So far I have only dealt with Windows-only games. However, many popular franchises have roots that reach well into the DOS-era. Warcraft, Aquanox, Leisure Suit Larry, Duke Nukem, Doom, Wolfenstein, Lemmings, Worms – the list of franchises that span several operating system generations is too long to ignore all of these titles. While it’s easy enough for the oldschool DOS user to get those games to run, newer generations are confronted with ancient technology to which they can hardly relate. Even excellent emulators like DOSBox require knowledge about vintage hardware, at least when the game has problems. And if it doesn’t start at all, then the drama begins that all former DOS users just know too well. Makes me think about all those Windows haters that wanted to stick to DOS at the end of the 90s, when Microsoft abandoned it as a gaming platform. Gee, I wonder if history does repeat itself (looking at the XP-fanatics).

Anyway, I wanted to see what problems I would encounter if I started working on a Complete Edition that also included DOS-titles. So I checked out a DOS-game that I just had handy and turned it into a multi-compatible game. Being in a Lovecraftian phase right now, I chose Prisoner of Ice by Infogrames. The game has a native Windows version, but that doesn’t come with DOS-executables, so I couldn’t just throw the DOS-version away.

My goal was to make it as easy for the end user as possible. The game runs originally from CD so that was a challenge, too. All recent commercial re-releases of DOS-games use installers to my knowledge (or Steam), but none of them use a fixed environment such as a CD. On top of that I wanted to give the end user limited abilities to change emulation options. In the end I limited the user options to a resolution and fullscreen choice. Other technical aspects like video modes or sampling frequencies would have been interesting too, but the game doesn’t really profit from them. So I rather optimized gameplay by tweaking DOSBox settings manually.

Furthermore users can run the game in original DOS if they have a compatible Windows version. That was may be the most important aspect of the edition. It had to offer a vanilla version. DOS-emulation is nice and all, but what is it good for if the implementation breaks the game so that it doesn’t run on the original hardware any more? Well, no problems here and this is also the way that I want to pursue in future releases.

These and lots more can be downloaded once the forum is up. It’ll take a while, but I’ll give you a sneak preview by offering this release for download already:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LLR15BVK

I decided to open a twitter account to keep those interested in my work up to date with what’s going on behind the curtain. I usually don’t announce my work on my blog, let alone what’s currently in the pipe, but twitter is a perfect place to litter with such quickly outdated information.

I just stumbled over Racketboy’s Dreamcast guide and found it to be error riddled and full of exaggerations, so I decided to correct it just for the fun of it.

Historical Impact

* The Dreamcast was Sega’s fifth and final video game console and the successor to the Sega Saturn. Sega cut off the Saturn’s lifespan early to try to get a head start in competing with the Playstation 2.
* Dreamcast was ahead of its time in many ways. It was the first console to include a built-in modem, Internet support for online gaming, and stunning VGA video output. It was also a large leap in graphical and storage capabilities over the existing PS1 and N64 consoles.

Correction:
- Online-gaming was already supported with the Sega Saturn and Sega’s NetLink service. In fact, that is what the Dreamcast’s online service was based on.
- Naming VGA-output as a feature that was ahead of its time is plain wrong. The N64 supported VGA just as much. Also, let’s not forget that in 1999 VGA-resolutions had been a standard for PC-gamers for half a decade at least. In fact, high-end gamers were already using resolutions up to 1280×1024, so this feature was neither stunning, nor ahead of its time, but merely necessary. Let’s also not forget that the Saturn had support for full SDTV resolution (704×480). And last but not least let’s not forget that direct competitors to the Dreamcast introduced support for HD-resolutions, showing that Sega’s console was rather outdated on that sector.
- It’s always funny to see comparisons of hardware from different generations, especially if this is supposed to show the superiority of the newer console. That doesn’t work, though. Almost every new console generation introduces higher storage capacities and better graphics over the older generation, so mentioning this, is really moot. In fact, the Dreamcast’s storage capacity was dwarfed by Microsoft’s and Sony’s support for DVDs. The fact that many gamers held out on Sega to buy a PS2 instead shows that comparing technical aspects this way to convince gamers of a supposed superiority of a console doesn’t work and actually back then, they compared the Dreamcast specs with the not yet released PS2 rather than with 5 year old hardware.

* The Dreamcast enjoyed one of the best console launches of all time with brisk sales and a solid initial game library. Unfortunately, between the growing media hype and the support for the hot DVD technology, the Playstation 2 quickly limited the sales potential for the Dreamcast.

Comment: The console launch the Dreamcast experienced could be described as mediocre or decent at best. Your misconception comes straight from the mouth of Sega’s Bernie Stolar, who claimed this to make the console look more attractive. However, he compared the launch numbers with those of the Playstation and N64, but those consoles faced a much smaller market at that time, that was only widened massively due to the Playstation’s stunning success. You have to compare the Dreamcast’s launch numbers with its direct competitors. Sony’s Playstation 2 sold twice as many consoles on its launch day a year later, which shows that Sega did not really make use of the market’s potential. Even the Xbox and Gamecube had higher sales numbers on their first day, which makes the Dreamcast launch look more like a fail than anything else. So much for the media hype…

* The Dreamcast only lasted a few short years on the retail scene outside of Japan, but still maintained a strong cult following due to its innovative games, homebrew capabilities and the trickle of interesting imports coming from Japan.

- Comment: This is a moot point too. Show me a console that doesn’t have a strong cult following. Cults around consoles develop easily and are nothing out of the extraordinary. In fact, a console having none would be worth mentioning, but this is just calling the cattle black.

Strengths

* The Dreamcast was a very powerful machine in its day and still holds up surprisingly well in the modern era. It also had some of Sega’s more creative and innovative games, some of which have not yet been ported to other consoles.

- Comment: Let’s put the statement of a powerful machine in perspective. The Dreamcast featured a 200MHz CPU, which was under-powered compared to the PS2’s 300MHz, or the Xbox’ 733Mhz CPU. In fact, the Xbox GPU (233MHz) was already higher clocked than the Dreamcast’s CPU. Implying that the console featured more creative and innovative games is debatable too, since every console had those, just the quantities varied. Still, those innovative games did nowhere near sell as well as those genre-defining games that the competing consoles released, which ultimately caused Sega’s demise, so I would be careful calling Sega’s game library a strength. In fact, it was its onesidedness that kept gamers away from the console.

* As mentioned above, in addition to many common video connections, the Dreamcast also supports native VGA output that makes it ideal for playing the Dreamcast on computer monitors or HDTVs.
* Due to the discoveries made by piracy groups at the end of the Dreamcast’s retail lifecycle, it is very easy to run both rips of commercial games and homebrew efforts like independent games and emulators of older systems without any modifications to the hardware. Because of this, the Dreamcast has one of the best homebrew and emulation scenes along with the original XBox.
* In addition to the quirky Sega-developed games, the Dreamcast is very popular because of its deep library of 2D Fighting and 2D Shooting games (shmups). Many of the original arcade games were originally developed on the NAOMI arcade platform (which is basically Dreamcast hardware with extra RAM), which made it very easy to have arcade-accurate console ports.

