Andro Dunos 1 & 2 Shipping Now.

If you cast your mind back to 2021, you may remember that Pixelheart and JoshProd announced that Andro Dunos and Andro Dunos II would be releasing for the Dreamcast on an undisclosed date in 2022. With that year coming and going, it would be easy to forget these two games missing their initial projected releases but earlier this year, JoshProd gave confirmation that the games would be shipping this year with a concrete March 2023 date.

Fast forward the time it takes for these games to reach from France to their final locations and here they are! So what do we have here?

Well, Andro Dunos is a port of the 1992 Neo Geo game by Visco, it’s your usual space shooting fare with a basic levelling system and choices of weapons. Whilst Andro Dunos II is a wholly new adventure which has been developed by Picorinne Soft and released on the Nintendo Switch, 3DS and PlayStation 4 in 2022 with the Dreamcast version suffering slight delays. Although it looks fairly basic on the face of things, Andro Dunos II actually has some neat little touches to the presentation which in a prolonged play session become more and more apparent as the levels progress. You’ll find cool effects when warping into light speed and enemies who’ll appear in background before making their presence known in the foreground to dish you some damage. Some enemies will skid into the frame and others will have noticeable battle damage when you start gaining the upper hand.

The graphical presentation is something which is actually a highlight of Andro Dunos II and the atmospheric soundtrack matches the action all the way along. I was very impressed with my play though, initially sticking the game on it’s easy setting to be able to see as much of the game as possible whilst learning the enemy patterns works well with a progressive difficulty curve. The Dreamcast port of course has concessions, it isn’t able to display the high definition output of the other versions and the initial load time when booting up is rather excessive but once in the game, the levels load in quickly so can be forgiven.

All in all, if you’re in any way interested in new games for your Dreamcast and Shumps tickle your pickle, there’s a lot to like here. Both Andro Dunos and Andro Dunos II are available now at http://www.pixelheart.eu

I made a video back in 2022 when I got my hands on the incomplete build of the game which is linked here

Also I’ve taken the time to have a look at the packaging design and what you get in the case which if you’re interested, you can catch here :

News Catchup – March 2023

I’m going to admit to you right now; I’ve been really slack in keeping up with the latest happenings on the Dreamcast and that has made me somewhat selective with what’s been exciting me of late, being a Dad now means I have less and less time to enjoy playing games, let alone write about what we can enjoy in the months to come. However, enough about me, let’s talk about things that you may have missed ….

Worms Pinball!

First up is the pinball entry in the enduring Worms franchise. This game was long rumoured to have been completed for the Dreamcast but unreleased due to the financial involvement of bringing it to the market for a console that had been discontinued (never stopped the N64 getting game long after if curled up though… But hey!), turns out these rumours were true and the Dreamcast build was released to the public in February of this year thanks to Comby Laurent (Sega Dreamcast Info) who made it all possible. Check out their website where you can find a whole host of information on various prototypes .

Next up is a new game!

HarleQuest is a cool looking dungeon crawler that has you taking control of a Jester as he tries the escape from the King’s exile. You’ll be dispatching foes and avoiding traps in this promising 3D adventure which hits Kickstarter on April 1st (no, really…). In all honesty, this game looks to be the most promising use of the Dreamcast’s graphical capabilities since Xenocider, so I personally can’t wait to give this one a try. Wave Game Studios are on publishing duties so hopefully there’s a reasonably priced PAL blue box variant available eh! The project’s creator, Ross Kilgariff attributes games like Record of Lodoss War, Medievil and Gauntlet Legends as inspirations for HarleQuest’s design. Check out the Kickstarter campaign here :

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ross-codes/harlequest-a-new-3d-dungeon-crawler-for-the-sega-dreamcast?ref=31s8gw

Next up, is some familiar news if you managed to bag on of the Wave Game Studios demo discs for the Dreamcast last year. Turns out that a second one is on the way this year which features a playable sample of HarleQuest as well as the mysterious Summoning Signals which was announced by Retro Surge almost three years ago now. There is also another playable demo featured on the disc which Wave are keeping under wraps currently, so we’ll have to wait and see what exciting game forms up the trio in due course. Head over to Wave Game Studios’ website to get your free disc before they run out :

https://www.wavegamestudios.com/shop/debug-indie-sampler-2

Next is also a new Dreamcast game!

Big2Small by RetroRoom Games is a cute looking game that is heading to the Nintendo 64, Gameboy and Dreamcast and tasks you with guiding animals to their food choices avoiding obstacles and utilising the unique abilities of each animal to aide you on your adventure. Big2Small looks to be quite an interesting game that doesn’t tax the hardware much but I can imagine will tax your brain as the levels get more complex. It’s always nice to see new puzzle games on the Dreamcast. If this is up your street, check out the order page below.

Thanks to @DreamcastPics on Twitter for the heads up on this one!

BIG2SMALL

Andro Dunos !

Remember back in 2021 when Pixelheart opened pre-orders for Andro Dunos and Andro Dunos II ? No? Well it would be easy to forget that these two games were coming to the Dreamcast and as sure as time flies, the release date is now upon us. Unleashed on March 25th after a slight delay, both of the games should now be shipping to customers around the world. Both Pixelheart and JoshProd have been somewhat quiet on the Dreamcast front in recent times so hopefully they’re gearing up to release something new on the Dreamcast in the future. One thing that seems quite sad is that Pixelheart look to have abandoned all of the Dreamcast branding from their PAL packaging looking at the spine renders on their website. This would be especially sad as their box designs for the earlier games were spot on next to commercial releases of the time but now look to stick out when spine on with other retail DC games. Shame really.

https://www.pixelheart.eu/en/shop/?pa_plate-forme=dreamcast-pal

Last up for this round is Falco Girgis! You may remember Falco from the days of Elysian Shadows, we ourselves had some choice thoughts about Falco back then but time has let go of that and Falco has been busy back at work behind the scenes in the Dreamcast community working on an array of cool stuff which he is no doubt aiming at assisting Dreamcast developers in years to come, it’s actually quite refreshing to see Falco with a renewed focus and active again in the Dreamcast scene. Follow his progress here :

Tweets by falco_girgis

News Catchup – December 2021

First off, let’s just get this out of the way; Merry Christmas to all the readers and Dreamcast fans, I hope your 2021 holiday has been filled with the excitement and free-of-drama you wanted.

