Capcom's Marvel Vs Capcom, 5800 yen, 25th Mar 99.
Taito's Psychic Force 2012, 5800 yen, 4th Mar 99.
My Trackman(a horse racing sim), 5800 yen, 18th Mar

Sonic Adventure Character Movies
Big Boys Toys has released a number of superb quality Sonic Adventure movies and screenshots showing all six playable characters. The movies are in 320 by 240 resolution with the awesome QuickTime 3.0 encoding used. All the movies where taken from Sonic Adventures attract sequence. Maybe that should be called the demo mode, as Sonic Adventure does not need an attract sequence! :) Big Boys Toys website requires your browser to support Java and frames. Here is a link that does not require Java or frames.
(Source: Big Boys Toys)

Shenmue Screenshots
Game Fun Room has put up 21 images and screenshots of Shenmue, and like other screenshots shown so far, show a game that is full of detail with incredible realistic subtle lighting!
(Source: Katsukou, Japanese hobby site: Game Fun Room)

More Sonic Adventure Movies
Dimension S has put up four zipped AVI Sonic Adventure movies, of which a couple of the movies show Sonic on Speed Highway, a single movie of Tails on Windy Tunnel, and a single movie of Sonic on Emerald Coast. You can really tell by these movies that Sonic Team has done an excellent job of making a 3D version of the 2D Sonic games! Speed is king!
(Source: Blue Demon, Dimension S)

News Shorts

• Capcom's Power Stone website weekly update took place last Friday again. No new screenshots this time though.
• CRI posted new screenshots of Aero Dancing and Buggy Heat with their weekly update.

• VF3tb review
• Sonic Adventure review

Shenmue and SEGA Rally 2 Screenshots
Seven new screenshots of Shenmue and two new screenshots of SEGA Rally 2 showing net play. Thanks to Howard for these screenshots!
(Source: Howard Shih, and Dreamcast Magazine)
 

Friday, December 25th, 1998

Thursday, December 24th, 1998

Shenmue Play Modes
According to the latest Japanese Dreamcast Magazine there are 3 game modes in Shenmue:

• QTE (Quick Time Event): you have to respond quickly to icons on the screen to determine the sequence of actions. You do not have full control, but you can still determine the outcome of a specific event by the actions you take with the controller. This mode includes QTE battles.
• Exploring: go where you please in the game world, pick up items, talk to someone, enter a room, etc.
• Viewing: Sometimes the game will play a scripted sequence, which is like FMV, but instead the game engine is used. You can change the camera angle in real-time while this scripted sequence takes place. 

Shenmue Video
Another report from the latest Japanese Dreamcast Magazine, concerns the Shenmue video that was included with VF3tb. Well it seems that video was pre-rendered, and not using the game engine as I thought. That video was done two years ago, as a way for Yu Suzuki to show his development team what he wanted to see in terms of the game engine capability and atmosphere. Now with the power of the Dreamcast, Yu Suzuki is proud to say that they do not have to use any pre-rendered FMV in Shenmue, and he can do what was in his mind two years ago in real-time!
(Source: Howard Shih)

More Sonic Adventure Videos!
Computer Exchange continues to provide excellent quality 320 by 240 QuickTime 3.0 videos of Sonic Adventure! One video shows Sonic racing away from a Killer Whale, that is just incredible! The second video shows the pre-rendered FMV at the start of the game. A big thanks to the people at Computer Exchange for providing these great videos!
 

Wednesday, December 23rd, 1998

New Preview
Added a preview of CSK Research Institute's Aero Dancing game in the games section.

News Shorts

• 30,983 Dreamcasts sold in the past week, making a total of 206,539 sold since it's introduction on Nov. 27th, '98. 
• 28,461 VF3tb games sold in the past week, making a total of 188,590 sold since it's introduction on Nov. 27th, '98.
• Rumor: Psychic Force 2012 from Taito will have the new team battle feature (3 vs 3) that is in the arcade version
• Rumor: Konami will release Castlevania for the Dreamcast at the North American launch
• Rumor: Namco currently has a racing, baseball, action, and fighting game in development for the Dreamcast.

