Racketboy

Note from racketboy: Forum member, nick944 was kind enough to share this informative review about his portable Dreamcast system with us.  I hope you enjoy it!
What Is A Treamcast?
The Treamcast is a Dreamcast with a screen attached and a few modifications. Yup, this is another one of those crazy modified systems from China.  As you […]

As we’ve discussed before, sealed games yield quite a premium over their opened counterparts when it comes to collectors. This is especially true of games that are rare to begin with. So imagine my amazement when forum member, lost_within posted this massive eBay auction that includes every single Japanese Dreamcast game in sealed […]

The Sega Dreamcast has one of the most loyal followings of hardcore gamers and more than seven years after Sega announced the end of its hardware run, the Dreamcast is still slowly being supported by a handful of devoted developers. The latest game be announced is DUX, a new 2D shooter from the […]

The Nintendo Wii may get all the mainstream attention when it comes to party games, but the Sega Dreamcast is still one of the best (and most affordable machines) when it comes to solid multiplayer action. The Dreamcast multiplayer library is quite diverse and has a number of titles that are recommended for both […]

The Dreamcast is one of the most popular consoles here at racketboy.com, and I’ve had numerous requests to compile a list of the games that still have not been ported elsewhere.  While a good deal of the most popular games have transitioned over to newer consoles, there are still a surprising amount of quality titles […]

The Need For Solid Arcade Controls
One of the initial motivations for getting a Dreamcast was its wide selection of fighting games such as Marvel vs. Capcom, Soul Calibur, and Street Fighter Alpha 3. However, once I tried bringing the arcade fighting experience home, I was very disappointed with the button layout with the […]

I’ve had a couple requests to compile a list of all the Dreamcast games that have appeared on other console and the PC and Mac as well.
While this list may not be exhaustive, it includes just about every worthwhile game Dreamcast including imports. The list is alphabetical and the other systems each game appears […]

Racketboy Reaction
The Dreamcast game library is filled with tons of 2D shooters, but if you enjoy blowing stuff up, but would like a bit of variety from the standard vertical or horizontal scrolling shmup, with a bit of Street Fighter (and other Capcom) fan-service thrown in, you definately need to look into Cannon Spike.
The […]

The Sega Dreamcast had many promising games canceled near the end of it’s lifespan such as Propeller Arena and Half-Life. However, there were also some lesser-known games at the beginning of the Dreamcast’s launch that never saw retail shelves.
There is one particular game by the name of “Drones”, that I had never even heard […]

Video game magazines are such an interesting way to look back in time at this revolutionary industry. This issue of Official Sega Saturn Magazine (UK) lets us look back at the transition period between the Saturn and the Dreamcast. For Sega fans, this was a time of both frustration and excitement. The […]

With virtually every disc-based console video game system, there has been an relatively easy way to copy, burn, and play perfect backup copies of games on a system either via an emulator or the console itself. Most consoles use a variant of either a CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM disc. This makes it […]

When you add a console to your collection, the first thing you want to do is get a handful of games to keep you busy with your new toy. However, most of us can’t spend afford to spend fat pile of cash for a few games. This budget-friendly list should help you quickly find which […]

As one of the most revolutionary minds behind Sega’s past blockbusters and innovation, Yu Suzuki can be thanked for a number of great games such as Outrun, Shenume, and the Virtua Fighter series. As a tribute for the master and look back for his fans, Yu Suzuki’s Gameworks Volume 1, was a book and […]

In their hardware days, Sega was always known for being ahead of their time. The Dreamcast Keyboard and Dreamcast Mouse are interesting example sof thinking outside of normal console gaming protocol in order to bring Sega fans the best console experience possible.
Like many of Sega’s quirky peripherals, there aren’t a whole lot of […]

Usually, when you get a new-to-you console, you can usually find or remember the major games to check out. But what happens when you need something different to play? This is where the “Hidden Gems” come in.
Read More About My Criteria For Hidden Gems
See All The Hidden Gems Articles
This will be a bit of a […]

One of the most interesting things about the Sega Dreamcast is that commercial games are still slowly being released in Japan more than 5 years after it was taken off the retail scene in the US. As one of the three (so far) 2D shooters to be released in 2007, Trigger Heart Exelica is […]

The RetroGaming 101 series is aimed at gamers who are just starting out in the classic gaming scene or are curious about an older console that they don’t know much about yet. Those of you that are especially knowledgeable about the featured console, I encourage you to add any information that you think would […]

This is basically a rumor, but there is some solid evidence that one of the games from my XBox Live Wishlist might become a reality.
According to Eurogamer, Ikaruga, the cult classic 2D shooter from Treasure apparently has shown up on the XBox 360’s top-secret (only for developers and journalists) area, Partnernet.
Eurogamer stated,
“There are two downloads […]

I’ve been cleaning up the files on my PC, including a number of useful text files. Among these files is a tutorial that I picked up a while back that let people put multiple Dreamcast games on a single CD-R. This can be pretty helpful if you want to put a few of […]

Going on its ninth year of being on the retail scene (at least in Japan), the Sega Dreamcast still has three new anticipated games coming out in 2007. While I have already covered each announcement on its own, I wanted to do a recap of them as a whole along with release information, screenshots, […]

Let’s face it. The Dreamcast will not die. Sega’s little white box just refuses to give up the fight.
Japanese publisher Milestone is bringing yet another interesting 2D shooter to the Dreamcast in the form of Karous (official site) and will have a release date of March 8th, 2007.

