Hi guys, as some of you will know I'm a big Dreamcast fan! Whilst my collection isn't huge (compared to some others) I have a few fantastic things, this being on if them. I snagged this from ebay and had to sell a few things to free up the cash. I'm pretty certain it's the real deal but need some help to trace its origin and understand exactly where it came from. I was certain it was a competition prize via a magazine but my research has drawn a blank. Hell I even got in contact with one of the developers of the original game at Videosystems to try and find out where it came from. So what's the story with this? Competition prize? Promo item? Or just a fan made custom? The paperwork and box are all European, included in the manual baggie was the below paper slip. Any help putting together the history would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance.
So you bought it , I had my eye on it while it was on eBay, the dreamcast junkyard did a feature on it a while back if I recall correctly and they couldn't answer it either. Just enjoy it for what is is/could be. I see you're selling your Sturmwind dc, I have a few dc's of M.a.l's work , top custom work he does.
Yeh guilty!!! Ha, you are spot on it was me that bought it. I have actually been in contact with Tom at the DCJY in the hope that he and the site could help but alas no joy as you say. I am 99% sure this has a legit history it's just a case of finding it! Someone will remember. On your other point yeh MALs work is top notch.
Other than the spray job, everything's just stickers. So it is probably either a competition giveaway or fan made . You'd imagine they'd use Torsten Rachu or similar otherwise. The cut and look of the F1 sticker makes me lean towards the latter, but you never know. If it was a competition thing, the English would suggest UK or Australia... so I guess you could go through magazines of the era from those countries.
That's right they are transfers/decals similar to the ones you would put on an Airfix kit. There is a paper insert in the box explaining that for the custom paint job they had to open the console and therefore the warranty was invalid, I will add a pic. I have been through most major magazines from the UK and enlisted the help of Matt at the Segamags website (he has virtually every Sega magazine ever produced) and he couldn't find anything either!
It's possibly motor racing related, maybe from a magazine like Autosport, or a promotional item from an F1 Grand Prix.
Yup, those are why I think it's not official in any way. And the box not being the correct one - like someone who had a bunch of Dreamcasts did it. You don't even know if the seller is telling the truth about how he got it (i.e. it could have been made recently), but "bought off eBay years ago" isn't exactly helpful in its history. If it was back 12 years ago or whatever he said (2004), only a few years after the console was made, you'd think the original seller would know where it came from. And you'd think someone would have seen the original auction and posted about it on a forum or something. Inspect that F1 sticker on the front right closer - the slope of it doesn't match the slope of the text... and I think the top is cut crooked, too? Seems odd if it were an official sticker. It seems odd that Video System would have made a PAL promo console... did they even have European (or Australian) offices? The game was distributed by Konami over here... surely they wouldn't have put Video System's name on it and left theirs off? That said, I guess Video System / Konami would have access to art assets to make the stickers.
You make some really valid points and they do point towards "not official". I'm still holding out hope though. I don't buy into the story from the auction. I believe he picked it up cheap, from memory one of those sold on ebay for around £40 around 3 years ago, I think it was actually posted in the ebay thread here. Maybe this one? Who knows?!?!!? As for the stickers you are right they are fairly poorly cut but they seem like they are well printed and the assests used are good quality. Video system did have a UK office, I have been in contact with Michael Lancaster an ex project manager who worked for them during the production of the first World GP Game. Sadly he left the business after the first game so didn't know anything about this, he also cut all ties so had no leads. If they did have a UK base I would be fairly confident they would have done this themselves without Konami. I'm going to carry on the investigation and maybe just maybe we will get to the bottom of it.
Interesting. I wonder why they had Konami distribute it if they had a UK base. They were the publisher, after all - not Konami. The actual word Formula 1 looks a bit iffy, but they could have just printed it on the cheap. That might explain the cut - they could have hand cut it instead of having a plotter do it. Likewise, the top art isn't perfectly printed... but not bad. Spray job seems decent enough... although it looks like they did a poor job of reassembling! I would have thought they'd have put their logo on the warranty notice. If it was a competition prize, maybe even a congratulations note? You'd usually get one from a magazine. It seems strange someone would have kept that note, but not the winner's letter. If indeed it was a prize, not just some really expensive promo. When was the game released in Europe on Dreamcast. Wikipedia says September 1999, but that's before the launch of the console! It also says the N64 version was released in 2000... so maybe then? I highly doubt they would have given away an expensive console close to launch. Does it still have the sticker on the bottom? What revision does it say in the circle? What revision board is in the console? Maybe there are some clues to put the console in the right age bracket to have been an of-age promo/competition item.