Shenmue Details

• Money can be made in the game by gambling or by doing small jobs.
• The game takes place in China, which includes Hong Kong, and Japan.
• There are four main characters: Ryo Hazuki (male lead), Rei Shenhua (female lead), Owap Hazuki (Ryo's father), and Ren Wuying (Ryo's rival)
• The game will be designed to be simply enough to play by a 5 year old, but have enough depth to please an adult.
• QTE (Quick Time Event) fighting sequences will take up 10 percent of total playing time.
• 1 hour of game time equals one hour of real time. The game time reflects the real world, so that if you play the game at night, it will be night in the game.

New Sonic Adventure Screenshots and Video!
The British import shop Computer Exchange has put up 18 new screenshots of Sonic Adventure, and a 320 by 240 QuickTime 3.0 video of Sonic's encounter with Chaos 0, who is the first boss you meet in the game. Sonic's attacks on Chaos 0 is amazingly fast! The video quality is excellent! Here's hoping that 320 by 240 QuickTime 3.0 video becomes the standard for showing Dreamcast games on the net.
(Source: Trunks)
 

Tuesday, December 22nd, 1998

Sonic Adventure Released Today!
Yuji Naka and Sonic Team's masterpiece was released today! At least two people have mentioned in the message board that they have picked up their copies. NoriPhd in Hong Kong, and Katsukou in Japan. 
(Source: NoriPhd, and Katsukou)

Shenmue Video
Computer Exchange has a Shenmue video that I have mentioned before, and something you might want to download. This is the video from the Shenmue disk that came with VF3tb. Most people including myself thought that all the scenes in that video was pre-rendered footage. After seeing the press release yesterday indicating this: "Shenmue does not contain any CG movies", makes that video ten times more impressive! WOW! Hats off to Yu Suzuki and AM2! 
 

Monday, December 21st, 1998

Shenmue
A game that is without doubt the best looking game in the history of video games! Nothing can even come close to touching the detail that is present in this game! Shenmue shows that the Dreamcast is the most powerful game system available, easily beating Model 3 Step 2.1!

• Game images released during Dec. 20th, '98 introduction. 
• SEGA of America's Dec. 21st, '98 press release. 
• Pre-introduction teaser images showing hand motions.
• An article at Dreamcast IGN entitled: Shenmue Premiere: The Full Report.
• A page that has quite a number of links to pictures from the Shenmue introduction.
• A Japanese hobby site that has many pictures from the Shenmue RealVideo broadcast: here, here, and here.

Shenmue "Project Berkley" Presentation!
Today in Japan Yu Suzuki and AM2 will show what they have been working on for the past 3 years! Yu Suzuki, considered by many people to be the best game producer in the world and AM2 considered to be the best programming team in the world will surely present a masterpiece of gaming! So far over $10 (US) million dollars have been spent on Shenmue's development. Almost no details have been released on this game, except that it is going to be multi-genre.

There will be three presentations today at the Yokohama International Meeting Assembly Hall, with each session allowing 5000 people to see the show. The presentation will be broadcast live over the internet at this address: http://shenmue.by.arena.ne.jp/  You will need a RealVideo player to be able to see the show. Check the message board for the exact address around the time of the presentation, if the information presented at http://shenmue.by.arena.ne.jp/ is not clear enough at presentation time.

(Source: Gary Evans, Shenmue poster)
 

Friday, December 18th, 1998

Power Stone Update
Capcom has updated their Power Stone website with some pictures showing what the characters looks like after they have collected three Power Stone's. Power Stones are magical crystal type rocks, which are randomly placed in the game's level, where you character has to collect them. When three are collected, you character will transform, and you will be able to perform a special move, causing great damage to your opponent.

Pen Pen Triicelon Videos
General Entertainment has updated their Pen Pen Triicelon website, with quite a few RealVideo movies, showing the game's levels. Some of the movies are quite long, but the low bandwidth from the site causes a lot of pauses in the playing of the video, and RealVideo being a streaming video format is not very clear. Here is another site at http://dreamcast.poisontooth.com/ which offers some more Pen Pen Triicelon videos that are in a resolution of 320 by 240 in QuickTime 3.0 format, and the quality is fantastic!
(Source: Japanese hobby site: Address Snowy)

More Inside the Dreamcast
Game StationX offers a look inside the Dreamcast, and make some very interesting observations! It seems you cannot change the battery in the Dreamcast, which is hard to believe!

