Playing All of the Dreamcast Games

[allthedreamcastgames]

Hey Dreamcasters

I'm going to play all the Sega Dreamcast exclusive games and post about each one individually here. This is directly inspired by the recent (and wonderful) Into the Aether season premiere. In that episode they meticulously played the majority of the Nintendo DS library and picked out their top 10 AND mentioned that the following years season premiere will be about the Dreamcast. They said, on the topic of the process that "it was awesome" and that "you should do this too".

Okay, I will.

Here's the list of games I'll be using as my compass.

At some point during this process I'll write out my history with the console for that good-good context, but for now check out some glossy JPEGs of this big beautiful system.

[allthedreamcastgames]

POD 2 : Multiplayer Online

“This racing game is online AND it’s multiplayer”

POD 2 is a very 2000s racing game. I mean that in both the good ways and the not-so-nice ways. Let’s talk about some of the not-so-nice ways first.

First off, the mechanics of POD 2 are not particularly interested in explaining themselves to you. There’s a buffet of arcade racing games mechanics like boost, items, shields, jumps, branching map paths and (weirdly thicc) otherworldly cars. In something like Mario, Dark Souls or Tunic this can be fun, giving the player an opportunity to discover secrets in a game that does not explain all that much can be such a joyous experience. However in a racing game, a genre defined by measuring just how well you can pilot a vehicle, merely plopping a player down in the driver seat without an explanation doesn’t feel great. I suspect this is a holdover from the days of racing games being mostly an arcade experience where there was a steering wheel, a gas pedal and a big ass button on the cabinet that said “TURBO BOOST”; it was usually obvious what everything did.

Second on my not-so-nice list is just the way cars respond to you driving them. I found myself constantly presented with the dreaded “WRONG WAY” warning during my time with this game, and usually it was a consequence of the strange physics that play out whenever you collide with a wall. In a simulation racing game, that would be welcome! I want simulation racing games to teach me what works and what doesn’t in a way that ends up feeling methodical and precise. In contrast, usually the thing I’m looking for in an arcade racing game is spectacle. A great example of this is in 2021’s Cruis'n Blast. That game goes to great effort to keep you pointed forward and cruis’n fast. Even when you mess up, the game still feels incredible. You may not get 1st in every race, but every race feels like a…well… blast. POD 2 feels like it’s trying to do both simulation racing and arcade racing but not really nailing either.

Onto the good stuff!

I truly love how strangely 2000s all the designs in this game are. I mean look at these menus dude.

Everything is covered in electricity, or goop, or rust. It’s so strange in 2023 but in a way that I can’t help but enjoy.

The conceit of the game’s story is also incredible. Wikipedia says: “The game takes place on a terraformed version of Saturn's largest moon Titan where a planet-wide viral outbreak has taken place. The premise of the game is that the only person who knows how to contain the virus will only assist the player if they race against him.” Come on, that’s magical. You don’t really act on that story in any meaningful way but I’m so glad that it’s there.

You might also be asking yourself, “hey this game mentioned it being online and also multiplayer?” Yeah you’re totally right, it is. POD 2 was an attempt at making online racing games a reality. Sega seemed to be pretty interested in this pursuit given their work on making a version of Sega Rally Championship that could be played online via the Sega Saturn Netlink way back in 1994. I can’t speak to how well that feature works given that I’m playing this in 2023 and those servers are long since dead, but I still think it’s a very neat experiment they were performing. Is it quaint in hindsight, yes of course. It’s like naming an Animal Crossing game “Animal Crossing: Sort of like Friends”. All that said, I really respect trying to get online racing to work on a system that existed when dial up internet was all the rage.

[allthedreamcastgames]

Floigan Brothers (2001)

“Skin me Brother"

Okay this game was a lot. Floigan Brothers is a game that defies my trying to put it into a genre. The way the game plays out is that you are thrown into the game playing as Hoigle, the smaller of the two Floigan Brothers, and your job is to help your brother Moigle collect enough objects to make a “machine”. Moigle does not specify what kind of machine, but given the parts you are collecting gives a pretty grim picture.

The way that you collect these objects is by solving what could be called puzzles. For example, one of these puzzles has you run after a dog, catch him three times, and then you are rewarded by the dog digging up an engine that Moigle can use for his machine. It is nonsensical, and quite honestly, that’s the part of this game that I like quite a bit.

