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Playstation Emulation On The Dreamcast
martial writes: "I saw the information on IGN; it seems that the people at Bleem! are going to release a DreamCast version of their software to play PC Playstation Emulator."
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What a lot of people here may not know/realize is that we have a very, very good reason (those of us with DCs, anyway) to come out in strong support of bleemcast. Sony sued bleem!, over and over again, trying to bankrupt them, because they were losing control of their media. So they tried to stop bleem!'s release on the grounds that the programmer had reverse engineered it and in doing so had violated a slew of Sony patents and copyrights.
Sound familiar to anyone? How about Jon Johansen? The bleem! case is VERY applicable to a lot of us because bleem! WON their case against Sony. That case may come up as a precedent in the inevitable DVD lawsuits. In fact, I'm surprised the EFF lawyers didn't mention it when DeCSS was yanked.
In any case, even though bleem! is proprietary software (sorry :), we should support it and back it up with money. The company has shown grit and stamina in fighting the good fight. I'm sure many of us would like to emulate (pun intended) their successes against the evil corporations. Put $30 behind bleem! or bleemcast. It contributes to a good company with our interests at heart.
"Honey, it's not working out; I think we should make our relationship open-source."
The person that invented the "NE1 G0TZ" quote was the same guy that invented the term "Bleemcast": the webmaster of Dave's Classics (now known as The Vintage Gaming Network (www.vintagegaming.com)).
MAME already runs on the Windows CE devices -- it hasn't crashed on me, but the current 0.2 version still needs a lot of work cleaning up the performance and range of supported games. Legalities aside, it seems like someone could use embedded CE that works with the DreamCast to create a loader for MAME along with a ton of ROM files on a CD-ROM. I'm not sure if things are directly portable between the PDA version of CE and the embedded version that works with the DreamCast, but the source is out there, and, well, it would be cool as Hell to be able to run those games on the home entertainment system instead of just the ol' computer. (I don't own a DreamCast, but if anyone did it, it'd definitely make me think hard about getting one.)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
they *will* have MS's WinCE development libraries on their side
I doubt it: Dreamcast developers can choose between Windows CE, Sega's own lightweight OS, or they can write their own OS... the OS boots off the CD.
Windows CE games so far seem to suffer from a fair amount of overhead: since Bleem! will need all the resource it can get, I bet they develop on the Sega OS.
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Sony FINALLY announced a US release date and price for the Playstation 2 yesterday - I was hoping to see a /. story about it, but none yet. The Playstation 2 will be available on October 26, for $299.
But you're forgetting that we haven't heard anything from Sega yet; we don't know if they support Bleem or not, just because Bleem for
DC exists doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that Sega supports it.
Yes it does: to release a Dreamcast game commercially, you need to get a license from Sega.
Bleem! would not have announced this product if they didn't already have a license to sell it.
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I have a suggestion for the next Slashdot poll:
How many days until Sony sues over this?
The point here is not that Dreamcast owners can play PSX games, nor that PSX2 owners will be able to play PSX games...
This is the mainstream gaming community EMBRACING EMULATION. (Something which Nintendo still claims is illegal!)
This is another step in the legitimization of emulation, and a chance for us to get un-tied to a particular console.
It's also the first step towards unifying the disjunct world of console gaming to a standard platform which (face facts people) will resemble the world of PC's. Instead of consoles, servers, PDA's and desktops running widely different operating systems on unreasonably different hardware, we'll see standard-conformant PC's tailored to particular purposes, which allows you, the consumer, to pick and choose exactly what best part of the computing world to take advantage of.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
While we're on the subject of Bleem!, I hope they're not trying to port their Windows version to Dreamcast. I observed the wine team trying to get it to work, only to conclude that it used too many dirty Windows hacks to get "the access it needs" to run Bleem! What access that is, I'll never know. It's this same reason that Bleem! doesn't run on Windows 2000 yet.. I'll stop being offtopic now..
"Please don't sigh like that, maam"
But with the announcement of the 'bleempack' technology, each of which will be having support for 100 games, a theroy has emerged of how Bleem will get around this problem. Basically, Bleemcast will not be like the PC version - one single emulator, with balanced optimizations made to make as many games as possible run reasonably well. Instead, it is believed that each bleempack will contain one hundred versions of the emulator, each one specially tweaked to run one single game as faithfully as possible.
To my knowledge, this type of console emulation (multiple versions of the emulator, each tweaked specially for a particular game) has only been done once before - a Gameboy emulator for the Atari ST. I'm looking very forward to seeing how it turns out, and I suspect that this might be what finally gets me to get a DC for myself.
Phillip Morris, Nike, Microsoft..
For such crimes against humanity and depraved indifference
I game, therefore I am...
hmmm, first off, no windows on dreamcast, more of an altered version of the new WinCE called pocketPC, Which has no similar code to the windows9x or win2k line of products.