The battery is hardwired - there's no easy changing of this puppy like there was on the Saturn. Kind of an odd choice, we would have thought, but there it is.

Just to let you know the Battery in the Dreamcast is rechargable.  It charges itself while the machine is on.

The Dreamcast features a rechargeable battle which is used for saving the date, time and language settings internally. Sega recommend's that you charge (keep the power on) for approximately 2 hours, the first time you use it. Furthermore, the manual explains that the charging process continues even while playing games.

And as an added bonus, there's a thermistor attached to one of the cooling rods to measure the temperature, probably attached to a cut-off in case of overheating.

Then there's the power supply. It's been designed, according to the label, for voltages ranging from 85 to 132 AC. This means that there is absolutely no problems running them in North America - they're designed for it. No silly step-down transformers are needed.

Buggy Heat and Aero Dancing
12 new screenshots of Buggy Heat have been posted at CSK Research Institute Corp.'s (CRI) website and they have also added 14 new screenshots of Aero Dancing showing the F15 jet in action. There is also a page showing the Heads up Display (HUD) used by the jets in the game.

Frame Gride
From Software's mech fighting game Frame Gride, that is very similar to Virtua On, have confirmed that it will have online multiplayer fighting as an option!
(Source: Katsukou)
 

Thursday, December 17th, 1998

Sonic Adventure Online Capabilities
Sonic Adventure will have an option in the game's menu screen marked "Internet". With that option you can visit Dricas, which is SEGA's official website for DC users, and with the internet option you can also send email. Yuji Naka has also indicated that you can download information and added it to the game, like Chao characters that can be traded with others on the net. Chao characters are very similar to the A-Life characters of NiGHTS into Dreams on the Saturn, and these Chao characters can be uploaded to your VMS (VMU) unit for some extra gameplay. It is too bad that SEGA did not include multiplayer capability in Sonic Adventure, as it would have been awesome to play the game together with a friend over the internet.
(Source: GameSpot News article)

Dreamcast Games Rated
The Japanese magazines have reviewed all the games that are going to be released next week, and here are their ratings, with the average score in brackets. 

Sonic Adventure
DC Mag 9 9 10 (9.3) 
DC Fan 9 9 9 (9)
FamiTsu 9 10 9 10 (9.5)
Overall avg. 9.27 - highest rated game on Dreamcast so far!!! VF3tb got overall avg. 9.23

Seventh Cross
DC Mag 6 7 7 (6.7)
DC Fan 8 7 7 (7.3)
FamiTsu 4 8 7 5 (6)
Overall avg. 6.67

Tetris 4D
DC Mag 7 4 5 (5.3)
DC Fan 5 6 8 (6.3)
FamiTsu 7 5 5 7 (6)
Overall avg. 5.87

High Resolution Textures
Here is a page at S3's site showing a special Unreal level using S3 Savage3D's texture compression capability. The Dreamcast PowerVR Series2 graphics chip has a similar texture compression capability called Vector Quantization (VQ). Expect to see games on the DC using very large unique and detailed textures, as a result of this texture compression. As you can see by the screenshots at S3's site, that the texturing looks incredible!

Climax Landers VMS Game
Here is a page at Climax Entertainment's website, showing screenshots of the VMS game that will come with Climax Landers.
(Source: Elric DC Japanese news site)
 

Wednesday, December 16th, 1998

Shenmue Website
The Shenmue website has gone live! No information is available at the site now, except the title. Expect more information at the site, after the Dec. 20th Shenmue introduction.

News Shorts

• 34,726 Dreamcasts sold in the past week, making a total of 175,556 sold since it's introduction on Nov. 27th, '98.
• 30,242 VF3tb games sold in the past week, making a total of 162,130 sold since it's introduction on Nov. 27th, '98.
• Culture Brain of Japan is working on two Dreamcast games: SD Hiryunoken Gaiden EX Edition, which is due May '99, and Hiryunoken Legends, which is due Aug. '99. Both are fighting games that will most likely not be released outside it's domestic market.
• Rumor: Capcom plans to release Marvel VS Capcom in April '99.
• Rumor: AM2 might have to give up Virtual Fighter 4 development on Model 4 and produce the game for Naomi's arcade board instead, due to pressure from SEGA's president.
• Koei has announced it's first Dreamcast title Happy Mahjong II, where you can play characters from their simulation games: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Operation Europe, Ambition of Nabunaga, etc.