There are also puzzles in which you need Moigle to help you achieve something you couldn’t on your own. This is usually some collectable that is out reach, or a location that you can’t get to by jumping. The bizarre part of this game is that you cannot simply ask Moigle to help you up or to throw you someplace you’d like to be. You instead have to do certain things to Moigle to get him in an emotional state where he will do what you need. If you need him to throw you, you have to punch him so he becomes angry. If you need him to throw you on a roof, you need to make him dizzy so he falls down and you can bounce on his tummy. I can’t say these mechanics worked very well for me, but I also cannot say that I’ve really seen them built like this before. It is novelty in the strangest way possible.

Floigan Brothers also opts to adopt a sense of humor that could best be described as “what if we threw a bunch of 90s cartoons into a blender and just used whatever came out?”. So humor is fairly physical and often times relies on “aren’t these brothers dumb?” as their main joke. 

About an hour or two into the game Floigan Brothers introduces a truly horrible looking villain. I think he is made to look horrible on purpose, but he looks like he was rejected from a Tim Burton movie for being too frightening. Here’s a picture of him.

Anyway, this game feels like a fever dream I had once. I can’t say it was a very good game but the experience of playing it was truly something that is hard to replicate.

[allthedreamcastgames]

90 Minutes (2001)

90 Minutes is a video game about soccer.

This is one of the games on the list of Dreamcast exclusives that I'm working off of. However, after watching a Youtube video about the video game, I have decided that I would not be able to distinguish if this was a good or a bad soccer game. I haven't played more than 30 minutes of fifa in my life (not a flex) and therefore feel would have no idea if this is a good version of soccer. So I didn't play this game. I just watched the video.

It in game commentary from a real dude who does that in real life. So that's cool.

Anyway here's a jpeg of Lanz from Xenoblade Chronicles 3. See you in the next post.

[allthedreamcastgames]

Dynamite Cop (1999)

A ridiculous beat-em up that is definitely NOT a Die Hard game.

I'm a sucker for a beat-em ups. Things like Turtles in Time, Streets of Rage, Fight Force, they all have some special sauce that keeps me beating-them-up for quite some time. Dynamite Cop neatly fits into that mold and turns the absurdity dial up quite high.

In this game you play as one of three characters Bruno Delinger, Jean Ivy, or Eddie Brown who are setting out on a mission to save the presidents daughter from a group of modern day pirates who have hijacked a cruise liner. That's a real video-game-ass-video-game plot if I've ever seen it.

Now is also a good time to mention that the main antagonist's name is this game is Wolf Hongo. One more time, Wolf Hongo. I just love that.

Anyway you progress through the game by fighting through hordes of Mr. Hongo's pirates and eventually coming into conflict with Wolf himself. After a fight in which Wolf regularly shoots tiny nuclear bombs at you from his eyeball, you beat him and in turn beat the game.

Dynamite Cop is another instance of a game on dreamcast that owes a lot of it's design to the affordances that an arcade game has. It works on a continue system, the game itself is intended to be able to be beat in smaller sessions, and the replayability is based on the different routes and rooms you can find in the game. I think all of that works just fine in this game because the base system of fighting "bad dudes" is still a blast and I just love how ridiculous everything is in here.

All that said, playing a game like this in 2022 has a few things that hold it back from being great.

The most notable is that the game just isn't going to last you very long. Once you've gone through the different routes on your way to save the presidents daughter and played as the different characters there really isn't much else to do. You could boot the difficulty up for a bigger challenge but "getting good at dynamite cop" is not something that's very high on my priority list.

The other thing that's hard to ignore for me is the obvious copaganda that this game has built into it. It's literally in the title. I do wish that Sega was able to retain the Die Hard license for this game because the story of some dude taking on hordes of bad guys is a lot more compelling (and believable) than the idea that some brave cops are going to go save the day. I realize that this viewpoint is very 1999, but it's hard to ignore when playing through this now.

Overall I had a good time with this one, and would talk about it conversations about fun beat-em-ups. However, I'm not likely to bring it up as one of the best games on the console.

[allthedreamcastgames]

Aerowings (1999)

Aerowings is one part Microsoft Flight Simulator, one part Pilotwings, and one part JAPAN AIR SELF-DEFENSE FORCE'S BLUE IMPULSE AEROBATIC DISPLAY TEAM. It's also neat!

Aerowings (also known as Aerodancing in Japane) is a flight sim game that errs on the side of making the game fun rather than giving you 100 knobs and buttons to really simulate flying. If Microsoft Flight Sim is Gran Turismo then Aerowings is closer to Forza Horizon. That's not to say it's easy, but it certainly wants to highlight how cool it is to fly a jet.

