Bleem step up a gear
They're trying to make some money now instead of fighting Sony
Back in the olden days, Bleemcast was a fabled universal PSX to Dreamcast conversion disc, functioning in a very similar manner to the PSX to PC version. Unfortunately in this format it would never have managed to ensure compatibility with the entire PlayStation industry, so it was decided that the software would be released in several Bleempaks, each of which would harbour the ability to emulate 100 or so games perfectly when presented with the original PSX discs. This was all wrapped up at E3 2000 as far as we were concerned, and expected to hit store shelves in June of the same year. A few ticks and tocks later and it's the end of the year. Still no sign of Bleemcast. We shot off some emails and made some phone calls but nobody wanted to tell us anything. In fact, it wasn't until a couple of months ago that Bleemcast eventually re-appeared on our radar screens, and in a drastic new format. Going from one extreme to another now, instead of supporting all or even some of the PlayStation's enormous catalogue of games, Bleemcast would be released in individual packs, each supporting a single game. Starting with Gran Turismo 2, the range would grow by the week until you could go into a store with a wad of fivers and pick up all sorts of CDs to enable support for your various games. In practice, there were even more delays, and typically we've only just heard about the latest release. Metal Gear Solid, an obvious choice, isn't finished yet, but should be in the very near future. (If you live in the Los Angeles area you can even offer to help test it.) In the intervening period a Final Fantasy IX disc allegedly popped into circulation. Our local EB doesn't have any Bleemcast stock, so we haven't seen anything. A trailer for MGS can be seen on this page, amusingly subtitled "coming soon - unless sony kills it". We should probably describe that as "a trailer for Bleemcast" more than anything though, there's no actual footage of MGS in action on a Dreamcast, just some spiel about how Sony has no intention of letting people play PSX games on the Dreamcasts and that they have resorted to strong-arming retailers not to stock Bleemcast. The entire bleemcast.com website is basically a recruiting poster that asks you to pledge your allegiance by ringing up retailers and demanding that they stock the software. We're not about to take sides in this boring legal dispute, but we'd have a lot more time for the Bleem side of things if they produced an all-purpose emulator as originally planned and didn't expect us to pay five quid per title. Oh, and then there's the rather distinct lack of Dreamcast consoles coming off the production lines. What's next? Bleembox, with Bleemcast emulation? Related Feature - bleemed!