Hi all,

Not much major news this week aside from a few things regarding future DC games: Some news on new games coming...Street Fighter Zero 3 for the Dreamcast will come out in Japan this August...no word on the Saturn version yet. Namco also announced their first Dreamcast game...Soul Calibur, the sequel to the fighter Soul Edge. The game is currently 30 complete, but looks extremely good, and will offer some new play modes as well as enhanced graphics to take advantage of the DC. No word on pricing or dates. There are a few images in the News area if you wish to have a look.

Last week, two new Dreamcast games were released: Monaco Grand Prix Racing 2, and Real Sound - Wind's Regret. Monaco GP2 didn't at first look very appealing, but as a game its fairly good. Not on the level of say, Sega Rally 2, but overall I'd say its a little above average for a GP style racing title. Real Sound is pretty much the same as the Saturn version, but with the option of displaying some nice photographs as background imagery. The big thing with that is the little demo of D2 that came with the game. The demo is limited to the first few production runs of D2. It contains along with some clips of the game, a playable level. The videos are basic intros like those shown long ago at D2's initial announcement. Along with clips of 'battle' gameplay, there are some sound clips from the game. The playable part is a snowmobile race on a short course that has eight pylons. Warp is currently having a contest to see who can complete the course the fastest. The winner will be announced at the TGS...still no word on a release date for the game.

Games coming next week for the Dreamcast include Marvel v. Capcom, Blue Stinger and Super Speed Racing. They earned the following ratings in Dreamcast Fan: 24/30, 20, and 22. For those in Britain, importer CEX has lowered the Dreamcast price a bit down, to £279. Still high, but its getting better.

I've updated the DC software lists to say whether the game has support for the VGA box or not. For titles whose release is several months in the future (past early May), VGA information is not known. Let me know if any of the titles have been mangled in translation. There have been a few changes in the Saturn release list as well..but only minor. Several titles coming are sim/RPGs such as a Suchie Pai game...they don't appear on the list because I cannot translate well enough to have a solid english title.

The Saturn emulator for the Dreamcast, SatCast has been officially announced by Sega. The software will improve the 3D on current Saturn games, but the software will not be released until they solve a memory storage problem. It seems that some Saturn games require more space to save things than is available on the VMS cards. The emulator should be released this summer for around ¥3300 (~$28US).

That's all for this week, I've finals starting at the week's end so the site will slow a bit...sorry for being slow in responding to e-mails...have a good week! Back to programming for me...

-Greg