- Comment: Well, calling it “very” popular in conjunction with the rather limited fanbase of 2d fighting games and shmups couldn’t be more of an exaggeration. If at all, Sega proved that these genres are not profitable any more due to a lack of fanbase, so makes this statement look pretty ridiculous. Now, if you had said that the console was popular among fighting and shmup fans, this would be entirely different and much more accurate.

Weaknesses

* The Dreamcast was developed before DVD drives had reached an affordable level, so it does not support DVD playback or playing homebrew off of DVD media.

- Comment: I really doubt that the price of DVD-hardware was really what kept Sega from using the technology. After all, they used their very own standard, which was certainly not less pricy than just licensing DVD-technology. Sega’s choice for the GD-ROM was more likely only driven by two aspects: copy protection by using a non-standard format and expanded income due to licensing fees by 3rd party developers. Too bad Sega had almost none and also overlooked the video craze that started with the introduction of DVDs.

* Since it was released a year before the Playstation 2 and two years before the Gamecube and XBox, it does not quite have the graphical capabilities of the later consoles. While it does not really hinder the machine much, some graphic-obsessed gamers may be disappointed.

- Comment: Yet, earlier you called it a powerful system. Well, how powerful is a system, which graphics capabilities settle at the lowest end among all of the consoles of that generation.

* Those gamers looking for many of the popular games from Electronic Arts will be disappointed as EA did not support the Dreamcast after its disputes with Sega during the Saturn era. However, Sega did an excellent job of filling the software gaps itself.
* The RPG genre did not have a very big showing in the Dreamcast library. Skies of Arcadia and Grandia 2 were very strong games, but the rest of the library was limited to a small handful of gems.

Emulation

* If you would prefer to play your Dreamcast games on your PC instead of the actual console, you may need to wait a bit longer for good compatibility.
* While you may get to have a few games playable if you have a high-end PC, most games are quite glitchy if playable at all.

Comment: I wouldn’t call a 1.5Ghz CPu with any DirectX9c-compatible graphics card a high-end PC. I’m aware that the article was written in 2007, but even then this was still an exaggeration. With the release of NullDC at that time, Dreamcast emulation became available even on low-spec systems.

Affordability

* The Dreamcast is actually one of the most affordable consoles on eBay. It is very easy to find one on eBay or in pawn shops or flea markets for under $20.

Comment: So is the Xbox, Saturn, Snes, Nes, Game Gear, Nomad, Master System, Genesis, Playstation, N64… Can you say moot?

* Many of the most popular games for the Dreamcast are also available for just a few dollars each. Add that to the emulation capabilities and you have a very good classic gaming value.

Comment: The emulation capabilities are rather laughable. Sure you have a lot of emulators for the system, but most of them don’t even work full speed, or support the majority of games. In fact, you only have a handful of emulators, which could be called playable. Just take the Snes-emus as an example. Emulation is not bad, yet not quite there (and it’s doubtable that it will ever get there). Simple games without overlays run almost at full speed, but those are rather limited in numbers and also look pretty bad, even for that system. Comparing that emulation back to the Snes-experience I had on my PC in 1999 I have to say that the Dreamcast is massively inferior and that basically goes for any emulation that is still lacking. Snes, N64, PSX games….they were all much better playable on my old rig, than they ever were on the Dreamcast. If it comes to emulation, an honest suggestion would have been to get an Xbox. It’s not more expensive, yet its raw processing power emulates basically all older systems at playable speeds. Dreamcast is nice for NES, Master System, Genesis, Scumm and old computer emulation, but why limit yourself if you can get all of that and much more on the Xbox.

Final Statement: It might look like I’m down-talking the console, but don’t get me wrong. Being a fan doesn’t mean that you have to praise everything about it, or have to turn every aspect into a positive one. That’s for fanboys. I’d rather keep it real and for a beginners guide this did little to inform people, but rather spread misconceptions among them. I think all older fans will agree that there are already far too many that surround the Dreamcast, so it doesn’t really help to push even more inaccuracies out there. I can see that Rachetboy tried to fill a page to justify this as a guide and therefore tried to include as many aspects as possible. Not being bound to such an artificial restriction, I’d rather condense it down to the following:

Historical Impact:

- Sealed the death warrant for Sega Saturn, while pissing off 3rd party developers for that console due to sudden lack of support and market consistency, which ultimately thinned out support for the Dreamcast. How ironic.

Strengths:
- Vast arcade game library
- Support for pirated games and homebrew right out of the box
- Own freeware compiler with KallistiOS for homebrew apps with the commercial ones being available as warez

Weaknesses:
- Lack of support for basically all other game genres except for a few titles
- Lots of homebrew apps never made it out of beta, or even alpha state and run less than decent, including but not limited to DivX-players and most emulators with only few exceptions
- Many pirated games can’t be played without having serious portions of them either cut out or downsampled, while original games still can cost a pretty penny if you live in countries other than the United States.

Yesterday, I uploaded my newest Complete Edition to BitGamer just to be pestered by some ignorant moderator hours later, who didn’t like that I stated my opinion about BitGamer’s stupid Golden Torrent policies. He claimed that I violated a rule that prohibited this kind of behavior, yet failed to quote it from the rules page. No wonder, because it doesn’t exist.

So this was all just a battle of opinion with him sitting behind the red button, which resulted in kicking me off the site. Smooth move. This is one way to end a discussion, where you have been proven to just talk out of your ass.
In any case, I’m glad that I pulled my Complete Editions before that douche kicked me, or else this would have looked like I was desperately trying to stay there. You can all thank 15 week moderator Nemius for canning my support for BitGamer. If you’re reading this Nemius: You’re not too smart, are you? My account only had a minimal download count, just to push me over the required 10GB for becoming a power user. I don’t use BitGamer for my downloads, but only for checking problem reports on torrents. I’ll just switch to one of my backup accounts, while making sure never to post some exclusive content there. Talk about shooting yourself in the knee, dumbass. Just a personal advice to you kid: If you think the truth is insulting, then either grow some balls, or move to North Korea. They need submissive pussies like you, that at the same time push their own opinion down other people’s throats.