Sonic Adventure Rating
Sonic Adventure is due in six days, and we have a rating by the Japanese game publication Weekly FamiTsu. The game got 38 out of 40, which is 95 percent. No real surprises here, since we are talking Yuji Naka and the rest of Sonic Team applying their talents to a game. So SEGA will know have two awesome games available for the DC, one for the fighting crowd, and another for the platform/adventure crowd.
(Source: NoriPhd, Sega DC BBS, Weekly FamiTsu)
 

Tuesday, December 15th, 1998

Dreamcast Technical Pages 1 Year Anniversary
Well it has been one year since I have put up this site on the net! 227,000+ visitors! Not bad! I have put in hundreds of hours of work into this site, and I must admit that for the most part I have enjoyed it. I must be a masochist or just plain nuts! :) Not sure though how long this will last, as my sanity is starting to come back. As more and more games come out, it becomes harder for me to stay on top of things, and this site may get too big for me to handle.

My other site PowerVR Global celebrated it's one year anniversary 15 days ago. I must be one of the few people on the planet that has two hobby websites that require daily news updates. You may notice that the news on DC Tech started on September 29th, 1997 and was updated 2 to 3 times a week for two and half months before the site went on the net. That was me practising regular news updates. :) I want to thank you guys for being a part of this site, and especially for you guys who share so much information with me everyday in the message forum, and by email!
 

Monday, December 14th, 1998

Screenshots
Quite a few screenshots have appeared over the past few days:

• Hardcore Gaming's SEGA-Holic has new screenshots of SEGA Rally 2 showing night driving, and Dynamite Baseball '98, which will be coming out for the Naomi arcade board.
• CSK Research Institute Corp., has put up new screenshots of Buggy Heat, and Aero Dancing.
• Setup a page that shows quite a few pictures of inside the Dreamcast.
• Japanese hobby site, Game Fun Room, with screenshots of Konami's Flight Shooting (tentative name), From Software's Frame Gride, SEGA:ESP:Sting's Evolution, Taito's Psychic Force 2012, and Atlus's Maken X.

Shen Mue
The Shen Mue introduction on December 20th, 1998 will be shown on the net at http://shenmue.by.arena.ne.jp  SEGA has also launched a Shen Mue website at http://www.shenmue.com Here is the current page at SEGA of Japan's website for Shen Mue. The broadcast site and the www.shenmue.com site are currently not active. SEGA will be selling toys, music (mini-CD), and brochures at the Shen Mue introduction, similar to the stuff that was available at the Sonic Adventure introduction.
(Source: NoriPhd, GunneR, and Galford)
 

Thursday, December 10th, 1998

Latest Screenshots
NoriPhd has provided some new screenshots: 

• Shen Mue: a new character sketch, and some antennas. The antennas are most likely objects from the game world. Quite a number of different antennas are shown indicating great variety in the game world for such a simple object! It looks like the attention to detail in this game is going to be amazing!
• SEGA Rally 2 new courses: Mountain special stage 1 (SS1) and Mountain special stage 3 (SS3), which are both part of the Ten Years Championship mode. 
• SEGA Rally 2 split screen (vs mode): expect 60 fps in split screen mode.
• MPEG Sofdec: a high polygon count environment mapped teapot that is infront of full screen MPEG video. This clearly shows the DC handling video and polygons at the same time! Very impressive. As reported earlier the DC MPEG Sofdec video, only utilizes 50 percent of the SH-4 CPU, leaving plenty of processing power for the rendering of high polygonal objects. It will be interesting to see how developers make use of this.

Thus far, the few, extremely proud (and broke) Dreamcast owners in America have one main reason to praise the system: VF3tb. Here at GR we play the game amongst each other on a daily basis, shocked every time by the machine's incredible rendering power. And this is a launch title!

Compare Altered Beast to Streets of Rage 2 on the Genesis...or compare VF to VF2 on the Saturn. Sega is known for their stunning programming progression on consoles. Sure, the VF3 veterans quickly identify where the DC version misses the mark in terms of gameplay and graphics, compared to the arcade, but these are minor inconsistencies.

