Old Sega Veteran just joined... what did you want to know?

No, there's definitely no footage of VF4 on the Dreamcast in public circulation - especially not on that VF History disc that came with the Japanese version of Shenmue II. As I said before, it was claimed in some unofficial publication (likely to be either Dreamcast Magazine or DC:UK as I collected these quite a lot back in the day) that Yu Suzuki had personally ended the conversion process of VF4 after concluding in the preliminary technical research phase that such a game would not meet his own high level of graphical standards.

My guess is that character polygon counts would have been reduced significantly, along with perhaps the background detail and certainly the frame rate. Remember that while the Dreamcast was capable of a theoretical maximum of 7+ million polygons per second, with various effects enabled this dropped to something closer to 3m, and even then few developers were able to achieve this figure (though I'm sure AM2 might have been). Of course, even the most high-end Dreamcast game would still fall way short of NAOMI 2 quality, though many would argue the eventual PS2 conversion was far from being arcade perfect as well.

Another point I brought up earlier is that Suzuki and the AM2 team may have been on the receiving end of a large amount of pressure from management to deliver big name titles for Sega's transition into a third party company, with VF4 one such casualty. Had the Dreamcast have been given another year, who knows if AM2 might not have actually tried harder to create a full on conversion of VF4? As it is, this particular studio experienced something comparable with the late Saturn era, when three of its own high profile games were scrapped in favour of ensuring the Dreamcast had all of the limelight for its own upcoming launch.

Many of us suspect that Propeller Arena's cancellation was indeed a combination of factors including Sega killing off the Dreamcast and a sense of the game being in slightly bad taste at the time (though certainly not deliberately), while VF4's appearance on the same console as the latest Tekken installments meant these two rival franchises could finally go head to head - an opportunity Sega was unlikely to miss, considering each series had a crossover of the same demographic that would ensure the success of VF more than if it had been released for another platform such as the Xbox or GameCube.

On the subject of Shenmue II, I honestly believe this would have become a full-blown Microsoft exclusive in all regions were it not for the fact AM2 had already completed a large portion of the hard work on Dreamcast already. Sega's hands were effectively tied, and realising already that a proposed third chapter would still be a few more years down the line, it was decided that Shenmue II could be the compromise title in so much as that it appeared on both the Dreamcast and Xbox, possibly as a bridge building exercise to ensure that when Shenmue III was ready the fanbase desperate for a conclusion to the series bought Microsoft's system in preparation knowing the ending would be exclusive to that machine.

Anyway, here's another post that's gone on way longer than I'd originally anticipated!

 

Was there by any chance also an answer to the devkit question ? (it was right after the question of the archive room - if not, just ignore this repost)

 

Something to consider.

 

were Daytona 2 and Scud Race ever considered for Dreamcast?

 

Considering there's a tech demo video of Scud Race running on Dreamcast, yes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irUqYGF0AG0

It's great that you're all so eager to ask questions, but do remember that many can be answered by a simple Google search!

As for the VF convo, please take it to another topic if you want to discuss it in such depth.

 

I know, it's my video

But a tech demo doesn't necesserily mean that there were plans to bring it to Dreamcast.

 

You mean Super GT? I'm not sure, I think I asked the arcade guys at some point but don't remember the answer they gave me. I think it was between the Saturn and Dreamcast life and just fell between the cracks.

 

I would just like to thank you for bringing theis game to light after so many years! I know it must be a tough decision for you.

I have heard of this for Dreamcast, but NEVER thought a copy would surface! My bro played it on GameCube back in the day, and it was a great game!

Here is hoping it finds a good deserving home, and if folks are bidding high, then it should be in good hands.

 

ive got an interesting question for you ( im just full of them aint i LOL )

what are the white label dreamcast games?
are they late print Dreamcast games when sammy decided to cheep out on printing twords the end?
or are they press/revew prints of Dreamcast games?

some people here say they are review some say it was so save money
ide really like to hear it direct from the source thanks DonnyK

 

Sega and Sammy didn't merge until well after Sega went third party. They had nothing to do with the Dreamcast at all. I think these white discs are you are talking about are all third party games.

