The Sega Dreamcast appreciation thread

[luth714]

8 hours ago, SeanR said:

Are you providing microUSB power?

 

I’ve got a few of these (Xbox, dc, and ps2), and some won’t work without the 5v juice

 

No it’s not got a 5v input - have one for my Xbox that has a connector but this is just plug and play apparently 

[Hodge]

Had a Dreamcast on and of through the years and was deciding whether to pick one up again modded with gdmenu.

 

thought I would check out how much emulation has come along first. 

 

Tried Redream lite version, Demul and flycast.

 

Redream was the most impressive as a all-in-one package, but failed due to the highly aggressive bilinear filtering that blurred everything out at near distance. Running Daytona 3 7 speedway is prime example.

 

Demul, was not impressed, pain to set up, tons of performance issues. Skip!

 

Flycast, very customisable, internal upscaling, well optimized. Best of the bunch imo.

 

But the main problem I had through all the testing, even though the emulators were reporting 60fps, nothing felt smooth when playing. V sync on or of, did not matter.  All the tinkering in the world do not alter this fact. What I put it down to in the end, is these emulators do not play well with freesync/Gsync monitors.

 

Thought I would throw a last roll of the dice and try Retroarch with flycast plugin as I read Retroarch supports freesync/Gsync and syncs monitor at exact output of emulator.

 

OMG, everything is buttery smooth now and with all the video config settings, can get all games looking far better on modern day TVs than my original Dreamcast could over VGA. Even upscaling to 2k internal resolution and 16x anisotropic filtering, runs flawlessly. 

 

Then the ace in the hole was going back online with PSO V2 last night after 20 years with minimal amount of effort. Might not of been anyone on the servers, but still Ace playing PSO online once again.

 

Then had a look how you go about going online with Dreamcast hardware. Broadband adapter is silly money or dreampi, way to much hassle, outlay and effort.

 

After being a huge Dreamcast fan over the years and original hardware is king pov. Emulation is at a point where it plays a high percentage of games flawlessly and looks so much better on modern day displays than Dreamcast ever can. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Parappa]

3 hours ago, Hodge said:

Had a Dreamcast on and of through the years and was deciding whether to pick one up again modded with gdmenu.

 

thought I would check out how much emulation has come along first. 

 

Tried Redream lite version, Demul and flycast.

 

Redream was the most impressive as a all-in-one package, but failed due to the highly aggressive bilinear filtering that blurred everything out at near distance. Running Daytona 3 7 speedway is prime example.

 

Demul, was not impressed, pain to set up, tons of performance issues. Skip!

 

Flycast, very customisable, internal upscaling, well optimized. Best of the bunch imo.

 

But the main problem I had through all the testing, even though the emulators were reporting 60fps, nothing felt smooth when playing. V sync on or of, did not matter.  All the tinkering in the world do not alter this fact. What I put it down to in the end, is these emulators do not play well with freesync/Gsync monitors.

 

Thought I would throw a last roll of the dice and try Retroarch with flycast plugin as I read Retroarch supports freesync/Gsync and syncs monitor at exact output of emulator.

 

OMG, everything is buttery smooth now and with all the video config settings, can get all games looking far better on modern day TVs than my original Dreamcast could over VGA. Even upscaling to 2k internal resolution and 16x anisotropic filtering, runs flawlessly. 

 

Then the ace in the hole was going back online with PSO V2 last night after 20 years with minimal amount of effort. Might not of been anyone on the servers, but still Ace playing PSO online once again.

 

Then had a look how you go about going online with Dreamcast hardware. Broadband adapter is silly money or dreampi, way to much hassle, outlay and effort.

 

After being a huge Dreamcast fan over the years and original hardware is king pov. Emulation is at a point where it plays a high percentage of games flawlessly and looks so much better on modern day displays than Dreamcast ever can. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have used redream for a while and its great for a quick setup and go but I will give Flycast via Retroarch a go.  Can you play PSO via Retroach?  I never played it but loved the old PS games. 

[Hodge]

4 hours ago, Parappa said:

I have used redream for a while and its great for a quick setup and go but I will give Flycast via Retroarch a go.  Can you play PSO via Retroach?  I never played it but loved the old PS games. 

Indeed you can. You need the modded psolive iso that allows access to private servers. Not hard to search the archives of the internet for it. Then it's just a case of booting the iso, typing in the serial and access code for PSO v2 which is easily available. Select the ISP connection that's already been setup via flycast.  If that don't work, boot quake 3 and create a connection that way. Quick YouTube search will show you step by step. Takes less than 5 minutes. You can also get access to DL quest challenges to.

