marvel Capcom episode because it's got to happen. But that's, you know, that isn't threaten me with a good time. Yeah. That's a really good case of, you know, so much of that game, some of its head scratching decisions, but all of it's very well put together and looks and sounds great. But does everyone want it? A lot of people didn't want it, which is kind of unfortunate. it. Yeah, I think you mentioned Street Fighter 3. No, actually you didn't, but you could have. Oh, wait. That was on Dreamcast? A very good version, too. Yeah, it was. I mean, if you look at perspectives, you know, kind of going back to what you said about 3D is good, 2D is bad, like people were so blasé about Street Fighter 3 at the time. It was just, you know, kind of for hardcore fans of the series and people who really were into traditional fighting games.

And it didn't even really start to take off an appeal until people saw that you can do crazy parries and completely turn around a tournament like 15 years later. But if you look online now, people are constantly discovering Street Fighter 3 and saying, holy crap, this animation, this sprite work is so good. It's like clockwork. Like every month a new angel is born as someone or gets its wings as someone discovers the sprite work in Street Fighter 3. you. No one is looking back at a 2D or a 3D game, like a PlayStation game or a Saturn game from from 1996 and saying, God, that 3D is so good. Look at, look at jumping flash. Look at, look at how immersive and detailed that 3D is. Look at, look at fade to black. My God, can you imagine? Oh, my God, clockwork night. So awesome. No, no one's, no one's looking back at that.

It's, you know, there's a tendency, maybe not so much these days because the, the, the, the, nature of games hasn't really changed that much over the past decade. But there was a tendency at the time to just say, like, everything before is bad on within with the new. Let's move along. And I kind of wonder if, you know, the irony of Dreamcast is that Sega had been pursuing the faithful high fidelity arcade at home experience for a decade and a half by the time it launched Dreamcast. And once it finally got there, once it finally got there, once it finally finally reached the point where, yes, you can truly have an arcade caliber experience on your television, no compromises, this is the real deal, this is the home version of the Naomi

hardware. And, you know, that's different than like the STV board for Saturn because that was just like, hey, let's put a Saturn board an arcade machine. Okay, cool, way to go. I played Play Choice 10 back in the day, but I wasn't like, oh my God, arcade experience. Yeah, once they finally got there, everyone had kind of moved on from arcade experiences or the arcade experience had changed. It was no longer, you know, traditional games, platform puzzle games, brawlers, fighting games even so much. It was music games. And there certainly was some of that. But again, you get into the radio versus home stereo experience dichotomy there. Because playing a rhythm game, a dance game like DDR at home, with the tools available, something like Samba de Amigo even, it's just not the same

as in the arcade where you have these massive machines that are built like industrial strength to hold up to months and months of hardcore abuse by B-boys and things like that, like showing off their crazy skills on the dance pad. And you don't get the huge displays. You don't get the people surrounding and watching and turning it into a spectacle. The arcade really had become about the location by that point, about the social experience and about the spectacle of watching great performers. And so the more traditional arcade experiences kind of tapered off and had to sort of evolve or die.

And you know, you certainly saw Sega trying to evolve some of those experiences or Sega's licensors, like, or licensees, like Capcom with things like Powerstone and, you know, Namco, again, with Soul Calibur, which, you know, that was kind of, the Soul Calibur port to Dreamcast, I think, redefined what a fighting game at home could be for the entire medium. It just made people stand up and say, whoa, this is what you can do with the idea of two people punching each other. That's incredible. Like, there's so much here. Yeah, Siga just, you know, they finally got what they had been aspiring to, what they'd been striving for, and the paradigm had shifted. And so all of a sudden they were, you know, kind of standing there at the party as everyone's leaving. Like, hey, guys, I brought the cake, guys, guys.

You know of happiness. You know, I want to go back to this idea of looking, looking at old 3D, because one thing I do, I do feel, and I do often say this to whoever's listening, even at the bus stop, is just, what is it about Dreamcast games that, to me, still looks good? I don't know how to explain, maybe this is a technical aspect of it, maybe it's the color palette they used or the breadth of color they had to choose from. But I'm thinking about games like the climax graphics, crazy games, you know, Illbleed and Blue Stinger and Capcom with Code Veronica, or even saying at first party games, like I want to say,

like Dynamite Deca, or at least one of the Dynamite Deca games that came to the Dreamcast. I don't know which one's arcade exclusive or not, but I feel like those 3D models that they were using and the colors they had to choose from, those characters just really popped in a way that I don't feel like they were popping on PlayStation, if you will. And when you looked at a lot of those games

that some of those games eventually came to PS2, and they just didn't quite look the same. And I feel like if you look at, you know, the PS2 did a lot of wonderful things and gave us a lot of great games. But I also feel like PS2 did send us on the road towards the sort of brown and gray town that we arrived in sort of the PS3 Xbox 360 era. Like, I feel like that started in the PS2.

But the Dreamcast, at least the Dreamcast games that I was playing, and the Dreamcast games I've played since then, even when I played now that are now old, like, I put them in, I'm like, what's going on here? Why is it so bright? Why is everything so magical? It can't just be emulation because some of these things are not just, you know, things are not emulated, but it's spectacular to me. me. And I do feel like, while there are people sort of now recapturing the PlayStation aesthetic, and even though it's not particularly, it's not necessarily accurate, but it's like, it fits our memory of the PlayStation aesthetic, I do hope and pray that we get to a day where we actually get people making modern Dreamcast-ish games. I've seen a couple. I've seen a

couple indie developers say, oh, here's our, here's our tribute to the Dreamcast. I know there's at least one out there. There's at least one game out there that's supposed to be like Jet set radio. And, you know, it's got a lot going forward. It's pretty good. But I want that to become the new norm. You know, I want, I want an annual release of many indie products that all recapture the Dreamcast, you know, like we get the haunted demo disc that's supposed to be PlayStation 1. Like, that's what I want. That's the, that's the amount of Dreamcast nostalgia I want in my life. More. I agree. Sega had their own look, especially on Dreamcast. And, you know, back a long, long time ago, the website UK Resistance started a campaign called Blue Skies

and Gaming or something to that effect, where it was basically like saying, Sega makes colorful games, there's blue skies, look at Outrun, look at everything that they're putting out on Dreamcast and, you know, so on and so forth. And no one really did that. Like when I think of PlayStation 2 graphics, and this isn't fair, but I think of them as looking really kind of grimy and kind of fussy, you know, there were, there were some, there were some great colorful games like Clanoa, too. Great cell shading. But I tend to think of things more like Metal Gear Solid 2, where they use color grading to make everything look like, you know, the Matrix, basically. Everything was kind of tuned to a cool blue, greenish color, grayish green.