While I’m at it I might give you some insights about how the Golden Torrent system works. It’s really no big deal to see through it, but you won’t find an official statement explaining it. Yesterday, I received confirmation for what I expected right from the start. It’s not about the content, but merely about the description. Copy half of wikipedia together with nfo fragments, make it expandable with some of the many cover images that you can find online and you’re on the way for a golden torrent. Nemius called this style “golden worthy”, so there you have it from the horse’s mouth. The site might imply some kind of democracy with offering you the ability to nominate a torrent, giving you the idea that only the amount of votes might matter, regardless of the style of the description, but that is little more than a smoke screen. I’ve seen torrents which went golden only shortly after having been uploaded while also only having like 50 downloads. I’m talking about this one, a torrent that was uploaded by Mr. Canthandlevalidcriticism himself and also awarded golden torrent status by himself shortly after having uploaded it. Very inconspicuous to abuse the system so obviously for himself. What a douche. In fact, in the discussion before my ban I told him that his claim, that I was violating a (non-existing) rule was nothing more than his hurt ego, because he felt personally attacked by my rant about golden torrents. He even called it an insult, even though I merely called golden torrent description copy-work, which – surprise, surprise – is just his mindless style of torrenting. He didn’t have the balls though to admit that and claimed that my rant was likely to cause trouble, even though my torrent had already seen hundreds of views at that time and only most positive feedback. Apparently, he wasn’t able to dismiss any of my arguments and instead of showing some character and admitting that he was wrong, he banned me lol. Could you be any more of a chicken, nemius? Actually I was hoping for your dumbass reply to my claim that it were only your little feelings my rant hurt and not those of the other users, because then I could have slapped the link to your self-sanctified golden torrent right in your ugly face. Looks like you get off on that superficial, worthless thing called golden torrent. And wasn’t that exactly what I was ranting about? What a sad little life you must have. Anyway, this lack of integrity with a self-righteous, self-serving attitude is exemplary for everything that is wrong with this site.

In many cases you can check for the most sought after torrents and will find that most of the non-golden ones don’t look much worse than their golden counterparts. And I’m talking about torrents that have seen thousands of downloads, hundreds of comments and positive ratings, yet they are not graced with that shiny status. On the other hand, you’ll have a hard time finding golden torrents with unique content, but with descriptions, that are streamlined for torrent specific information rather than stuff that you can google. So golden torrents are merely a travesty, or else you would find more specific information about what the requirements for that status are. There is no transparency how those torrents become golden. Do they have to reach a certain nomination count, or a certain nomination/download-ratio? How many mods decide that a torrent becomes golden? Do they vote on it or is a single one enough to hand out that status?

Personally, I couldn’t care less about golden torrents. In fact, I don’t like them, because they give way to mindless downloading. Many leechers just download on queue while only playing a fracture of what they’re actually getting. If a torrent is not golden, then at least they give some consideration whether they want to download it or not.  This is important to me, since I’m interested in feedback and not pointless download counts.

Anyway, while the world defeated fascism over 60 years ago, it is on the up and up in shitholes like BitGamer and Underground Gamer (no wonder, both are run by the same asshole). Many users though stick desperately to those places, thinking that they found the pot of gold, while that are merely puddles compared to the see of warez that is the internet. That fascism is also the reason why you won’t find any release groups spreading their stuff on sites like these, because those are the few that actually have some spine and will go their way, regardless of any rules. On the other hand you have the leecher, who is rarely more than a spineless drone. He will back down in fear of losing his precious access to something that is neither unique nor special. This would be funny, if people’s behavior wasn’t so frighteningly stupid, namely by acting as if this place was the hottest shit since sliced bread. Nowadays, we have more possibilities to get warez than ever before. If modern sharing technology has taught us one thing, then that you don’t have to care about certain places any more, because the vast possibilities of sharing help spreading releases like wildfire. It’s even sadder to see that these melting pots for the ignorant turn this thing into a business by shoving donation infos right in your face on every single page. The fact that they use a negatively looking smiley to somehow reach your conscience and get some bucks out of you should make it fairly obvious. This doesn’t concern BitGamer alone, but is exemplary for many sites out there and borders on the ridiculous when it comes to forum owners that claim that hosting costs several hundred dollars a month, while any kid could afford some webspace with its allowance. For me, donators that support places that do not generate content, but only mooch off of the scene are the stupidest among all. You give money to sites, because you think it will help improve it, or keep it alive. Well, hello moron, even if it went down, releases wouldn’t stop pouring onto the internet.  In fact, if someone should receive some form of compensation, it should be the release groups, because they actually buy a good portion of software that they release for free, apart from having all the cracking work. They have to maintain a costly infrastructure to keep the game running. It’s not the small torrent site or warez forum that needs the money to give you pirated goods. In fact we don’t need them at all. Warez have been spreading before they came along and they still will long after those methods will have become unpopular. Anyway, grow a spine. Defend your opinion. I did and it feels much better having done so, than eating shit from an idiot.

Almost forgot to give you the most important info at all. retroCast will be back soon with a newer, better and bigger forum, where you can grab all my old and new releases. This time it will have a much wider coverage of games. Dreamcast is nice and all, but it sure as hell is not my ultimate choice for gaming. Never really was, never really will. Computer games are the way to go, so retroCast will not just cover consoles, but anything related to gaming. Check back regularly, because sooner or later this address will direct you to the new goodie haven that is retroCast. And for those who couldn’t follow my latest releases, here are two screenshots. Click them to read the nfos:

Whenever a game is released to the gaming community it has to stand up to the expectations and judgments of the gamers. In particular that means, that it will be compared to other titles, that are considered equal in visual quality and performance. But once in a while, a game is so completely different, that those standards just don’t work. The problems arise when people don’t realize that and still apply them. One of the victims is Cryostasis.

Released at a time, where gaming technology was still rudimentary, Cryostasis had to face the onslaught of negative opinions that many titles experience that are ahead of their time. Cryostasis is almost perfect within its own realm and that makes it an easy victim for ignorance and prejuduice. Those are the result of never changing judgment patterns of gamers. For this game, they need to adapt. Alas, that’s  a rarely seen quality nowadays and to make things worse, Cryostasis is a first person shooter. Fans of this genre have never been the most tolerant or understanding, let alone interested enough to enjoy a well done plot over lesser attractive gameplay. After all, fans of this genre are entertained merely by shooting things and how many hardcore FPS-titles can you name that offer an outstanding storyline? (No, Half-Life doesn’t count, especially not HL2)

So, additionally to climbing that steep mountain of expectations, Cryostasis also has to carry the burden of FPS-gameplay, but enough of the metaphors and let’s get to the meat of the issue.

Visual Quality: Cryostasis vs. Crysis

A crisis indeed, because every comparison of Cryostasis to any other current game out there is doomed to fail. Cryostasis uses the unique AtmosFear 2.0 engine. Comparing games that are based on different engines makes little sense, unless it comes to gameplay or a direct comparison of similar effects done by both engines. Cryostasis doesn’t give you such a basis though. People usually think that Crysis is visually superior to Cryostasis, but this is arguable. The normal gamer usually doesn’t give much thought to what works behind the scenes, or even pays enough attention to see the important details that eat up performance.

