Dreamroom UK 2011 is Today!

Watch live streaming video from gagaman at livestream.com

Today is the day before the 12th anniversary of 9/9/99 and because I won't have time to livestream tomorrow just before barry's one I've decided to dedicate today for my show!

I will be starting at 1pm UK time (7:00am Eastern Standard Time) will take a couple hour break somewhere between 3 and 5pm, then return continue on into the night! That's a lot of Dreamcast gameplay!

So make sure to come and visit at the video link above sometime today for the celebrations! Then tomorrow it will be Barry's turn for him to treat you to some Dreamcast gaming goodness!

EDIT: It's over! Thanks to everyone who popped in! If you missed out you can watch it in the 'Dreamroom UK 2011' folder here. It was running for roughly a total of 8 and a half hours! Here is a list of the games that were played throughout the day:

• Mars Matrix
• Segagaga
• Gundam E.F.F vs Zeon DX
• Marvel Vs Capcom 2
• Rush 2049
• Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
• Alien Front Online
• Daytona USA 2001
• Power Stone
• Pro Yakyu Team de Asobonet!
• Zombie Revenge (complete play-through of arcade mode)
• Densha Deo Go! 2
• Sengoku Turb - Fanfan I Love me Dunce doublentendre
• Fast Striker
• Heavy Metal Geomatrix
• 18 Wheeler

Dreamcast Doujinshi Manga Comic

Cross posting this from the Dreamcast Junkyard, seeing as it is a Sega related comic though not an official one, and may be considered a not very common collectible to find on Ebay.

Probably the weirdest thing you'll ever see me feature for DCJY InsideOut, and actually a bit NSFW although unlike most Doujinshi (fan comics) it's not a flat out hentai porn comic, but it is in places a tad perverted with quite a few er..well you'll see. You have been warned.

The comic features short stories based on Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Code Veronica, Soul Calibur and many others, but they're pretty much all resort to rubbish and just plain weird jokes. The art is mixed, sometimes pretty decent and other times wonky.

Because  Maken X features in the Doujinshi I also decided to show off a Official  Maken X manga I bought years ago, which is just a tad more gory than I  recall the game being. So yeah, this one is defiantly not for the younger lot or easily offended this vid. :P

Forklift Number 5 of 1000

It's here! The major award has arrived: the 'Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing' Ryo Hazuki forklift statue. The short version of how I came about the figure: I entered a Sega contest a few months back and last week I won the figure. The figure was limited run of 1,000 was was only available via the online contest with a handful making it over to Europe and distributed via Sega Europe's Free Stuff Friday giveaway. Now enough chatter, let's take a look at the figure!



Ryo arrived in a simple cardboard box. Inside was the black box wrapped in bright green paper. Perhaps to reference the jade mine seen in the conclusion of 'Shenmue II'... or not.

The back of the box sports a huge Sega logo as well as the statue number out of 1,000. Oddly, the box did not give the individual statue a number. Instead, they left a black space for where the number should have been written and the same is true for other forklift statues I've seen. While I have no clue what number I had, I'm going to assume number 5 of 1,000 because it's the forklift's number and would probably boost the resale value.

It's important for me to note that the Ryo Hazuki forklift statue is just that: it's a statue. It is NOT an action figure so don't expect spinning wheels and a lift that rises up and down. While I was a little annoyed at first, I quickly found that a statue is much much better than a plastic action figure.


The statue is made of heavy duty vinyl, with the frame being made of metal. The lights are strung up with a tiny fake electrical cable and is fastened on with little bits of wire. The cage on top is the one piece made of plastic.

The paint job is not amazingly done, but it is much better than, say, a Jazwares 'SASASR' figure. The forklift itself has lots of wear and tear to is while Ryo looks like Ryo, for the most part.

You can see in the photo above that they gave Ryo a little swipe of white for his cheek bandage. Impressive! They even painted his zipper, belt, lips and eyes. It might look a little messy up close, but for the size you really don't notice it.

The ONE sin that the statue commits is the back. The tiger is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there is this odd eagle shape. I'd rather they just left it blank or had given the figure a pack-in sticker of the back of the jacket to stick on. Despite this goof, it is small in the grand scheme of things. With the statue up on the shelf facing outwards, one doesn't even see the back. And if an owner of one of these is reading this and still regrets the loss of the tiger, feel free to print out and tape the image below to Ryo's back:

Now that the messy part of the article is out of the way, let's have some fun with ol' Hazuki! I'll bet you're wondering if the forklift can carry Shenmue. Well guess what:

"Toss 'Shenmue II' on while you're at it!"

