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

thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk

31–40 of 55 posts

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

#31

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.

I've been playing around a lot with RetroPie recently - I built myself a full-size arcade cabinet and everything. I started it running on a RaspberryPi, but recently upgraded to a cheap used Dell OptiPlex.

Right now, Dreamcast seems to be the sweetspot for hardware emulation. A sub-$100 PC (on the used market, anyway) can easily emulate a Dreamcast (for all the games I've tried, anyway - Tony Hawk 2, DOA 2, etc), possibly even with extra cycles to provide extra video smoothing to get rid of jaggies that are pretty obvious at its normal resolution.

So yeah, I think this would be possible. I wouldn't think the IP for the hardware would be an issue since it's all emulated, it's just down to the BIOS and the games themselves.

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

#32
>> It is also at this stage where the player releases the seaman into the wild

Not good. Not something to teach to kids, or anyone. I cannot stand people who think that it is acceptable to raise an animal and then "release" it into the wild once it isn't cute anymore. Setting aside the horror of doing this to a dog, there was also a famous Japanese cartoon where a pet raccoon was released once it became an adult. Raccoons, like many wild animals, start off cute but can become violent as they mature. Raccoons are now an invasive pest in Japan, a problem that started during the years after the cartoon.

The concept of keeping animals in a cage with the intention that one animal will eat the other is also very problematic. There is a very fine line between a "natural behavior" and cage fighting. Zoos may feed the lions meat from a dead Zebra. They don't release live Zebras into the lion enclosure.

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

#33
post #6

It's scary to think about all the games we're going to lose because so many games are implemented as SAAS nowadays. As someone interested in gaming history and the preservation of games it's actually quite saddening.

Well more concerning is that source code is never ever released for most games even when they are not sold anywhere anymore. Being able to run a proprietary piece of software is one thing, but being able to check how it was implemented would be more interesting at way many more levels. But gamedevs have no interest in preserving anything, they like it disposable.

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

#34
post #6

It's scary to think about all the games we're going to lose because so many games are implemented as SAAS nowadays. As someone interested in gaming history and the preservation of games it's actually quite saddening.

it's not hopeless, though. as an example, look at the communities that have preserved "vanilla WoW" through reverse-engineered custom servers and patched clients.

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

#35
post #33
post #6

It's scary to think about all the games we're going to lose because so many games are implemented as SAAS nowadays. As someone interested in gaming history and the preservation of games it's actually quite saddening.

Well more concerning is that source code is never ever released for most games even when they are not sold anywhere anymore. Being able to run a proprietary piece of software is one thing, but being able to check how it was implemented would be more interesting at way many more levels. But gamedevs have no interest in preserving anything, they like it disposable.

That's not fair to the devs. Plenty of devs would love to share their code but the companies they develop for prevent them from doing so for obvious reasons.

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

#36

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…

What was up with the Dreamcast and fish? Fish Life, Seaman, plus that game with the fishing rod controller[1]. Plus I'm pretty sure an Ecco the Dolphin game was on there too. Someone at Sega really liked the ocean.

[1] http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/ddrgame_2249_134074308.jpg

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

#37
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…

Japanese companies may be good at certain things, but by far and large most companies I have seen in Japan are really, really bad at documenting and archiving what they do. They work like the past stuff has no value whatsoever.

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

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank you, that game looks extremely weird and interesting. I really dislike his "shouting" shtick, though, I think it makes for really cheap humor.

That's a pretty significant part of the character- most of AVGN's older material is about pointing out the frustration of playing games with incredibly bad controls or non-obvious puzzles.

My bigger complaint with AVGN is the toilet humor, but I still think he does an awesome job of curating awful video games.

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

#39

Wow... I read Dreamcast Junkyard for years, starting back around 2005 or 2006, had a few fishing games for the Dreamcast as well as the fishing controller, and have never even heard of this one! This one is even more interesting than some of the weird ones I know about, like the Dreamcast in the shape of Sonic's head with the built-in TV. So glad to see Dreamcast Junkyard is still at it after all these years! :) Stil…

Even ignoring Sega's dire financial situation at the time, Segagaga had some uh..."issues" that may have prevented its localization:

>For the most part, once you've assigned your staff, this process is fairly automated. You pretty much just kick back, speed up time, and watch as the numbers pile up. Sometimes different random events will pop up, like an employee getting married (which makes them happy), getting divorced (which makes them depressed), making friends or enemies with other programmers, discovering efficient design tricks or coming across some nasty bugs. You can give specific orders to each person, telling them to work harder, or to take a break to study, or take a rest. You can give various items to alter various stats as well, most of which just refresh their stamina. (One of the skills, which shows up as a Question Mark, summons an underage girl wearing a gym uniform, who refreshes each staff member with incredible boosts.)[0]

[0]https://hg101.kontek.net/segagaga/segagaga.htm

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

#40

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.

I've been playing around a lot with RetroPie recently - I built myself a full-size arcade cabinet and everything. I started it running on a RaspberryPi, but recently upgraded to a cheap used Dell OptiPlex. Right now, Dreamcast seems to be the sweetspot for hardware emulation. A sub-$100 PC (on the used market, anyway) can easily emulate a Dreamcast (for all the games I've tried, anyway - Tony Hawk 2, DOA 2, etc), pos…

Can you expand on what tutorial or steps you took to build your own arcade cabinet? I'd be curious to see pictures or the actual internals. Did you install standard cabinet joysticks and buttons as well?
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