Crysis is a game that shines at polygon pushing. Life-like high-poly enemies, plants, water…you name it. The game wants to deliver superficial graphical excellence and it achieves that. The strain on the hardware when it came out was immense and even today it is still the major benchmark for new high-end gaming cards and that will not change anytime soon.

Cryostasis is different. The polygon count is rather low. NPCs seem stiff and less life-like. Enemies however do look very much alive and very realistic. Still, that doesn’t justify the strain on the hardware. Cryostasis’ performance-chugging black hole is far more subtle, yet very demanding.

Cryostasis animates tens of thousands of particles in certain scenes…all in realtime and all physically accurate. No other game does that so far and also Crysis doesn’t do it. Sure you have some basic physics and in comparison to Cryostasis they are really basic. The number of physically influenced objects at a time in Crysis is fairly low. In Cryostasis you will end up having fights with monsters that will make massive use of physics. Bullet sparks that fly all over the screen, bouncing around on the floor in a realistic fashion are only one factor. Hit an enemy with a bullet and dozens of iceshards fly off him and react accurately with their surroundings. Now imagine attacking him with a tommy gun, which usually results ina  massive amount of sparks and ice shards at the same time. Throw in other physically influenced effects such as water streams from broken pipes, nearby fires, breaking off icicles or stumbling over some of the debris during a fight and you have acquired quite some workload that can trouble many graphics cards without even having applied many of the other visual goodies.

Numerous ice shards fly off when you hit an enemy. This also happens when the bullets hit ice.

If a bullet hits metal, the resulting spark-effect emits light. You can see the yellow light being reflected in the icy surfaces around the spark area.

The lighting effect dies off quickly and sparks are generated. They rain down to the ground in a realistic fashion, bouncing off walls if they hit them.

Sparks raining down. Pay attention to the great visual filter that distorts the view and gives the screen a frozen over look.

Aside from the complex physics Cryostasis also has a higher particle count than any other game out there. Water dripping from the ceiling, water gushing through open hatches water shooting from your water gun, water falls coming through broken ceilings…water all around you. It’s kind of what you would have expected Bioshock to be like, which only let you experience water rather scarcely. Speaking of which, let’s compare the two games’ water. Water has always been a strain on hardware and new games are no different. In Bioshock you only get the better water effects when you play the game with DirectX 10, but even then it is barely comparable to Cryostasis. The water in Bioshock is scripted and therefore puts no load on the CPU physics-wise. Also, Bioshock seems to use a mapping effect for the water, which is an efficient way of pulling the water effect off, but it isn’t realistic. In fact, the water in Bioshock looks downright terrible. It reminds me of the same style 10 year old games used. The only difference is its realistic looking transparancy effect. Cryostasis relies solely on particles to pull off all water effects! Where Bioshock (and all other games, including Crysis) used a texture to simulate a stream of water, Cryostasis uses thousands of particles and all behave physically accurate! This is a quantum leap in terms of realism and considering these different technologies you might see now, why Cryostasis needs much more power than games like Bioshock or Crysis. But it doesn’t end there.

Water running through a broken ceiling. You can see that it consists of many small objects. Even reflections from the light source above are visible in numerous drops of water. Also take note of the motion blurring effect for every water particle, making the whole element look much more realistic.

Cryostasis supports many texture filtering effects to make the surroundings look more real. Apart from your standard run-in-the-mill water reflection effects, The game also reflects the surroundings. The effect can be easily overlooked, because it blends in so well, due to its natural look. Also, the game features impressive water caustics effects. The term caustics describes the behavior of light when it hits a water surface. It is not just merely reflected, but also broken and overlayed and causes complex light patterns on surrounding objects. Cryostasis renders a realistic caustics effect that is also influenced by the water’s movement and additional light sources. While you will find some water in Bioshock or Crysis, you will have a hard time finding caustics.

This is water rendering without environment reflection.

Here environment reflection is turned on. What you can see is the ceiling. The effect is very subtle and can easily be overlooked. Still, without it, the water looks a lot less realistic. Also pay attention to the caustic effect in the upper part of the picture. Compare it with the prior picture and you can see that the caustics change according to the water movement.

Here you can see the beautiful caustic effect.

Here is the scene with caustics turned off.

Cryostasis has a very interesting lighting model. Lighting, as you might know, requires massive computing power. When Stalker came out, it was perfectly playable with static lighting, even on older computers. But when you activated full dynamic lighting, framerates plummeted. The difference in visual quality was immense, though. Try standing on a field at night, surrounded by trees and bushes during a lightning storm and you will know what I mean. You can test your computer’s lighting abilities with 3D Mark. I suggest using 3D Mark 2001. Yes, you read correctly. The benchmark is old, but its lighting test, that uses up to 8 lights in a low poly scene is even capable of bringing high-end graphics cards to its knees. In  Cryostasis you might end up enjoying a minimum of 16 (!!!) light sources in certain levels. While this amount alone is enough to keep your computer busy rendering reflections, there’s also the small matter of shadow rendering. Those add to the amount of light calculations. Compare that to stalker. You had a sun as a light source at day and your flashlight, or even several at night, including fires. How many did you ever see at a time? Additionally to that, weapons in the game are dynamic light sources too. You don’t need a flashlight to find your way through a dark corridor. A full clip from your tommy gun will suffice.

You can see light reflections on all of the icicle shards, that break off if you destroy icicles, or hit an enemy, or ice.

Cryostasis doesn’t stop there. Having shadows helps the look of a game, but to make it look realistic, you also need reflections and Cryostasis is full of them. The game makes heavy use of specular mapping, a technique that reflects light accurately on surfaces according to their reflective abilities. You’ll see blurry sun reflections on snowy ice blocks outside the ship, while you can see sharp light spots on icicles inside.  To make things more real, specular mapping also takes the camera’s position into account. If you move, then the reflections will not remain static, but will change according to your viewpoint.  Cryostasis takes this a step further though. Not just you can change your position, but also the objects. Heat up a room and the ice on the walls will melt. It starts to run down the wall and while it does, the light reflections on it change according to its movement and to its surface structure and thickness. This is a unique effect that no game has showcased so far and it looks extremely realistic.

When you change your position towards objects, that can reflect light...

...then the reflection changes according to your position, while taking the objects surface structure into account.

Another example. You can see how the surface structure of the ice creates an uneven, realistic look of the light reflection...

...and as soon as you move, your position relative to the ice will add another factor to change the reflection. That's as realistic as a game has gotten so far.

The player's position does not just change the appearance of the reflection...

...but also its intensity. Although hard to capture in an image, this side view of the above image is more gloomy. The effect is very apparent within the game itself.

Another clear example how your viewpoint has an influence on the lighting. In this picture the reflection is visible on the right side of the icicles...

...and when you move to the left, it moves with you.

Here it gets really realistic. The ice starts to melt and runs down the wall. May be the most famous effect of the game.

However, I haven't seen a review that paid attention to the reflection change on the moving ice.

