D.J. Tatsujin of GemuBaka

My latest magazine feature is on Tips & Tricks Issue #21 - Would you pay $50 to knock Candy's skirt off? Who is Pepsiman? Who topped the XBand leaderboards in 1996? Want the attack chart for your favorite Star Gladiator character? It's all here!

A couple of years ago I found a few issues of GamePro in a game shop, and I was pleased to realize one of them was the issue where they used 25% of a page to trash Mortal Kombat II Reptile. He is put in his own tier, and this has been in my mind for about 30 years now.

His weaknesses are too long to print, and if you know of any strengths he has, please send GamePro a fax to let them know. Maybe they will send you a Fighter's Edge T-shirt or something.

Here is a photo from an issue of GamePro featuring a dog playing a Virtual Boy to cheer you up.

The SEGA Dreamcast had its original console launch in Japan on Nov. 27, 1998, making the system officially 25 years old today. This means the U.S. release date anniversary will get a likewise 25-year accolade on Sept. 9, 2024.

SEGA of Japan did a couple of celebratory posts for the occasion, crediting the Dreamcast's infamous boot-up audio to musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. It took nearly a year for the system to release stateside, but from all accounts I've read, this was a good thing. It seems the system didn't exactly hit the ground running in Japan, and the extra time allowed developers to tweak a number of games such as Sonic Adventure and Virtua Fighter 3TB.

It's no secret I am a fan of the SEGA Dreamcast, and I try to do some sort of live event based on the system around the timing of its 9-9 release date anniversary. As such, the console usually takes up a large chunk of my retro gaming time in the summer. This year, I made sure to include multiple entries on my website, GemuBaka, to honor a few odds and ends on the console.

First, on a general level, I documented a series of thoughts from playing the system during a "marathon" live stream I did on Sept. 9. I provide comments on the individual games played during the stream, which included me remembering that Dynamite Cop has a special feature where you can read a comic that I believe was originally hosted online. The comic ends with Bruno's monkey stealing the end boss' helmet and going on a power trip ... the storyline to Dynamite Deka 3 was right there, and this is what we missed out on. 😔

On top of that, I point out the drawbacks of the console's controller creep out to me more and more as time passes. This was most evident in trying to do certain commands/combos in Street Fighter Alpha 3 and then playing Spawn: In the Demon's Hand and having to nonstop snap the camera to your back. The absence of a second analog stick is hard to ignore in select games, and it's my selfish desire that the Dreamcast would have kept the six-button spread from the SEGA Saturn.

Another notable from the general Dreamcast report is a publication I found that was distributed exclusively through Toys 'R' Us: The Prima Official Preview Guide for the SEGA Dreamcast. There doesn't seem to be any pricing on the publication, so I wonder if this was some sort of pre-order item for the console.

This is really just a 70-plus page advertisement for the SEGA Dreamcast. You get a nice section at the front that hypes up the system, and then you just have generic previews of games expected in the launch window. However, most of these games are also given advertisements in the publication, which I always enjoy seeing.

Going from one random Dreamcast publication to another, it is of note that the U.S. had both an official and unofficial magazine dedicated to the console. People are likely more familiar with the official version that contained the GD-ROM of demos and game videos, but the newsstand also allegedly carried this unofficial publication, dubbed DCM.

This has been occupying my brain for the past month or so, but looking into DCM provides more questions than answers for me. You'll have likely noted my use of "allegedly" in that last paragraph, and that's because I am striking out on finding more information on any issue of the magazine other than its debut.

This publication was an EGM and Expert Gamer offshoot and was formed with the intent of being run quarterly. Given the life of the SEGA Dreamcast, this magazine stuck to that quarterly rotation and only had four issues. I've found that SEGARetro.org claims the publication is "very rare," and I'm beginning to believe that.

I might get to some deep scrubbing of the internet soon, but simple searching only turns up the cover of each issue. If I do a shopping search of the publication, I get one, single hit on the issue #1 of DCM. I've never seen with my own eyes any other issue of this magazine, so a slice of me is being consumed with verifying issues 2, 3 and 4 do indeed exist.

Anyway, this magazine was actually pretty interesting then and now, with my favorite section being the "BS Detector" in which rumors about the SEGA Dreamcast are plucked from the ether and then given a BS rating on how plausible it is. This section has a couple of really wild twists and turns thanks to the knowledge we now possess. The publication has even more expansive features on the console's specs, and there is even a GameCave.com advertisement that offers pre-orders for every game it could throw at the wall, most notably Castlevania: Resurrection.

My huge video game breakdown of the year was tied into the 20th release anniversary of Feet of Fury. This game title might not immediately ring a bell with most people, but it stands as a very notable game release in that it was a certified retail independent game release that came more than two years after SEGA dropped its support for the system.

Feet of Fury was an independent rhythm game that heavily leaned into a competitive player-versus-player format of the popular DanceDanceRevolution game in arcades. The game is well done given the resources the developer had at the time, but its real pedigree was the independent nature of its development and the fact it was the debut game from GOAT Store Publishing, which intended to release a string of new games for the Dreamcast.

I personally own the game and loosely followed its development around the time of its release, but the internet provided a number of other bread crumb trails to follow and fill in a lot of information on this independent game release. This feature is a really deep dive into how independent Dreamcast development was even possible, how the publishing label formed, general information about the game and notable information from a developer interview I did in 2009 along with other interviews found online.

And then lastly, we have a game spotlight based on Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), developed by Anchor and published by Crave back in 2000. While mixed martial arts (MMA) and UFC are universally very familiar today, this game released when a lot of the regulations of the sport were actually relatively new at the time.

UFC released on the Dreamcast when the organization had recently implemented loose weight classes, the timed round structure and the 10-point-must judging, but there were still a few elements of the "underground" events tucked into the game. The well-rounded fighter was taking shape at this time, but you still had specializations such as fighters that focused on sumo wrestling or boxing. The clothing of the fighters wasn't quite as regulated at that time, so some of the fighters still wore karate gi or singlets. The game also still heavily featured a tournament structure, harking back to the original events that saw competitors participating in multiple matches in a single night.

It's actually an intriguing slice of the sport from that time frame, and it's a bonus that Anchor knew what it was doing in providing a very fluid and satisfying fighting game that teetered the line between being rooted in reality while still giving players a snappy arcade-like experience. The seamless transitions between standup and ground fighting and submission holds were widely lauded by video games press at the time.

Despite owning this game since it launched, I never really dug into the game outside of exhibition fighting. I changed that in June, and I discovered something lurking in the depths of the game I never expected to find: McCarthy Jr.

Based on real-life UFC referee "Big" John McCarthy, McCarthy Jr. serves as the "final boss" of the game's career mode. It is said that Anchor was founded by a developer who previously worked on the Tekken series, and McCarthy Jr. is like a Tekken character was transplanted into this combat sports simulator. He breaks all of the rules other fighters have to follow and is given crazy moves that go as far as a dragon punch. It took me many attempts and roughly 25 minutes to beat him, and this served as such a memorable fight that came out of nowhere that I inducted McCarthy Jr. into the GemuBaka Fighting Game Character Hall of Fame.

The Dreamcast will surely have a place on GemuBaka on the future, but these were the more notable features posted to the site this year. It's awesome to reflect on this system, and as the console hits 25 years in Japan, check out these features if you want some reading on a few very random items relating to the Dreamcast!