Kind of like Game Boy, but cooler instead of warmer. When I think of GameCube, I think of things as being a little blurry. And maybe that's just like a hangover from N64, but there's a softness to GameCube's graphics. And actually, you know, I'll be honest, GameCube was my preferred platform at the time. I mean, everything was on PS2. So as a game reviewer, that's where I was playing a lot of games. But when it came to multi-consul ports, I just always really liked GameCube, the feel of it and the look of it. But Dreamcast, it did have a vibrance to it. I feel like part of that is, you know, if you look at arcade 3D games from the late 90s, they do have this distinct look because they're kind of low polygon, not like PlayStation 1 low poly. It's kind of that next level, and Dreamcast had that, but they're much higher resolution than PS1 could render.

So you're getting these like fairly, you know, relatively simple character models and structures. and things like that, but they're rendered at really high resolution, and they're running at 60 frames a second, like really consistently. So when I think back to stuff like, you know, obviously Sega's games like Virtua Fighter 2 and 3 or Virtua Cop, but also things like, you know, like Time Crisis 2 or 3, they just have this sort of like, it's simple look, but there's a lot of pixels on screen because they're rendering at a high resolution and everything moves so smoothly. So it has this like cartoon robot feel to it because the colors are really vibrant and bright, but then everything is moving

really smoothly and kind of in a stilted sort of way, if that makes sense. Like the frame to frame movement is smooth, but then the actual animations, the riggings, those tend to be a little mechanical. They weren't using like, you know, mocap and things like that. So it just, yeah, it just has this kind of, you know, even moving away from the texture-free gorow-shaded polygons of the early Virtua games, you start getting into the more detailed games with texturing and things like that, but it still has just this like, you know, grade school robot kind of feel to it just because the colors are so vibrant, so vivacious. And everything is detailed but not, and it's moving smoothly but not. It's this very unique sort of visual paradigm. And I feel like Dreamcast captured that better

than any other console. Like if you wanted that specific feel to a game, Dreamcast was where you went. Because it did have, you know, the option for VGA output to a monitor. And everything was always running really smoothly. I'm sure there were some games like maybe Mars Matrix or something had some slow down. But generally, everything ran really smoothly, high resolution, but, you know, it only had so many polygons per frame compared to like PlayStation 2 or Xbox or GameCube. So it just kind of, again, felt like not so much a prelude to that generation, but just sort of like the capstone to, hey, here we go. Here's the look of the 90s. Here's the essence of the late 90s arcade bundled into a little gray box that sits under your TV and beeps at you when

you turn it on. You know, I'm glad you brought to The Matrix, because that is also another thing that we talk, that I feel like, was a very specific trend at the time in that the 90s, the 90s in general were about black. Like a lot of things changed from, you know, the 80s had a lot of color to it, or the 80s eventually had a lot of color to it. And the 90s had rejected that, and a lot of things went to black. And you think? What I think of the 90s, I think of, like most of the 90s. I think of things being pretty vibrant, pretty colorful. I mean, this, like, think back to Wired Magazine.

It did have black, but it also used metallic in neons and things like that. Like, to me, that was the late 90s look. What I'm thinking about is, I'm thinking about, like, sports teams in the 90s all started switching to black. Like, everyone either had a black alternative or, like, their main uniform became black. It's like, oh, we can't, we can't have bright colors on uniform anymore. Everything has to be dark now. and the Matrix in particular was such a huge hit, a global phenomenon really, and that is a movie that is very much about, look how cool we all look when we're all dressed in black. So I do feel like that's one aspect that, again, the Dreamcast, through no fault of its own, kind of got caught up in because, yes, here is a bright, colorful, you know, candy-colored system full of life, but in between the Japanese release and the American release, the Matrix came out, and it sure seems a lot of people would rather have,

characters are all wearing black, you know, maybe that's, maybe that we should, we need to do that instead. But then of course, I thought about, you know, if we're talking about arcade games, then yeah, obviously if you're making an arcade game, what do you need to do for an arcade game? You need to grab people's attention, you know, you've got to draw them in, and you're going to do that, you're going to do that with all black. You're going to do that with bright, loud colors and big sound effects and expressive characters. So I think a lot of Dreamcast games, even ones that were, you know, designed to be played at home, like, let's say, Shenmu, you know what I mean?

Shenmu is not an arcade experience, but if you look at Shenmu, that is a game that is eye-catching. It is literally eyes-catching, if you will. You have to look at that. You cannot look away. You cannot deny what you're seeing on that screen. And, yeah, not all of it worked,

but it's a game that absolutely it insisted upon itself for good and bad. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the gap between the Japanese and American releases of the Dreamcast, because that's another way that Dreamcast represents kind of like the final expression of an era of video games, which is, it really was a Japan first kind of platform where Sega was creating for its home market first, and then localizing. And beyond that, PlayStation 2, you really started to see a shift

toward thinking of the American market first because it was growing so rapidly, and the boundaries between consoles and computers were becoming much slimmer. So you started to get more migration from Western developers who had spent 20 years developing for computers since the Atari crash, starting to move back over to consoles in earnest. And of course, it's not like there was a like a hard stop point or start point for that. It was a process of evolution. But I really feel like PlayStation 2, Xbox, like that was really kind of where the tides began to turn. But Dreamcast came out in Japan in November of 1998. Yes.

And it came out in America in September of 1999. So that's a 10-month gap between the launch of the Japanese and U.S. consoles. And, yeah, a lot did change in that time. that was pretty much standard fare for consoles prior to PlayStation 2, which narrowed the gap to about five or six months between Japan and US. And then subsequently, every console had less and less of a delay between region launches. Like, you know, GameCube launched in Japan and then like a month later, it was in America. So, yeah, I really feel like that was another way that Sega kind of got caught on the wrong foot. And I don't think that's necessarily

a fault of anyone in particular. I feel like it's more of a fallout from the weird schism between Sega of Japan and Sega of America and the kind of territorial infighting that happened during the 16-bit era when, you know, that system was launched in Japan, 10 months, the Genesis, the Mega Drive, was launched 10 months in Japan before. it reached the U.S. and then it took another like 10 months to get to Europe. But it was America where, and Europe also, where the system saw just tremendous success. And all of a sudden, you know, the sake of America had the real power because like that's, they were the, the section of the company making money. And the Japanese home office obviously had trouble

sort of, I think, accepting that in some ways. And there was always put. pushback. I mean, I think it's pretty well known that really for all companies, but especially Japanese corporations that have overseas branches, like the Japanese parent company is the mothership and everything is top down from there. But that, you know, when it's one of the satellites that's bringing in all your money, what does that do to the power dynamic? And so that resulted in a lot of push and pull within Sega and it manifested in things like the 32x and the really sloppy American Saturn launch. And ultimately, it shaped the nature of the Dreamcast. I mentioned Doral and Katana at the beginning of the episode. And those were the two

competing potential hardware platforms for the Dreamcast. There was the American model and there was the Japanese model. And one was Nvidia based and one was 3DFX based, I think. I didn't actually look this up to refresh my memory before this episode. because I figured I would remember, but I was wrong. Anyway, the point is that there was this kind of ongoing friction between the different regions of Sega corporate. And I kind of wonder if that made them susceptible to being caught flat-footed by this sort of larger change in the nature of games

and what people wanted and just the direction of things at the time. Thank you. Well, speaking of the regional difference, I think we should also highlight the fact that not only did the Dreamcast come to Japan first, it also lasted longer in Japan. You know, they, you know, they made their announcement in two, I want to say early 2001 saying that's it. We're getting out of the race here. But a lot of Japanese companies continue to support the Dreamcast, I want to say, I want to say well past 2004, 2005. I think the last official release might be as late as 2007. Like, it, it had legs, whereas the last, you know,

