2025 continues to be a renaissance of sorts for Sega’s Dreamcast with yet another online server brought back to life by the fan community. Only a week ago the Dreamcast Live X account teased an “imminent” revival of online servers for the arena shooter Outtrigger, returning capabilities lost when the originally servers shutdown in September of 2003. As of this morning, the online functionality of Outrigger has been restored — as announced on Dreamcastlive.net — thanks to the hard work of fan developers flyinghead and Shuouma.
The Dreamcastlive.net announcement said that Outtrigger had been “in Shuouma’s archive [and] that he got almost there but stalled.” Recently, Shuouma shared his work with flyinghead who was able to crack the code and see the server revival to its completion. Dreamcastlive.net praised “this collaboration [for] resulting in great things for the community” and rightfully so. The news of this servers restoration comes less than a month after a trio of Aero Dancing titles also came back online — SHIRO! coverage here.
Those who are interested in getting back in the action will be happy to know that Outtrigger featured Broadband Adapter, mouse and keyboard support! It’s important to note that the European release of Outtrigger did not feature online capabilities, so you will need a Japanese or North American copy to take advantage of the new server. A connection guide to help you get up and running can be found here.
Pcwzrd13, flyinghead, and Shuouma demostrating online matchmaking.
Flyinghead, while certainly better known for their excellent Dreamcast/Naomi/Naomi 2/Atomiswave emulator named Flycast, is no stranger to Dreamcast server reverse engineering and revival projects, with credits including F355 Challenge and Speed Devils Online.
Shuouma also boasts an impressive portfolio of Dreamcast server restoration projects, including the aforementioned Aero Dancing titles in addition to more than a dozen other games.
Outtrigger is a first- and third-person arena shooter developed by Sega AM2 under the direction of Hiroshi Kataoka with Yu Suzuki acting as producer, originally for NAOMI arcade hardware. The game debuted in Japanese arcades in November 1999. A subsequent port to Sega’s sixth-generation home console would come in the summer of 2001, releasing first in North America that July, and about a week later everywhere else — including in Japan. There were regional variations in the release, with the Japanese version coming bundled with the Dreamcast Mouse, and the European release lacking online features.
In Outtrigger, the player selects between four unique characters, each with differing abilities. Like other games in the arena shooter subgenre, powerups and weapons litter the battlefield varying the match-to-match gameplay. While the single player sees the player take part in “anti-terrorist” operations, the multiplayer of Outrigger is perhaps its most lauded feature, with four-player, local split screen, and six-player online arena matches.
The Dreamcast port reviewed well, with Dreamcast Magazine awarding the game a 92%, and Famitsu giving a 33/40. Sales, however, were middling, selling just 29,209 units in North America and 10,978 in Japan, ranking 182 and 259 respective to their regions.
Awesome! Most footage online shows the tiny maps you start with but there are a few bigger ones showing the engine could handle UT/QIII size maps too. Water Sanctuary and Art Museum (not S) are unlocked from the start but the two biggest are the unlockable Building and OEDO which are really cool to see with the glowing materials and textures in the former (particularly cool in the Dark variant as all glows are visible from afar when the rest of the walls/floors aren’t) and the Japanese castle aesthetic with blossoming trees in the background of the latter. It’s a shame we didn’t get more weapons, modes and content in a sequel or expansion disc or something, it would easily rival the big name arena shooters with its blazing fast performance putting them to shame, even if it sacrifices some visual fidelity for it (though I guess it could also look a lot better if they aimed for 30 instead of 60 fps and still perform way better than them, great engine).