 

Weird seeing original DC PSO back online after all these years 😀

[Parappa]

2 hours ago, Hodge said:

Indeed you can. You need the modded psolive iso that allows access to private servers. Not hard to search the archives of the internet for it. Then it's just a case of booting the iso, typing in the serial and access code for PSO v2 which is easily available. Select the ISP connection that's already been setup via flycast.  If that don't work, boot quake 3 and create a connection that way. Quick YouTube search will show you step by step. Takes less than 5 minutes. You can also get access to DL quest challenges to.

 

Weird seeing original DC PSO back online after all these years 😀

That's this weekend sorted cheers!

 

Had a quick spin with flycast earlier and it's bloody great.

[Hodge]

2 hours ago, Parappa said:

That's this weekend sorted cheers!

 

Had a quick spin with flycast earlier and it's bloody great.

Yeah the more Dreamcast library i try out, the more i love this emulator.  Another tip is to put alpha sorting to - per pixel if your rig can handle it as it sorts the odd texture glitching out like on daytona hornet car for example. Also maximum transparent layers to 32 aswell. Another game i tried thats a huge improvement is msr, upsampling to 2k really helps sort out the fine detail from the railing and other trackside detail.

 

The only game i found upto yet, that runs like garbage is sega rally 2.  Then again the frame rate was all over the place on the dreamcast version aswell.  Saying that supermodel is my goto for my Sega rally 2 fix anyway, which wipes the floor with the the dreamcast version by a mile.

 

Had a quick bash on F355 challenge aswell. Again flawless upped to 2k and has aged really well.

 

Great getting back into the Dreamcast catalogue for my quick Arcade fix.  Wouldn`t mind getting back into PSO again after not really feeling New Genesis.

[Parappa]

Cheers for those tips I totally forgot about 355 so will give that a spin and try and sort out the wheel with it.

 

Sega rally 2 running at all is impressive as I don't think redream supports any games based on the Windows platform they used.

[Oh Danny Boy]

New issue of SEGA powered is out and comes with the first Dreamcast demo disk in two decades. 
 

For any Dreamcast owner who hasn’t played Shadow Gangs, Intrepid Izzy or Flea you’re in for a treat. All three are essentials imo. Driving Strikers is shaping up nicely too. 

[Oh Danny Boy]

New album by Remute is coming out on the Dreamcast in November with accompanying visuals for each track done by Duranik developers of Sturmwind. 
 

https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2022/10/new-remute-music-album-generations-to.html?m=1

 

 

[bplus]

On 05/08/2022 at 07:43, Hodge said:

Had a Dreamcast on and of through the years and was deciding whether to pick one up again modded with gdmenu.

 

thought I would check out how much emulation has come along first. 

 

Tried Redream lite version, Demul and flycast.

 

Redream was the most impressive as a all-in-one package, but failed due to the highly aggressive bilinear filtering that blurred everything out at near distance. Running Daytona 3 7 speedway is prime example.

 

Demul, was not impressed, pain to set up, tons of performance issues. Skip!

 

Flycast, very customisable, internal upscaling, well optimized. Best of the bunch imo.

 

But the main problem I had through all the testing, even though the emulators were reporting 60fps, nothing felt smooth when playing. V sync on or of, did not matter.  All the tinkering in the world do not alter this fact. What I put it down to in the end, is these emulators do not play well with freesync/Gsync monitors.

 

Thought I would throw a last roll of the dice and try Retroarch with flycast plugin as I read Retroarch supports freesync/Gsync and syncs monitor at exact output of emulator.

 

OMG, everything is buttery smooth now and with all the video config settings, can get all games looking far better on modern day TVs than my original Dreamcast could over VGA. Even upscaling to 2k internal resolution and 16x anisotropic filtering, runs flawlessly. 

 

Then the ace in the hole was going back online with PSO V2 last night after 20 years with minimal amount of effort. Might not of been anyone on the servers, but still Ace playing PSO online once again.

 

Then had a look how you go about going online with Dreamcast hardware. Broadband adapter is silly money or dreampi, way to much hassle, outlay and effort.

 

After being a huge Dreamcast fan over the years and original hardware is king pov. Emulation is at a point where it plays a high percentage of games flawlessly and looks so much better on modern day displays than Dreamcast ever can. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For N64, PS1 and the Dreamcast, I'm finding emulation is the easier option. Higher resolutions etc plus fewer cables lying around! Though there's always the nagging suspicion the game isn't running quite right.