U.S. release was probably 02, maybe 03. You know what I mean? A lot of, like, American and European publishers, I think, really bailed out immediately after the news. But Japanese publishers hung in there for quite some time. So people like me who, you know, were buying imports, like I continued to buy import Japanese Dreamcast games for a long time. So even though I knew there would be no new games coming, I was still getting, you know,

mostly arcade ports. But, you know, they're the occasional, you know, interesting. curiosity, but, and I do think that is, yeah, as you said, I don't think you really don't see that very often anymore. Indeed, if anything of the opposite is true, you know, now we live in an era where it's more common for a console to launch in the U.S. first, you know? I mean, the, the PS4 launched America first, didn't come to Japan for three months later. The PS5, I think, was technically a global launch, but, you know, no one in Japan could buy

that for years. It took years for that thing to actually appear on stealths here. as a regular product, it was impossible to find for a very long time. Even Nintendo, even Nintendo, which is a very traditional Japanese company, they still tend to launch a lot of consoles in America first, even only by a few weeks because they want to get that, you know, they want to get that Black Friday going on. And then it's like, you know, well, Japan, as long as it's out in December in Japan, that's fine. Yeah, I want to say that during the time that I was in the Games Press covering Nintendo

launches and stuff. The only system that arrived in Japan before the U.S. was the DS, which no one cared about. So there wasn't much market for covering DS import software for that month before the American version arrived because everyone was like, who cares about this stupid thing? It's going to fail. But then we came here first. Wii U, 3DS, switch, I want to say, launched simultaneously in March. 3DS had a very small way. It was like one month, Japan first than America, but yeah. Oh, but again, that was also, everyone was like, who cares about this stupid thing? It's going to fail.

Exactly. But, yeah, Switch was a proper global launch. And, you know, we're recording this before we know what's happening with the new Switch. I would bet money that Switch to, whatever they call it, is going to be global because it's, you know, it's done so well. I really feel like they're not going to go back and say, oh, well, we're going to launch in Japan first. And then we'll work out the kinks and we'll bring it to, you know, let's say, Toledo. Yeah, well, we'll celebrate the 40th anniversary of the NES launch by waiting two years to bring the game system outside of Japan.

Yeah, that just doesn't make sense. I looked it up, and yes, the final Dreamcast official release, licensed release, I guess, was March 2007. And basically, those last two years, there's just a few games, but it was basically ports of arcade shooters to, you know, the most faithful hardware, I would say. It was trisiel, Radraji, underdefeet, trigger-hard, exalika, and Karos. So all of those are, you know, just like bullet hell, Dodmaku shooters. So, yes, that's what the Dreamcast specialized in, apparently. But we just came back from Long Island Retro, you know, last month, Jeremy, where we saw, you know, dare I say a plethora of either modern indies or just original games being created

for the Dreamcast or being ported to the Dreamcast. There was a whole slew of them available, you know, to mess around with on the show floor. And I feel like does, does anyone make modern PS2 games? No. No one does that, right? No, I feel like the PS2 is so complicated. Who would want to do that? Whereas the Dreamcast, you know, it's got a pretty straightforward architecture.

It's not, you know, it's not like ladder systems like GameCube and beyond where it's, hey, we just took a Motorola processor and, you know, you've, you've got yourself a power PC chip, which was really kind of the evolution of megadrive, Sega Genesis, where it was, you know, a Motorola processor. But Dreamcast for whatever reason, apparently the architecture is very, very approachable. And also because Sony put out those GDROM rewritable discs, you know, it's easy to, it's easy to make yourself a Dreamcast game. But yeah, that's, that's been a staple of retro shows for as long as I've been attending them for this podcast on a regular basis, which has been nearly a decade. Like, there's always a table that's just like, here's the latest supply of Dreamcast games

for you. I'm sure some of those are, you know, probably worth more now, those early releases, than anything that was ever actually published officially on Dreamcast. Because I'm sure they were produced in, you know, quantities of 100. And collectors are like, oh, I got to keep getting games for my Dreamcast. Well, now I've got to get all of my games for Dreamcast, including the ones that weren't official, and it's this rabbit hole, and now they're living on the street, eating cold beans from a tin can. It's very sad. Dreamcast, Destroyer of Lives. Now I'm trying to think about what

consoles I see them most often as far as having, like, modern game, like, people love to make NES games, people love to make Game Boy games, but even though the PS, the PlayStation aesthetic is very popular with developers, yeah, no one actually makes PlayStation discs. No one's actually doing that. Yeah, I think PlayStation, PlayStation 2, the discs are really hard to create, actually. I think it's some sort of proprietary protection system. And, you know, Sony played Wackamel with lockout, with region lockouts. I used to import for PlayStation 1 all the time. And to get that, to make that happen, I had to have a mod chip. And then I had to put a game shark on the I.O. port for my PlayStation because Sony would program countermeasures

against mod chips, so then a new mod chip would come out, and they'd program new countermeasures. And it was obviously unreasonable to put a new mod chip in your console every time a new game came out that had new rules. So what you did was you got a game shark, and you just hacked, You waited for the codes for the most recent PS1 workaround to come out to show up on whichever forums you looked at and you would punch in those codes. So anytime you wanted to play an import game on PS1, you had to look up online what the proper mod chip enabling code was for GameShark code for that game. So that's probably why you don't see a lot of PS1, PS2 games. But Dreamcast, it was not an open standard, but I just feel like it was very approachable. And it does hit that sweet spot of like a very capable system, but not so powerful that you feel like, oh, it's overwhelming.

It's going to take, you know, a huge team to create a game for this. It's just that, you know, the Goldilocks spot for game development. But yeah, Dreamcast and NES are by far the most popular systems for putting out new. games on. Then I guess Atari 2,600, the Atari family, but the ones that you really see, I think, the most are the more recent platforms, so NES and Dreamcast. And the nature of the games that you get on the two systems, though, these days really differs. Like, Dreamcast, because it has more power, you get a much broader array of software. Like, with NES homebrews, it's either, you know, hey, we put a ROM hack patch for translation on some,

someone's game, you know, you can pay $50 for a pirated card of Final Fantasy 3, but in English, Dreamcast, on the other hand, you get, you get all kinds of things. You get, you know, ports of indie games, you get original software, you get emulation packages, you just get everything. It's, it's really kind of the all-in-one Swiss army knife of systems, except in Switzerland, its logo is blue, and that's, that's gross. Ha, ha. You know, now you mentioned about hardware and compatibility. So was Dreamcast running Windows, or was that just the Internet thing?