Karous looks like it is similar […]

It’s a tragedy that the Sega Dreamcast was killed off so early. Not only did the console have some much potential, but Sega also had a number of games that were ready for retail, but just never got released.
Propeller Arena is one of the most famous of the unreleased Dreamcast games as it used […]

The Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console is bringing classic Nintendo emulation to the masses, but with the high download prices, it can be frustrating for people that already own the original cartridges to have to shell out more money.
Fortunately for us retro gamers that aren’t able to find and/or purchase a Wii and purchase Virtual Console […]

Much like the N64, the Dreamcast was one of the first consoles to become a good party machine due to its four controller ports as a standard feature. And while their was a great deal of 4-player sport, racing, and FPS games on the Dreamcast, there were not a lot of dedicated party games […]

Ok — every time we think we have seen the last of the commercial Dreamcast shooter releases, another one gets announced (not that I’m complaining).
The newest entry in the Dreamcast shmup library comes from Warashi, which shooter fans may know from the Saturn shooting game Shienryu.

The Dreamcast port of the fairly recent Naomi arcade game, […]

Inspired by the classic Micro Machines games of the 8-bit/16-bit eras with a touch of Pixar Toy Story feel, Toy Commander was one of the first quirky Dreamcast games to hit the market.
While there isn’t one individual aspect that makes Toy Commander stick out, it is very well-rounded in terms of presentation, attention to detail, […]

The Dreamcast had a long string of 2D shooters that continued long after the console left the retail scence in most countries.
Trizeal was developed by Triangle Service, a small Japanese developer, and was ported to the Dreamcast in 2005 from the NAOMI arcade platform, making it one of the officially licensed games to be released […]

The Dreamcast is an extremely versatile machine – there’s no denying that. As if the commercial developers didn’t push the limits of the console enough, there are many homebrew and emulator developers out there that are trying to squeeze every last ounce of processing power out of the Dreamcast in order to bring more playable […]

It’s pretty easy to find a list of “The Top 10 Dreamcast Games” or some similar ranking, but most of them were written back when the console was still on the retail scene and almost all of them only compare the games against other Dreamcast games.
This is all fine if the Dreamcast is the only […]

Castle of Shikigami 2 (also known as Shikigami No Shiro II) naturally originated in the arcades and was later ported to the Sega Dreamcast (in the series of late shmups that kept the DC import scene alive), Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Xbox. The game was released in Japan for each of those mediums and […]

September 9, 1999 (better known as 9/9/99) was the date of possibly the most successful game console launch in history. It also marked the release of what is possibly one of the best console-specific magazines to be published in the USA.
The Official Dreamcast Magazine was a slick publication that not only featured some of […]

You will find that I bring up the development house known as Treasure quite often — and for good reason. They are behind many of the best cult-classic games of all time and know how to feed the cravings of hardcore gamers — sometime before the audience even knows what it is that they […]

In the peak of Sega’s creativity, legendary developer Yu Suzuki was finally able to release the long-awaited and heavily-hyped project that was started on the Sega Saturn’s hardware, but was able to thrive on the Dreamcast’s extra power.
Shenmue defied traditional gaming genres and took elements from a number of game types. It features strong […]

The third installment of Sega’s premiere 3D fighting series seems to suffer from a was could be labeled as middle-child syndrome. While it is a decent game, it had a number of circumstances going against it.
The first Virtua Fighter was, of course, a ground-breaking game as Sega brought in its cutting-edge 3D modeling and […]

If you ask most gamers to list off the current-generation consoles (soon to be last-gen), the will probably recite “PS2, XBox, and Gamecube”, but conveniently neglect the Sega Dreamcast. As many of you know, the Dreamcast was way ahead of its time ” (literally fifteen months before the PlayStation 2 and three years
before GameCube […]

The Sega Dreamcast is quite possibly one of the most versatile console of all time. They also happen to be quite affordable and plentiful. If you don’t already have one, you need to pick one (or two) up. If you already have one, take a look at some hardware and software that […]

Over the last decade or two, we have seen a wide variety of gaming hardware — each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I would love to be able to play with just about every unique piece of hardware at least once. However, some of the most interesting gaming machines are both difficult to […]

The Dreamcast is truly an amazing machine that was ahead of its time. One amazing capability that Sega’s little white box was able to pull off surprisingly well was emulate original Playstation games.
Now don’t get your hopes up too much — while some games run quite well, the number of Playstation games that are […]

As one of the best games that defined the Dreamcast, Samba De Amigo is one of the premier rhythm games of all time. Unfortunately not that many people have actually played it.
While I have greatly enjoyed this unique game, I have not been privileged enough to possess the full Samba De Amigo box set […]

While VGA mode is supported by most every Dreamcast games, there are a few that do not support it. Some of the non-VGA games can be patched to be used with a Dreamcast VGA cable by making some quick modifications to the ripped game’s CDI file.
You can also get a full-featured Dreamcast VGA Box […]