dreamcast

Since about 1999/2000ish i had a love affair with the sega dreamcast. I have to admit, partly because i am looking back through the rose tint of nostalgia.

In 99' i became fast friends with a group of kids that didn't go to my high school. They went to montville high. At the time to me they were the most interesting creative people on the planet. Finally, some people who embraced the natrually odd in lue of the mundane. Here was my own tiny sliver of culture. Music. Art. Our youth was wild and we really didn't give a shit who knew what as long as it felt good and you liked doing it. We were all working shitty shitty jobs and watching the clock until we were out. The summer of 2000 was probably the best of my life. High school was behind me and i was glad to be rid of it. College didn't loom because the thought never had a moment to sneak in amongst the comic reading, first drinking, dinner coffee drinking, game playing time we were having. A few of these montvillans had rented an apartment in new london connecticut. At the time i didn't think much of it. The reality of 18 year old kids having their own place didn't even dawn on me when instead of getting loose change out of the couch to buy groceries (of which- there were none, and simply they were no use) the money was spent at sarges to buy the last issue of preacher. Honestly- it was the most carefree and the least responsible I've ever been. Whatever we wanted to do, we did and damn the man or anyone that tried to stop us. Our wildest dreams were rarely over a hundred bucks. There was a show 4 days a week, and when there wasn't, we would be up anyway chuging coffee at the dank 24 hour dinner. It was vacation that seemed to go on forever. We would huddle around mounds of cigerettes and fire up the dreamcast to play tony hawk's pro skater, seaman, marvel vs capcom 2, rivial schools project justice amongst others that i'm sure I am forgetting.

Then i went off to college. The first year of college was rough on me. I could handel the work without a problem but I'm not exactly the best at meeting new peopel now, and I was worse then. I would often call the apartment and see how those guys were doing. They would pass around the phone so i could talk to everyone there, becasue everyone was always there. I saw them over breaks and came home for summers, but it was never the same, and every time it seemed to get sadder and sadder. Real life was seaping in through the constant vacation. I started to make friends eventually in college. I traded some games that had been played to death. Sold my dreamcast.

Then in about 2003 a friend of mine game me his dreamcast because he was quitting school (i think?) and was packing light to go home. I can't quite remember the specifics. Since then I have been trying to burn dreamcast games off and on to no avail. By then they had started to become more and more limited to buy, and it seemed to be my only good option. First I tried it with a pc, but with limited knowledge of it. The very idea of burning games very new to me, and seemingly shrouded in the secrecy of mirc. It was something i simply couldn't spend the time to wrap my head around. Then i switched to mac. Which.... as a gamer, apple really isn't the way to go. As an artist, it worked beautifully. Now i have a new mac, with intel tech. I am running microsoft xp and vista.

And after long long years, i burnt my first dreamcast game today using Parallels, windows xp, and Alcohol 120%. Thank fucking god, because it is impossible to find a reasonably priced copy of ikaruga! For some reason, I could never get discjuggler to work correctly. It could never connect to the superdrive and start burning discs.

Now that i have it fired up for the first time in what seems like forever, all i can think about is the apartment in new london with the sloped floors and piles of ash. The hum of the dreamcast invokes a lot of vivid memories of that beloved shithole and everyone who enjoyed it.

I'll probably be playing some dreamcast for the next month or so until those new games come in. I'll probably be picturing boot, larry, matt, jason, amanda, carroll, angie, dave and tom playing right along side me.