What was the Windows for Dreamcast thing that I'm thinking of? That was a thing. So Windows CE was available to use as a, not just a programming environment, but also like a runtime environment on Dreamcast. Microsoft provided or, you know, licensed to Sega. a special custom form of WNCEE, but I don't think very many games used it. I think like Sega Swirl, the browser, and Choochoo Rocket used it, and not much else. But yeah, I have to assume that, you know, the support for WNCE also makes Dreamcast a very approachable platform for emulation and things like that.

Good call. I forgot all about that. Yeah, well, I was thinking about that and the internet, you know, that the fact that the Dreamcasts arrived, and it just, it had Internet capabilities built in, which, you know, GameCube never did, really. I think there was like one third-party game or something. You know, PlayStation. There were two. Okay.

It was Fantasy Star Online and Fantasy Star Online Card Revolution, Revolution, Revolution, Revolution. Made use of the broadband adapter. It was PS2 eventually added it down the line. And, of course, Xbox, of course, you know, had the hard drive and the modem and had everything. You know, Xbox had everything. That was kind of Xbox's whole deal. But here was the Dreamcast in, you know, 98-99. And it was included of these features that I feel like a lot of people maybe didn't know what to do with at the time.

But if you mess around with them, you got some really good interesting stuff. You know, certainly you had a lot of early experimentation with online play. You know, I'm thinking of capital. made some versions of their arcade hits and specifically mentioned like the the dreamcast ports would like be called matching service or for matching service indicate to the consumer oh if you play this you can use your dreamcast to play against other fighters on the other and i never got it working you know obviously i was i was buying it for the wrong region so it wasn't going to work for me anyway so i don't know if even maybe inside japan it was actually a fun experience to play online

I doubt it, but, you know. So my experience with Japanese internet around that time, the first time I ever went to Japan was 2001. And the place I stayed, they had DSL, which was much faster than anything I was using in the U.S. I was still on a 56K modem. But it was like pay per minute, basically. It was a pay-as-you-go. So I was kind of under-restricted. instructions don't get online for long, like make tactical strikes on the internet. Do not,

do not hang out for hours at a time because it will be very expensive. So I have to assume that was kind of widespread, like the general approach. So I feel like that would be very limiting for people to use. And, you know, here we did have, I think Dreamcast did have a broadband adapter, but most people had modems, the system came with a modem, and modem play was not great. It's very limited, long lag times, terrible pings, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, the Dreamcast gave us this feature that was really cool and very robust, and a lot of games made use of it, but I don't know that the infrastructure was there for people to really exploit it the way Sega intended.

And I feel like that was kind of really any sort of Internet connectivity in a platt and a console at that point was kind of future-proofing. Like, you know, five years from now when the system is in its latter days and people are, you know, there are a hundred million of these things in homes everywhere, the Internet will finally catch up with us and it's going to be great. But for now, let's just get our foot in the door. But, you know, that was a realization of ambitions that had been around since the 80. I know there was some sort of online connectivity thing that connected to cable for Atari 2600, but in Japan, the first meaningful attempt to take a console online, I believe, was the Famicom banking system where there was like a modem and you could access your bank information. I've got one of those things here. It's like this big, like an elongated pyramid. that sits on your Famicom and plugs in to the internet and then you've got a

you've got this really cool controller. It's like a Famicom controller, but it also has like a keypad on it. So kind of a precursor to the amazing Dreamcast keyboard controller. Another great innovation too good for this world. No one's ever done that because it's mad and I love Sega for doing it. But yeah, like, you know, the 16-bit era you had,

You had X-Band in America. You had the Satellaview in Japan and download services. I can't remember what Sega was called in Japan for Mega Drive. It was like, was it just the Sega network? I don't know. But there were a lot of games that were kind of unique that came out only on that download service in Japan. Like Fatal Labyrinth was originally a game released for,

or like the first console roguelike was released for that download system, I think because, like, hey, we can make a really compact game, like very little data with a lot of content and a lot of changing content as a roguelike. But also there was a remake of Flicky and a bunch of other stuff. So, you know, it was this kind of very limited sort of approach, like companies understood, networking is important, but they thought about it more in the cable TV paradigm. And I want to say that Dreamcast was really the first console to, not just to integrate a modem as a base level hardware element, but to approach it from the direction of, hey, modern internet, let's, let's, you know, present this to be used the way people use the internet as opposed to a, like a download

service like cable. It's about communication. It's about interaction. It's about going both ways. So, you know, in that sense, my theory here is wrong, and Dreamcast really was the start of a new paradigm in video gaming. But otherwise, it was the culmination of everything that was good before. And, you know, obviously, as I've said before, there's no like hard lines being drawn in video game history. It's just this constant evolution, constant change. And Dreamcast is a very significant part of that. I had a plug-in modem for my Sega Saturn,

which I believe was called Netlink. So I was definitely used to the idea of an online console mimicking computer functions. So I don't remember doing any email checking on my Dreamcast like I was doing on NetLink, but I was definitely curious as to what could come of it.

And what might have come if, you know, Sega hadn't pulled the plug so fast and, you know, more internet service hadn't been available. but I do. I'm pretty sure I played Choo Choo Rocket Online. I'm pretty sure that's the thing you can do, right? Yes, there was an online component to it. But I am a person who doesn't like the Internet except to publish things. So I don't know. I've never used it. Other people, man, they're scary. I just, I don't love them. You know, So moving into the final phase of Sega's final days,

we should talk about the Dreamcast games, because really they are, you know, all other things aside, the VMU and the networking and the Sega swirl, the little startup sound, all those little memories you have of Sega Dreamcast. ultimately, you know, pales in comparison to the real star of the show, which was the games. And again, I feel like the games really did culminate, like represent a culmination of Sega's ambitions in game development, game design.

You look all the way back to the 1970s, they were always kind of pushing the technological envelope, really. They were always trying to give people the most amazing experiences, the most, the most exciting experiences, the most technically impressive experiences. I mentioned Hang-on earlier. And Hang-on, obviously, like, it still is cool to play because it is a very fast-paced game and the 3D effect, you know, it's moving so quickly, the scaling. It's very convincing. But the thing about Hang-on back at the time, what it was, it was one of the Tycon games, the first of the Taekon games where it's basically like it's a video game but also an amusement park ride.

