Hello all,

For the next month there will be somewhat of a slump in DC news with the long gap between releases. No new DC titles are set for release until the 27th of this month. Until then..most news is more likely to come from product announcements, previews, and other news regarding non-Asian release of the console this Fall.

Today Sega announced that they will release a set of VMS mini games on the 22nd of this month to help promote the launch of the RPG, Climax Landers (May 27th). The VMS programs will be available through Dreamcast partner stores and Sega Amusement centers. Possibly it will also be available online via Dricas for download, but it is not mentioned in the release. The set contains three titles:

The first is Tsuyu Daku IV a pseudo 3D title in which you explore randomly generated dungeons. Basically its a simple survival RPG game in which you collect items, explore, use them etc.

The second minigame is strange...perhaps I'm losing things in translation but its roughly called 'What's Yoghurt.' In it your main character ('Yoghurt') is a sort of messenger sent to run various errands for different characters.

The third is called Climax Editor. Its basically a simple graphics editing program for the VMS.

In other news, Famitsu Weekly has reported on some titles that Sega AM divisions have confirmed plans to port some arcade games to Dreamcast. These titles include: Daytona USA 2, Fighting Vipers 2, Scud Race, SpikeOut, and Virtua Striker 2.

Regarding upcoming titles, MagicBox has reported that SoA has confirmed that a Ridge Racer title is scheduled for release on the DC sometime next year. However, neither SoJ or Namco have commented on this claim.

Also, Capcom has announced the Dreamcast version of Street Fighter Zero 3. The game will have the same features as the PSX version and some additional ones. One new feature is the 'Dramatic Battle Mode' which allows any four characters to fight at the same time. The game will be coming out sometime in July.

Last week, Sega of America released some DC images for publication via their PR company. After downloading them (each weighed in at 30MB), I found that the images appeared to be slide scans intended for use in publication. The images were of the DC Arcade Stick, Fishing Rod, VGA Box, and the Steering Wheel. All of them appear to be the same as the Japanese version so either there will be no cosmetic changes, or the images are merely pictures of the Japanese counterparts. There was no accompanying press release. Strangely the images have since disappeared from the PR company's file server.

Speaking of American DC news, more details regarding Sega/Visual Concept's NFL Football game have been revealed. It will run at 60fps and have around 3000 player animations, 6 times more than current football games. Midway's Mortal Kombat Gold is based on MK4 but will have some additional characters and stages taken from MK2 and MK3. Gameplay will be in full 3D with each character being composed of around 3,000 polygons at 60fps this means around 360,000 polygons will be pushed each second for two characters alone. Both games are currently slated as US launch titles.

There should be many more product announcements at this weeks E3 in Los Angeles which runs from tomorrow until Saturday. I will do my best to keep up with E3 news, but with school I may not be able to. That's all for this week, see ya!

-Greg