Asia Arcade Amusement Show
As reported earlier, the Asia Arcade Amusement show took place in Shanghai, China on December 4th ~ 6th. SEGA was there in full force, showing Model 3 games: Daytona 2, SEGA Rally 2, Dirt Devil, Virtua On 2, Fighting Vipers 2, Spike Out, and AM1's Ocean Hunter - Seven Seas Adventures. Also SEGA showed their latest Naomi game House of the Dead 2, but unfortunately did not show any other Naomi games.

The Asia Amusement Show was a huge success with a huge number of people attending the event, which was open to the general public. Tickets for the show where hard to come by, and expensive. 

The show is a co-operation between SEGA Huahan company (China), which is a SEGA China joint venture company that focuses on the arcade business, Japan's JAMMA organization, and the Chinese government's Cultural department. This is the first time that the Chinese government has been officially involved in the arcade industry. This clearly reflects the changing attitude of the Chinese government towards video games. Read that, as time to make lots of money. If SEGA plays their cards right, as they are doing so, with shows like this one, they stand a good chance of doing very well in this nation of 1.2 Billion people! 
(Source: John Wang of Shanghai)
 

Tuesday, December 8th, 1998

WARP's Real Sound
WARP's first title for the Dreamcast will be a makeover version of Real Sound, and it will be released on February 25, 1999. Real Sound was first released on the Saturn in Japan only, in July of '97, and this game is very unusual in that it uses only sound for the interactive element. The main player in this game weaves his way through a love story using conversation, music, and sound. There are no in-game graphics, except for some on screen prompts and arrows. That means no fancy screenshots to ogle over. 

Now you can see why Kenji Eno's game company is called WARP. Kenji Eno wanted a game that would rely on the human imagination to provide the visuals. The game clearly goes back to the days when radio was the chief form of entertainment. It nice to see a company taking such risks to try something new like this game!

WARP will be also releasing a limited edition version of this game on the DC, that will include a demo of D2. The demo will be comprised of the opening movie, level one play till the first boss, and the opportunity to drive a snowmobile! Expect to pay through the nose for the limited edition version.
(Source: Gamers Republic article)
 

Monday, December 7th, 1998

Sonic Adventure Screenshots
The latest from NoriPhd, and Dreamcast Fan #23 magazine. 22 screenshots showing E102, it's enemies, along with some screenshots showing a new level called Ice Cap.
(Source: NoriPhd, Dreamcast Fan #23)

Dreamcast Movies
Here is a site that has some excellent 320 by 240 QuickTime 3.0 videos of Virtua Fighter 3tb, Godzilla Generations, and Pen Pen Triicelon. Only one problem, and that is the site is extremely slow, with everyone and his dog downloading the videos. You might want to wait a few days or a week before you try to download the videos. The site has just added the entire intro sequence for VF3tb, and it comes in at a whopping 51 MB!
(Source: F5 Twister)

SEGA Rally 2 Info
Gamers' Republic's website, which is turning into the must see site everyday for the latest Dreamcast news, has some details on SEGA Rally 2:

Sega Rally 2 will contain all new original elements, new courses and a new game mode. The new course is called "Muddy" and it is based on a real course from Indonesia.  As the title suggests, the course is exceptionally muddy, thus enhancing the rally-car experience.

KDD To Build Internet Access Network For Sega Dreamcast Users
TOKYO (Nikkei)-KDD Corp. will start building an Internet access network next month exclusively for users of Sega Enterprises Ltd.'s new Dreamcast home video game player, Sega sources said Thursday.

The 128-bit machine has a built-in modem allowing users to play games via the Internet, as well exchange e-mail, chat electronically and browse web pages. KDD will set up phone lines and servers to construct the exclusive nationwide access network for Dreamcast users. The step is designed to avoid expected phone line congestion among users playing games via the Internet.

KDD will install servers to set up 14 nationwide access points through its Internet provider group company. The telecom firm plans to raise the number to 90 by April. Only Dreamcast users will have access to the points.

Sega shipped about 150,000 machines in the week after it launched Dreamcast on Nov. 27. So far, an estimated 40,000 owners are using the Internet access. The company aims to ship 1 million machines by the end of March.

