Another classic game has been tinkered with, this time for the Sega Dreamcast.
The game, a rather obscure puzzle-action title named Floigan Bros. was released on July 30th, 2001. By the time of its release, the Sega Dreamcast had ceased production in March of that year. Floigan Bros. also had ambitious plans; the developer team at Visual Concepts set up a full year's worth of support for the game, in the form of downloadable content.
DLC was first first possible for consoles with Sega Dreamcast games, but it was severely limited due to file size limitations and how broadband connections worked with the system. The most famous examples of extra content being for Samba De Amigo and Sonic Adventure 2.
For Floigan Bros., the DLC plans were to add a year's worth of content to the game, including new in-game outfits and items. All of this content would have been free, and the content was "gated" on the game disk, simply providing an unlock for a later date. The cancellation of production for the Dreamcast ultimately ended those ambitions, and the DLC content was locked in the game for sixteen years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khzjWu6TmJw
That all has changed, however, thanks to the efforts of the original developers of the game.
The website Dreamcast Live has reported that Tim Meekins, Nick Jones, and John Elliot of the original Visual Concepts team helped in unlocking the DLC for the first time in 16 years. According to Dreamcast Live, only one piece of DLC was ever officially archived online, the January release titled the "knitted hat" DLC. Using the January unlock, the team was able to manipulate the save file to unlock the rest of the content.
The content was mostly holiday-themed, including Halloween costumes, fourth of July fireworks, and an easter egg hunt mini game. This is also the first time this content has ever been seen by the public.
Quick Take
There has been a major effort to unlock and discover the hidden gems found in old games as of late. From making Primal Rage 2 playable to discovering secrets in Donkey Kong 64, actually getting a few of the developers to help uncover lost DLC to a game that by all accounts, is incredibly obscure is quite amazing to me. All of this helps in preserving the history of the hobby as well, so I welcome such stories as they happen.What are your thoughts, though? Leave them in the comments below.
