Alrighty folks it’s time to have a closer look here at the concept art featured in Dreamcast Magazine Volume #5 👀👀
First of all gotta say I’m incredibly lucky to have found a copy in this good of a condition wow.
Now I wanna say that my camera is kind of ass. I’ve got an iPhone 13 mini and trying to take any close up pictures of tiny details is a nightmare so I really tried my best with getting good pictures of the concept art. So let’s see what it looks like!
And OH MY GOD it has way more DPI than I thought it was gonna have I AM RELIEVED. On the left is a regular picture and on the right is a picture I took with a magnifying lens. I really hope tumblr doesn’t fuck the resolution on these images.
We got the interior of a vessel here with a crew inside. Very Captain Harlock-esque (kind of Gundam-esque too) to be honest. Seems like some kind of pirates. Enemies perhaps? Or maybe they were just characters within the story that you don’t actually fight or interact with. Big guy in the middle seems to be the captain and the crew all around him kinda all look the same. Like a Team Rocket situation. This may be the second or third time we’ve gotten a view of the interior of one of these vessels—or I should say one of these vessels that are still functioning and not sunken.
I have a miniature microscope that I won from an arcade that functions more like a macro lens but I wasn’t able to take any good pictures with it. But I can say with the details that are visible it is a great piece of art. The ceiling has a map of the world and you can see all the little consoles and stuff that the crew are working on. You can see Taguchi’s style shine through the characters.
Here’s that shark shaped vessel. Now I have no clue what this thing is honestly because we see nothing of this caliber in the final game. Looks to be some elaborate battleship? Maybe the exterior of that pirate ship? No clue. Kind of makes me think of White Base from Gundam.
Here’s that scrapped whale boss. I theorized it to be a Bakekujira or something like that. Though I can imagine they probably scrapped it because of Japan’s reputation with whaling and honestly I do think it was a good choice. But it’s a very cool design. Big ol baleen grin with no visible eyes from what I can tell.
Saved the best one for last but FINALLY AFTER ALL THIS TIME. We finally have confirmation that Morfa is really named Morfa and Player 4… is named…
Unfortunately many details are still obscured but we finally have a name for this elusive character. It’s no full art but we can work with it.
All four characters have some kind of machine displayed beneath them. I thought maybe they were shock guns but I think they might be vessels? They almost look like mechs? Was the Ocean Hunter gonna be a mecha arcade game?
Also, taking a closer look at Tomas it almost looks like he’s holding an animal just like Morfa is doing in her full art. Looks like a dog maybe? Actually no yes it definitely is a dog no doubt about it.
Translating the text we find that yes, the Ocean Hunter was originally planned to be a mecha fighting game! Really strange to think about. I’m glad they took it in the direction they did, though.
In conclusion. I’m really happy I was finally able to get my hands on this. I’ve been looking for it for so long and now I finally have some answers to a few mysteries. Yet another piece in my collection of Ocean Hunter related things. Now I just need to find the Japanese poster and the Torel phone card.