When we were done with every game, it went to the factory to get the security seal on it. We would get back a spindle of 100 of these discs for every game and they didn't have a label on them. We called them "silvers" (I'll be selling a bunch of these soon here!). Because they were "free" to Sega... well they had to make that 100 to test the final build they ended up just sending theses out to the press. I was really good friends with the guy who was in charge of keeping these so I got a LOT of them over time as it saved me from buying the game retail through the employee store.

I'm not sure how the silvers for the third parties went. I think they only got like like 20-30 of the spindle of 100 and Sega kept the rest. Really not sure as I was a first party guy. You got links to any white label first party stuff for me to see?

 

actually there is a picture from right here at assemblergames
thanks for helping

actually looking at the photo it says its a sample not for resale :redface:
but if you know anything about them it would be appreciated
thanks DonnyK

from this thread http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29115

 

How long were there rumors floating around about going 3rd party, until the actual announcement?

 

ive wondered the same thing myself because the IGN article said that segas CEO the guy who liquidated his wealth to fund Dreamcast
said he wanted to go 3rd party for a long time

so was it basically after the failure of the Saturn that 3rd party rumors were common?

 

They kept that stuff secret from us as long as they could due to the issue of insider trading snafus. Same with Sega picking THQ to publish all their GBA titles. Something big like that is a really big deal. We didn't know as much in first party as SOJ kept pumping out games till the end but our third party was drying up bad so we all kind of knew. And again, we all knew we were in fourth place and the market could not handle four systems.

That's a PAL third party game. No clue. If you have a link to a US first party game I can give you more detail. I have no clue how SOE or SOJ handled things. Sorry.

Btw, Propeller Arena's cancellation 100% had nothing at all to do with the life of the Dreamcast at the time. It was only canceled because of 9/11 and no other reason.

 

i appreshate the responce DonnyK its likely how SOE did things thanks anyway

another quick question if you please

do you think if sega of japan haddent removed " BERNARD STOLAR "
from president of SOA the day before Dreamcast launched
do you think he could of kept the energy rolling for the Dreamcast
to of survived ? Dreamcast sold 10 mill in 4 years while Game Cube sold 20 mill in 10 years

 

Did you ever do any work on the Panzer Dragoon games? and if so is there anything noteworthy about them you can tell us? I love the games and just wonder if anything fun or unique was left on the cutting room floor... however I can imagine them being handled purely in Japan.

 

As has been said before, white labels were European silvers, basically. They were retail versions of games (with 2 exceptions) given out to the press and even to retailers for review. I've not seen anyone say it was to save money - that's crap. Silvers save money. Going to the trouble of printing the discs is not saving money.

Again, you'd find this out by Googling ;-)

 

Yes I can confirm, the white labels you find on ebay are all from SEGA Europe or for the european market. They were used to give to the press for reviews. I self was one of the press and got them from SEGA, I have a lot of them and still have all the press maps they sent me with those white labels.

 

Question:

In an interview he did a few years back with 1up, when asked about whether or not Panzer Dragoon Saga would ever be ported to another console Yukio Futatsugi said that it was very likely because of an issue with the original code (or something to that extent) but the circumstances were kept secret in the article. Are you aware of what happened with the PDSaga code?

 

I'm also very interested in the above question.

I've heard two things about the code over years, the 1st being it merely fell through the cracks of the company via many mistakes thinking it was backed up elsewhere and such which happens more often than it should from everything I've read or heard from people over the years.

And far more often I've the other being it was deleted after completion for due to internal squabbles, the harsh reality of its creation and the fact it was pretty much coded to the metal.

I do hope it wasn't something so silly as (theoretical comedy conversation)
SOA - Please finish the game, you have not translated the Credits, they're in Japanese.
Andromeda - No
SOA - Why?
Andromeda - Ummmm (Presses delete) The source code is missing *cough*