Main List
Age of Empires II - YES (1.5 years of development. Cancelled due to performance and memory issues. Small maps used 98% of RAM.)
Alien: Resurrection - NO (This was nothing more than an idea. It never left planning stages.)
Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood - NO
Arctic Thunder - NO (Never planned.)
Baldur's Gate - YES (Running at a good framerate but no AI or gameplay.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: NO (Fox Interactive announced a Dreamcast version without consulting the developer.)
Chakan: The Forever Man - YES (Very basic prototype as seen on YouTube)
Conflict: Desert Storm - NO (Never planned.)
Cryptonauts - NO (Cancelled in early artwork phase)
Dark Angel - YES (First level playable demo)
Dark Earth - NO (It was discussed internally at Kalisto but nothing came of it.)
Deer Avenger 3 - YES (About 50% complete.)
Dogs of War - NO
Drakan - NO (False rumor.)
DroneZ - NO
Fable - NO (Called "Wishworld" at the time, it never got beyond paper designs for DC.)
Farnation - YES
FIFA 2K2 - YES (Early mod of NHL 2K2 which eventually became Sega Soccer Slam)
Frontier - YES (Very early prototype)
Galleon - YES (Close to beta)
Glover 2 - NO (A Dreamcast version was planned but never started.)
Gothic - NO (Never planned.)
Halo - NO (Never planned. Rumor was false.)
IHRA Drag Racing - NO (There was a proposal for a DC port but nothing came of it.)
Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos - YES (Core engine running)
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine - YES (90% complete)
Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus - NO (False rumor.)
Jump Runner - YES (About 25% complete)
Kleaners (Became SWAT: Global Strike Team after it was moved to PS2) - YES (Very early build)
Knights - NO
Kurt Warner's Arena Football - YES (Late stages)
Legend of the Blademasters - YES (100% complete)
The Mummy - YES (Running in "some form")
Outcast - NO (False rumor spread by the publisher. A Dreamcast version was never planned.)
Picassio - YES (Just a scripted in-engine sequence)
Redline Arena - YES (Engine was ported with "solid" framerate.)
Renegade Racers - YES (100% complete)
Scooby Doo (Unnamed Project) - NO (A PS1 game was in dev. with a planned DC port. Both cancelled.)
Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder - NO (Never planned.)
Skies - NO
Soul Reaver 2 - YES
SSX - NO (Dreamcast was the original target console but prototyping was only done on PC.)
Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing - NO (Only early controller and file access tests were done.)
Supreme Snowboarding - YES (Beta stage)
Title Defense - NO (A PC tech demo was made and shopped around to publishers. It never got beyond this.)
Totem - YES (Early performance test)
Turok 2 - NO
UFC: Tapout - NO (Was only in planning stages before cancellation.)
Woody Woodpecker: Escape from Buzz Buzzard Park - NO
Woody Woodpecker Racing - YES (Almost complete. Running at 60fps with supersampled rendering and bilinear filtering.)
Worms Blast - NO (A Dreamcast version was considered but never got beyond that.)
Extended Info
Age of Empires II
Alien: ResurrectionAge of empires for Dreamcast was ported over 1.5 year and it had running on Dreamcast.
It was cancelled because Dreamcast didn’t have enough hardware performance for AoE, running slow and need more memory. I remember that Dreamcast consumed 98% of RAM when the game was only started at small random map.
Arcatera: The Dark BrotherhoodYeah I'm 99.4% sure nothing happened. Or if it did it was planning and art only
Arctic ThunderThis port was not even started
Baldur's GateNo, Dreamcast had run its course by the time Arctic Thunder was under development, at least that was Midway’s perspective.
Buffy the Vampire SlayerIt was rendering at a good frame rate but no ai or gameplay. Also the controls weren’t remotely figured out.
Chakan: The Forever Manthere was no real offical plans to do them on Dreamcast. I don’t think Dreamcast could have handled the SlayEd engine… at the very beginnings of Buffy it was meant to be a PlayStation game… but we knew that platform could never handle it pretty early in development.
It just made us look better to physical retailers to put more platforms… I’m sure the intent was there, it always is, but no real attention to practicality when your announcing a product initially…
CryptonautsWe have a prototype running on the DC, of chakan, running, jumping/flipping (like he does) in all directions. Double swords, swish attack in all directions, even in the air. Thats it.
Conflict: Desert Stormit barely made it out of the pre-production phase. We were heavy into concept art and were just starting to build 3D assets/environments when the plug was pulled.
