Hello all,

The past week has seen the release of Sega Rally 2 to the market. The game has gotten great reviews overall but one complaint from some is that the game isn't 60FPS at all times. When lots of cars are on screen the frame rate may dip down into the 30s or even just a shade below. Some people are quick to point out that the frame rate drop is a testament to the Dreamcast's lack of power. Frankly, such claims are ridiculous, especially when analysing the performance of first generation software. The same thing happened when Virtua Fighter 1 appeared on the Saturn. With its polygon dropout problems, people quickly wrote off the system. However, with the release of VF: Remix and VF2 for the Saturn, the same people praised the console. Rally 2 is a great effort on Sega's part to get the game out, and naysayers aside the game does meet expectations and deserves the great reviews it has been getting.

Sega has been pretty busy behind the scenes making deals here and there. Lets say one is out shopping for a car...at oh say a Toyota dealer. Then walking about one sees the familiar orange swirl on the wall. Strange...but starting on the 15th Toyota Motor Corp to distribute DC hardware and software at Toyota dealers in Japan. Sega has also been working on a LAN device for the Dreamcast to network two consoles directly together. Such a device with the addition of a ethernet hub would allow for large multiplayer tournaments though it remains to be seen if the adapter will act beyond being just a link cable. Sega plans to reveal the device at the Spring Tokyo Game Show. Other peripherals reportedly in the works for the console include a hard drive and printer.

Over in Europe, Sega of Germany moved its headquarters from Hamburg to Dusseldorf along with appointing a new CEO. The Dreamcast will make its first official appearance at the Nuremberg Toy Fair next week. British importer Computer Exchange has also lowered the price of a Dreamcast console to £299.99 ($494.23US). This recent drop brings the import price in-line with what is being charged in the US for the DC console.

Over on the site, I've put up more images from Shenmue so check them out in the snapshots area. Older images have been moved to the archive area or to my personal offline archives. While I'd like to keep all data online, my limited web storage prevents me from doing so. A review of Evolution will be up in a day or so..I'm currently playing with the data formats about what info should be included etc while allowing for future expansion.

That's about all this week, enjoy! Also, let me know if you want a currency convertor on the site if you haven't already. I'm currently deciding how to best integrate it into the site (it costs me money to have such a feature and traffic effects my costs).

-Greg