Added 2 more pics one of another sticker to the left hand side, looks a little more professionally cut, also shows the mandatory disclaimers etc. Pic 2 is of the stickers on the bottom, looks like a rev 1. I haven't opened the console yet and it sure I will. The spray job is actually very good quality as you say, it's a nice metallic red and finish is professional. The reassemble is actually fine, my other Dreamcasts have a similar gap, the pictures also make it look worse than it is. The release date of the game is an interesting one, there are mixed reports online. Tracking progress in the official U.K. Dreamcast magazine it would appear it was delayed and was released somewhere around Dec 2000. The 99 release was probably the first game.
I would open it. 4 screws and pull the lid off - what could go wrong? Saying that, I just looked at what I thought was my original console and it had the front left edge stuck out with a chip on the bottom..... noooo! Not my machine I got 2 or 3 days before release! Actually, it wasn't my machine. Date code is 7/00. Phew! Probably a faulty one a friend gave me. DE076407345, by the way. So yeah, look at the date code on the top! Clearly, it can't have been sprayed before it was made.
This EU release date list from 2000.11.13 has a date of 2000.11.24. It may have got delayed again, but the 2000.12.02 date listed on many sites is a Saturday, whilst games released (and mainly still do) on a Friday in the UK, so there's something not right about that date. The funny thing is that looking at the weekly ELSPA Dreamcast Top 20 charts from the end of 2000 and beginning of 2001 this game isn't in the charts. F1 has always been quite popular in the UK, so it's surprising that it didn't even make the top 20 Dreamcast games during release week. Still, if it released just before Christmas it may have just got crowded out.
It's technically a sports game. Sports games never did that well here - especially with the likes of SFA3, MSR, Ready 2 Rumble 2, Jet Set Radio (why does the list say Grind? Surely we knew by then) and Tomb Raider Chronicles out around then. Sadly, I don't think I have any MCVs from that early any more to check release dates and charts.
Well, F1 '97 was the fastest selling PS1 game, and nearly fastest of any game ever during it's release week. FIFA has always been a huge seller, and other sports games like Brian Lara's regularly topped the charts too. Unless you just meant on Dreamcast. I doubt that MCV carried the full platform specific Top 20s anyway (but release dates would be useful). A lot of the charts are here, but there's still some gaps.
Finding accurate Dreamcast release dates is a nightmare, towards the end of its lifetime most titles just ended up on the shelves with no warning. I rockon World GP II was one of those. I vividly remember seeing Sonic Adventure 2 on the shelf at HMV 2 weeks before the supossed launch date. By all accounts a member of staff just "put it out" as the shelves needed filling. That broke the street date in Croydon and everyone else followed suit! By that time I think Sega were past caring.
Dammit! When I clicked on this thread I thought it might be someone posting that they'd discovered the origins of this console! Sorry I haven't been able to shed any further light on this, I emailed a couple of ex Dreamcast Magazine/DC-UK/ODM people and none of them recognised it as a magazine prize, sadly. That said, I'm confident that we'll find the answer sooner or later
Yeah, that was Bigben dealing with Dreamcast in Europe then. I doubt that they cared that much about retailers respecting street dates.
Ha ha Sorry to disappoint Tom! Still searching but the truth is out there! I never knew that, you are spot on they clearly didn't give a dam.
To sum up answers quickly... Yes, Dreamcast alone (those games listed in the charts were WAY bigger sellers... we barely had any copies of F1) MCV did list charts by format at one point IIRC (unless that was CTW), but then merged all formats into a bigger chart MCV's release lists for Dreamcast were fairly accurate as far as I recall - we had distributor lists too, but they were binned a long time ago Bigben were most definitely NOT the sole distributor of Dreamcast games in the UK - perhaps France I'm pretty sure F1 came out well before that deal. It was a strange game in that it was based on the 1999 season but came out at the very end of 2000. Not the way to do a sports game! (Both seasons ended in October and the first 2001 race commenced in March - a mere 3 months after the game came out if that was the beginning of December! There would have been a lot of driver retirements still in the game (Damon Hill, for example) and drivers you'd got used to who weren't (like Jenson Button), not to mention people driving for the wrong teams! In fact, Stewart became Jaguar racing in 2000, Ford engines became Fondmetal and BMW engines returned.) You could never expect a sports game that was already two seasons behind when it came out to do well - regardless of whether Formula 1 was popular with gamers or not. The ELSPA charts were online at www.elspa.com/research/chart.asp back then, by the way.
Yeah, MCV had format charts, but only top 5 at the beginning of 2000 at least. ELSPA posted the top 10, but the full top 20 was posted on Chart-Track's site. Unfortunately neither ELSPA or Chart-Track kept an archive back then, so only a handful have been archived on the wayback machine. There can be several layers of distribution, in the case of Bigben they may have used different companies to physically distribute their products in each country, but they were ultimately the official distributor of Sega's Dreamcast products in Europe. Third parties would have used whichever distributor they wanted to. Yeah, F1 should've come out before then, I was commenting on Sonic Adventure 2 really.