Dark Angelsadly no, there were no plans to do a Dreamcast version.
Dark EarthWhen Dreamcast version of Dark Angel was demoed at E3 2000, as I remembered, it was only a first level playable demo. After I left MetroPac, i.e. the Taiwan branch office of Metro3D, in July 2000, the original DC version was cancelled and then it became a totally different game named "Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse" for PS2 only.
I didn't explore its game design and gameplay for PS2 in detail, but as I knew, it only reused the female main character model "Anna" from the original DC version. Although both were ARPG style games, the control, camera, level design, environment, enemy creatures, gameplay, AI and many other things of PS2 version were totally different from the DC version. The development teams of both versions were also mostly different. The original DC version was completely developed by the Taiwan team, while the PS2 version was mostly developed by the US team. It seemed that the PS2 version of Dark Angel had an unmistakable resemblance to Metro3D's first DC game, Armada, which was also developed by the same US team.
Ideas for potential Dark Earth games on Dreamcast were discussed internally but, as far I can remember, never reached any kind of prototyping stage.
Deer Avenger 3
Dogs of War / WarMonkeysProbably ~50%. [When asked how far along the game was.]
DroneZThere isn't a lot to say about the dreamcast version. We were working on the Matrix card version of the game, and I think we DID do an OEM version with them, I had the dreamcast dev kit on my desk. I think the most we did was play sega rally on it.
it had a couple of names. Warmonkeys was the 2nd name, it had another name before whih I dno't remember and was a very different type of breeding game with the animals and you would then fight between them. it was called starhip soildiers in germany and I think they called it dogs of war because the publisher had some IP and just called it thought, but I think that nae makes it sound like a world war 2 game
I didn't see it [referring to a Dreamcast build]. The plan was to do the PC version and then build the dreamcast version.
DrakanNo, it doesn't exist. We developed the game on pc. Dreamcast was our target platform at the beginning of the project but... after 2 or 3 years of development we changed our plans: we had a good opportunity with nVidia with GeForce 3 launch
FableI don't remember it ever coming up in our discussions. The game was always a PC game when Psygnosis published it. Later Psygnosis was bought by Sony Europe and the Drakan sequel was published exclusively on PS2.
Bottom line is that Drakan was never planned to be release on any game console.
FarnationAt the time we were working on ‘Wishworld’ (which eventually morphed into Fable, but was *very* different). We only got into initial talks with Sega, so the only work we really did on it was paper design.
I think they wanted us to be a launch title, and the money they had available wasn’t enough to really guarantee the quality of what we wanted to make. It was a looooong time ago, so I could be misremembering some aspects. I, for example, was very much in favour of our making a Dreamcast game. I loved the console! Way ahead of its time and - for me - one of the best periods in console history
FIFA 2K2Farnation... now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Unfortunately, my memories of the game are pretty sparse. I have definitely played it (it was still in very rough shape), but I don't recall much about it. I remember roughly that it was a fantasy setting with pretty basic graphics, but honestly that's about it. I don't even remember which team was working on it...
FrontierWe started it with Sega on dreamcast [referring to Sega Soccer Slam]. Sega had planned on getting a fifa license and we were making a full on soccer sim, but when the license was a no-go and Sega were getting out of hardware we switched to the crazy 3 on 3 format and ps2 became lead platform. I think dev started in 2000
We started it from the NHL2K engine. I had totally forgotten about the original 11 a side plans until one the other devs reminded me. We pulled out the ice stadium, dropped in a field, added a few more players and there it was in the most basic form.
Didn't last too long like that.
It was never a complete game in any form. Just a work in progress. The engine already worked on ps2 and Xbox so there was no conversion required. We just drop a bunch of players and kept going
GalleonI can talk a little about it. It was exciting to get a chance to develop on Dreamcast - it was my first console title - and a console MMO was like science-fiction at the time over 20 years ago. I remember getting to discuss the project in one of the inner lounges of Sega's E3 megabooth, and holding the carved wooden prototype of a Dreamcast controller while we talked about what Frontier could become.
We had an overall design, and a prototype demonstrating key art tech, and had a client test working on Dreamcast. The art test was for the modular creature-breeding system that was at the heart of the game; players were going to explore an alien world using creatures they bred, and any hostile creatures they killed could be consumed to extract a bit of their DNA, letting you cross-breed new hybrids.