I also bet you'd like to know if the forklift is ideal for picking up chicks. Well of course it can:

"Hey baby, ever play 'Virtua Forklift'?"

Ah! The figure also came with this plastic circle which was meant for use as a base. one side is shiny black, while the other features the logos as well as another blank space for me to write in the number "zero" and scam a guy out of thousands claiming this to be a super special "zero edition" figure.

Please submit all "Ryo carrying _____ with the forklift" requests to the comments section.


Return to SEGAbits, if that's how you got here

This Crazy Taxi is Huuuuge!

Apologizes for being so lax in posting lately in general for that matter, especially to Barry who has been keeping this blog alive all on his own for quite a while! I have quite the backlog of things to snap photos of and write dribble about! For example, this rather beefy Sega toy I picked up about a month ago..

 
More after the jump!

When I heard about this remote controlled Crazy Taxi a few years back I just had to hunt it down. Every time I've spotted one however they have been located in America and would cost the average Crazy taxi fare (read: lotsa money) to ship over. Finally though one popped up that was located on the same lump of land and I managed to get it for the starting bid which was a bonus. It wasn't the cheapest purchase in the world but for what it is I'd say it was worth it.

It was brand new in it's box, which meant I had to fart about with those wire things they curl and wrap around every inch of the toy to get it out and have a good look at it. But first off here's a look at the box waffle. Most remote controlled car toys like this simply go back and forth, left and right (at least from my limited experience) but this one supposedly does all sorts of KER-RAZY stuff like flips and cornering on two wheels, ooh!

I say supposedly because I still haven't actually taken this thing for a spin yet and that's because it requires a 6 Volt NiCd battery which I have yet to go out and find. I reckon they've missed a trick by not modeling the controller on the Dreamcast controller though I think this cab was a bit too late for that fare: it's copyrighted 2003 so long after the DC was off the market. Probably made to promote the many ports to other consoles, but moving on here's what it's like out of the packaging.

As the title gives away, this taxi is a beast! For comparison I stuck the other Crazy Taxi toy I own (of the same character and cab, none the less) beside it though I guess I could of put the game beside it for a better size judgment, oh well! It's not necessarily heavy but quite a decent build, though I'm not sure how much bashing about it could take.

The attention to detail in places is rather neat. Axel actually has a sort of dolls' shirt dressed onto him and they haven't forgot his '1N0M155' license plate out. The taxi even has some suspension in it's wheels so it can tilt to the sides, and the passenger at the back wobbles about with it.

It's always nice to see some Sega toys that are not based on the blue hog once in a while, and Crazy Taxi is one of the only games i recall playing so much it actually gave me blisters (though that could be something to do with the Dreamcast analog stick) so I'm glad I picked this up though it really is one of the biggest toys I own so it certainly has a presence, currently sitting atop my Mega Drive stand.

I've actually bought another smaller Crazy taxi toy since, one of the second games' character Angel, so now I'm only short of one of the cabs (a Crazy taxi 3 one) which someone outbid me on just the other day, haha.

Michael Jackson 1958-2009 - His Contribution to Sega

Michael Jackson has just been confirmed to have passed away tonight in a hospital in L.A. at the young age of 50. No matter what you think of him as a person, he was an incredible talent and for those who were kids during the 80's and 90's: his music was a huge chunk of our childhood.

And as any Sega fan would know, Michael Jackson and Sega got along rather well, collaborating on many projects such as The Moonwalker arcade, Mega Drive and Master System games..

..not to mention his supposed involvement on the Sonic 3 soundtrack.. (click image for the video)

More after the jump..



Here's a rather neat mix of the Sonic 3 credits music and Stranger in Moscow (and check out that photo!):

..his cameo in Space Channel 5 Part 2..

..and judging from the auction of his processions a while ago, he owned a LOT of Sega arcade machines at the Neverland ranch, possibly provided by Sega themselves as a thank you because you gotta admit, the Genesis in America may not of had the jump start in the market it had if it was not for his name associated with it in this infamous commercial.

R.I.P Michael.