(The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Friday morning edition)

Even More Buggy Heat Screenshots
Well, CSK Research Institute has been very busy this week, as they have released even more screenshots of Buggy Heat. Well the game looks great, let just hope that it also plays great.
 

Thursday, December 3rd, 1998

Power Stone
The game that will be coming for SEGA's Naomi arcade board and Dreamcast, will be released on the DC in late Feb. '99. 
(Source: NoriPhd, Japanese game site: Address Snowy)

VGA Box
As mentioned before, SEGA will be selling a special connector that will allow you to play DC games on your VGA computer monitor. The VGA box will go on sell in Japan on January 14th, 1999 for 7000 YEN. It seems that games need some extra code to make them work with the VGA box, as VF3tb and Godzilla Generations will work with it, but not Pen Pen Triicelon or July. SEGA should insist that all games work with it!
(Source: NoriPhd, Japanese game site: Address Snowy)

Aero Dancing Screenshots!
CSK has released 6 new screenshots of Aero Dancing, with a couple screenshots showing night flying!
(Source: Luya)

Climax Landers Delayed
Another game delay: Climax Landers delayed from Jan. '99 to Feb. 25th, '99. 
(Source: NoriPhd, Japanese game site: Address Snowy)
 

Wednesday, December 2nd, 1998

New Buggy Heat Screenshots! 
CSK has released 16 new screenshots of Buggy Heat at their japanese website. This game is starting to look very good indeed!
(Source: Fernando)

Games Delayed
SEGA of Japan have announced more game delays:

Evolution from 12-23-98 to 1-21-99 
Blue Stinger from 1-14-99 to mid March 99

Asia AM (Arcade Amusement) Show
From Magic Box Gaming News:

The yearly Asia AM (Arcade Amusement) Show will take place in Shanghai, China on December 4th ~ 6th, the following companies will participate in the show and display their newest arcade and home console games to visitors: Sega, Namco, SNK, Capcom, Taito, Tecmo, Jaleco, Sammy, Banpresto, K&U, A Create, Atlus, Visco, Hope, Warners, AAMA, L&W Supply Global Inc., Wai Lee Video Amusement Co., Tai Tin Amusement Co.

The bottom line is that it's a truly excellent conversion. The graphics are slightly different to the arcade game, due to the fact that the Model 3 technology displays polygons in a different way to Dreamcast, but they're still incredibly good. The important thing, however, is that the game plays exactly the same as the arcade version.

Graphically, this game is a joy to simply watch, let alone play. Backgrounds retain their awesome splendor from the arcades. Everything from Jeffrey's beach stage at night (with a full moon's light bathing the battle in an eerie glow) to the elevated sumo ring with sunset for added affect.

New Aero Dancing Screenshots!
CSK has released 19 new screenshots of Aero Dancing at their japanese website. The jet models in this game look absolutely stunning! 
(Source: F5 Twister)

Software Tools
Sega's subsidiary partner CSK has released a couple of development tools for the Dreamcast, where one tool is for video and the other is for sound:

CRI's MPEG Sofdec (MPEG1 Software Decoder)

• MPEG1, digital format
• full screen, in 24-bit color
• 24 fps or 30 fps
• 320 × 240 resolution
• stereo 16-bit 44.1 KHz sound
• compression as high as 1/50
• 50 percent CPU utilization
• 2 Mbps or 4 Mbps of GD-ROM access bandwidth needed out of a total of 14,745 Mbps (1800 KBytes/s)
• 2 hours of playing time on a single Dreamcast GD-ROM
• used in VF3tb, Pen Pen Triicelon, July, Godzilla Generations, Aero Dancing, Buggy Heat, and Sonic Adventure

• six 16-bit 44.1 KHz CD quality digital sound channels
• also supports 22.05 KHz (TV/FM quality), and 11.025 KHz (AM quality)
• 1 percent CPU utilization
• used in Aero Dancing, Buggy Heat, Evolution, and Sonic Adventure

Here is the Japanese CRI MPEG Sofdec press release and CRI ADX press release at CSK's website. You can possibly expect MPEG2 (DVD quality) software decoders in the future, even though MPEG1 is of sufficient quality.
(Source: phu, Gamers' Republic article)