Skies of Arcadia: a difficult start

I bought Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast (for £5 when HMV was clearing its stock).  I bought Skies of Arcadia Legends for the Gamecube (for about the same when Game was clearing its stock).  I have never played either.

But now, with the release of ReDream, a clean and simple Dreamcast emulator, and a few spare hours with my laptop in a Taiwan hotel, I have at least started it.  There are a few graphical effects on the screen which wouldn’t be there if I were playing on my Dreamcast, but at the same time I wouldn’t have such a clean picture … and in fact I wouldn’t be playing it at all.

Daytona USA: a time machine on four wheels

I’ve been waiting forever for a good conversion of Daytona.  The Saturn game was disappointing.  The second Saturn game fixed all that was bad about the first, and ruined all that was good.  The Dreamcast game was great, but it was too tricky and involved.

The Xbox 360 game is amazing.

Yes, there are a few added modes on top of the pure arcade game, with challenges and time trials and endurance races, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is Daytona, down to the octagonal wheels and fuzzy roads.  The only thing that’s different from the arcade game – other than the wheel of course – is that this is playing on a better quality TV and is in higher definition than I ever saw before.

I’m inspired to get out the old copies just to see if they are as disappointing as I remember.  Particularly the first Saturn game, with digital steering and all.

Pod 2

During the day, my friend Matt visited my flat while his girlfriend went shopping with my wife. I think we got a better deal. We decided to play some games which either I’d never played before, or which I’d played very little and not in multiplayer.

First up, we played Pod 2 on the Dreamcast. What fun we had, seeing how the options screen allowed you to limit the online communications to 28.8k. And then we started to play.