The Dreamcast Thread

[OrangeRibbon]

Nice, anyone here use one yet? I am thinking about splurging on one.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

I don't have it but am thinking about getting one. It looks like it works well and is easy to set up.

I'm going to make this the official BG Dreamcast thread.

[OrangeRibbon]

I also saw one for the Saturn to but it is in pre order and they are not taking any more. Funny thing, I still have almost all the US Dreamcast games.

[ian]

Shoutout to all of those still playing original games on original hardware. Being a Dreamcast fanboy is essentially: 'GO BANANA!'

I can't call myself a fanboy these days because I'm on my second copy of Crazy Taxi, even though all my other games are original.
(The first copy from 2000 got so worn out it wouldn't read anymore! I think the laser actually burned through my original disc)

I look at the repairs and mods I have to do to my DC and I think it might be easier and CHEAPER to just buy another console and keep mine as parts.
do any of us have any of the mods????
GDEMU: Legit $400,000,000 or copy $100
DC HDMI: $200 + at least $100
Fan mod: $40 plus 20 hours of time.

Is anyone running any mods? or if not, do you intend to get any for your BANANA?

[melancholy]

I plan on installing GDEMU and the fan mod in the coming weeks. I just have to commit to removing the GD-Rom, which I’m still hesitant due to all the physical games I still have.

[ian]

Be interested to see you do the fan mod, mel.
I actually have a few suitable fans here (including a Noctua which if you're not into PC's, you should use), but have bigger problems to deal with before I worry about that.
I'm not even using my DC too much anymore TBH. More into PlayStation light gun games and Saturn games right now.
Can't get a world record, so focusing on ENJOYING games ATM

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Vice City on the Dreamcast.

[ian]

When the games (3 and vice city) are at the point you can burn a fully working and finished game to a CD or 2-3 and have them boot and play on real original hardware I'd give them a play.
If you're just mounting images to a GDEMU or god forbid an emulator its sort of less impressive. A good tech demo, but a tech demo nonetheless...

Since the last time I posted in this thread, I've made a full compliment of Dreamcast mods. They finally got to a place where they were easy and cheap enough...
Just about all of Dreamcast (the original one I got myself for my Birthday in 2000) has been replaced. Original parts are stored in the box.

Got a clone GDEMU with surround mounts with a 128GB Samsung Evo plus micro SD. And while 128GB isn't QUITE enough to store all the games, I picked it for a few reasons. The original drive in most Dreamcasts was indeed manufactured by Samsung.
Using a pro card is a waste of money (it can't read games any faster with a professional card anyway) and the capacity is just right for a 128 bit machine.

Noctua Fan mod... Without the GD rom grinding away like a 1979 dot matrix printer, it was really apparent the 1981 black and decker power drill sounding fan was out of place and eventually the Fan mod became easy and cheap enough for me to be bothered, no hacking up latches and botching dodgy surrounds from early 3D printers and soldering resisters.. just a $15 kit that had every single part but the expensive fan which I already had. And was installed and working in 5 minutes.

Clock battery holder and new rechargeable battery. My internal battery was dead, so a quick and cheap mod. This was the hardest I had to work on all of my mods. for the first and only time I had to solder something myself. One day I'll get a good Maxell battery for it instead of a cheap clone. Mine goes flat after a week of not playing it. a friend's with a good battery in it lasts at least 2 months before it starts to lose time.

Pico PSU. My original PSU started to struggle a little while back. So I picked up one of these rather than redoing a whole power supply. It's been solid ever since.

When the thread was made, all those mods together were as expensive as the system was when it was brand new. About $500aud Which WAS a total rip off. Since then though, A fully up to modern code system for under $200 (including price of noctua fan) was worth it personally.

Still haven't sold my discs as I have a spare stock Dreamcast I should sell since I just spent a million dollars on a PS5 pro. (Also a birthday present to myself)

I doubt I'll be using the PS5 in 25 years if I'm completely honest, even if I were alive, I'm sure it wouldn't be worth fixing or modding...
But a Dreamcast? A Dreamcast is timeless.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01MuoxLTQ9o

[Dr. Zoidberg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLUqvhBDqlw

https://github.com/jnmartin84/wipeout-d ... s/tag/v1.0

[ian]

I'll give it a whirl.

Love me some wipeout, and love me some Dreamcast!

[Dr. Zoidberg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw6MOjbq5Ww

[Hawq]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vz5ZVIMy1U

[Manoel]

I find it strange that while Falco scammed the DC community with the Elysian Shadows kickstarter, he's doing lots of genuine work in the current DC devkit and the GTA ports. It's kind of a redemption arc, except that me and maybe a few other people don't care about GTA, so I got absolutely nothing back from the money I paid for ES.

I don't know anything about the GTA3 engine they're porting, but I think it's one of the reverse-engineered engines that were released under the GPL. Cool stuff, except there's no way to use it to create officially released commercial games for closed platforms such as the latest PlayStations and the Nintendo Switch, due to the license. And due to its reverse engineered nature, despite the GPL allowing commercial use, I'm not sure if someone using this GTA3 engine to create a commercial game (with fully original assets, of course) could get in legal trouble. So, this release doesn't fully compensate the people who funded the ES kickstarter to get ESTK (their ES SDK). Thankfully, I never had much interest in ESTK because I always preferred to use the Quake engine, so I don't feel much scammed in this aspect (and iirc, I paid for it before the ESTK inclusion announcement in their kickstarter).

So, yeah, strange times. But it's good news for a lot of people anyway.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[melancholy]

I’m going to say I want one, but I’ll bet it costs as much as a Dreamcast itself.

[ian]

It seems a bit too much (in price and features) for what it is.

All it needs to have is a backlit screen.
Swappable SD card.
A built in mic.
And to play MP3's with a 12 hour battery life.
That's all I need from a VMU.
It's too small to play actual games on, but those other things mentioned would be nice.