The game comes with two main modes.

The first mode lets the player train to fly with the JAPAN AIR SELF-DEFENSE FORCE'S BLUE IMPULSE AEROBATIC DISPLAY TEAM and eventually perform tricks with them. The tricks are fun and it is pretty satisfying when you finally are able to nail a barrel roll. A weird complaint though, did they have to make the flight instructor so mean?? When you are not performing the tricks correctly he sounds overwhelmingly mad and chews you out for not flying well enough. The vocal performance is also weirdly earnest; the dude recording the lines sounds <em>genuinely</em> mad that the player was unable to do a 30 degree turn in a fighter jet. It was certainly motivating to get the tricks right, but that's just because I didn't want to make the mean-mean man mad anymore.

The other mode presents the player with more traditional 'video game' challenges to perform, things like flying through rings or finding targets and hitting them. This section reminds me quite a bit of pilotwings, and I think for the better. The relaxing tone in both this game and pilotwings can feel really great. It's conjures the image of some kind of flying-based vacation? Like, if Amelia Earhart, the Wright Brothers and Luigi all decided to go to an island, drink some pina coladas and fly around in their ships. It's nice.

However given that these are the only modes of play the game ends up feeling like a bit of a flex on the part of the game designers at how good this game looks and runs. And to be clear, it does look and run good! Even in 2022 it's impressive that they were able to get this game running as well as they do. I also really appreciate trying to find a middleground between Microsoft Flight Sim and something like Ace Combat. It's a niche that I don't know a lot of games fit into.

Thus far I think this is one of the more enjoyable games I've played for this series. I suspect that this won't make a top 10 but I still quite enjoyed the time I spent with it.

[allthedreamcastgames]

Carrier (2000)

Carrier takes the 'Jill Sandwich' line in Resident Evil and turns that into a whole game.

(Content Warning: some dreamcast era gore and gun violence)

I'm a person who very much enjoyed the state of survival horror in the late 90s and early 2000s. Resident Evil 1 - 3 were all games I loved, Parasite Eve is still one of my favorite experiences to return to, and Silent Hill remains a video game that I think about frequently. So seeing that there was a survival horror game that looked quite a bit like the Resident Evil series, I was stoked to jump in here.

Carrier tells the story of a gigantic aircraft CARRIER (get it?) that was returning home from a mission but had lost all contact with its home base in North America. A duo of soldiers from the organization SPARC (one of whom is your playable character) are sent to investigate what's going on. On their way there though, they are shot down by the carrier and crash land on its surface. This is where the game begins in earnest.

The game then, nearly unceremoniously, drops some zombies on your front door and lets you have at it. The game almost assumes you've played Resident Evil before and don't need an introduction into what is going on with the zombies. You've got a gun and there's zombies, you know what to do.

It's worth noting here that the controls of this game are similar to the earlier RE entries in that they are using 'tank controls'. What this means is that there's a fixed camera that is swapping positions between visible scenes and you control your character by pressing up to move forward and down to move backwards, regardless of what position the camera is in. I know that this is a pretty painful way to control a character, but I also think that using fixed camera angles can really benefit games in the horror genre. By restricting the things the player can see, the designers are able to play tricks on the player and warp their expectations about what is around any given corner. Not to mention, taking away some aspect of control from the player feels like a very effective tool for creating an atmosphere that can feel hostile and dangerous, but in the way you would want a haunted carrier to feel. A good example of this kind of camera use to scare the player can be seen in one of the first scenes in Silent Hill 1. The way the camera begins in positions that the player is used to and slowly starts to weave around is genuinely unsettling and serves the purpose of the scene incredibly well. If you've got the stomach for some PS1 gore then it's well worth the watch.

All that said, I don't find the minute-to-minute action of Carrier to be particularly exciting. I suspect this is because I've played games like Resident Evil 4 or even the more recent Resident Evil Village and by comparison the action in these older-style survival horror games doesn't feel as fresh. That's not to say it's bad, it just isn't the thing that I think this game is doing well.

What I do like about this game is its dialog and vocal performances. To be clear, the dialog is very bad and it is performed in a way that no real human would speak. However, I love that. Similar to things like the zoom-in on someone's face in Oblivion, I don't think the dialog was built to be intentionally campy, but the effect is still so much fun. The flip-flop between running down a hallway of unspeakable plant-zombie monsters and then ducking into a room to meet the weirdest guy you've ever seen is genuinely enjoyable. I'd give some longplays of this game a watch if that at all sounds interesting.