I mean, the big thing about Hang-on when it launched in Japan in the summer of 1985 was that it looked great, but you controlled it with your body. You sat on a plastic motorcycle shaped device and you steered the game by leaning left and right. And, you know, that really threw you into the game in a way that other games had never done before and it was a it was a spectacle there was actually um i've read that there was there were some hard feelings about it like criticism in uh publications at the time saying like this is so gimmicky you know this is um really just kind of an abomination that defies what video games should be about like you know people were super hidebound even back in the 80s if you can

believe it but um you know they continued pushing that envelope with with things like the super-skiller hardware, which evolved into the, you know, the Model 1, Model 3 boards, et cetera, always, always, always pushing those limits. And at the same time, they were always trying to come up with interesting and unique gaming hooks, not just graphics, but also concepts that seemed intriguing. You know, I mentioned the fact that Fantasy Star was a, you know, sort of top-down RPG until you got to the dungeons, then they became a first-person RPG. So, kind of combined Ultima with wizardry, like really sort of went back to the original Ultima, where the dungeons were from a first person perspective.

But no first person RPG on any platform, including computers, had ever looked like that before. And Sega was always just pushing the boundaries of what you could do in video games. I'm curious, Diamond, what do you think is the game on Dreamcast that best represents that? Is it SIGA swirl? Gosh, it's really hard to put one title up there like that. I mean, my Dreamcast memories are so scattered and disparate because it was just,

you know, especially because it didn't last so long. You know, everything I played on Dreamcast was like, oh, what do we got? What do we have here? And some of the games I played were amazing. And some of them were right away. It's like, oh, I love this. And others were like, oh, well, this is neat. I think, when I think about Dreamcast, my first thought is usually of C-Man.

That to me is such- Okay, there you go. That to me is such a singular experience that I don't really know if anyone could ever match. You know, I've written things in the past about, you know, how I want a new C-Man, and I know that Yud Saito is out there at least, at least he's, for at least five years, he's been teasing some kind of revival and, you know, online AI experience, which I think is not what we want. I think we do want, I think we are always looking for connections, I feel like. So for me, when Seaman came out, I was like, okay, this is it. I'm going to talk to my video game console. We're going to have a relationship now. And I was just really excited for that.

And I didn't expect, I didn't expect Leonard Nimoy. I didn't expect blood sucking. I didn't expect, you know, weird mating practices or the sort of, you know, really bizarre fiction that they crafted to make. you know, explain why you have a pet that can talk to you. But damn, if I wasn't, you know, if I wasn't living my life at least, or at least a few months, scheduling my time around when is C-Man, when can I play C-Man? What's happening today? What is C-Man going to say to me, you know, can I mess with C-man? Can I mess with the clock to play more C-Man today? Because I don't have time. But, you know, then also there's the mobile component with the VMUs where you could actually,

I believe you could trade things with their players. I forget how it worked. But you could put things on your dream. You put things on the VMU and level them up or trade them or something. Like there was another part of that where it's like you're not playing C-Man, but you're playing to prepare for C-Man later on your VMU. So the idea of scheduling your life around playing a simulation game where you'd never know what people are going to say to you, the character's going to say to you, I kind of feel like the closest thing we have today is

Animal Crossing, where people were, you know, especially once Nintendo got better about the clock controls and kind of a global time, people really, especially during the pandemic, the lockdown had to, or not had to, but chose to, basically schedule their routines around when things were happening in Animal Crossing. and, you know, having weird internet fights about getting characters, specific characters in their town, because, like, that's my comfort character. It got a little, it got a little strange, a little intense. I don't want to judge, but yeah, a little intense. People really took that seriously.

I feel like that is kind of the ultimate, or not the ultimate, but the sort of modern iteration of what Sea Man represented. But at the same time, Nintendo Weird is different. than Sega Weird. Nintendo Weird is kind of cute and quirky and a little funny and a little cute. I keep saying cute because that's what it is. Sega, you know, their quirkiness came out through seamen, and it's kind of dark and morbid and a little bit mean sometimes in a way that Nintendo just never is. I realize that's, you know, kind of standing in contrast to me saying that Sega was all about colorful, vibrant experiences. But, you know, Sega contains multitudes. What can I say? No, just they're, you know, they, they went dark in ways that Nintendo never really does. And so they, you know, they represent the fullness of life, of the human experience. Joy and bitterness. No, Seaman is a great example. I did not have time even back then to devote to that game, so I never messed with it. But it always looked so fascinating to me. You know, if we're talking about online appointments, then I guess we should probably also mention the game that you already said out loud, but you talked about it as a Dreamcast game.

Fantasy Star Online began as a Dreamcast game, you know, before getting ported to other systems and, you know, eventually now it's multi-platform. But originally, you know, that modem got people to play a, you know, rudimentary online RPG. And I don't think, I don't know if it was the first ever online RPG, but it was certainly the one that I heard about the first. and it's certainly one of the few ones that are still running today. I forgot to look it up, but I know there's a version of this game that you can play right now on your PC. It's not called Fast Star Online.

I think they call it Blueburst or, oh, geez, it's, I've messed around with it, and it's really cool because I never actually, at the time, I did not play it. I was like, I don't know how to play an RPG online. I don't get that. But I have since gone back and messed around with it on my PC, and I was like, this key, you know, it's my background right now.

This is from Fans Star Online. It's a game to me that is very visually exciting, even if the combat is kind of, like, clunky. But, like, I loved it. I loved it. The music is fantastic, and I do feel like I've never actually played a massively multiplayer online RPG. I've never done that. But I have messed around with Fantasy Star Online. And there's a version of me that played this in 2000, and then later got hooked on other things

and maybe, you know, didn't move to Japan and decided to just stay in America. and, you know, get better Internet and just live my life online. Did I make the right choice? I don't know. But I feel like we missed out by not embracing this aesthetic behind me, I got to say. I don't know. It's a little too neon green. That's like, to me, that reads as poison because of video games.

But, yeah, I think it's okay for me to say that my boss at work at Limited Run Games is over the moon that we've been, you know, working with Sega on. a few game releases, like, you know, we published the persona games four and three and four recently. And, you know, that connection is vital to him. It's essential. Like, it's his number one achievement, I think, because of Fantasy Star Online. Like, that game defined his youth in so many ways. Like, to him, that is the game. And I know a lot of people who were like that. Like, you know, at the time Dreamcast was out, I was contributing to the Gaming Intelligence Agency agency website. And I feel like everyone at GIA was playing Fantasy Star Online.