It's not only the structure of objects that change the reflection, but also bumpmapped textures, such as those of the ice.

Another major performance factor is the shading, which allows for beautifully looking ice-encrusted walls and doors. Since the game mainly uses these looks, the performance drain just by standing in a room filled with ice is quite heavy.  Of course you also have to take high-resolution textures into account. Enemies are being graced with 4 Megapixel textures (that’s 2048×2048), while objects can have anything from 256×256 up to 1024×1024 and that’s quite some amount of data to handle.

The other Rumor:  Missing multi-core support

I don’t know, who actually started that rumor, or even why, but someone told me, that even the official forum admin of the publisher 1C admitted that the game had no multicore support. Let’s think about that for a second. The assumption alone that a game by a developer, who was capable of pulling off effects that surpass those of current gen games in certain aspects of visual quality, doesn’t honor hardware trends that have been available for half a decade (multicore CPUs were announced in 2004), sounds pretty stupid. In fact, it’s as asinine as it can get. I first stumbled upon this rumor on wikipedia, where it was “proven” with two links that lead to the publisher’s forum, where people bashed the game with their screenshots of proof. Those screenshots showed the workload of the CPU-cores during gameplay and for many of them it was rather low. Those people claimed that if the CPU would have been used more, their framerate would go up. Actually, I have a hard time understanding how someone who practically knows nothing about how the computer components work together, can make such a claim. It’s like telling your doctor how to treat your sickness: “Cut my leg! The loss of blood will help me getting rid of my headache”

The most work is done by the graphics card. However, it is dependend on the CPU to get data to process. Think of it as a dish washer in a restaurant. Someone has to do the main work, which is washing the dishes, but someone also has to bring them to the dish washer. If you have a fast dish washer, then you also need someone who can bring in the dishes fast enough, or he’ll get bored and has to wait. This equals computers with strong graphics cards, but with underpowered CPUs. What you’ll get is a maxed out CPU, while your graphics card would still have some potential to pump out more performance.

However, if your dishwasher has to deal with ages old, encrusted dirty dishes he might slow down to a crawl and the guy who delivers the work to him might get some spare time. The effects in Cryostasis do just that. They are so overwhelmingly massive in comparison to any other game out there, that your graphics card will be maxed out, even if it is a most recent model. Since it can’t take any more work, the CPU cuts back on delivering more data and gains some idle time. So in cases of those people with extremely low core workloads (may be 20% in the shots I saw), it just means that their cards are already maxed out, while their CPUs could most likely also power stronger graphics cards.

Also, there is a clear indicator, whether an application supports multiple cores or not: If it is limited to only a single core during runtime, then it is not multithreading capable. However, the screenshots of those who shunned the game showed equal load balancing among their cores. In other words, their graphical proof disproved what they wanted to prove.  The fact that an admin of the publisher supposedly fueled these ignorant assumptions just shows that you can’t trust even public sources, that should have better access to the developers than you do. For those that I confronted with the above technical facts it didn’t take long to develop new theories to blame the game for their laggy gaming experience. All of a sudden, the performance patch must have had introduced this feature, because suddenly they felt that the game ran better after installing it with better maxed out CPUs.

Well, I tested all retail versions right out of the box and all supported multithreading equally well. In fact I made a screenshot of my CPU-workload while playing the first level of the unpatched russian version (the oldest version there is) and my CPU was maxed out by 75%:

Both cores are clearly in use, even in the oldest unpatched version of the game. Only the balancing is a little off. This was shot with all settings turned down, to show a clear CPU-usage. Maxing the game out pushes the workload on all cores so far down, that the balancing isn't really a problem. With the performance patch, the CPU-usage became even less important for users with compatible PhysX-hardware.

You can check it yourself. Keep in mind that your CPU-load will be higher if your graphics card has more headroom, so turn off all effects. On the other hand, you can see that your card is already maxed out by raising everything to max. This will minimize your CPU-load. Some claimed that you’d need one of the strongest CPU-cores to play the game smoothly, but since it’s the graphics card that is bottleneck in modern games, any CPU will do. In fact, Cryostasis recommends a rather old and weak CPU for recommended specs. This is no surprise, since – as I already said so many times – it has little to do, because most calculations are performed by the gfx-card. CPU-load is even lower for those, who can make use of hardware-physics, because that will take the biggest load off the CPU and put it on the graphics card.

As you can see, Cryostasis needs a strong computer to be enjoyed in all its visual glory, but it is not flawed. It’s just going one step further, just as many titles before it did. Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry and Crysis have all marked big changes in visual brilliance, whether this was achieved by higher polygon counts, or additional visual effects. They all required state of the art computers to be played maxed out, but they also allowed to be played on smaller systems with toned down settings. Cryostasis is no different. It pushes the envelope as far as physics and particle rendering goes, but it can still run on old computers. You just have to know your way around hardware. Just for shits’n giggles I ran the game on my old Radeon x1600, which is worlds below the actual minimal requirement that the manual states (x1900, that one is a lot stronger than an x1600. Check the technical specs). I was able to run the game with all settings turned down at 640×480 and framerates never dropped below 25fps.

If you have a high-end gaming card and can’t play the game, then don’t blame it, but understand it. You want more from the game than your hardware can deliver. The fact that you spent 200, 400, or even 800 dollars on a graphics card, doesn’t mean that you can play any game without limitations. Cryostasis offers room for visual improvement for future graphics card generations (or at least the next one) and that’s a good thing to keep a game fresh. If I had the choice of choosing between a game that was toned down, just so that high-end gamers could get a warm feeling, because they could set everything to max and still drool over smooth framerates, or a game that offered a much bigger potential for visual quality and allowed me to tone it down to a level of playability that my hardware could handle, then I’d always go with the latter.

Take Half-Life 2 as an example. When it came out, it was considered to deliver jaw-droppingly beautiful graphics, but those were surpassed soon enough due to the game’s low texture resolution. Now you can use the cinematic mod, which replaces the mushy textures with high-res multimegapixel ones, giving the game a much newer look. Wouldn’t it have been better if HL2 had come with high-res textures in the first place? Sure you can use the Cinematic Mod, but how many games actually have third party texture packs for them? Doom 3 was advanced enough to offer a texture mode that requires 512MB graphics cards. Unbelievable when it came out, but very nice for gamers 5 years later. Slent Hill 3 allows texture rendering according to the native support of your graphics card. When it came out in 2003, that limit was 2048×2048 for many, but of course no one could play it like that. On current cards, you can quadruple that resolution to 4096×4096 and enjoy visuals that no one could have enjoyed 6 years ago.

