No, that would be homebrew, and pretty useless homebrew too. On a homeburnt CD-R. Which only you know of and own. With no covers, manuals or... content, really. Which was made without getting paid and without the intention (or target demographic) to be sold on the worldwide market. Do you count the older MIL-CDs as being not DC-related either because they're not on GDs? Other perspective: ask one of the devs what he's been working on. He will answer 'a game'. You then ask him what platform it will be for, and he will say 'DC'. So a developer is getting paid to make a product that runs on a specific gaming platform. Isn't that the very definition of a 'commercial game'?! Or is the dev team to small to make a commercial game in your eyes? Well, Remedy isn't that much bigger (yeah, they've grown a lot in the last years) and I'd say they did and do make games. Or is it the life-cycle thing? I personally don't care when the DC was declared dead, as long as games keep coming I will play or at least collect them. From wikipedia: -dōjin games (同人ゲーム?), are video games created by Japanese hobbyists Doesn't fit. It's commercial. It was being marketed. And not dev'd by Japanese but that's not the point. - Dōjin soft are typically available in "demo" or "trial" (体験版 taikenban) form for free on the internet, with full versions available for purchase. Doesn't fit either, does it? Maybe I missed that, but I don't think so. - Some titles sell well enough that their creators can make a full-time job out of their "amateur hobby". One particular circle, TYPE-MOON, has since become a commercial videogame developer and anime studio. Now that fits, doesn't it? Except they were always commercial. Nobody said 1 copy was produced, ~500 of the LE and many more of the normal edition were produced. Just some are/were different than the others, variants if you will. Judging by the price tag on the normal LE I'd say the game is pretty much accepted on the market as not being completly useless homebrew crap, but a game, which collectors looking for complete DC collections need to have in order to, well... complete it. I define a complete collection of a specific system by having everything that was commercially released for it (that includes commercial press demos etc. too), and all variants that made their way out of the commercial factories. GD-Rs etc. count extra in my book, since they were not pressed in factories, also I can't imagine how one could own/verify owning a 'complete set' of those. It was produced after the official death of the DC, but it's still a game that does play on it and was commercially released in big enough quantities to have it qualify as having been 'released to the market'. Also those discs are not homeburnt, do contain covers & manuals, and are available worldwide. I'd even take the wild guess that every shop that sells this game has it in it's database as a DC game, not under 'undetermined/homebrew/crap', and I think the game is positioned on the shelves between other DC games in shops that still carry them. Obviously I'm the only one who thinks like this but I still won't throw the new games out of my DC rls lists because of that
To me for a game to be classed as rare it MUST be officially licensed. They are official Dreamcast games. If you start to include unlicensed stuff then you may as well start to include pirate hack games. The developers of those get paid and more than one is made. They also come with covers and a few even with instructions. So, the rarest Dreamcast games would be the kapitel series (especially the later games) or the Toyota discs. Even Extra Cawaii is pretty rare as far as cover discs go. Not worth much but still rare. yakumo
Homebrew is just an Enlglish word for Doujin. Wikipedia is wrong. MOST (like 99%) of the Doujin games market are unlicensed SOLD products. Touhou is the prime example. The companies funds are made from it's products, but they are still doujin products. Yes, you missed it. I have demos of plenty of games which I got for free, and paid for the full versions. That does not make them doujin games. Nonetheless... Fine. The company I own will pay me for my work, and I will post it for sale. Problem solved, and the "Rarest DC Game" has been defined.
I'd personally only count titles that are on a GDrom disc since its the consoles propriatory format. For me the rarest titles on the system are the D-Direct 2k2 sports titles simply because of the small distribution amount and not many people in Japan wanted them. The most expensive DC game is Okawa management style Seaman. There are alot of Hibaihin titles which are equally as difficult to track down as well.
yep, but you still need to tell me where to pay it to. Do you still have a Japanese bank or postal account?
I'd go with the Toyota discs - rarer than Kapitel... - The Kapitel discs flucutuate wildly in price and aren't that hard to find. The Toyota discs on the other hand... extrememly difficult. The problem is neither are playable as 'games' as Kapitel was a web based thing, and the Toyota discs were just promo's for the cars. The Cawaii disc should also rank quite highly - but I have no idea if it's more readily available in Japan?
I see you are doing your very best to misunderstand me. Someone who has to live in a place where hunting for food by running after it is still necessary might run 100m in a second less than the current olympic gold medalist. That makes him the fastest runner period. The gold medalist is only the fastest runner who participates at Olympia. If the (by your definition) rarest DC game was printed and sold thousands of times I doubt it deserves to be called rare. Make a thread in the WTB section, offer last known eBay price + X and you'll find sellers each and every day. Isn't there a thread on here where everyone complained about how all ebay game auctions are labeled as 'rare' nowadays?! I'm a bit confused and surprised noone shares that opinion, but that must simply mean I'm wrong and not smart enough to understand why - so in the name of peace I'll accept that, leave you guys to your discussion and be on my merry way.
Basically, when it comes to defining a rare item, most collectors limit that to officially licensed product. Everything else is grey market. Anyone can order up a cheap MIL-CD run. Make a shitty homebrew game, order a 100 disc production run, include a basic manual and covers and you have a "rare" game by your definition. That's why you'll find most stick with officially licensed titles only. -hl718
I personally would have my fun trying to track down one of those 100 shitty copies, but yeah, I see where you guys draw the line. I never intended to say your definitions were wrong, just that mine's different. To each his own.
My opinion is that not officially licensed games a.k.a comercial homebrew don't count when talking about rare games. If the homebrew manufacturer makes 1000 copies it'll be rare. If they make 5.000 copies it'll be less rare. They decide. They can make more prints like they did with last hope. It's not serious. Official products is what we are talking here.
later Grauen kapitel, ok. these are hard to get, i agree. but toyota doricatch? come one, these are promo items and not really games. if you include that stuff, alabama meets will vi is the rarest dc game...
The rarest game is one that never existed. Bwahaha! But was sold in stores. Bullshit aside, I'm thinking of 40 Winks on the N64. The rom exists, and people have confirmed seeing it sold, but I've never seen a picture of an actual copy. That seems like it'd be the rarest of the rare, assuming all stories check out? I should read through this entire thread, but one thing that seemed really interesting were copies of titles that had only minor variations (extra sticker, etc) that would cause them to blend in with the massive ammount of normal copies. Stuff like Daytona USA CCE Netlink on Saturn. Any more DC examples?
Well, if we're going silly then I have the rarest of all DC games if Home Brew is included. I have two builds of XOP which was to be renamed as DALFORCE for Dreamcast. It's a vertical shooter which is actually pretty good. The team behind it never finished the game even though the last build is pretty far along featuring over 5 stages. I have videos of it on my site. Yakumo
And I've got 5 builds of 'Grizzlies' (formerly named Toxic Waste) which was going to have a GOAT release while there were all those games announced... Oh, and the Midwest Gaming Classic GOAT Demo disc (only one was ever burned and I made a copy of it ... ?). Possibly slightly more legit homebrew would be a all the DC Evolution releases that were given away at M4 2006. These actually include CD cases, covers, instructions, and CD cover stickers. DCSquares is the best of them. ... That's probably why homebrew doesn't count.