And at the same time, like Fantasy Star Online, I think really kind of represents the overall mindset of Sega. Like, let's do something new and different. MMOs existed at that point, but not a console MMO, not an MMO that was actually not massive. like PSO is is much it's a much smaller or more intimate kind of online experience

where you're not out there with you know hundreds of people in a hub it's more about you know going out with a couple of friends and venturing together and you know

it's console size and at the same time you know they could have just given us Fantasy Star 5 they could have said okay let's let's keep making you know new sequels in this existing series

but they took a break for a generation from Fantasy Star. No Fantasy Stars on Saturn, unless you count the collection, I believe, that came out in Japan. And when Fantasy Star came back, it was something different. Like, it had the aesthetic, it had kind of the universe in there, but it wasn't a continuation of the story. Because, you know, Rieko Kodama said, that story is told. Like, we don't have anything more to do with it. There's no reason for us to, you know, drag this out and keep kicking it around. instead, really Fantasy Star Online is about giving the story over to players and letting them

kind of forge their own experiences together and, you know, kind of have that shared community experience. And, you know, they did the same thing with not the exact same thing, but with Sonic the Hedgehog. They didn't try to just, you know, rehash 2D Sonic games on Dreamcast and, you know, try to make that work. They moved into Sonic Adventure, which is much more about, in this case, it is about the narrative. It's about the individual characters and, you know, kind of fleshing out Sonic's universe, whether you think that's successful or not is, you know, that's a matter of debate. But it does feel like after things like Knuckles' Chaotics and, you know, some of the other games that had come out in the 90s, they said,

let's take a fresh start and try something different with Sonic, with still faithful to the Sonic brand. But I feel like to be control, back off the rules, back up the chocker, I'm sicker, not there, bitch you're still like, leave me alone, I feel like I don't want to be control. So I want, so I want, so I want, so I want, so I want. But for me, I feel like there are a few definitive Dreamcast games, obviously Shenmu is. talked about, but even though it started in arcades, I feel like Crazy Taxi kind of shows Sega in their, like, let's do something new and exciting mode. It's basically an open-world racing game where you're not really racing. It's hard to really pin down what Crazy Taxi is

when you couch it in terms of what had come before. Like, in a sense, you could kind of see it as an evolution of outrun, where instead of having branching paths, you now have like an entire city to drive around in. And, you know, again, you're not racing against other cars. You're racing against the clock. But in this case, the clock is what you choose to make of it. You pick up a fare and they say, I need to get to X place and X amount of time. And so you sort of have that freedom to define where you have to go and how long you have to get there. And in a way, you know, that is, yeah, as I think about it, that really is like conceptually, fundamentally, very similar to outrun where, which road do you want to go down, you know, you have your choice of the road paths and some are more difficult than others, but opened up into a true 3D world experience. And, you know, as home games go, there's not that much depth to the original Dreamcast Crazy Taxi, the original Dreamcast port of Crazy Taxi. It's pretty much an arcade experience at home, which, you know, is limiting. And at the same

time, kind of doesn't matter because it's so fun and so energetic that you just keep playing. I mean, it was enough to get Tim Walls addicted to video games and his wife to take his dream cast away. So that's verified that that was the game in his system when it was sold off to someone else. So yeah, Crazy Taxi, it's addictive and get you hooked. But, you know, I feel like they were laying down ideas that other developers would pick up on and carry forward because once you got to Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City, like Crazy Taxi, basically that concept became a component, like something they built into the open world framework of Grand Theft Auto 3, especially Vice City.

Really, as an incidental detail, it was like they had the sandbox for development, during development, and they said, oh, you know what we could do, we've got these taxis driving around, we could just steal Sega's game and make it part of ours. And, you know, driving the taxi in Grand Theft Auto,

Vice City, not nearly as much fun as Crazy Taxi, but would we have that game concept, if not for Crazy Taxi? and, you know, driving emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks, maybe, maybe they would have come across that idea on their own. I don't want to, you know, be little DMA designs, but I feel like Sega kind of paved the way with Crazy Taxi. And it's another example of Dreamcast and Sega in that era doing something really fresh and different and fun and doing okay with it, but then everyone else stepping in and saying, I like that idea.

I'm going to disagree with you here in that I found the Crazy Taxi Dreamcast port to be exceptional because, A, they had to rework it for a controller. I mean, I'm sure there's probably, there's got to be a steering wheel option out to somewhere, but the arcade version very much, here's a steering wheel, here's a gas pedal, here's a brake pedal, you're pretending to drive a car. Whereas Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast's like, okay, here's your controller, here's how you drive with the controller, we've worked some acceleration. deceleration and shifting, it's all been mapped to your, you know, these buttons and triggers now, but also we've included a whole tutorial mode to sort of teach you little tricks and that tutorial mode included like challenges to complete and that was very much like, these are things I never would have attempted the arcade game because the arcade one's very much like, okay, I'm waiting for a movie or I'm having pizza and I'm just going to play

some crazy taxi while before we go to our next adventure today. day. Whereas the home version's like, okay, we're hanging out with Crazy Taxi today. What can we do with Crazy Taxi? How can I get better at Crazy Taxi? How do I learn, you know, drifting in crazy? Like, there's a drifting mechanic in Crazy Taxi that I don't think I ever would have really messed with in the arcade version, you know. And it's something I probably would have, I'm sure I messed up with drifting, say, in like, Mario Car, because that's something you play for hours at home. But like, Crazy Taxi had these little things you had to learn to do. And then it would give you specific levels that are just like abstract it's like oh here's a weird staircase like

driving the staircase we taught you how to do this now do it in a situation where if you don't do it right you fall into the oblivion you know like that kind of stuff to me was very interesting and you know kept me coming back but also glad you mentioned the grant the thought of three thing because i know geez it's probably 10 years ago or so when they when they ported crazy taxi to i want to say xbLA i wrote about it for wired it was like this is really fun. You know, I had a lot of fun memories of this game, but it's kind of weird playing it today because it's like, well, there's so many other games that it lets you drive a taxi now. So, like, it's not nearly as innovative. And the internet got very mad at me, but for suggested

that somehow other games had more taxi mechanics that, you know, appealed to me. And I was like, okay, I'm sorry. I guess, you know, I don't really, also don't really love the offspring, but I just, that's me. Sorry. Why buy a Sokabon game when you could just buy a mystery dungeon and get it for free as a bonus. No, it is the same conundrum. But yeah, like, the Dreamcast wasn't around that long. Eventually went away because basically at that point, Sega was being funded by its billionaire owner,

and he started to run out of money. Like, when you drain a billionaire's resources, you're doing something wrong. So Sega had to recalibrate. And thankfully, they're still around today, and they're actually still going strong. Like, their library of games, you know, I think they've got

some Sonic games that are kind of eh, but they bought Atlas. And so they've got a great slate of RPGs. They've got the Yakuza games. I think they're doing okay. They are a third party now. But that just means more people can play their games instead of having to own a Sega system, which, you know, win-win. So final question for you, Diamond, what's your dreamcast two? What's your dream launch game for Dreamcast 2? When Sega says, oh, we have to get back into the console industry. We have to take down Nintendo and Microsoft and Sony. It's our place.

It's our world. What's going to be the killer app for you? A new dreamcast in our modern age, that is a tough call. I guess the dream title, it's completely impossible because the autortes behind them are dead. But if someone out there, either via a sales, or via just the absolute whipcrack reading of the room. You know, if someone could channel the energy of Kenjiino or Nishigaki, the man behind, he'll bleed, that kind of, you talked about like Nintendo Weird is different than Sega Weird.

