The Sega Dreamcast appreciation thread

[gone fishin]

They've got a Facebook page, but there's no updates of note on it! Lol - they're a typical games shop from the 90s! If you search Games Masters Leith Walk you'll find it.

[IR354Lifeqhybot]

Having been inspired to look for my GC Component Cables in my retro draw and cupboard, I came across my Dreamcast selection. Not many, but pretty much all good games including the classics. Found a memory card with 4 lights where you could select different slots. Official Japanese memory card it looks like, but I have no re-collection of ever purchasing it. Console still works as well.

[Nathan Wind]

Some great games there. What's the one in the bottom left corner?

[gunrock]

Millenium Soldier?

[Nathan Wind]

Ah yes, I vaguely remember playing that. Looks pretty good from the gameplay vids I just watched, I'll have to pick it up when I get my DC back.

[Riven]

Millenium Soldier was quite a decent top down shooter on the Dreamcast worth a pick up if you like that type of game and it's a nice cheap buy.

[gone fishin]

Really fancied picking up Outtrigger, had great memories of it. had a quick look on eBay and it seems to be going for around 20 quid. Which is a lot for a dc game.

So played my aherm pirated copy of it and was really disappointed. Did not remember it being that basic. Oh well....

[Oracle]

I wanted to play that but never had a decent internet connection back on the day.

[Elseb]

Been playing my Dreamcast with a VGA box for the first time ever, the difference is incredible! Completed Zombie Revenge tonight, adore this game!

[spanky debrest]

I had a DC & VGA box but never did what I considered the pinnacle of what you should do with such a setup - stick a huge telly on its side and play Ikaruga without borders, the way it was always meant to be played.

[Ninja Doctor]

I did that with a 21" crt. Think it buggered it up in the end ????

[Peloquin]

Did anybody used to go onto the chuchu rocket chatroom a lot...i used to go on it all the time and ended up meeting loads of great peole thanks to that.

I used to be known as Peloquin.

[NEG]

/wave Responded to you on the Chu thread as well. We should probably continue discussing here rather then there, what with Chu Chu being a 'Retro' gaming discussion these days.

[Creamstick]

I had my Dreamcast out for a quick blast today, stuck on Crazy Taxi 2, Soul Calibur and Rival Schools 2 - all looked great through RGB via the SCART-HDMI upscaler mentioned in the other thread (the cheap one). I wanted to keep it out to have a run through Sam & Max Hit The Road on the SCUMMVM emulator, but my boot disc wouldn't load.

Fuck I love the Dreamcast. Next purchase I think will be a VGA cable for it. Do I have to get some sort of external box as well as a cable, or is it as simple as a DC-VGA cable into the TV?

[SeanR]

the cables have the VGA box in-line, but have a VGA-F connector to add the M-M VGA cable to connect to the monitor.

And you'll lose the composite bypass and options for audio 3.5mm jack only, rather than either/or RCA connectors to an amp, that you get with a separate DC-VGA box.

[Creamstick]

I've seen VGA cables without the box in-line and with the RCA audio connectors. There's videos on youtube of people trying them out that I saw after posting here, as well as posts on other forums and the consensus seems to be that the picture from these cables is exactly the same as using the VGA box, or a cable with one in-line.

Here's a post from a Dreamcast forum in a thread about a cable without the box in-line, a Tomee one, and a no-brand ebay one (that's about a tenner) amd they say that the picture is exactly the same as with the box. http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6107&start=60#p79620

I've seen the Hanzo box/cable talked about as well, which upscales the VGA signal as well as generates scanlines, but haven't seen these for sale (they seem to be about $60 + shipping from Turkey), and seen on ebay a VGA cable with the box in-line that also generates scanlines for about £25.

[Dr Nookie]

I spent countless hours playing Record of Lodos Wars which I'd borrowed off someone at work. I bloody loved that.

[Elseb]

I bought an official Dreamcast steering wheel with Daytona USA 2001 today. 

 

Probably the most enjoyable gaming session i have had in ages. 

 

I'm going to have to buy some racing games I think.

[kempstar]

I love my Dreamcasts. All seven of them

 

i will write something tomorrow as I have lots to say.

[Wiper]

Ah man, I'd love to see one of the non-white Dreamcasts in the flesh! It was exciting enough when I finally got a generic Japanese Dreamcast and suddenly appreciated how nice the orange swirl looks on it, but an actual colourful Dreamcast would be quite the thing.

[NEG]

I evidently need more Dreamcasts 

[Elseb]

I'm just here waiting for Kempstars post. 

[kempstar]

Sorry!

 

Here is Dreamcast memory #1. Lets call it the "Shenmue 2 chair".

 

Back in 2001 (?) when Sega pulled out of the hardware business, they had a contract with a company called Big Ben interactive to release a certain number of games for the platform. Big Ben had the exclusive rights to distribute these games in the UK. Were it not for the existence of this contract, which legally bound Sega to release a number of Dreamcast titles, then I am sure Sega would have pulled out of publishing in the UK too. So, the UK might not have seen Shenmue 2 or Headhunter for example. Two wonderful games.

