TOKYO - Also as part of the press meeting with Sega president Irimajiri-san, we were shown additional demos running on Dreamcast hardware. These are only demos, not games in progress (although it may indicate what games are possible on the system).

　　After the meeting we moved to the next building where the R&D divisions are located. At a conference room on the eighth floor, we had the honor of seeing more demo footage and had a small Q&A session with Hideki Sato, managing director.

　　There was a tower PC, monitor and a huge projector in the room. First we were shown the demo on a Set 2, a PC board that emulates the Dreamcast console. It's a tentative board and not as powerful as the actual Dreamcast. The Set 2 only produces 2,500 polys/sec and is the equivalent of one third that of the Dreamcast. The demo we observed featured a vehicle from a famous arcade game based on the Model 3 board .

　　The demo was intended to show hardware effects, from an actual in-house developed game port. It shows the different kinds of real-time light-sourcing effects, which are some of the best parts of the Dreamcast.

　　Next we were shown a fast moving camera on one of the courses in an arcade racer. This course data was directly ported to Set 2 from a Model 3 board. It looks fine for the most part. Since Set 2 is one third the power of the Dreamcast, Sega assured us that current arcade games based on Model 3 will be ported to Dreamcast perfectly.

　　We were also shown several real-time animation segments, which showed off hardware effects like environment mapping or software effects like shape animation.

　　Then the stage was set for Set 4.... The PC board using the actual chipset for the Dreamcast, although the Power VR2 chip is not finished. We were shown the same real-time animation sequence shown by Irimajiri at yesterday's conference called "Tower of Babel."

　　Since these segments are not intended to be games, we don't want to comment specifically on them - but it does show us part of the power of the Dreamcast.

　　After the demonstration, Sato kindly answered some of our questions.

　　When he asked about the CD-ROM format Dreamcast will use, he said, after a small pause, "The CD-ROMs used will be advanced ones. Which means not only speed but...."

　　Then he was asked if the capacity of a Dreamcast CD-ROM is larger than regular ones, and if there's a possibility of supporting a Dolby-like sound system. After another long pause he said "I'm an honest person. So I'm really tempted to reveal things...." Then his publishing assistant quickly interrupted and said, "And I'm holding him to do so as we are planning a teaser campaign. You will have this information little by little."

　　Afterwards, we packed up our bags and went back home, the end of our fun for the day. We sincerely express our thanks to the team at Sega that was involved in our visit.

　　With their cooperation we enjoyed spending time at Sega covering the machine. Hopefully we will get to see actual Dreamcast games next time we're at Sega headquarters.