So the problem is not Cryostasis, but rather a psychological problem of gamers thinking that they need certain features in a game (like AA), or that a game has to deliver a similar performance, just because others do. It’s all in your head. Get over the cliche that games without AA and AF don’t look good. Check out the game’s options for yourself. Know your hardware’s limitations. Especially the latter is a massive bottleneck, in both the gamer’s head and for the computer.  For example, I encountered numerous people using older high-end cards, who complained about the game’s performance. As it turned out they used the highest texture quality with 512MB Ram cards. I already mentioned above that the game uses very high resolution textures. A single enemy texture can weigh in at 15MB not counting scripts for AI, engine and rendering. Consider other high res textures for your surroundings. How many do you think a level has? How many do you think you can fit into 512MB of VRAM? Do you still think you should play the game with that setting?

Fact is, the game runs…and it runs well. Start out with minimum values and raise only those that you absolutely want. If a Radeon x1600 is capable of running the game, then any other newer card should too, do you actually want to see your gaming rig put to shame by 4 year old mid-range hardware?

The Dreamcast is dead and so is my interest for it. While working on the next version of the forum I kinda lost my ambition for the whole thing, so I stopped the work altogether. Don’t ask me for tools or ripping techniques. This knowledge goes with me. I will keep this blog for now and may be I’ll make links to all my work available here. The only project I still might pour some work into might be TBGC (The Better GDI Collection), but this also won’t happen any time soon. That’s it from me,  but I won’t leave without giving you something: Screenshots of the release that would have been the opening release for the new forum:

Whenever new mediums hit the market, there is a strange confusion about their storage capacities. Usually, the first numbers come from the producers of these media and they are sometimes hyped up to make the medium sound more appealing and fantastic than it actually is. I remember reading a Panasonic brochure about Video-DVDs in 1997. It listed all the amazing features, including a storage capacity of 17GB. Nowadays we know that they used a double sided medium to crank up the numbers. Of course, that is rather deceiving, because it doesn’t matter if you have to flip the same disc or insert just a second one to access the other half of the content, the data that can be read in one session is still just half of that what Panasonic tried to make people think back then.

Today, people are smarter in that regard, due to excessive use (=copying) of the medium and thanks to a massive amount of informations being available by now. The GD-ROM however doesn’t share this level of transparency and therefor you can find differing numbers when it comes to the storage space of Yamaha’s proprietary medium.

The English section of Wikipedia says a GD-ROM holds up to 1.2GB of data and therefor offers almost twice as much space as a normal CD-ROM. Marcus Comstedt, the bright mind, who was one of the first to actually disassemble and run code on the console and who also created the awesome DreamSNES port, writes on his page that it only holds 1GB of data. So who is right on this subject?

The answer is easy: Marcus is right. Contrary to what a lot of private wikis, the official wikipedia and many other highly regarded sources claim, a GD-ROM holds not more than 1GB of data. GD-ROM stands for Gigabyte Disc and that’s a pretty accurate description of the medium. It consists of a low density area that can be read with normal CD-ROM drives and which can hold 18.000 sectors (approx. 35MB) of data. The interesting part of the disc is the high-density part that holds the actual game data. It can store 984MB max. That’s it. More isn’t possible. Combine the space of the low and high-density area and you end up with about 1019MB of storage space, which is 5MB shy of actually being a gigabyte, but who wants to split hairs.

How could this false information of 1.2GB develop, spread and even oust the correct value of 1GB? Let’s check out the official GD-ROM specification that Sega released for developers. It says:

“A GD-ROM has 1.2GB capacity and a conventional CD has 650MB capacity.”

That sounds strikingly similar to what you can read at wikipedia, but how does Sega get these numbers and why does it spread false informations?

The Mathematical Mystery

Whenever data is stored on an optical medium it is being stored in sectors on the disc. These sectors have a distinctive size. Each sector on a GD-ROM (and same goes for most CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs) has a size of 2352 Bytes, but only 2048 Bytes of data are being stored in it. The rest is taken up by checksums that allow restoring the sector in case of read errors. This is a highly needed feature and is basically the life line of optical media. Without it data security could not be guaranteed and the lightest scratches and even sunlight could be enough to render sectors unreadable.

But not all disc formats make use of the recovery data. Audio-CDs and Video-CDs sacrifice this security data to gain an extra of 15% space. Let’s calculate the maximum sector storage capacity of a GD-ROM:

1019MB : 2048 * 2352 = 1227104256 Bytes = 1170MB

For everybody who doesn’t understand this: if you store 1019MB of data on a GD-ROM AND throw in the recovery data, then you end up with 1170MB. You could also store 1170MB of raw audio data as audio tracks on a GD-ROM. Already confused? Good, there are games in my forum for download. Go grab some. The rest may read along.

If you didn’t start using a PC yesterday, then you might have realized that many mediums don’t hold what they promised. Thanks to some nifty marketing strategies of media producers, many discs, hard drives and sticks don’t contain as much data as they claim. The reason for that is, that they use the total amount of the medium’s storage space in Bytes and use a conversion factor of only 1000 instead of 1024. This results in a higher storage capacity than the medium actually offers. The bigger the storage space of a medium, the bigger are the resulting differences. This started way back with floppy discs in the early 90’s and made people wonder why they only could store 1.37MB on their 1.44MB floppies. While CD-ROMs received a proper capacity description when they hit the market, hard drives suddenly experienced a massive mislabeling of their actual capacities starting in the mid 90’s up to today. Since 1997 all my hard drives boasted bigger capacities than they actually offered. I was surprised when I purchased a 300GB Samsung model a while back, which actually offered 299.7GB of space. Soon after a that, I got my hands on a new 500GB HDD, which turned out to have only 460GB.

Even some optical media is being mislabeled nowadays. Some CD-Rs with sizes of 90min and 99min boast wrong sizes of 800MB and 900MB instead of their actual storage capacities of 790MB and 870MB. The differences are even more apparent with DVD-Rs. A dual-layer DVD-R holds 8152MB (=7.95GB), but is being advertised as a 8.5GB medium thanks to using the false conversion factor of 1000. This also brings me back to my Panasonic example from the beginning. They just multiplied that already wrong number by 2 to get a maximum storage space of 17GB…adding 1.1GB of not existing space to the medium…more than a GD-ROM could even hold.

Speaking of GD-ROMs, let’s go back on topic. As we already calculated, a GD-ROM can hold about 1227104256 Bytes. Sega just used a decimal conversion like everyone else in the industry does and this resulted in 1.23GB of disc space. Subtract the basically useless 35MB from the single density area and you end up with 1.2GB of space for game data…or at least that is what Sega tries to make you believe.

Still, there’s another possibility how Sega could have “calculated” a capcity of 1.2GB. A GD-ROM holds in any case 122:30min. This equals a true storage capacity of 1077MB or 1236MB of pure audio data. Take the latter as base for further calculations and you end up with true 1.2GB. There’s just a little problem with that calculation. Each GD-ROM has a security session between the single and high density area. This security stripe is basically a blank and can’t be used for data storage. So theoretically a GD-ROM could store 1.05GB of data or 1.2GB of audio tracks if that security stripe wasn’t there, but since this is a technological requirement for this format, counting the security session’s theoretical storage amount into the total capacity is like counting all theoritically possible layers into a BluRay-Disc’s  capacity, even though they can’t be even achieved technically right now.

