Propeller Arena finally playable online thanks to Dreamcast Live

Welcome to SegaBits!! Hi there! I’m your writer for this exciting news, Big Elk! You all as happy to see a new Dreamcast game playable online as I am!? Sit back, relax, and enjoy the wind rushing through your hair as you read on!

On April 1st, 2026, Dreamcast Live had, for the first time ever, opened up the internet features of the unreleased Dreamcast game Propeller Arena: Aviation Battle Championship for business, but this is no April Fools joke. Dreamcast Live heroes Shuouma and Flyinghead have done it again, figuring out how to finally allow for this game to be enjoyed over the internet thanks in part to the fact Propeller Arena made use of the same netcode as another game these two had brought back online: Outtrigger. If you’d been dreaming of one day finally experiencing online dogfighting in this game like I have, then your dream has finally come true.

Check in past the break for more info, then get set for flight.

Propeller Arena: Aviation Battle Championship is a multiplayer airborne battle game developed by Sega AM2 (Who also made Outtrigger) and originally meant to release worldwide in late September 2001. The game was fully complete and ready for the big time, but was cancelled following the September 11th tragedy in the USA. It wouldn’t be the last time a tragedy claiming the lives of many innocent people would cause problems with the release of an upcoming Sega game, but since Sega was already leaving the console race anyway, they must’ve felt that it was too late to even bother with a delay and just called it off altogether. Years later, the completed game would be leaked online, allowing players to finally experience the game for themselves, but until now, the online features were completely inaccessible to the general public.

While Propeller Arena is perfectly playable offline, including splitscreen multiplayer, it was one of those Dreamcast games, like Outtrigger and Hundred Swords, designed heavily with online multiplayer in mind. It even supported the Broadband adapter and the microphone would’ve also been supported for voice chat, making this one of the more feature-rich online enabled Dreamcast games. Since the game never officially launched to retail, however, the online servers never went up in the first place and no one had ever experienced the online multiplayer beyond developers and playtesters within a closed-off environment. The fact that a few people have gotten it to work 25 years later is nothing short of a miracle.

Beyond that, the game had plenty of depth to it. There’s a lot of different stages and characters, special weapons and shields to pick up during the game, and even special areal maneuvers like “barrel rolls” and corkscrew turns that you can pull off with button commands straight out of a fighting game. The game even features a training mode to help wrap your head around all this, which is especially helpful since no written or printed instruction manuals have ever been found for this game. The game even maintains the punk rock aesthetic of Crazy Taxi and Top Skater by including several licensed songs from different punk rock bands such as Rise Against, No Use For A Name, Consumed, Mad Caddies, and Zero Down, all playing off of a radio station featuring DJ Greg Irwin introducing the songs and commentating on the match. DJ Greg Irwin himself will sound a lot like Eric Kelso, a name many Sega fans should be familiar with considering he’s long been the voice of Jacky Bryant from Virtua Fighter, Ren of Heavens from Shenmue II, and Capt. Falcon in F-Zero GX, and his voice was lent to many other classic Sega games besides, although he isn’t credited in Propeller Arena.

Normally I dance around the subject of how to obtain a legal copy of a game for yourself if you don’t already have one, but in this case, you may as well just download Propeller Arena. The Sega Dreamcast Info blog has it available, along with a few earlier prototypes if you’re interested in trying those out. Just make sure to download the “September 11th” prototype, as it is the most complete version and the only one that can connect online. The Broadband adapter and the microphone are all still supported, along with your DreamPi, if you’ve got one. Just make sure your DreamPi is updated with the latest firmware if you plan on using it. As with all other Dreamcast Live games, you can check out their connection guide for help to get yourself set up and see their full list of currently supported games. As you may have heard if you frequent our quaint little SegaBits blog, the last game they brought back online was Power Smash.

Have you played Propeller Arena before? Were you hoping to one day see this game playable online? Are there any Dreamcast games left that you wanna see playable online once again through Dreamcast Live? (I know there aren’t many left, but you can come up with a few.) Tell us all about it in the comments below.