Vanishing Point Online Features Restored!

It’s another great day for Dreamcast racing fans as Vanishing Point’s online features are now back online thanks to Shuouma! Dialing into the game’s online mode gives you access to the current challenges in normal, expert and pro difficulty levels. The challenges will be one of three different types: a single race which is self-explanatory, a time trial which a series of races where the time is added up at the end, or a balloon race in which popping balloons removes 1 second from the timer and hitting bombs adds 2 seconds. Completing these challenges will earn you points which decide your position on the online leaderboard as well as your rank. Your rank will determine which challenges you have available to you.

Back in the day, there were new challenges available on a regular basis. This will remain true with the revival as Shuouma has developed a script to automatically create a new random challenge every week! This will assure a steady flow of new content without the need for pesky human intervention and hopefully always assure there will always be fresh competition.

This game is an interesting one as unlike most other games that have similar online features, this one doesn’t simply use the Dreamcast browser, it’s all a native interface built right into the game. Props to the devs for going the extra mile! I’m personally quite excited to have the online features restored for this game as it’s one of my favorite racers on the system and having a steady flow of new content to enjoy will be a treat! A huge thanks goes out to Shuouma for getting this up and running again! I also want to give a shout-out to one of the former devs who was kind enough to help with getting this one back online. It’s always cool to see devs still passionate about games they developed over two decades ago!

If you’d like to test your racing skills in Vanishing Point’s online challenges, simply select the “Internet Challenge” option from the main menu of the game. DreamPi users will automatically connect but if you’re using another connection method, you’ll need to make sure your DNS is set to 46.101.91.123. It should be noted that you may have issues with the PAL version of the game. It seems to require specific ISP configuration that we have yet to figure out as it just refuses to dial. If anyone manages to successfully connect with the PAL version, please let us know! In the meantime, the NTSC version has no issues.