After dazzling us with his preview build of Postal for Dreamcast, Dan Redfield has teamed up with Wave Game Studios to publish the game on physical disc. The rights holder, Running With Scissors, have given their blessing for the release originally seen on PC in 1997. This is big news for the Dreamcast community and another new release for 2022 after several already. Dan has optimised the game to run smoothly on the Dreamcast. He has also added a few features to help the translation from PC. Pre-orders are up on the Wave Game Studios website now.
When asked about what it meant to get his port officially released Dan seemed excited. ‘If you’d told 16-year-old me that someday I’d be releasing a Dreamcast Postal port, then frankly, I would have called you nuts. It’s still hard to grasp that it’s actually happening. I’m really stoked about it and I hope gamers like the arcadey tweaks I’ve added’. After playing the preview build I have no doubt Dreamcast fans will lap this port of Postal up.
For anyone who did not play the original game it is an isometric shooter where you play as a guy who has gone postal. It was released not long after the controversy of video game violence in the 90s. It garnered criticism and is still banned in Germany and New Zealand. You go on a rampage of mass murder killing anybody in your way from bystanders to hunters. The game’s developers found themselves in a legal battle with the US Postal Service but it was eventually dropped. Looking back at the game now it was clearly a comical title, even if some thought it was in bad taste.
But none of that matters now as we see a classic PC game find new life on the Dreamcast. You can still download the preview build disc image to play on an emulator. Those with a CD burner can play it on the real hardware as well. The game is being released as part of Wave Game Studios ’12 months, 12 games’ strategy. They plan to release at least one Dreamcast game every month this year. Incidentally, Running With Scissors released the source code in 2015 with the request that ‘someone promises to port it to the Dreamcast’. Well, they got their wish.
