A dreamcast documentary(s) by Archipel and G4TV (with interviews from dreamcast game devs.)

[beanboy]

Here's a nice two part documentary, from Archipel, called "A Dreamcast," that came out a few days ago, on youtube.
It's a cool documentary, where the famous devs from sega, namco and a few other game companies, talk about their experiences, making games for the dreamcast. eg. Crazy Taxi, Skies of Arcadia, Soul Calibur, Sea Man, Ikaruga, and other cool stuff etc.

Strangely, as others including myself have noticed, the super famous grand daddy creator, of 3d fighting games,Yu Suzuki, who is the the creator, of the advanced, Virtua Fighter martial arts fighting games, and even the co-creator of Sonic, Yuji Naka, were not interviewed for this documentary. Hopefully, they will be interviewed in another documentary one day.

The documentary is also kinda sad too.
Some of the devs, moreso the ones from sega, blame themselves, for the dreamcast failing.
I will admit, after watching both parts, especially part 2, I actually wish 10 times more than ever before, that the higher ups in sega Japan, didn't pull the plug on the dreamcast.

Well, I hope you guys enjoy watching it. I learned alot of new stuff too. And remember, no crying.
Otherwise the Sony tekken fanboys will laugh, and the power of the powerstones, will leave us forever.


Here they are. It's two parts. Enjoy dudes!

Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD7JYqty8aE

Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzXSZTk-J8A


Update:

G4TV's Dreamcast documentary
https://youtu.be/e_EhUAwXrE8

[sgmx]

Thanks for the share it looks great !

[Strik3r91]

thank you very much! will watch it soon.

[Anthony817]

I watched this the other day, it was a really great video.

[beanboy]

@Anthony
Yeah. It was really informative.

[beanboy]

I wish they interviewed Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, and the Powerstone devs too.
If they did, that would have been super cool.

[cloofoofoo]

I gotta admit I agree with them. It was their fault. The Dreamcast era was very creative but they were given too much free reign. For every game they thought of Sega should have forced them to revisit old properties.

Need a sequel to space harrier? Oh planet harriers for an expensive not compatible board. The next Virtua fighter ? Oh let's make it for an arcade board that's 3 times faster than the home console. A sequel to nights? Let's just toss it away and use it's controls as reference for maracas controller. Shinobi? Sure after we finish skies of Arcadia and 2 Sakura wars games. Like wtf. People loved spike out in arcades, nah IAM just gonna refuse to Port because it won't be 100% even though rent a hero runs on the same engine.

I loved their creative out put but seriously someone should have also grounded them every now and then. They also should have been forced to Port allot of the model 3 stuff. Even it wasn't 100% it isn't such a big hit like let's say model 2 to saturn. Or Virtua fighter 1 to 32x. They were just too spoiled at that point.

[Thmanx]

Yeah I stumbled across this 2 part-er the other day too. Figured someone else would post about in on the forum with more of a write up about it then I would have.

Indeed it was very interesting seeing the Japanese SEGA side of things, how when you were inside the SEGA bubble it looked like all fun and games and how some of the Devs were really inspired to do amazing work on the machine. Especially the Namco/Soul-Calibur team.

Like lets take the crack shot team who just got off the heals of Tekken 3, make an even prettier and better game for arcades based on a fresh IP. Then when they switch gears to port it to the Dreamcast after their great work with MIPS on the Playstation, they go full beans on the SH4+PowerVR combo to make their name again... All for a launch title that not only looks better on the home console, but even tweaked the controls to feel better too.

Its was really the vision of old 1990's Sega branding where you could bring the arcade, home.

If they wanted, they totally could have pulled a Soul-Calibur 2 on the console late in the cycle I'm sure.

[cloofoofoo]

Yeah I stumbled across this 2 part-er the other day too. Figured someone else would post about in on the forum with more of a write up about it then I would have.

Indeed it was very interesting seeing the Japanese SEGA side of things, how when you were inside the SEGA bubble it looked like all fun and games and how some of the Devs were really inspired to do amazing work on the machine. Especially the Namco/Soul-Calibur team.

Like lets take the crack shot team who just got off the heals of Tekken 3, make an even prettier and better game for arcades based on a fresh IP. Then when they switch gears to port it to the Dreamcast after their great work with MIPS on the Playstation, they go full beans on the SH4+PowerVR combo to make their name again... All for a launch title that not only looks better on the home console, but even tweaked the controls to feel better too.

Its was really the vision of old 1990's Sega branding where you could bring the arcade, home.

If they wanted, they totally could have pulled a Soul-Calibur 2 on the console late in the cycle I'm sure.

Namco could have done some real good looking games on the DC. Shame they never really tried past soul Calibur. They did more with Naomi like mazan and that ninja lightgun game.

Soul Calibur 2 was announced for Naomi I think and an enhanced soul Calibur 1 was definitely mentioned for Naomi.

Soul Calibur 2 as it was released might be too much. It's like nearly Naomi 2 polygon count. Hovers like at 70k polygon per frame . Unless they are running at 30 fps they wont reach that. For comparison Virtua fighter 3 tops out at around 30k Tris per frame and Dead or alive 2 cruises at around that count. They could always trim the surroundings and replace it with some 2d props IMO. Or like I said they could keep it intact but reduce to 30 fps.

[Thmanx]

Yeah while a 100% accurate port down to the Dreamcast would not be technically possible given the raw amount of texture data and polygons... doing some clever background detail work and optimization could get a version to look pretty close. Just like how Virtua Fighter & Virtua Racer made it to much less powerful machines (though significantly compromised to make the squeeze). We were spoiled getting a better version of SC at home than the arcade machines, normally its the other way around. But still quite doable.