Like, you want to talk about like the games that Kenji Ino was putting out on Saturn and eventually Dreamcast. Or Nishigaki, who is this, who is a guy basically behind climax graphics. became crazy games, and he is, I believe, I believe he wrote the entire scenario for Illbleed and also produced the game. If you watched the credits for Illbleed, which is a really good, really good credit sequence, a lot of crazy art, a pounding soundtrack behind it, you'll see this guy's name pop up so many times. This guy was like, his fingers weren't everything in that game, and unfortunately he died like crazy young, you know, I want to say 2004.

So there is no future for that sort of, you know, illbleed. it'll bleed-esque games. But man, if a Dreamcast came back, that's the kind of thing I would want. I'd want some sort of weird freak-out games, you know, where blood comes to life or, you know, you're dealing with blind people and you have to become a blind person to better understand the blind people. You know, like the kind of stuff that those guys are coming up with. And, you know, did it all work?

I don't know. Like, I don't know if I really don't want to play Shenmu ever again. I feel like I've played enough Shenmu to decide I don't want to. like this kind of game. But without Shenmu, you don't have yakuza. And without the weird stuff that Kenji, you know and Nishigaki were putting out, I don't think you have a lot of games today. They're just like, oh boy, that was why. I got to look up the guy's name. All I know is Nishigaki. Sinha. Excuse me. Shinya Nishigaki. I apologize. That's okay. Okay. So basically, you want them to recapture a very ephemeral kind of

video game experience. I feel like that really embodies the concept of wah, of like, here's a transient moment, savor it because you'll never have it again. But yes, that kind of quirky, distinctive quality that so many Dreamcast games had, that sort of, you know, one-of-a-kind feel, and there really never has been a console with quite that same spirit to it. I see that. You know, we haven't even talked things like Space Channel 5, and, oh, gosh, like, you know, they never came to the U.S., but El Dorado's Gate, the 10-part serial RPG from Capcom. You know, they, I think that was what it's called. Yeah, like, Dreamcast was all over the place.

It was such a weird, interesting console. But also, I'm glad you mentioned Climax Entertainment in kind of in passing there, because I feel like I've mentioned this on the podcast before. But one of my strongest, like most what the hell memories of when I was in the Games Press, you know, going out and doing dev interviews in Tokyo with Sam Kennedy. Like, we'd always team up and just go meet people because we just love talking to kind of off the beat and track game developers. We went to Climax's headquarters and interviewed Khan Naito, the head of the company, you know, the guy behind games like Landstalker and so forth. And I don't know what we expected to take away, but we asked, like, what are you working on? And instead of saying, like, well, here's my current projects for current consoles.

He whipped out of VMU and was like, I've been programming games for Sega's Dreamcast VMU and showed us like these little, these little tiny micro games that he had been creating for the VMU. This was in like 2008 or 2009. So the Dreamcast was like, you know, even those, those Don Maku shooters, those were over and done with that. That was a dead platform, but that was his passion right then, was just making these, like, a little hobby VMU games.

So, you know, the Dreamcast definitely got its hooks into people. I mean, Climax was a huge supporter of Dreamcast. There was even a game called Climax Landers, which was called Timestalkers here. But in Japan, it was like, here's a game by the Climax guys on Dreamcast. Like, you don't get stronger branding than that. So, yeah, that was just one of those little, like, it didn't necessarily become a huge hit

but Dreamcast really stuck with the people who got into it. Like it really it just kind of it got stuck in everyone's craw if they let it. And that's, I think really speaks to why people are still talking about this system

and still love Sega all these years later because Sega did change after putting to bed its first party development. Like internally, structurally it changed. Oh God, I didn't mention Rez. There were so many games. All that UGA stuff. Okay. Anyway, um, Dreamcast 2 killer app for me. I don't know that I'd actually play it myself, but I think that, you know, I was talking about how crazy taxi is kind of, uh, it's Outrun meets San Francisco Rush meets, uh, open world.

Like really jump on that. Oh, did I mention, did we, did we talk about, uh, Jet Set Radio? No, we didn't. God, there's so many games. I said it out loud. We didn't really talk about it. Okay, okay. That's good. I'd hate to miss that one.

Yeah, I feel like an outrun sequel that takes place in a sort of open world space, I don't know how that would be different from something like burnout, like the online burnout games. But I feel like Sega could do it. One, it would have a better soundtrack. But two, it would just have that. Sega vibe. The blue skies, the palm trees, like, bring back you Suzuki and give him, you know, a couple million dollars to go drive around Europe and or maybe like set him on a road someplace that hasn't been mapped in a racing game. Like, you know, China, like Western China,

who even knows what that place is like? No one lives there. No one ever shows photographs at that place. It's got to be interesting. Like mountainous passes. I don't know. Just set the guy free, you know, bring him in as a contractor with a lot of money and a nice car and say, okay, now take this into an online space, work with a developer who can actually get stuff done, and, you know, bring the spirit of Shenmu online into this. Just go for it, you Suzuki. Make us the coolest, most vibrant, most relaxing, but exciting driving game ever with other people. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not clever and cool enough to design this game myself, but I have confidence in Sega that they could pull the people together to make it happen.

And it would be awesome. And everyone would say, ah, yes, Outrun, it's better than ever. It's back, baby. So that's my Dreamcast to Dream launch game. Outrun forever. You know, Jeremy, I had to look it up. It is an entity called Eldorado Gate, the Capcom, Japan-only RPG series. and Capcom got Yoshitaka Amano to do this stuff

I can't really heard of this game before Wow yeah it's it was really strange It's like it was 10 episodes I want to say And they each sold for like 20 bucks They did episodic gaming Yeah seven volumes For dream cast Oh seven okay

Seven volumes and the last one dropped in Japan October 10th 2001 So just after it was mostly a pre-9-11 existence Mostly pre-game cube too Yeah Yeah. So I didn't even occur to me. Episodic gaming. That was a dreamcast innovation. Unless we're counting Mega Man's one through six, but we should. So in the end, Dreamcast is a land of contrasts. No, it was a great system, even though I didn't spend nearly as much time with it as I did with PS2 and GameCube, for obvious reasons, namely that it died, very young.

it just had such a great library and ultimately represented such a great outlook on the universe like just pure unbridled creativity the games that Sega brought and their licensees brought to Dreamcast I mean sure there were lots of the usual fair hey here's a Resident Evil game okay neat

here's some fighting games okay but even within those those kind of boxes they were still doing different stuff like Code Veronica was kind of I don't know. I'm not a Resident Evil fan, but would you say Diamond is a connoisseur of all things Resident Evil and Biohazard that Code Veronica was kind of like, would you describe it more as like the culmination of the series as it had been, or would you say it pushed things in a new direction? Well, I wrote about this in my weekly columns, which for our Patriot supporters, we get every week. But to me, Resident Evil was a turning point because even though it's very much structured like the original trilogy, You know, you've got tank controls and you're exploring these spaces and you've got Claire Redfield and Chris Redfield and Wester comes back and we thought he was dead. He was. But to me, the changing point is that it switches. The first three games are all about Raccoon City. They're all about umbrella. They're all about scientists and, you know, manipulation and corruption. But Code Veronica is not about that. Code Veronica is about weird, aristocratic.

who might be twins, or are they cross-dressers, or are they perverts? You know? And it's an, it's, the most of the game takes place either in a remote island base or in the Antarctic, but inside the Antarctic base is a recreation of the original mansion for reasons. Like, that to me, I think you don't get, you don't get Resident Evil 4 and it's, you know, village of weirdos without having Code Veronica out there and the Ashford, the Ashford family. And just, to me, that's, that's the switch. That's where they pull the lever on the troll. Like, no, we need to get weird, you know, weird on this track.

