The Atom's Family

It's been a stressful week, as I'm sure you can all attest. We had a rollercoaster of an election, with the sweet taste of victory swiftly followed with the unwanted tang of uncertainty. (Trump said he wouldn't concede, and hasn't, perhaps the first time in his presidency where he actually told the truth.) We lost Sean Connery on Halloween, and Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek just days after that. It's been exhausting, and I for one could use a little news that delights rather than distresses, with a clean finish.

And here it is. A hobbyist programmer named MegaVolt85 has managed to port Atomiswave games to the arcade jukebox's close cousin, the Dreamcast. I don't know how he did this- the increased RAM in the Atomiswave should have made porting its games to an unexpanded Dreamcast massively difficult- but he managed, and here's the proof.

Pardon the liquor and the treats... I told you this was a stressful week. Several King of Fighters games were ported to the Dreamcast officially, but King of Fighters XI was not one of them, landing on the Playstation 2 instead. Fifteen years after its arcade release, King of Fighters XI has found its way to the Dreamcast, and it's pretty much the same as it was on the Atomiswave. There's a faint bit of access time between stages on the GD-EMU where I installed it, and that loading could be more significant if you're playing it from a disc, but past that I noticed no other differences.

KOF XI is on Dreamcast now! Whoopi!

However, there are differences between this and the Playstation 2 port... rather important ones. It's a straight arcade port, and as such I haven't found any way to adjust the difficulty, button layout, or other settings. Most damning is that while the backgrounds are crisp, the characters are not, smoothed over with a bilinear filter that detracts from the otherwise pleasant graphics. The Playstation 2 game let you turn that filter off, but it's an option that doesn't seem available on the Atomiswave, and by extension, here.

Hello? Were you gonna give me the stage now?

Another slight bummer is that the game crashed on me about three stages in, which may either be just a freak occurrence or a serious glitch MegaVolt85 will need to address later. Still, this is a pretty nifty accomplishment, and the programmer intends to tackle more Atomiswave games in the future. A port of Metal Slug 6 is already finished, and perhaps its nautical cousin Dolphin Blue won't be too far behind.

By the way, the Atomiswave is an interesting machine, offering a peek at an alternate future where Sega had supported the Dreamcast just a little while longer. Not all of the games in the system's modestly sized library are fantastic- in fact, many of the games aren't fantastic- but the 2D fighters in particular take full advantage of the resolution of the Dreamcast, making them sharper and more detailed than similar Capcom titles. Seriously, Fist of the North Star may not be Arc System Works' best fighter, but damn does it look gorgeous. 

More Atomiswave games would be welcome on the Dreamcast, and I hope MegaVolt85 will continue to port them. (Feel free to skip this one, though.)