3rd party VMU

[Tarnish]

Hello everyone. Just a long time lurker here who decided to register.

Figured I'd show something I came across a few months ago that I find kinda interesting. Since I'm no DC expert, this might be a lot less interesting than I think it is and some of you might know about it, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

I was looking around on an online auction site we have in my country (Hungary), looking at Dreamcast stuff and found something that I've never seen or heard of: a 3rd party (Performance) VMU. I'm well aware that there are a ton of different 3rd party memory cards for the DC, but I've never even heard of or seen a picture of a 3rd party VMU, I thought only SEGA made those.

As you can see in the attached pics, it has the screen, dpad, buttons and everything (interestingly the speaker is on the same side as the screen) and it's somewhat longer than the official VMU.

I wanted to buy it just out of curiosity, but it wasn't for sale on it's own and not much later someone else bought it. Would have been curious was it any different besides the looks from the official thing and how compatible it was with games, minigames etc.

[pcwzrd13]

This is really interesting! I've NEVER seen a third-party VMU and I'm constantly looking on eBay for Dreamcast stuff. I just did a Google search and came up with nothing. I think it's safe to say that this thing is extremely rare! I'm curious if anyone here knows anything about it.

[VasiliyRS]

This one i think is one of best 3rd party made accessories for Dreamcast.
It comes with awesome package:




My unsealed copy has battery out of energy so i cant tell you about how it works atm but it has different start up sound at dc power on!

[pcwzrd13]

Very cool! Do you have any other information on it Vasiliy? Like when and where it was released? There is no information whatsoever on the VMU online. No eBay sold listings or anything even if I search worldwide.

[Tarnish]

I had a feeling someone would show up in no time to reveal they have one of these things, lol. I don't think it's possible to show anything new about the DC to most of you guys.

[Jenkins]

WTF?! Please tell us more about it!

[naiaru]

Wow, I'd be interested in how the screen compares to the official VMU.

[WildCard]

crazy.....

Europe only maybe ??

[dark]

This is crazy. The VMU is its own console/computer, so this is a third party making a huge monetary investment just to replicate the sega VMU. I would be curious if performance somehow licensed the official sega guts of the vmu and maybe just put their own plastic shell on it for distribution in some minor European countries or so, I would think that would be a heck of a lot cheaper than doing the R+D to replicate the VMU and source their own parts.

[pcwzrd13]

Europe only maybe ??

That's what I was thinking. That would explain the rarity of it.