 

There was no such contract in existence in the US. This meant that there were a lot of unhappy people who now had little chance of playing Shenmue 2 on their beloved dreamcast. 

 

At the time, I thought - "I bet I could sell my copy of Shenmue 2 to some mug in the US, to help pay off my student debts". I put it up for auction on ebay, and it went for something ridiculous, like £80. I quickly got the bus into town, went into Game, and bought another copy. I repeated the auction, it again sold for a similar price.

 

Now, I started thinking, actually maybe there is a bigger opportunity here. I phoned up Big Ben Interactive, and told them I wanted to set up a distributors account. I then put another auction on ebay, this time for 200 copies of the game. It was a dutch auction, so I fixed the price at £35 (I think). Not bad considering Big Ben would sell me it at £22 a unit. All 200 copies sold. Bear in mind I didnt even have the games at this point. I called up Big Ben and placed an order for 200 copies. They arrived the next day. I drafted in my mum to help me package everything up, stick on address labels, and take them to the post office.

Really and truly, some of the easiest money I have ever made. Especially bearing in mind I had taken the cash for the orders via PayPal before I even had to pay for the games.

 

I put up another auction, for another 200 copies. Again all of them sold. I repeated this trick and milked it for as long as I could. I sold well over a thousand copies. Not just on ebay, but on game forums, Shenmue forums and so on. Not just to the US either, as the situation was the same in Australia. So I made quite a few sales there. I did the same thing with Headhunters, but that didnt sell anywhere near as many copies. I was able to largely avoid ebay and ebay fees, as I had a large mailing list of all the customers that had bought Shenmue 2 from me, and a decent amount. The last game I sold in this short but incredibly sweet business venture was Grand Theft Auto 2 on the PS2. This was briefly banned in Australia. I managed to sell maybe 20 copies of this on ebay before my account was locked. 

 

So why is this memory call the Shenmue 2 chair? Hold on, im just getting to that.

 

At this point in my life, I had just graduated, and had moved back into my parents house. I had to take the small single room. I had gone out one night and came home pretty hammered. That day there had been a rather large delivery of Shenmue 2. I had all my junk and crap from my student digs, cluttering up this small room. I wanted to sit down and play on the Dreamcast, but there was no chair, and no space. So I built a makeshift chair out of several hundred Shenmue 2 games instead, and sat down to play some Crazy Taxi. Amazing 

 

Next up - Dreamcast memory #2: How PSO changed my life.

 

 

[Elseb]

That post just reminds me I haven't got a copy of Shenmue 2. 

[wev]

How did the shitty PAL cases hold your weight? They could barely stand up to being placed in a plastic bag!

 

But yes, I only own Shenmue 2 on the original XBox.

[Nick R]

God bless Bigben Interactive!  The only game distribution company I have ever heard of, and with good reason: if not for them we almost certainly wouldn't have got Headhunter, Rez, Virtua Tennis 2 or PSO ver 2.

 

They used to have an en.wikipedia article but it was deleted as non-notable. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE NOTEWORTHY TO ME!

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=BigBen_Interactive

 

Thankfully the French and Germans are more appreciative:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigben_Interactive

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigben_Interactive

[Oracle]

Just picked up 18 wheeler for £7 bargain!

[BarryL85]

With the upcoming release of Shenmue 3 next year I decided it was time to get myself a Dreamcast and replay the first two. This is my first Dreamcast but it was a large part of my childhood gaming, my friend gave me a loan of his to play through Shenmue and then later Shenmue 2. We had many of gaming sessions playing Crazy Taxi,18 Wheeler, Virtua Tennis, Sega Rally, Toy Commander, .... the list could go on (if I could remember the rest). I didn't want a yellowing console so my first mission was to find one that had little to none.

 

So here she is.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next was to find like new condition copies of Shenmue 1 & 2...

 

 

 

 

Got myself a VGA cable (really does make the image incredibly sharp) and cannot believe how good this game looks after 16 years...

 

 

 

 

 

Been playing it stretched to 16:9 which I don't mind, some would prefer it in 4:3, there is however a new mod that makes the game playable in 16:9 natively which looks great but I haven't got a cheat disc (yet).

 

 

 

 

 

[jonathanhoey]

I scrolled through all of those pictures going "good God man, fix that aspect ratio" and then you address that very point at the end. To each his own, I guess

 

Seriously though, that's brilliant. My DC is in the loft but I must get it out and find my VGA box - I didn't own a 50" TV back in the day so I'm very curious to see how the games look these days.

[BarryL85]

5 minutes ago, beenabadbunny said:

I scrolled through all of those pictures going "good God man, fix that aspect ratio" and then you address that very point at the end. To each his own, I guess

 

Seriously though, that's brilliant. My DC is in the loft but I must get it out and find my VGA box - I didn't own a 50" TV back in the day so I'm very curious to see how the games look these days.

 

Haha I knew it would annoy some so I had to mention it, I am definitely going to try the native 16:9 mod though. My friend I mentioned earlier still has his Dreamcast and has been trying to get it to work but ran into some odd issues.