Having the chance to play DeeDee Planet

some person involved in marketing at sega back in the dreamcast games will be so grateful to let me have an insight into all the gd-rs and dreamcast-stuff he has now at home, after the closure of the sega-subsidiary in that country.

if you want me to check something in particular about this game, just tell me! and maybe i'll finally see some other "hidden" treasures. of course i'll tell my experiences in detail here. :Girl:

 

Seeing some videos of it in action would be great mate. Just see if you can use a capture card rather than a camera.

Yakumo

 

That's great news - a vote for videos also!

Oddly enough, I asked an old friend (who now works for Sega UK) if they had a similar 'archive' in their uk division... I specifically mentioned this game to him.

I doubt he'll get back to me on it.

 

i think sega uk should still have an archive, since the sega office there was never closed (please correct me if thats wrong) sega usa has this big archive room i wonder if someone knows someone who works there, who could have a closer look

 

SoA does have a final Japanese copy of DeeDee Planet.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaamerica/2742088595/sizes/o/

Just look all the way down on the right pile below Real Race 1.

 

ok i just saw in this picture two cases with "farnation" and "otoire". so was this music sequencer planned for US release in the US, since all these games in this right side pile seem to be somewhat US-related? and regarding farnation, may this be the proof that there is a playable version???

 

Where does that pic of the Japanese Sega archive come from? (website? forum?)

Fascinasting viewing.

Also, did anything ever happen? (re: visit to sega employees house to see his collection)

 

yes it did happen. anything specific you wanna know about the game?

 

yes indeed:
was it on gd-r or an actually printed "sample" disc?


very very nice find by the way... i have been looking for proof of its existance for ages now!

 

Is the game fun? Fun on what level 9like is it the next holy grail of unreleased gaming?)

What basically is it about?

Did you get any videos of it?

 

Wasn't this game recalled at the very last minute due to a major networking bug? If that is the case, why didn't the developers just cut the online portion and release this at a later date, possibly in a revised edition? Better yet, how come they didn't give us the offline parts as a budget title or even as a playable demo on a sampler disc? As a massive fan of Death Tank, I really mourned the loss of Dee Dee Planet and I'd sure love to see if it compared with Lobotomy's multiplayer classic. I don't think anybody here expects you to provide a copy for our pleasure (of course not - you've clearly earned the trust of someone with access to some real holy grails!), but it would be great if you could find any new information because there's very little known about this one...

 

I like to know if you played Dee Dee Planet, was it any good?

Was there anything else you saw of interest?

Great work!

 

If you are posting about the flickr link above - that is an archive room at Sega of America.

 

well the game is indeed very fun.

we played the TGS demo, which was burnt to a GD-R. he has a multiregion-dreamcast (officially by sega), he inserted the system disc and then booted up the game.

when you start the game you first select how many players (there's no real start screen, no credits, nothing about multiplayer, nothing nothing really), and then your character will be automatically selected, you cant choose, same goes for the 3 different maps you can play in.

each character is tied to a special weapon and can either move or jump (depends on the character). the rest is just like Worms - you select an angle and then activate your weapon, whatever that is. i think we had stuff ranging from simple guns to more severe stuff, like bombs. but as i already mentioned, you cannot collect new weapons, your "stuck" to it.

the 2d environment is destructible (just like in worms). and there happen to be events in the background to distract the gamer. if i recall correctly its some typical "weird japanese" stuff like some crazy huge character appearing in the background and moving around without really affecting gameplay. there are some more events but since all this happened in november i can't really recall all details.

each round can have 1-5 plays, you select that before the game starts. and thats basically it - it's a really fun game, you can go crazy trying to get the best out of your randomly selected character, since there's all these things like reload time, shooting angle, the fact that your character either jumps or crawls etc etc

the background music is pretty fun too, the graphics are very simple but straight to the point, i wouldnt want this game to look anything different. it's such a minimalistic game, but at the same time when you play it against a friend it's a real blast.

XBLA, anyone @ SEGA?

 

Sounds like a blast! Thanks for the detailed review - I remember initial reports of a demo kiosk in Japan with Dee Dee Running (I think it was Yakumo who mentioned seeing it?) To finally hear from someone who has actually played it (esp. after all this time) is very reassuring, to say the least.

As a big fan of worms, I'm disappointed Dee Dee never came out - what did your friend have to say about its cancellation? The current thinking (as pointed out above) is that the game had a glitch and was recalled at the last minute... I also remember hearing it had been pressed and was ready to go to the shops when the bug was noticed = this makes me think it was cancelled because it was too expensive to reprint/repress all the discs and packaging. These are all rumours though, any chance you could confirm what really happened?

Also, (I hope I'm not asking too much here...) can your friend offer us any insight into the existence of a 'playable' gdr of Castlevania (my personal dc holy grail). The graphics artist I e-mailed years ago (with a link to his site via this forum) seemed to confirm copies did exist (iirc). I'm still very sceptical of the supposed copy sold years ago on a French website (or offered 'for sale' briefly)

This seems like a great opportunity to clear up some of these old rumours... Same thing with Black and White - I emailed Lionhead about it also (ages ago) and they couldn't confirm either way... they were certainly very cryptic in their response.

I really hope you can help! - and thanks again for unlocking part of the puzzle with Dee Dee, I really appreciate you sharing this information with everyone.

 

he couldnt confirm the rumour with the pressing gone bad.

the problem with black&white was that every game had a testing phase of several months back then (maybe times have changed in the meanwhile since a lot of unpolished games appear on the shelves that feel rushed) and black&white may have been finalised in the programming aspect but not yet gone through the testing phase.

with the cancellation of the dreamcast and the testing phase still pending, they just decided to can the game completely. no infos on castlevania, sorry.

wanna hear a shocking detail about propeller arena PAL though? (which wasnt leaked, its the NTSC version floating around)

 

Of course!

Thanks a lot for all that info.

 

tell us that shocking detail

 

...on the edge of his seat...

 

stop teasing us like this! :crying:

does it have something to do with someone owning the white label or something even more shocking?