Okay. That was my kind of vague impression of where it sat in the Resident Evil milieu. So thank you for supporting me on that and clarifying the vague, you know, impressions that I was trying to articulate. Anyway, that's why we need a Code Veronica remake. Do it. Do it. Don't do five. Do code Veronica. Yeah. So anyway, even when Dreamcast did like business as usual, it wasn't business as usual. It really was a singular console. You know, the kind of like weirdo quirky console that normally would only get like six games and then vanish. But it got, you know, hundreds and lasted for several years and sold millions of units. So it's still out there. It's thinking. And. it's thinking, hey, you could pick up

one of me for pretty cheap and experience some really weird, interesting stuff. You should do it. Do it. Come on. And then encourage Sega to give us a dreamcast too. Probably a terrible idea, but it would be so fun. You know, you can get a dreamcast for cheap, but a lot of these

Dreamcast games we've talked about are not cheap. I know if you can find a copy of Illbly in the world, good luck. It's pretty pricey. Yeah. Yes. And sadly, there's no such thing as an optical drive emulator that would allow you to experience these things in a more rational, reasonable manner. So, never mind, please ignore that advice.

Do not pick up a Dreamcast because you cannot get an ODE for it and experience ill bleed without paying exorbitant prices. That would be terrible and wrong. And we cannot sanction that. Absolutely not. So please just put all of this conversation aside. I forget we said anything. Table it. Thank you. Anyway, Diamond, thank you very much for taking your time. I know it's very late for you over in Japan because, you know, much like the Dreamcast era, Japan is ahead of us here. Getting everything first. You're getting Monday morning before we get to Monday morning here in the States. It's still Sunday morning. But, you know, I think that's appropriate for a conversation about Dreamcast with the, again, the last console to really. go Japan first and say, this is how it's going to be. But it is 25 now.

As of today, again, if you are a patron, and if not, oh, no. So, yeah, Dreamcast, good times, interesting times. But not in, like, the bad fortune cookie interesting times way, like good interesting times. Well, it didn't work out very well, so maybe it was a bad fortune. Aw. Of course, I guess. They should have gotten another lottery draw. Okay. Yeah, so that wraps it up for this episode of Retronauts, looking back at Dreamcast, 25 years later. I wasn't sure how this kind of off-the-cuff-cuff-on-the-fly episode is going to go, but it turns out Dreamcast is so awesome that it's the rising tide that lifts all ships. And this was a great fun conversation. I hope everyone else enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it, Diamond. I did. I was worried I would fall asleep, but I didn't have an energy drink because it's very late. But you know what?

My enthusiasm for Dreamcast lifted me up out of my doldrums, and now, having recorded this, I can, you know, take a very long piss and hopefully go right to sleep. Ah, yes. Thank you for oversharing. That's the Dreamcast way. I mean, Seaman would definitely say something like that. It's late. I got to take a piss. Go to bed.

If Seaman pisses do even know, he's already in the water. No, but just don't drink that water is what I'm saying. Anyway, that wraps it up. Like I said, thanks everyone for listening. This has been Retronauts. This has been a standard weekly episode, which means that, again, patrons heard it first. Those of you on the free feed did not. Very sad.

But you can hear more Retronauts every week right here on whatever platform you're listening to this podcast on. And if you're really cool, you can subscribe to Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts and listen to next week's episode right now because it's out there. assuming you're listening to this on the free feed. If you're listening to this on Patreon, you got to wait a week. But thank you for supporting us. Three bucks a month gets you early access to every episode, every public episode, in maximum audio quality. Well, not quite maximum, but we find a good balance between economical bandwidth usage and audio fidelity. It's higher quality than the public feed is what I'm saying. So check that out. And if you bump up to tier

number two, the $5 a month tier, you get those weekly, weekendly podcasts, mini podcast by Diamond here that they mentioned. And also, you get biweekly episodes on Fridays that are only available to patrons and also Discord access where you can see really strange conversations happening. I'm there daily to help keep it strange. So that's my commitment. to you, the Retronauts Patron. Thank you for supporting us. Your support keeps this show going and also keeps us fed so that we can talk about video games and not die. Diamond, where can we find you on the internet? Best place to start is my website, which is FightClub. Me, F-E-I-T, that's my last name. C-L-U-B, that's a moniker you might apply to a group of Dreamcast enthusiasts, a Dreamcast Club, if you will. Dot me, Emmy, because Fight Club, it's me. But yes, I do a lot of work for astronauts and other services when possible.

The columns you mentioned, I've written multiple columns about Dreamcast games. I've done Code Veronica. I've done Illbleed. I've done Jet Set Radio. Shenmu, possibly in the future, it will turn 25 later this year. I actually think, at this point, you've written so many of these columns every week, almost every week, that if someone subscribed to Patreon now at that level, they would have reading material to, like, read in bed at night for months.

Like, it's a massive amount of content. And if they listen to the podcast part of it, that's even more. That's even more. Wow. So much stuff. And that's not even including the Friday episodes. What I'm saying is you should support this show, patreon.com slash retronauts, where you can find more podcasts by me and many other people.

You can also find stuff by me on YouTube. I'm doing stuff at limited rungames.com. I've got a new book that's up for. For pre-order now, it just went up for pre-order called the NES era volume one. It's part of a three-volume set, a photo atlas, like giant coffee table book, 12-inch by 12-inch. Showing off, the first volume shows off every single console game released in Japan from 1979 through September, October, 1985 when America's Nintendo Entertainment System launched. It's like 240 games. It's taken me years to track them all down.

I'm still missing, too, but I bet I can find at least one of those. One of them, incredibly rare, may never happen, but at least I will write a lamentation in the book about it. But otherwise, it's high quality photography, very awesome. I'm very proud of it. I'm very excited about it. Still working on it, but please check it out at limited rungames.com, the NES era, volume one. You can also find me doing other stuff. Other places.

I'm on blue sky as Jay Parrish. and not on Twitter except, you know, occasionally to say, hey, here's a link by my stuff, because that's all Twitter is good for anymore. And even then, not so much. And I think that's it. So please come back next week to listen to more podcasts or check out Patreon.com and retronauts and subscribe and get tons of content. And that should keep us going for the next 25 years when we can talk about Dreamcast's 50th.

Please look forward to it. We'll all be old and dusty. but the Dreamcast will still be cool. Good night. I don't know. Thank you.