EDIT: Someone linked to this wonderful piece of Sonic art. Don't know of where it came from, but it deserves a show:


and here's a collection of brilliant Sonic/MJ mixes by the ever clever Yuzoboy in one tribute vid:

The I Have a Dreamcast EP

Posting this both here and the Dreamcast Junkyard because it deserves to be heard!

The I Have a Dreamcast guys have released the EP as a free download! They had a live performance of the album, and some more DC playing goodness last night. There are 8 tracks in MP3 format in the download:

The Pianosaurus - Green Hill Drone
Bicycles & Gravel - A Song for the Dreamcast
Gemini Cricket - Dreamcast Vision
Grey Milk - Venice is Dying
Bicycles & Gravel - Curious Console
The South Will Rave Again - I Fell in Love Playing Marvel vs. Capcom
I Have Read Other Books Besides The Catcher in the Rye - To Beat, From Gum
Captain #1 - Bring Sega Back

Oh, I'm so making some Dreamcast videos with these songs in them. Amazing stuff.

Meanwhile at the Junkyards..

As you may now I write for a few other blogs other than this one. Ive been writing for the Dreamcast Junkyard for a good few years now and recently I joined the team other at the Saturn Junkyard too. This is nothing more than a plug for some articles I wrote recently at both of those in case you missed them, as they do relate to collecting Sega stuff too.

Firstly at the Saturn Junkyard as my first article for the blog, here's a whole bunch of photos of my Saturn collection. I've been buying a lot for this system lately since i got myself a white Japanese Saturn and the 4MB RAM cart that lets you play all those brillaint Capcom fighters. It far more up to date than this photo from a while back, anyway.

Then at the Dreamcast Junkyard I've displayed a bunch of photos of the Segagaga box set I recently got in the post, which contains a nice pin set of all the console logos and a rather sweet t-shirt design. The game is about as much Sega fan service as you'll ever see in one place. I'll be writing more about the game there soon.

Now you know why most posts around here end up being about Sonic merchandise!

Sega of Americas Holy Grail

I'm sure if you browse gaming blogs you will have already seen this by now (most likely at Kotaku where they made up some rubbish about Sega forgetting all about it, either from mis-reading or an excuse to take a pop at Sega AKA gaming's whipping boy), but I can't NOT post about this archive of Sega's back catalog that they store at the American offices. Apparently it holds just about every game Sega has ever made or published, as well as all their consoles and peripherals. It truly is a beautiful sight to behold, and they have even more games stacked behind the ones shown in the photos!

A whole draw full of what look like Dreamcast GD-Rs. They even have a list for them all.

More after the jump!

Darn, even more GD-Rs, although according to the writer of the Flickr page they could very well be early builds or prototypes. You whats to guess they have some copies of Propeller Arena and maybe some betas in there?



Goddam that's a lot of Saturn games! The rest are PS2, Xbox and Gamecube games, and when looking quite close up it seems they've kept a bunch of games that were not produced by Sega too.



This appears to be where they keep all their PC releases, of which they seem to have a lot of copies of. There appears to be at least six piles of Sonic 3D there alone, and what do you know: I didn't know they ported Virtual On to the PC.



Even more Saturn games and shelfs full of Japanese and PAL Dreamcast games. Someone wipe the drool from my gob please..



There's a Dreamcast award of some sort her that in the full size photos reads "Sega Dreamcast: 1 million units sold, November 25 1999". Also a bunch of master System games, loads of PS2 and even more of those big PC boxes.



A whole slew of Mega CD games here, many of which I've honestly never even heard of (Bouncers? Wild Woody?). The 2nd shelf seems to be a Nintendo stash, and who knows whats in those hundreds of CD spinals at the bottom. One can hope it's original source codes that they could use to port classics to modern systems. If you find Chu Chu Rocket in there can you port it to Wiiware please?



A tall pile of PAL Dreamcast and on quote "some burns". Having a closer look at these burns shows they they have a propeller Arena demo, a whole bunch of E3 anf TGS demos and even some betas and alphas! Right near the bottom of the pile is "Dee Dee Planet Final". FINAL? Holy shit. If you haven't heard of Dee Dee Planet, it was a Death tank style Dreamcast game that never got released. All we ever saw of it was this video.



Piles and piles of peripherals and consoles, all of them never opened from their boxes. Oh how i would love to have a supermarket sweep through this room..



Finally a photo of an entire wall of shelfs. In the bottom corner they have every Pico game, a bunch of Japanese mega CD and Saturn games, GBA games, even more "burns" and much, much more. It's just so much to take in. Incredible.