The idea was exciting. Looking back, I think we bit off more than we could chew, in terms of developing an open-world MMO on the Dreamcast, filled with an MMO's worth of systems. The decision to step away from the project was probably the right one, but I'd love to see someone explore the concept. There have been a number of creature-breeding games but I'm not sure anyone's had a similar take on it.
Glover 2Originally Galleon was a Dreamcast game and it did run on Dreamcast. But because of the extended development we had to switch to the later generation of consoles by the time we came out.
I suppose you couldn't call it a beta when we had to switch. We were somewhat close but not beta. The switch cost is almost a year though. Full graphics upgrades to switch up to the next gen. From 300 polys to 500!! Or whatever.
GothicAt Blitz we developed a cross-platform engine, BlitzTech and wrote everything on this. This made porting to different platforms cheaper and easier than normal. It was fairly easy to port from PSOne to Dreamcast… and we produced Glover (original) for PSOne and would have offered Hasbro a Dreamcast version.
However, Glover 2 was in development on N64 only. Had we managed to get close to completion, we would have offered a PSOne and Dreamcast version to Hasbro.
But we didn’t get far enough to pitch Glover 2 on those platfrom before the game was cancelled ☹
So I can confirm – NO Dreamcast work was done for Glover or Glover 2.
HaloWe didn't plan a Dreamcast version back during the development of Gothic (1).
IHRA Drag Racing:Bungie Founder:
That does not ring a bell. My memory ain't perfect, but that would have been pre-Microsoft and I definitely would've been involved in that convo. I don't think that's true
Independence War 2: Edge of ChaosDev 1:
I did find the proposal for the Dreamcast version dated 3/3/1999. Again, no particular contractor was mentioned. Proposed finish date was 12/7/2000.
Dev 2:
I got there in 2000, it wasn't in development then, and it had not been. I was there til 2004, at which time, Poor dreamcast was done for so we were not supporting them at all.
Indiana Jones and the Infernal MachineI know however that the DC version was cancelled by Infogrames as they didn't think the extra investment to make a console interface would be worth it. As far as the software went, we evaluated the DC for feasibility, and got the core of the graphics engine working.
Invictus: In the Shadow of OlympusThe Dreamcast version was about 90% done. We had been playing it and testing, and adjusting. The biggest issue for the Dreamcast version for Indy wasn't functionality, it was monetary. Dreamcast sales weren't where the Lucas folks wanted them to be, and the cost of manufacturing and marketing were high -- that was the main reason it was cancelled. We had made improvements to the control system over the PC (and Nintendo) version, and the graphics looked good. Load times were a little slow, but that could have been improved upon. It was just ultimately a marketing decision.
Jump Runner:I can tell you that interplay never contacted us about doing a Dreamcast version or any other sequels so it definitely didn’t come from us.
KleanersThe original game was an unnamed space game commissioned by Bethesda for Dreamcast, they cancelled very early in production (a without cause cancellation - I can not remember what their reasons were). We continued to develop the game ad Jump Runner and contined talking to publishers - it ended up becoming the episodic free to download game Halcyon Sun, published by freeloader.com; (for PC). The label Glass Ghost was dropped and it published as a Kuju game
I would say the project was closer to 25% complete when it was cancelled. Initial development with Bethesda as publisher was PC / Dreamcast with equal emphasis on both. Online was a key focus, including console- the same team went on the develop Firewarrior : Warhammer 40k was PS2 led with strong online multilayer. They also developed the online component of Call of Duty on PS2.
There were certainly builds running on Dreamcast developer kits - but I suspect that any archives would be very hard to find.
KnightsWe prototyped "Kleaners" on DC which eventually became SWAT: Global Strike Team on Xbox/PS2
I've searched around but sadly not. I have some aspects of it around but nothing bootable. I'm not sure we ever burned anything.
Kurt Warner's Arena FootballDev 1:
It has been a looong while, but if my memory serves me right, we did initially target it for Dreamcast. I went to a dev-con for Dreamcast in Brighton at the time for this purpose. However, I am not sure if an actual deal for that console was ever signed. Since the game switched publishers so many times, and the game taking so long to develop, the target platforms were switched around a few times. At the time it was cancelled, it was targeted for PC and PS2, I believe.
I can't remember if we ever had it running on the Dreamcast. I do remember looking into the graphics hardware that the Dreamcast had, and using PowerVR graphics cards on the PC to get close to the same setup as Dreamcast. I don't think we ever progressed to the point where we had the entire engine running on the target hardware though.