While Carrier doesn't feel like a high point for the Dreamcast or the genre, it was a pretty fun jaunt while it lasted. Considering that Resident Evil: Code Veronica also launched within a few days of this game, I'm not surprised that a lot of folks missed this one. But if you're a fan of the genre or like campiness in games, then this is at least worth booting up to see just how wild the cutscenes are.

[allthedreamcastgames]

Charge 'n Blast (2000)

Charge and Blast delivers on it's promise to all gamers, you get to both charge N you get to blast.

Hey this was a weird game. I hadn't played or even head of Charge N Blast before so my curiosity was peaked. It turns out that this game is mostly an on rails shooter in which you control a person in a mech(?) that has a limited amount of time to destroy all of the on-screen monsters. To do that, you choose a weapon (CHARGE) by pressing the X, Y, or B button. Then, you aim and (BLAST) by pressing A. Really the only other way you're able to interact with the game is by moving left or right with the shoulder buttons, which you can use to attempt to dodge some of the attacks. I usually was just strafing back and forth, which weirdly worked out pretty well.

Similar to 4 Wheel Thunder, this game inherits some game design choices that seem like a hold-over from the arcade days. The most obvious of these choices is the presence of continues in the game. Similar to an arcade game, when your health depletes you are presented with the option to 'Continue??'. Of course, there was no quarter slot on the Dreamcast so instead the designers opted to just give you a predetermined number of continues.

I feel like I saw this method applied pretty often, and especially on games that were ported from, or originally designer for the arcade. I certainly don't think it's a bad approach, and in the cold daylight of 2022 feels almost roguelike given that you have to go all the way back to the beginning once you run out of continues. However that would like also come packaged with some variability in the power ups or levels, which this game does not.

I've found that I tend to enjoy the aesthetics of this generation of games, and Charge N Blast fits nicely in that group. It's got this very bright palette of colors while still remaining fairly low poly. It's something that I'm sure doesn't appeal to everyone but I've found it to be really charming the farther away from these releases we've gotten.

I saw a review on Backloggd from user NewYokohama which said: 'Easily one of the most hopelessly stupid game I've ever played. It's like Virtual On but you can't move forward. Also it sucks.' That feels a bit harsh. The game IS simple and I likely won't be returning to it day after day, but there's something to be said for a simple game that just lets you Blast and also Charge.

[allthedreamcastgames]

4 Wheel Thunder (2000)

4 Wheel Thunder is an exciting game and delivers well on letting you ride around in a big ol' truck but mostly made me feel bad doing it.

4 Wheel Thunder sits among a number of games in Midway's 'Thunder' series. Games like Arctic Thunder, an arcade game that typically came installed with a tiny fan above the controller that would blow air on you as you played so you could revel in the 'winds of the arctic'. It is also related to Hydro Thunder, another arcade racing game where you're asked to control a comically fast speedboat. 4 Wheel Thunder poses the question, 'what if we did all this too, but in the dirt and in a big truck?'

I really liked the experience of actually racing in this game, it felt fast and phrenetic in the way that an arcade racer often does. You're encouraged to almost always have your hand on the boost button and because the game gives your opponents a head-start, the race frequently feels like you're clawing your way back to first. It's good!

The tone of the whole game is also quite fun. All of these 'Thunder' games strike a similar 'X-TREME' vibe. I see that the most in the over the top announcer shouting at your while you're racing and in just how responsive the gigantic hunks of metal you're controlling are. In no world would a big car like this be able to whip around a corner in the way that they do, but because the game wants you to feel like you're Vin Diesel in 'The Fast And the Furious 19: Big Wheels & Family Meals' it bends the rules of reality to accommodate that.

The challenging part of the game comes when you actually finish a race. The first race I participated in, I came in second place. Right before crossing the finish line I thought 'hey that wasn't bad at all for my first time!'. However 4 Wheel Thunder snapped me back to its reality by throwing the phrase 'YOU LOSE' on screen. A humbling experience. This choice was almost certainly inherited from arcade game design where, unless you came in first, your game was over the second you passed the checkered flag. However the nearly punitive approach to racing feels somewhat out of place on what would have been a home console experience at the time.

Overall, a fun experience that I'm glad is on a console so that I don't have to hop in a time machine to go to an arcade in 2002 just to play it. But I don't see myself jumping at the opportunity to fire this game up when the King of Racing Games (Mario Kart 8) is politely sitting on my Switch, waiting to be played.