Sega History Collection

This collection of consoles arrived in the post today. A member of the racketboy forums by the name of GrittyKitty sold me this whole lot for just $20 (about £10 in my money).

But no, I didn't just get the console bundle bargain of the century, as these are not the real consoles. Rather, they are miniature toys of them, about one 50th of the original size! Did I fool you? Nah, you probably already looked at the other photos and know I mainly post about stuff like toys at this blog. If I did get a stash of real consoles like this, though, you would probably hear about it anyway! More photos after the jump.

These are, much like the 'Sega Gals' I showed you all a while ago, toys that were sold in capsule machines in Japan, so when you bought one you would never know which one you're getting until you open it, and you have to build them up from many, many pieces. They were produced by a company called Yujin and 200 yen each. Because these were pre-owned, I did not have to do any fiddly sticker work as it was already done for me! Here is each system all set up in backwards order of their release.

First off, here is Sega's last console the Dreamcast, showed cased here by my Ulala toy.The little console, no bigger than a 2p coin, has a opening disc drive and all four controller ports, of which you can actually plug the tiny little controller into any of these just like the real thing! The set also comes with two VMUs, which even have their lids that can be taken off so you can plug the VMUs into the controller or into each other. If that isn't an insane attention to detail for something so small, I don't know what is. Each little system also comes with a replica game or two. Lucky for Ulala, in the case of the Dreamcast you get a tiny copy of Space Channel 5; both the box and the disc, which can be placed in the console if you wish!

Next up is the Sega Saturn in it's model 1 grey glory (I liked the white 2nd model more, but you can't have it all), shown off here by Fighting Viper's Honey. This console miniature comes with a controller, and a box and disc of Virtua Fighter 2. Like the others, you can plug in the controller and insert the disc. This one seems to come with the least pieces. A mini 4MB RAM cart would of been nice. It's still neat none the less, and a great likeness to the chunky old box of joy.

Now for the biggest behemoth of the collection when plugged together, the Mega Drive with both of it's add ons, the 32X and Mega CD. The Mega Drive, the first design with it's iconic gold '16-BIT' lovenly recreated, came with a Master System converter (see further below), a controller, and two game carts: Sonic 1 and Alien Solider. The 32X and Mega CD (Under the system design) were bundled together along with a six button controller, some Mega-CD game I have never heard of and a Virtua Fighter 32X cart. Above is all of these little toys when you plug them together. The disc drive of the Mega CD can slide out to slip a disc in, and the Mega Drive has it's flap of plastic at the bottom so it can plug into the Mega CD, again just like you would with the real deal. Good thing you don't have to sort out all the plugs for this miniature!

Here is where Sega started for many of us: the Master System (I started to get lazy with the photos here, so no character toy showing it off). This the first design of the 8-bit system we got, but the last in Japan. It came with two joypads, a Phantasy Star cart, and Teddy Boy on a 'Sega My Card'. Now if only I could plug it in and play a built in Alex Kidd game. =)

Now this system won't be familiar to everyone unless you lived in japan in the 80's or are a major console collector, as this is a Japanese equivalent of the Master System, the Sega Mark III. Released a couple years earlier, it is a smaller cuter design much like the Famicom compared to our NES. This system comes with two Joypads, a Fantasy Zone cart, some Ninja 'My Card' game and the FM sound unit which you attach to the top of the system (The FM Sound was built into the Master System, which maybe explains why that console was bulkier). This was the third design of the SG-1000, Sega's 2nd console in Japan after the SC-3000. I really dig the design of it.

GrittyKitty also threw in a spare Mega Drive set, which I have with it's Master system converter sitting on top here. The master system games can plug into that too! They have really thought of everything with these toys!

The obsessive attention to detail is quite amazing. Just look at all the games that come with each of the systems. To the untrained eye this photo below makes it look like I own an actual cartridge of Alien Solider! Even the Master System card games have fully detailed artwork on them despite being the size of a pin.

To get the best gist of the scale of these things, here are some comparisons with the real things. For example, see how the Saturn controller is the size of the real controllers start button, and the Dreamcast controller is smaller than the real VMU's screen! Crazy.

Next time: I just bought a Sonic 15th Anniversary statue from Ebay today, so when that arrives in a week or so I will be posting some photos for that! =)