The Dreamcast was an interesting beast. Sega was so financially strapped, and it had already launched in Japan to a sort of tepid, luke-warm reaction. These are big stakes games. I mean, when you're launching a games console, you need hundreds of millions of dollars to get it off the ground… and so the North American launch was the last best chance – Europe was going to be launching but there wasn't enough there to salvage what was going to be a tough situation with the PS2 looming 12 months out … The US was the last best chance of getting the Dreamcast up and running.

We amassed a very strong line up of titles, but unfortunately, EA - God bless 'em – decided they weren't going to publish on Dreamcast. That forced me to build my own sports brand, called 2K – we came up with the name one night, because it was the Y2K period, we needed to get the packaging done and we couldn't come up with a name. So we just said, 'let's call it 2K sports'. It was the best we could come up with.

Dreamcast was a phenomenal 18 months of pain, heartache, euphoria… We thought we had it, but then Playstation came out, that infamous issue of Newsweek with the Emotion Engine on the cover… and of course, EA didn't publish which left a big hole, not only in sports but in other genres. We ended up that Christmas period not being able to get to where we needed to be – we weren't far short, we just couldn't get that critical mass…

It seemed that the European office weren't as confident as the American office…
We [Sega of America] knew we could win. It was just indicative of the complete lack of integration – the Dreamcast logo was blue in Europe instead of orange, the concept of a globalised brand, which we're now building here at EA Sports, just evaded the Japanese completely. And JF, who was the general manager in Europe, went his own way, had his own positioning. We had a very different positioning, we were very aggressive in the US – and it was a little challenging in Europe. There wasn't that, 'let's go and get them, we can win this battle'.

You know, I loved the console wars and still do even though I'm no longer in the console business… the idea of being upfront, getting after Phil Harrison, getting after Kaz Hirai and then later getting after John Riccitiello… I think the consumer loves it, it adds publicity and it adds fire around the industry. And in those days we needed to because we didn't have the money …

In the end it didn't work out. It was tough, but those were great days and I've never met anybody who regretted buying a Dreamcast. Soul Calibur anyone? We had a lot of content, a lot of fun and we had tremendous PR, and we got after it in a unique way – the 'Its thinking' campaign was a great campaign, we had these wacky 15-second spots on MTV, we launched on 9.9.99 at the MTV Music Awards, we hit the road with Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit of all people; the Family Values and Anger Management tours – we were a big brand.

But then it all went pear-shaped in Christmas 2000.

Okay, but let's go back to the hopeful years. You said you didn't have much money or much time, but you certainly seemed to make an impact.
Oh yeah. I mean, I arrived in February and we were launching in September, so I had seven months to figure out, a) what the industry was and b) what the console and software were, and then build a marketing campaign. Which we did by April. In 60 days we came up with 'It's Thinking'. We filmed a huge ad spot in Vancouver, we went ten nights and did Apocalypse, a multimillion dollar TV spot (by ad firm Foote, Cone and Belding). It was this idea that the console was actually thinking, and it was bringing 747s down, it had this Black Rain-style look. We only ran that spot once on 9.9.99 during the video music awards and it became very viral - this is obviously a long time before YouTube.

We had a tremendous 18 months. Dreamcast was on fire – we really thought that we could do it. But then we had a target from Japan that said – and I can't remember the exact figures – but we had to make N hundreds of millions of dollars by the holiday season and shift N millions of units of hardware, otherwise we just couldn't sustain the business.

So on January 31 2001 we said Sega is leaving hardware – somehow I got to make that call, not the Japanese. I had to fire a lot of people, it was not a pleasant day.

We were selling 50,000 units a day, then 60,000, then 100,000, but it was just not going to be enough to get the critical mass to take on the launch of PS2. It was a big stakes game. Sega had the option of pouring in more money and going bankrupt and they decided they wanted to live to fight another day. So we licked our wounds, ate some humble pie and went to Sony and Nintendo to ask for dev kits.

Actually, the only company that ever called was Microsoft and that became my link with the company, because

Final version 1.0.2.6 is now available here.

Emu changes:
Add support for Fog Alpha.
Add support for Edge Marking (only with shaders).
Add support for 8MBit save types.
Add support for RAM_COUNT register (only Vertex).
Fixed some bugs in Frames Skip options.
Fixed a bug savestate routines.
Fixed a bug in BGxCNT registers.
Fixed some bugs in console output.

Audio PlugIn changes:
Fixed some bugs in resampling routines.

New features:

subject_to_minz {int} - Model header command. Toggles minimum Z bounding for model on playfield. Available to script methods getentityproperty and changeentityproperty as "subject_to_minz".


{int} - Default 1 for all except panel type models.

1: Entity cannot move beyond current minimum Z boundry.
0: Entity can move freely beyond current minium Z boundry.

subject_to_maxz {int} - Model header command. Toggles maximum Z bounding for model on playfield. Available to script methods getentityproperty and changeentityproperty as "subject_to_maxz".


{int} - Default 1 for all except panel type models.

1: Entity cannot move beyond current maximum Z boundry.
0: Entity can move freely beyond current maximum Z boundry.

New features:

subject_to_minz {int} - Model header command. Toggles minimum Z bounding for model on playfield. Available to script methods getentityproperty and changeentityproperty as "subject_to_minz".


{int} - Default 1 for all except panel type models.

1: Entity cannot move beyond current minimum Z boundry.
0: Entity can move freely beyond current minium Z boundry.

subject_to_maxz {int} - Model header command. Toggles maximum Z bounding for model on playfield. Available to script methods getentityproperty and changeentityproperty as "subject_to_maxz".


{int} - Default 1 for all except panel type models.

1: Entity cannot move beyond current maximum Z boundry.
0: Entity can move freely beyond current maximum Z boundry.

New features:

subject_to_minz {int} - Model header command. Toggles minimum Z bounding for model on playfield. Available to script methods getentityproperty and changeentityproperty as "subject_to_minz".


{int} - Default 1 for all except panel type models.

1: Entity cannot move beyond current minimum Z boundry.
0: Entity can move freely beyond current minium Z boundry.

subject_to_maxz {int} - Model header command. Toggles maximum Z bounding for model on playfield. Available to script methods getentityproperty and changeentityproperty as "subject_to_maxz".


{int} - Default 1 for all except panel type models.

1: Entity cannot move beyond current maximum Z boundry.
0: Entity can move freely beyond current maximum Z boundry.

ApricotsDC is a game written by Mark Snellgrove using the SDL libraries. Despite the name, has nothing to do with apricots. It is a game where you have to fly an airplane across the screen and shoot targets and drop bombs on enemy targets, is fast and fun.

Based on versions of Amiga, Planegame and Planegame2 was rewritten for Linux and this is the result. The website of the game is it.

The Dreamcast version is not yet finished, we are implementing audio in SDL, now comes in Open Audio Library (OpenAL) and it does not have the DC.

The controls as always, with the pad, is viciante and will soon be completely finished, meanwhile We can start testing and told us that bugs encontráis.

The downloads are available at the usual section. ApricotsDC by Ron & Indiket

Update: The sound and begins running and shooting and bombs are already sounding very soon the full version.

Project Leader: Mark Snellgrove (Original concept and game coding)
Co-author: Mark Harman (First Windows port and SDL conversion)
Additional contributor: Judebert (Configuration file)
Freely distributed under the terms of the GPL.

Already missing little to DUX this term. To demonstrate HUCAST.net & KonTechs Ltd. Blog since we offer some screens that will be the 3rd level of this Shoot'em Up: Mine Field.

http://www.blog.hucast.net/

DUX be launched on 28 this month and distributed through:

http://www.hucast.net/