Let’s catch up on some of the latest Dreamcast news doing the rounds. First up is a new game! We’ll admit, this sort of passed us by but there’s a new title called Driving Strikers coming to the Dreamcast in the near future. This game is quite unique for the console as it’s the first driving and football hybrid we’ve seen on Sega’s machine. If you imagine Rocket League parred back to run on an 128 bit system from 1998, you’re probably on the right lines. There was a recent Christmas demo that was played and recorded for YouTube by Freakdave which you can view here :

Perhaps one of the most innovative independent games to be developed for the console, it shows a tonne of promise, it actually reminds me of Neverball with it’s creative inspiration drawn from an existing franchise. Let’s hope this one gets picked up for release in the next year or so.

Next up is Shadow Gangs, this promising Shinobi style adventure has taken to Kickstarter in need of a rather huge goal to make it a reality on the Dreamcast. The developer had shown off some recently added stretch goal goodness in the form of the PAL blue plastic box, this stretch goal starts at a whopping £100. It does look rather spiffing though. At this time, Shadow Gangs is just over £10,000 of it’s £139,999 (!) goal.

 

Next up is Andro Dunos 1 + 2. This pair of shooters may very well have escaped your attention since the last batch of Pixelheart releases flooded the market but these two games have been held back until the early part of 2022, probably marking the first two releases of the year. You can order these two as well as the previous JoshProd / Pixelheart back catalogue by clicking below : 

Andro Dunos 2 Dreamcast [PAL]

Next up is Watermelon! Remember them? The guys that brought you Pier Solar are back to give you Paprium for the Dreamcast (as well as a host of new systems too) which has now been fully funded, this has been offered in the attention to detail packaging you have come to expect from Watermelon with Euro, USA and Japan style box art being offered as well as a reprint of Pier Solar which has largely been unavailable for a number of years now. Let’s hope that the rocky 5 or so years that hit Watermelon is over and normal service can resume. You should be able to order the Dreamcast releases from Watermelon’s home page. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/573261866/paprium-the-16-bit-beat-them-all-coming-to-the-next-gen?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=paprika

 

Did you know that two other Dreamcast games were released in this quarter? Well,  Non Casual Encounter and Ghoul Grind – Night Of The Necromancer are both doing the rounds now, both have a very low print run so if you’re planning on getting a copy, now would be the time. I made a video unboxing both of these cool games and the information of where to order them in in the video bio section : 

 

Last up for this round is my own show that I have created, ‘Locked Out Of Europe’ – being a UK Dreamcast collector, there’s loads of games that were never released here and I want to cover some of them on YouTube to see how easy they are to play and obtain today, I’ve started with Baldr Force EXE as I received this for Christmas this year, but I have hundreds of games I would like to cover, you’ll have to excuse the video issues, my equipment wasn’t playing nicely but this is just the start and I aim to improve over time, exposing games for our favourite system, join me on the journey! 

 

Until next year! Stay safe.

Andro Dunos 1 & 2 Heading to Dreamcast.

If you have been following PixelHeart on social media, you may have recently noticed a teaser for a huge announcement from them set to be the biggest in their history – at first, I will admit that I felt a little deflated that this may have ‘just‘ been new-old-stock copies of Virtua Striker 2 which went on sale on Friday, as per the weekly ‘release‘ method that has been the template thus far from PixelHeart on their website, but in actual fact, when the video reel was finally revealed today, on the 27th March rather than the proposed date of 24th March citing technical difficulties as the reason, it would appear that the company have purchased the complete back catalogue of Visco, to which PixelHeart had worked closely with in the past with various Dreamcast releases like Breakers, Bang2Busters and Gunryo, of course, Visco were well known for their Neo Geo games with releases right up to the late 90‘s so it would make perfect sense for PixelHeart to release some of these games again for that console.

What is perhaps more interesting for you, a Dreamcast fan, is that previously announced 3DS game, Andro Dunos 2, will in fact be making it‘s way to our console of choice as well as the slew of current generation machines, it has been teased since 2020, but at last, it‘s confirmed.

If you‘re unaware of the game or indeed the ‘original‘ then you‘re not to be blamed, it was a 1992 space shooter released for the Neo Geo and later for the Neo Geo CD console where the action take place from a horizontal playing field {think Dux} across 8 levels with mankind fighting it‘s way out of peril.

Worth noting and perhaps not immediately clear, is that the first game is also getting released on DC, one would have to wonder why it wasn‘t bundled in with the second entry though, I‘m sure there is a logical reason behind this but the game does seem quite expensive in the face of the upcoming sequel.

The sequel has been developed by Picorinne Software who has previously been tied to Battle Crust. This is quite an exciting time for Dreamcast fans as we have over 20 new games to get excited about over the next year or so as well as perhaps some other surprises along the way, it‘s never been a better time to be investing in Sega‘s last machine.

Pre-order your copy of both games over at http://www.pixelheart.eu where the usual PAL and NTSC style releases are available.