Dev 2:
Im not sure I ever remember it running on Dreamcast, but besides the “intro/tutorial” island and some playable animatics there was not much Done,
Legend of the BlademastersThe art was already at the proper resolutions as well as the animation. If I remember correctly it was running pretty stable as well. I think the company wanted Blitz to go dreamcast and Kurt Warner's Arena Football was basically a Blitz reskin. As far as I remember.
The MummyI am sure I am remembering the story slightly wrong, but Ripcord Games told us that any game that's not already in boxes is to be canceled. So, we had the final copy on disk ready to be delivered to the publisher, but that didn't meet their line in the sand.
OutcastThere was a 'flying game' example project that came with the Dreamcast SDK, which we used as the starting point for both versions (as we could build for either platform). Then built a Playstation emulaton layer onto that, so the PC and Dreamcast versions were running all the original versions logic, we replaced all the graphics system calls.
Bits, in some form. [When asked if it was running on DC hardware]
It was cancelled during development when Sega pulled the plug on the Dreamcast.
PicassioUnfortunately this is a myth. There never was any Dreamcast version at all. My best guess is the publisher back then might have talk to journos about the possibility to make a Dreamcast version and the word spread like it was a real thing.
Redline ArenaPicassio never got beyond an in-engine scripted sequence. There was never a game, just the paper design and an art generated sequence.
Renegade RacersWhile we were working on Redline for the PC, Sega was interested in a custom version of the DC. We had early dev kits and had the Redline engine up and running within a few weeks. And visually it looked really good and had a solid frame rate. The design of the game was a multiplayer arena combat game with both on foot and in-vehicle combat. The single player mode was a boss/clan progression. We spent 3-4 months working on details, but our publisher Accolade could reach what they considered a fair price and the development was put on hold. Sadly I don’t have any original screenshots, or any discs. We did work a bit with another developer to help port the engine, who later formed Secret Level.
Scooby Doo (Unnamed Project)Renegade Racers shipped on PC and PS1. We made a Dreamcast version from the PC sku, that was finished but the publisher decided not to publish it due to Dreamcast sale forecasts.
Dreamcast version has some great 1 bit animations that played on the VMUs at various points that Damian did.
All complete we had even passed initial submission checks, we even had revolutionary tech like online highscore tables!
Interplay just decided it wasn't worth the pressing and marketing costs to release.
Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder...while we were working on evil dead , there was a game for scooby a team was working on for ps1, which got cancelled. I think the plan was to port it to dc - but because of the cancelling that was that. We laid off half the study and reorganized to focus on scooby Soo for ps2, GameCube and Xbox a year later.
SkiesDev 1:
I dont think that is likely though it would be great to see it on Dreamcast.
Dev 2:
I don't think that it was headed to dreamcast. By the point in time that SPPS was in development we had already moved on from the Dreamcast.
Soul Reaver 2The development never got far enough to even call it a game, before SegaSoft shut down... We had not even assembled a dedicated development team at the time as it was so early in the process. There was conceptual art that was being created, and some basic 3D motion controls were being developed in software
SSXWas a long time ago so I can’t say for certain [how far along it was]. We usually kept all platforms running pretty close to parity. Since we shipped Soul Reaver on Dreamcast I would say SR2 Dreamcast was probably close to parity with the other SR2 SKUs up until the time it was dropped then the other SKUs moved forward. I can’t remember when in the product lifecycle it was dropped.
Star Wars: Super Bombad RacingI don't have that much to share on the topic other than very early on in the development of what became SSX we were prototyping in a PC environment initially thinking that it might make sense for the Dreamcast. However, when EA leadership was unable to make a deal with Sega that made sense for EA, we were told that we (as a company) would not be focusing on Dreamcast as a platform. At that point, we began to move our focus to the PS2, which I believe ended up being a better fit for what we were trying to do title.
Supreme SnowboardingSadly, it wasn't very far along. We had the developer system and had ported parts of our cross platform framework but then Sega announced they were exiting the hardware business. If we had been much farther along then we might have finished it off and shipped it, but since it was so early in the development process it was an easy business decision to cancel it.
Nothing game specific [was ported to Dreamcast]. Just tests for generic low level stuff like controller input and file access.
Title DefenseCertainly some version of Supreme Dreamcast is around somewhere and even a dev kit, but nobody has time to dig this up and figure out how things work.