Now let’s have fun with numbers again and let’s show how Sega’s 1.2GB is a total exaggeration. Your head is smoking already? Remember the games in the forum. Convert those 1.2GB properly the binary way and you’ll end up with roughly 1230MB, but we already calculated that even if you abuse the checksum data as storage space, a GD-ROM can’t hold more than 1170MB, so Sega exaggerated the capacity even more. Now consider this: You have 984MB for your game data, but Sega implies a storage space that is 250MB bigger…They just add a whopping 25% of space that you can’t use. Well, that isn’t correct either. Theoretically you can stack a GD-ROM with audio tracks and store over 1.1GB of audio data on it, but when we speak about data storage, we talk about normal 2048 Byte sector storage to ensure data integrity. Also, raw audio data can also be stored as files on the GD instead of audio tracks. Quite a few games rather use this method. So you would be limited to 984MB again, and so this argument doesn’t hold up to anything. Even though there are very few games that are stacked with audio tracks, resulting in combined game data of 1.1GB, sacrificing data integrity for storage capacity is a bad trade and can’t be compared to a storage medium that doesn’t use this “cheap trick”:

Sega compared apples with oranges in their statement. The 650MB of a CD-ROM are first of all correctly calculated by the binary system and also being stored in the data integrity ensuring 2048 sector format, while Sega uses a hyped up value for the GD-ROM that isn’t suitable for data storage at all. If Sega had meant pure data storage without caring for checksum data, then they would have had to use a value of about 750MB for the CD-ROM, because that’s the amount of audio data you can store on a 74min disc. If you go even further and use the exaggerated decimal conversion in conjunction with the wrong sector size, then you would end up with 800MB. Now you have a basis on which to compare these sizes and they already show that a GD-ROM can nowhere near store twice as much as a CD-ROM. Let’s go back to the correct numbers again. That’s the additional storage a GD-ROM offers compared to the following media:

51% compared to a 650MB CD-R (74min)

40% compared to a 700MB CD-R (80min)

25% compared to a 790MB CD-R (90min)

13% compared to a 870MB CD-R (99min)

12% compared to a 878MB CD-R (99:59min)

I used 984MB as a basis for the calculations, because it’s the space that you can use for your games that counts. The 35MB on the single density area of the disc can’t be utilized for the game and are therefor lost and only good for bonus material. You can see that Sega exaggerated a lot. They claimed that a GD-ROM could hold twice the data of a CD-ROM, while it only offers half of that additional space.

Reasons for the lie

id-game developer John Carmack explained in an interview during QuakeCon 2008 that the only advantage of the the PS3 over the XBOX360 is its data storage thanks to Bluray. This offers developers the possibility to ship a game on only one disc instead of multiple ones as on 360, given that the game is even that big. This is important, because the developers have to pay license fees for every disc they release…not just one per game. I don’t know if that was the same back then with Sega, but this seems pretty standard practice, so it’s very likely. The option to utilize the amount of 2 full CD-ROMs while only paying half of the license fees could have been, what Sega wanted to catch developers with. Another positive effect, which Sega might have aimed at, could have been to discourage anyone, who would try to copy GD-ROMs. This might have worked for those, who couldn’t access the discs anyways. but hackers always look for a way, regardless of what their options are. They did and they succeeded, so much for that.

Last but not least, 1.2GB and twice as much storage capacity as a CD-ROM sounds also much better and much more appealing than less than a Gigabyte capacity and only 50% more storage space of a CD-ROM. In the end Sega had to justify the higher production costs for the mediums. Tons of factories out there were able to produce ready to sell commercial CD-ROMs for prices that Sega couldn’t have possibly been able to compete with, but only Sega and its production facilities were able to produce GD-ROM games (apart from Yamaha I guess). Just like Nintendo, they may have seen that as a source of additional income. Demanding a lot more for producing a GD-ROM for the small benefit of 50% more storage space would have sounded little convincing.

So, you finally decided to buy a genuine, far too expensive CD-Player, that was designed after the Dreamcast to listen Audio-CDs while playing your crappy non-CDDA rips and you bought an overpriced japanese Dreamcast from an alleged Developer just to find out that it doesn’t offer anything new other than the distinct feeling that you got ripped off? Well, then you might as well put it to some good use and connect it with your first Dreamcast. All you need is a link cable. Shouldn’t be hard to get one, right? I mean, who has two Dreamcasts or even the urge to play games this way anyway?

Alright, looking for such a cable can’t be too hard. There were several manufacturers for link cables and seeing that this feature never really took off, due to only a handful of games supporting it, there must be quite some quantities available. So it must be cheap as hell. Well, turns out that this cable is not that easy to come by, yet the prices are still affordable, ranging from $4 up to $20. If you live in Europe, you’ll most likely have to settle at the higher end of this range. In no case though should you pay more than $30 for it, or even $75 (=50 Euro) like this crazy italian seller wants for it. And that’s without shipping! He allows for personal price offers though and I couldn’t help it and sent him an offer over 10 Euro (=$15). He denied it, but I still got my price, because I won an auction an hour later for just that amount.

I have no doubt that this cable – just like the Aiwa CD-Player and the “Developer Dreamcast” – will rot away on its virtual shelve, because no one will spend so much money just to get to play 5 games with it. I’m glad to see that no buyer so far was dumb enough to actually accept those insane prices and I have a pretty good feeling that no one will buy this cable from this seller either. Hell, you can get it from genuine european shops for about 20 Euro and that means boxed and new! Checking out a shop’s other articles usually reveals with whom you’re dealing with. A quick look assured me of what I was assuming already: An utter moron. He is selling Dreamkeys for insane Euro 12,90!!! As if that wasn’t enough he even calls it “Very Rare!!”. For all those, who don’t know what that is: This was a browser disc that shipped with european Dreamcasts and didn’t cost you a thing. EVERYBODY had one. That’s right. That’s why it’s even next to impossible to sell those on eBay for 1 Euro and that nutjob wants 13!!! Not to mention the insane shipping costs for a single disc. Additionally, hardly anyone uses the Dreamcast to surf online anymore. Oh yeah and let’s not forget that he sells Dreamkey 1.5, while the newest version is 3.0. Also, 1.5 had was a failed production and had some major bugs, e.g. you couldn’t choose your own ISP, that’s why this version was pulled after Sega realized their fault. So this disc is useless twice. May be he meant exactly that with “Very Rare!!”, but judging by his other “rare” products that you can find by the dozen on eBay, I seriously doubt that he’s even able to distinguish the versions of the browser.

