Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo • Hacker News Board

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#11

Post by jonah-archive » Fri, May 31, 2019, 4:14 AM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #10

Long time ago, I read somewhere that SEGA, the company, has very little source code and hardware development artifacts saved from their Dreamcast days (and even earlier than that). They either lost or just junked majority of it as time went on. Do other companies care so little about their own history? If I was running one of these companies, I'd save a copy of every game, console, HW development platform and source…

Often even when people try, it doesn't work out: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7559762-181/hewlett-p...

Lots of copies keep stuff safe.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#12

Post by lostgame » Fri, May 31, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

w_s_l wrote: post #5

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to see seaman in action with some humorous commentary: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IV8hCvsXy0

oh man I remember the hype around this game in magazines back then! It's AI would "adapt" to your inputs and that was a 'wow' in my mind back then. all in all Dreamcast, imho, was the perfect console. You could emulate PSX games at higher, smoother res and sharper textures, there are emulators for various games now. I wonder how much it costs to pick one up now...

The Dreamcast had an incredible array of quality software, and ran at a beautiful full 640x480 while other consoles were for the most part stuck at 320.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#13

Post by daodedickinson » Fri, May 31, 2019, 4:35 AM UTC

phren0logy wrote: post #2

If you like that, then you need to check out SeaMan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_(video_game) "The narration is voiced by Toshiyuki Hosokawa in the original Japanese-language version and by Leonard Nimoy in the English-language version. ... The 'Seaman' is a form of freshwater fish (the color and shape of the fins suggest that it is a Carp) with a very lifelike human face. It possesses human mannerisms and b…

A debate partner of mine told me a story about Seaman where a guy at a debate camp would call home every day to someone who he had arranged to take care of his Seaman for him while he was gone and he had the Seaman sitter hold the phone up to the Dreamcast mic so he could talk to his Seaman. I think the Seaman got despressed and died anyway.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#14

Post by sb057 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 4:36 AM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #10

Long time ago, I read somewhere that SEGA, the company, has very little source code and hardware development artifacts saved from their Dreamcast days (and even earlier than that). They either lost or just junked majority of it as time went on. Do other companies care so little about their own history? If I was running one of these companies, I'd save a copy of every game, console, HW development platform and source…

That's part of the problem; standard practice for Japanese companies until rather recently (as in, within the past decade or so) was to physically print out a copy of the completed game's source code and stick it in a filing cabinet somewhere, never to be seen again. Most remasters of games released ~1995-2005 are based on beta code they happened to find on old workstations.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#15

Post by daodedickinson » Fri, May 31, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

You'd think somebody could print money with a Dreamcast Classic instead of all the cheap looking Genesis things out there. I think the fact that the Dreamcast had too many arcade-like games would make it better than that Playstation Classic which had a lot of slow games that you can't easily jump in and out of.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#16

Post by bredren » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, but this is just not an interesting find to me. A slightly mutated game computer used to display a virtual aquarium? Knock me over with a feather.

I get the obsession w game hardware and that it was Japanese. But this article makes it sound like this was a lost DaVinci sketch book, and these comments liken game design dust to the same.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#17

Post by ncmncm » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:39 AM UTC

bredren wrote: post #16

I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, but this is just not an interesting find to me. A slightly mutated game computer used to display a virtual aquarium? Knock me over with a feather. I get the obsession w game hardware and that it was Japanese. But this article makes it sound like this was a lost DaVinci sketch book, and these comments liken game design dust to the same.

The interest mystifies me too.

OK, it's rare. Everything that flopped is rare. But there are millions of flops. I get that SEGA has a following. But even when SEGA was selling like hotcakes, SEGA fans were not interested in this. Why the interest now?

Genuinely curious.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#18

Post by monocasa » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:39 AM UTC

daodedickinson wrote: post #15

You'd think somebody could print money with a Dreamcast Classic instead of all the cheap looking Genesis things out there. I think the fact that the Dreamcast had too many arcade-like games would make it better than that Playstation Classic which had a lot of slow games that you can't easily jump in and out of.

The IP might be in question; PowerVR made the GPU, and the patents wouldn't have expired yet for instance.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#19

Post by rfrancois » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #17

bredren wrote: post #16

I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, but this is just not an interesting find to me. A slightly mutated game computer used to display a virtual aquarium? Knock me over with a feather. I get the obsession w game hardware and that it was Japanese. But this article makes it sound like this was a lost DaVinci sketch book, and these comments liken game design dust to the same.

The interest mystifies me too. OK, it's rare. Everything that flopped is rare. But there are millions of flops. I get that SEGA has a following. But even when SEGA was selling like hotcakes, SEGA fans were not interested in this. Why the interest now? Genuinely curious.

I think the interest comes from the fact that it is the last "home" console by SEGA before going software only. It's also due to the fact that Sega gave its approval to release disc images that allows emulation. A big Japanese company approving this kind of work is kind of unprecedented.

Re: Rare Dreamcast-Powered Sega Fish Life Preserved and Released by Musée Bolo

#20

Post by toast0 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 6:08 AM UTC

daodedickinson wrote: post #15

You'd think somebody could print money with a Dreamcast Classic instead of all the cheap looking Genesis things out there. I think the fact that the Dreamcast had too many arcade-like games would make it better than that Playstation Classic which had a lot of slow games that you can't easily jump in and out of.

You would need to put real money into the storage though, and you would want to spend real money getting the emulator tuned up so that the end result is good (Nintendo showed how nice things could be, although maybe sales from the Playstation Classic might show it doesn't matter?)