Title Defense as a game never really existed. From memory it was a (fairly non-interactive) PC tech demo to show physics-based dynamic mesh deformation (in this case the changing muscle shape of the boxers as they threw and received punches). Once we saw it internally, we decided that it could be the basis of a boxing game and came up with a high-concept design document. We then put out a press-release to say that we had started development (naming every high-end system we could think of – including Dreamcast) as a way of gauging publisher interest and hoping to encourage a few of them to come to talk to us about the game and hopefully sign it. We’d just signed a PR agency to represent us to the press so a lot of it was their work (and to be fair to them, they did get us a lot of press!). Also, given the interest in Dreamcast at the time, anything that mentioned it as a potential platform was guaranteed to generate press interest!
Totem
Turok 2The game was running. but we were still early in the production, there was aroung 5 6 map already, and 4 characters
The story is interesting. Was hired at Kalisto for this game, Totem, we created a brand new engine, with editor, a pc runtime, and a dreamcast runtime. The game was like a mario racing, but with characters, they were cute aliens, splitscreen up to 4 player, after the early performance of the dreamcast the decision was made to switch to ps2. and later the game was canceled. The engine produce for the game was very good, so Kalisto kept it under the name TotemTech. The game engine was used by multiple games in the studio. It was even used for a demo made for square, as kalisto just finished their work with square (and testuo nomura) on a ps1 game, for a game on ps2 that was no finally signed. When kalisto closed, a few existing projet and teams were taken by other publishers, i was lead prog on totemtech on a game called Spirits and Spells or Castleween (depending on the region) on ps2 and gc. A new studio started in bordeaux, Asobo studio, came out with superfarm, their first title on TotemTech. Even games like a plague tale and flight simulator 2020 are running on TotemTech, in the us ex Kalisto USA at austin released Sponge bob, and a jimmy neutron game, at ubisoft montreal we used totemtech on ShaunWhite snowboard 1 et 2 sur wii, psp, ps2, and it was used for Mighty Quest For Epic Loot pc. Another Paris company BlackSheep studio used it for 2 or 3 games also (also old Kalisto's employees). I still have my tshirt with the logo of the Game Totem. and still have screenshot
UFC: TapoutI’m not aware of Turok2 (or any of the Tuork games) ever being converted to the Dreamcast which is probably why there was silence afterwards. The only conversion I was aware of after development was to the PC - I’d never seen any development of the game running on Dreamcast during my time at Acclaim I’m afraid.
Woody Woodpecker: Escape from Buzz Buzzard ParkThe planning for the DreamCast version of UFC TAP was well underway; the first UFC game sold very well, and of course, my own production was going to be mainly on Dreamcast.
I wrote the proposal, worked out the details of the contract with Anchor and the price, and was just about to get the contract signed. However, the president of Anchor at the time was a money-maker, and since UFC had received good reviews in the US, THQ approached me. They didn't tell us about it, and tried to get a lot of development money by weighing the two sides of the equation.
In the end, they ended up grabbing more than twice the amount of money from THQ for the UFC development that CRAVE had offered, and they ended up making a WWE game.
In other words, the development of the Dreamcast version of UFC TAPOUT was cancelled, and they took the project to Dreamfactory, which at the time was developing an Xbox title with Microsoft, so they decided to develop it on the Xbox while using that engine.
Woody Woodpecker RacingUnfortunately, this is a mistake. Nothing was ever planned for a Dreamcast version of Woody.
Worms BlastSo it was up and running at 60fps. I seem to remember that it rendered the whole track - so no pop-in.
I think we had the VMU working too - I remember a logo.
It wasn’t ready for a full QA cycle and we hadn’t done the usual technical requirements stuff either. It was probably a month off from being ready for final QA and then another month or two from being done - it was a port but we’d written the original game so it could go quickly.
We had it running from GD-ROM as well - I remember burning orange discs.
I also remember having to quietly replace the SCSI drive in one of the (loaned) dev kits because someone plugged into 240v (not the first or last time that happened to equipment in the UK)
It was from the same codebase as PS1.
Higher resolution with supersampled rendering
Bilinear filtering
60fps up from 30 on the PS1
Rendered whole track for no draw-distance issues
I don’t think we’d swapped any models or textures - we only started it once the PS1 was done. Was just me and another bloke.
There was a port done in parallel by someone else on the team but he was from a PC background so it was slow and took up loads of memory, so after he quit we ripped it out and started again
We might have discussed internally doing a dreamcast version, but we never got as far as doing an actual build for dreamcast, so it was never really seriously considered.