While checking out his shop I found something that is even more ridiculous than his Euro 50 offer of the Link Cable: a Dreamcast power switch, which he offers for – drum roll – EUR 10 + shipping. Could there be any more proof that this seller is either retarded and/or impudent towards Dreamcast fans? This is not even a Dreamcast specific component, just a standard switch with a cable, which you can get both for a few cents at an electronics store! Not to mention that for that price you can get a whole fully functional Dreamcast – including accessories! Seriously, this guy needs some massive lack of customers so that his bills choke some sense into him.

I think it’s quite revealing that so many shops claim to be the ultimate source for every gamer’s needs (and that is not just limited to the ones I mentioned so far), while those queefs actually know nothing about their products. I contacted quite some of those eBay shops and asked them about their insane prices. Their answer is always the same. According to them, they target the valuable (Translation: dumb) collectors, who actually care about quality and appreciate paying for it. Too bad that this explanation was also rolled out when they offered used, unboxed accessories in medium shape, while other shops just a click away offered a brand new model for a much cheaper price. Asking about that, they replied that someone will buy it eventually. Knowing that, they apparently don’t need to care about the actual market price, but still dictate their over the top prices to the market, preying on the dumb. So, if you find a shop that offers a good portion of its products for unreasonable prices, think twice about supporting it by ordering from it. Sure sellers have to make ends meet too, but they usually get pretty good conditions from their sources anyway and if they bought the item second hand from a pre-owner and paid an overly high price already, then that’s just their punishment for not knowing their business.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse with that overpriced Aiwa Dreamcast CD-Player, a new seller steps up and proves me wrong. Apparently, it’s the week of the dumb but greedy Dreamcast sellers. So, what are we dealing with today? A Dreamcast. What? That’s it? Afraid so… So what’s all the fuss about? Well, check out this eBay auction.

Someone is selling a HKT-3010, a standard japanese Dreamcast. Yet, he wants 150 frickin Euro for it, because it belonged once to a Developer. The auction title boasts “Dreamcast from a Sega Dreamcast Developer Test Kit” and apparently that is enough for that moron to sell the console for a higher price than a new and boxed, unopened Dreamcast costs today. As extra you’ll receive no hook ups and accessories whatsoever and the fact that this is being sold as defective, seeing that he wasn’t able to test this 110V system on a 220V socket. Just in case you might wonder, yes this is indeed a standard console. There’s nothing special about it, just because developers used it to test their games. In the end they had to test them on standard systems, because that’s where they were supposed to run on. The only thing that you can be sure of is, that this system was in constant use and therefor shows more wear and tear than other Dreamcasts that only experienced normal home use. The scratches on the front lid bear proof to that. If you want a japanese Dreamcast so badly, then get a Treamcast instead, because it is actually cheaper than this overpriced garbage and comes fully functional with guarantee and accessories. Oh yeah, and it is cheaper too. Mine cost 135 Euro including shipping, his bad joke of how to fool the gullible costs 165 Euro inlcuding shipping (=US$260). Can you say retard? I bet if he still had a controller he wouldn’t hesitate to sell this pile of horse pucky for 200 Euro… The week has just started and I’m eager to see how many more fucked up dumbasses are trying to fool the Dreamcast fans and sqeeze some big bucks out of them. The Angry Dreamcast Nerd has spoken.

Update (04.07.2008):

The Dreamcast received an offer from someone, but apparently that wasn’t enough for that idiot of a seller, so it wasn’t sold at all. To say it with the words of Bill Hicks: “Who would have thunk it?”…

Whenever novelty hardware for a long dead system appears on the market, expectations by the fans spark up to acquire the rare piece of heaven. Too bad that also the expectations of the seller spark sky high when they expect huge profits. We all saw that happen with the prototype zip drive for Dreamcast that made it to eBay, but never into a fan’s home.

Finding prototypes for sale is a rare occasion, so thank Sega that they created their own little arsenal of hard to get goodies. I’m talking about their Dream Point Bank. Some special japanese Sega goods came with a Dream Point card. You could register the product online at the so called Dream Point Bank. The more you bought, the more points you collected and those could be exchanged into more or less unique goodies. One of the most exclusive ones, which only few people saw with their own eyes and even fewer owned must have been the Dreamcast Dreampoint Casio Portable TV Divers, a portable Screen that was powered by batteries.

Finding this stuff is rare and getting it is usually determined by a good portion of luck and a heavy diet on your wallet’s side. Seems that at least the luck is in a good mood, because right now the wealthy collector is able to pick up another Dream Point Bank exclusive – an Aiwa Dreamcast CD-Player.

The seller wants a freaking 100 Euro plus shipping for it. That even beats the zip-drive seller, because at least that guy offered something unique. But hey, the seller offers an option to offer my own price. Just to check out his reaction, I sent him a 20 Euro offer, which was automatically turned down a second later. Seems that he really has high hopes to milk the stupid, but rich ones. I guess I would need to offer at least 50 Euro to not being turned down immediately and to get a reaction. I won’t do that though, as I’m pretty sure I would end up paying for this overpriced door stopper, because I can’t see why anyone else would want to offer even more. Just for comparison: the above portable Casio TV went for US$50 (=EURO 33) in October 2007 on eBay. Think about that if you really consider pumping money into that CD-Player.

Let’s take a look at that Aiwa Player. It’s a simple discman that was produced by Aiwa back in 1999 or even earlier with the model number XP-V310. The discman reads CD-R/W-discs and comes with a feature called DSL, which stands for Dynamic Super Linear Bass and allowed to raise the bass to two additional levels of intensity. The player has no support for MP3-playback, or even antishock, which really shows its age. It is powered by 2 batteries, which allow for up to 12 hours of listening fun with the player’s so called “long play” function. It seemed to have been a common gift for bonus programs. Sega wasn’t the only one, who offered it. Webmiles, a German bonus program also offered this player, when people had acquired enough bonus points when shopping at participating shops.

So the player is technically not just old, but ancient. Its quality is supposed to be good, but that doesn’t justify the price of 100 big ones… not in 2008. In 2001, the player sold for about 50 Euro. A quick check showed that you can get this thing for 5 Euro nowadays, but I’m talking about the normal edition. The last time I saw this thing was in September 2007. Back then the seller wanted US$99 (=Euro 66). Selling it new and unopened like the current seller does sure justifies a slightly higher price than only 5 Euro, but only slightly, because old hardware is practically worthless compared to recent devices unless it offers unique features or superior quality. Both is not the case here. So if you throw in the novelty bonus (=old player you can get everywhere, but in a terrible color with a transparent lid stamped with the “Sega Dreamcast” Logo), then I reckon 50 Euro should more than cover it. Everything above that, can be considered a rip-off from the seller’s side and utter stupidity from the buyer. Personally, I believe that this player shouldn’t be sold for more than 20 Euro and even that already borders on robbery, but I’m certain that some desperate collectors that pay any price will help keeping prices for this stuff high.