When I first met up with Lukas “3r0t1c n3rd” Cerin — a sterling chap in case you don’t know him, and a thoroughly dedicated member of the Dtoid army — on Wednesday night, he told me of a story he’d heard that there were going to be new Dreamcast games at the GC. I found myself doubtful, but I just couldn’t quieten the little voice at the back of my head that was whooping and flipping somersaults. The voices in my head can be very athletic when there’s potential good news to be had…
New Dreamcast games have appeared in Japan sprodically since the machine’s unfair and early death, but turning up at Leipzig GC? While I was there? It couldn’t happen, surely. But what if there were more on the way? What if I could see them this week and soon again feel the joy of loading a new disc into my DC? How fantastic would that be? With that small glimmer of fanboy hope shining away in my soul and refusing to go out, I became determined to find out the truth.
And the truth was pretty fantastic indeed.
Redspotgames is a German publisher which sprang out of international online Dreamcast community Dreamcast-Scene. They help independent, often one-man developers get their games out on the DC, and had three of them playable at the GC. Last Hope is a deliciously retro R-Type relative, Wind And Water is a puzzler which is also available for the GP2X, and they were also showing a preview copy of their next release Dalforce, a multiplayer vertical shooter, and a pretty damn good one from what I got to play of it. This is what happens when people who really love and understand a machine continue to lavish affection on it long after the big guys have given up, and I couldn’t be happier to have met the Redspot guys and seen what they’re doing.
On top of all that, they really are a fantastic bunch of people too, and some of my favorite out of the many I met at GC. They really understand what the gaming community is about, and turned their booth into one long DC party with a live band, a boatload of the machine’s back catalogue ready for play on their two consoles, and two arcade cabinets running Sega’s Dreamcast-based NAOMI board all week. It was one of my favorite places to hang out, and while the craziness of my schedule didn’t allow me to do that anywhere near as much as I’d have liked, every time I was there there was a gloriously friendly welcome and guarranteed fun from start to finish.
I’ll be running a lengthier profile of Redspot soon, along with a chat I had with Excecutive Director Max Scharl, by which time I should hopefully have been able to acquire some good quality screens. The guys currently only have distribution in asia, but you can find their releases through online importers, and in the meantime, keep watching my GC reports. I may have something for you over the next couple of days…
[Big thanks to Lukas for the tip-off, and for being such damn good company for the whole GC]
