Summer of Dreamcast

[Neon Ignition]

My curiousity with Propeller Arena is pretty much satisfied now, there's very little game here and very little to the action either. Controls are very basic and all you basically do is fly around a lowly populated square grid and shoot down the other planes. It's very easy, a curiousity due to its lack of release but that's all.

[saturn-gamer]

I think I never spent more than 15 minutes on PA. Didn't know what to think of it and what to do with it. I think its a rather worthless game myself... I wasn't sad that the game didn't make it.

[averybluemonkey]

Propellor Arena is one of my favourite games on the system! Seem to recall each plane having special moves? The soundtrack was the best on the platform in terms of licensed music in my opinion, awesome indie punk. Did you try the 4 player mode? That's a lot of fun.

[DJ Sack]

PA was really meant to be an online title, so much like PSO the single play is incredibly basic and online is where its at its best.

[DJ Sack]

Over the past few months i've also been replaying my Dreamcast and picking up games i always wanted to play but didn't want to spend ?40 on at the time.

Trickstyle - A friend owned this and i remember having some fun but im having trouble getting through the forced tutorial the game has at the start that you cannot skip. It is extremely difficult with tight time limits and things you don't really have to do in the game. When the Dreamcast launched this was one of the games you should have picked up and whilst it looks really nice, the frame rate does leave a lot to be desired. I'll go back to it another day to actually get to playing the tracks but this is up there with the Driver intro for high levels of frustration.

Power Stone 2 - Back in the day a lot of DC magazines thought 4 players would be better but concluded that actually it isn't in power stone. They're wrong. Power Stone 1 is a great 1 on 1 beat them up but this is smash brothers in 3D. I love the fast paced levels, all the items you can pick up and the sillyness off it all. The only thing that lets it down is the terrible bosses as the levels are amazing.

THPS 1 & 2 - I won't say too much about these as they are amazing and transport me straight back to 99, which makes me sad as 99 was amazing.

Ready 2 Rumble - Before launch this game converted everyone who saw it to the Dreamcast. It looked amazing with big characters, had a proper crowd in the audience and had great lighting effects. Apart from Sonic Adventure, this is the game that also converted me but i never did pick it up. As a game though its a bit simple and lacking. It looks great and plays pretty well but it is horribly simple and single player is horrible basic. Great for some quick 2 player action but not much more.

Crazy Taxi - As wonderful as i remember and much better than the XBLA port thanks to the music, the locations and the controls feeling spot on. Back in the day i played this for hours somehow even though its arcade gameplay hasn't been expanded upon much.

[Sam The Man]

Ready 2 Rumble was a brilliant game and the sequel even better. Definitely the most playable boxing game by far but that's not exactly hard.

[nakamura]

I found Ready to Rumble gets boring in around about 37 seconds.

[Kit]

Ready 2 Rumble is alright for a quick blast, but I agree with Naka, it wears thin after awhile. The second is a bit better with some pretty cool unlockable characters like Michael Jackson and Bill Clinton, all-be-it with an ultra cheap final boss.

Trickstyle - A friend owned this and i remember having some fun but im having trouble getting through the forced tutorial the game has at the start that you cannot skip. It is extremely difficult with tight time limits and things you don't really have to do in the game. When the Dreamcast launched this was one of the games you should have picked up and whilst it looks really nice, the frame rate does leave a lot to be desired. I'll go back to it another day to actually get to playing the tracks but this is up there with the Driver intro for high levels of frustration.

A shame to hear Trickstyle is a bit on the frustrating side. I remember playing it in Argos and thinking what a cool concept it was at the time - kind of like a futuristic Tony Hawks.

[Skull Commander]

I haven't played Ready to Rumble for a while. I do have one of them (maybe even both of them) but have not played them for at least a couple of years. Whatever you think of it, it was still much better than Facebreaker this gen!

[DJ Sack]

R2R makes for great demo material i feel. High level of replayability but there is pretty much no meat to the game so its suited for quick one off blasts rather than any deeper involvement.

Trickstyle had a follow up on the ps2 called Airblade, i think it fixed a lot of the Trickstyle issues but i remember it not selling too well.

[Sam The Man]

I found Ready to Rumble gets boring in around about 37 seconds.

Thats probably because you got KO'ed in 36 seconds! Overall it isnt the longest or deepest game but the gameplay was good and 2 player mode was also fun. The 2nd one was definitely better and i loved some of the unlockable characters.

[saturn-gamer]

I think R2R was nothing special. It was very playable but as others say it just wore thin very quickly. But it shows how good and expansive the launch lineup was, this is one of those games I completely forgot about.

Power Stone 2 - Back in the day a lot of DC magazines thought 4 players would be better but concluded that actually it isn't in power stone. They're wrong. Power Stone 1 is a great 1 on 1 beat them up but this is smash brothers in 3D. I love the fast paced levels, all the items you can pick up and the sillyness off it all. The only thing that lets it down is the terrible bosses as the levels are amazing.

I probably prefer the first game, it had better details and much more moves. Faster, better controls. But the 4 players surely did add something to the second game. We enjoyed it in multiplayer.

[Neon Ignition]

Well, time for the next game in my playthrough, I mixed the discs again and pulled out the next title which was Star Wars Episode I: Racer

[Kit]

How well has it aged? I recall Star Wars Racer being quite fun and visual pretty impressive at the time - I remembering being impressed with the 64 version using the expansion pack.

[Neon Ignition]

Not very well to be honest. The gameplay itself is okay, if overly basic, and the graphics look sharp but other than the VGA resolution it reeks strongly of being an N64 graphics level game. The menu's have the same muddy, soft focus look that N64 menu's had as well. There's little content and dull track design. The feel is that Lucasarts put little love into it.

After Racer I played Looney Tunes: Space Race

It also gets old pretty quick with little nuance to the way it plays. It does however still look brilliant, with the exception of some jaggies it does a great job of looking like the old cartoons on screen.

Next up is Under Defeat.