As an aside, I paid for an RGB mid for my NTSC N64 so I could play through an ossc. I shouldn't have bothered. It looks dreadful. Though playing 1080 I'm convinced is quite a bit more responsive on real hardware.

 

[Ketchup]

Psone and n64 on emulation sounds fine, but with Dreamcast you’ll be missing the *Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppppppppppppp* on every start up and the disc drive scratching its way around the disc. Especially handy during skies of Arcadia as you know a random battle is about to appear.

[bplus]

11 hours ago, Ketchup said:

Psone and n64 on emulation sounds fine, but with Dreamcast you’ll be missing the *Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppppppppppppp* on every start up and the disc drive scratching its way around the disc. Especially handy during skies of Arcadia as you know a random battle is about to appear.

Ha! Good point, they need to add that to the emulators

[Lorfarius]

 

[Paulando]

Tell you what, right.

 

 

Absolutely beautiful console and controller. Up there with the Gamecube for me as the best-looking and most fun-looking consoles of all time.

[geldra]

Here’s something that has always bugged me and has just resurfaced after seeing a retrospective about it on YT…

 

Could the DC have managed a better/closer port of Sega Rally 2?  
 

Was it just too underpowered to deliver?

 

Did the devs just fuck it up? 

 

Was the fact that Windows CE having something to do with it held it back?

 

Could the DC version be ran at a locked 60 on current Gen hw? (Not talking about the stripped back mode that ran smoother that was available in the game via button code) And if so… would it have technically been better than the arc version? 
 

I watched a comparison vid and they’re almost like totally different games, the camera angle on the 3rd person view is totally different, the style of the arc version feels different. 
 

What the fuck happened? It still hurts. 

[Ninja Doctor]

Wince held it back. It absolutely could have been done. The wince powered games were notorious for it. 
 

another video game esoterica subscriber?

[geldra]

11 minutes ago, Ninja Doctor said:

Wince held it back. It absolutely could have been done. The wince powered games were notorious for it. 
 

another video game esoterica subscriber?

not a subscriber no, there’s a thread on Arc Otaku where he posts his stuff.  
 

Begs the question why they would even use WinCE if that’s the case. Bah.  I did just read it was developed along with the DC hw so was kinda rushed. 
 

it’s weird though, it’s not even like it’s a port of the arcade version with a shitty frame rate, it’s like an approximation of the arcade game (with a shitty frame rate). 

[Ketchup]

There was a proper port which wasn’t working out and for some reason, Sega being Sega, they were working on a PC port anyways and decided to quickly port that over to have something ready for near launch. They didn’t learn their lesson from Daytona on the Saturn and Segas pc releases have always been a bit strange and a little counter productive for the time.

 

If they’d actually made a proper port with the time and team required it could have easily done a faithful adaptation, but what we did get wasn’t actually the worst and does have a rather chunky single player mode.

[spanky debrest]

I'd have been happy with accurate / enhanced port of of the original Sega Rally. That could've feasibly run at a locked 60fps even under whatever compromised environment winCE on DC was, I'd imagine.

[pastry]

Yep it was absolutely just a rush job hampered by CE. For me it was one of the very few DC games to really disappoint.. and would you believe it, the other standout was Daytona! Oh, and — hmmm, this is a bit awkward — yet another was Sega GT.. maybe Sega should give up on racing games? 

(But then, of course, we wouldn't have F355 – which was incredible)

[geldra]

9 hours ago, Ketchup said:

There was a proper port which wasn’t working out and for some reason, Sega being Sega, they were working on a PC port anyways and decided to quickly port that over to have something ready for near launch. They didn’t learn their lesson from Daytona on the Saturn and Segas pc releases have always been a bit strange and a little counter productive for the time.

 

If they’d actually made a proper port with the time and team required it could have easily done a faithful adaptation, but what we did get wasn’t actually the worst and does have a rather chunky single player mode.

what what?!?!? There was an alternative port?!  Does it live in the vaults with the DC ver of Scud Race? 

 

@spanky debrest what about an accurate/enhanced port but with new tracks, or remixed tracks from SR2?  I’d buy it. 
 

I’d also buy an arcade accurate port of SR2 with the DC tracks ported back in (read on segaretro that the DC tracks were originally developed for the arc version but cut out). 

