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Happy 10th Birthday Dreamcast! (Image: Yuan Works)

Though a little late announcement, the Sega Dreamcast’s 10th Anniversary was on late 2008. The Dreamcast was one of the most underrated consoles of the time, surpassing the PlayStation 2 in graphics and quality. For some reasons including very bad luck and bad decisions from Sega, the Dreamcast was very short-lived in the Americas, and later cut off from Europe. However, in Japan, the Dreamcast held its title as one of the best modern generation consoles, with official releases years after the console was no longer mainstream.

The Dreamcast fanbase was never dead nor gone, and last November, to honor the Dreamcast, Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles was released as an independent release (同人ソフト), an extensive puzzle game in both English and Japanese!

The game features a professionally pressed CD, an obi strip (spine card collector’s item), and a 40-page full color manual in both English and Japanese. Watch the game trailer below!

Why Independent?

In case you didn’t know, the videogame industry is no longer in its Golden years. Similar to Hollywood movies, mainstream companies have turned big and games are no longer good for what they really are, instead, for how much promotion, licenses, or money they have available. Talent is rather lacking on many mainstream games, and gamers now purchase games created for a consumer market. Of course, this  does not go without a toll, and big companies like Electronic Arts (supposedly the biggest videogame company) has cut off 30% and now 10% of their labor force, mostly because they can’t keep up pumping with sales.

同人ソフト in Japan

Contrary to the Western side of the world, 同人ソフト is very common in Japan, in fact and Asia, many artists and talents were actually spotted as independent developers. Actually, the Comiket was created solely for independent releases, and as I wrote a while ago more than 500’000 expectators visited the last Comiket 75 in Tokyo!

One of the gems of independent games is 洞窟物語 (Cave Story), created by pen-name Pixelさん. If you’re into videogames, then your life is not complete if you have not yet played it. Here’s a bit more information about Independent games and reasons to support them ^^

Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles is also an independent release, created by Yuan Works, a team also known as the Yuan brothers, me being half of said team ^^.

That’s me in red!

The game was sold-out in some stores in Japan and Yahoo! auctions that overpriced the game (lucky them!), and we’ve been told that some stores stock in Osaka. We do hope that one day we can see our game in Akihabara! If you’re a puzzle game fan, you may like this one too ^^ I’m good at puzzle games including our own one, and I dare challenge Utada Hikaru for a W&W match!

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