[Gabe]

I've never played on a Dreamcast other than a demo machine which had Crazy Taxi on it (so a long time ago).

Is there much on there worth playing if you don't like racing games (of any type), 1-vs-1 beat 'em ups or platformers? Some very brief googling doesn't turn up a great deal, especially stuff that was exclusive.

[Ketchup]

There is a tonne of stuff. Now when you say exclusive many Dreamcast games got ports but they’re generally also on consoles that are difficult or expensive to get or the port is just worst.

[klargon]

It depends how you define what’s worth playing. It’s still an old console, so you’ll find evolutions of the mechanics in a lot of the games in modern games. In those cases, it’s probably not worth playing over current stuff. Having said that, a lot of stuff has aged pretty well. The fun in playing retro games is sometimes in ignoring the ‘Top x Games’ lists and just trying a few random games. I think you’re likely to have some fun with the console that way.

[Gabe]

I play a fair bit of PS2/original Xbox stuff via emulation, so I'm not averse to the lack of quality of life features or mechanics.

And that's the root of the question @klargon - most of the top-rated stuff for the Dreamcast I have no interest in, so I'm looking to find the stuff outside of that which may be of interest - good hack-and-slash or RPGs, for example. Rather than random googling, is there a decent Dreamcast site to help me out?

[phillv85]

You could try Berserk: Guts’ Rage. Not a long game, but I enjoyed it.

 

Some good shmups on the DC as well. 

[klargon]

50 minutes ago, phillv85 said:

You could try Berserk: Guts’ Rage. Not a long game, but I enjoyed it.

Funny enough, this title came to mind for me. I picked this up when I bought a Dreamcast and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Hitting a wall with the sword is a bastard, though!

[phillv85]

1 hour ago, klargon said:

Funny enough, this title came to mind for me. I picked this up when I bought a Dreamcast and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Hitting a wall with the sword is a bastard, though!

Yea the narrower areas are a right pain in the spuds 😆

[acidbearboy]

4 hours ago, Gabe said:

I've never played on a Dreamcast other than a demo machine which had Crazy Taxi on it (so a long time ago).

Is there much on there worth playing if you don't like racing games (of any type), 1-vs-1 beat 'em ups or platformers? Some very brief googling doesn't turn up a great deal, especially stuff that was exclusive.

Cannon Spike

Cosmic Smash

Zombie Revenge

Bangai-o

Chu Chu Rocket

Cool Cool Toon

Seaman

Ecco the Dolphin

Samba de Amigo

Space Channel 5 (and part 2)

The Typing of the Dead

and a bunch of shumps 

[bplus]

On 05/08/2022 at 07:43, Hodge said:

Had a Dreamcast on and of through the years and was deciding whether to pick one up again modded with gdmenu.

 

thought I would check out how much emulation has come along first. 

 

Tried Redream lite version, Demul and flycast.

 

Redream was the most impressive as a all-in-one package, but failed due to the highly aggressive bilinear filtering that blurred everything out at near distance. Running Daytona 3 7 speedway is prime example.

 

Demul, was not impressed, pain to set up, tons of performance issues. Skip!

 

Flycast, very customisable, internal upscaling, well optimized. Best of the bunch imo.

 

But the main problem I had through all the testing, even though the emulators were reporting 60fps, nothing felt smooth when playing. V sync on or of, did not matter.  All the tinkering in the world do not alter this fact. What I put it down to in the end, is these emulators do not play well with freesync/Gsync monitors.

 

Thought I would throw a last roll of the dice and try Retroarch with flycast plugin as I read Retroarch supports freesync/Gsync and syncs monitor at exact output of emulator.

 

OMG, everything is buttery smooth now and with all the video config settings, can get all games looking far better on modern day TVs than my original Dreamcast could over VGA. Even upscaling to 2k internal resolution and 16x anisotropic filtering, runs flawlessly. 

 

Then the ace in the hole was going back online with PSO V2 last night after 20 years with minimal amount of effort. Might not of been anyone on the servers, but still Ace playing PSO online once again.

 

Then had a look how you go about going online with Dreamcast hardware. Broadband adapter is silly money or dreampi, way to much hassle, outlay and effort.

 

After being a huge Dreamcast fan over the years and original hardware is king pov. Emulation is at a point where it plays a high percentage of games flawlessly and looks so much better on modern day displays than Dreamcast ever can. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I need to try this. Just got a Nvidia 3070 for pc under telly, so hopefully I'll get same results as you.