Second, a PC emulates a playstations custom chips on one or two standard chips.
The pentium is made to do many things well, not one thing really well. a dreamcast has plenty of custom chips that can emulate the playstations custom chips quite well or even better than the original PSX. Windows emulates PSX sound through a pentium, also emulates the core OS on a pentium. The only thing the pentium can be free from is 3dfx or 3d accelerator card emulating the PSX graphics chip.
The dreamcasts GPU can more than adiquitly emulate the slow ass PSX chip, the CPU can handle emulating the PSX 33mhz chip, and the onboard sound will more than easily run PSX crappy 16bit sound. Bleem! is a completely software emulation on a single CPU system. It would not so much be software "emulation" as a playstation software "layer" to translate between the chips, not emulate the chips. similar to WINE, Wine is Not an emulator. just a software layer between Unices and Windows programs.
Also, i have seen words of a "Dreamux." yes, linux on a dreamcast as well as some other OSs that will port over easily like the embeded BeAI(mini-beos)
Somehow this harks back to OS2. The minor player in the market brings out "emulation" of the leader's last-generation platform. Sure, it works, but at that point, who really cares? People who buy Dreamcasts aren't going to get excited about the ability to play Playstation games when the Playstation 2 is already out.
(I know Bleem has nothing to do with Sega, so the IBM analogy doesn't really hold.)
I hear the comment already - you're saying, "But then I can upgrade and still keep all my Playstation games." What's the point, speedy - if you already have a Playstation, then you don't need the emulator. Why pay extra to play something you've already got?
What's your damage, Heather?
I was on the phone with a bleem rep today (I work at dreamcast.net) and he told me the actual product will be released within a couple weeks and everything will debut at E3, so check out dreamcast.net for the latest on this.... This should be very sweet, playing games like GT2 and the final fantasy games with some graphical enhancements on the dreamcast. Im sure going to enjoy it
------------------------------ SirPhreak - "It's Thinking..."
... Yes, but can it play Pac-Man?
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Interesting things to consider... If the DC consumer has Bleem! then that takes away from sales of actual DC games, but if the resolution is doubled and the framerate also increases then hardcore Playstation gamers will have incentive to buy a Dreamcast (which with the Bleem software and Dreamcast hardware is essentially a Super-Playstation). With new customers buying Dreamcasts, there's more incentive for them to buy actual Dreamcast games. On the other hand, it's a well known fact that Sega doesn't really make any money off of the hardware, it's all about licensing the games. I wonder how Sega will react? We all know Sony's probably already thrilled ;)
The Atari 2600 was #1 until NES came along. Along with an emulator for their Atari 5200, they made the 7800 compatible with 2600. Amid all this inbreeding, Colecovision decided that to get the millions of 2600 owners to jump to their superior system, an emulator that played the 100's of inferior but popular games from Atari was needed. WHEW! Take a breath. Lawsuits followed but the idea had been cast. Bleem! is only the latest to utilize this technology loophole to our mutual advantage. I own DC & PSX and look forward to the new systems[PS2,Xbox,Dolphin]. A product like Bleem! will keep me playing my older games that much longer.
I.e. badly.
I don't understand why these emulators appear. They are generally slow, buggy and consume two many resources. They also tend to die out fairly quickly.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The Dreamcast can run Windows CE, but WinCE is in no way, shape, or form "under the hood". It resides entirely on the game disc and boots from there if the game uses it. Otherwise the Dreamcast is 100% Microsoft-free.
Anyone thought of an emulation-based box? Probably not possibly ATM due to tech and licsense reasons, but a console that could play NES/N64/PSX/PS2, dreamcast, etc, would be neat. The price on something like that, thou, is something I'm not even gonna think about. :) Nor am I going to wonder how to run cart and cd based games pratically on a system like this.... it's just an random thought. Back to perl now, oh well..
bash: ispell: command not found
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Well, now we're going to start seeing a different question on emulation-related IRC channels.
"NE1 G0TZ D4 BL33MC4ST R0MZ?!?!?!?!"
Interestingly enough, one of my friends invented the term "Bleemcast" in 1999, far before there was even speculation on the matter.
... But you're forgetting that we haven't heard anything from Sega yet; we don't know if they support Bleem or not, just because Bleem for DC exists doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that Sega supports it. After all, Sony was pissed at Bleem... But to my knowledge, Sega hasn't said anything about this new software yet. If they have, can someone provide a link?
As anyone who has used it knows, the dreamcast controller does not have the secondary trigger buttons that are on a playstation controller, or one of the dual shock's analog sticks (which are far better than the "rip the skin of your finger" stick on the dreamcast).
Aftermarket controllers anyone?
Revenue stream for Sega??
This just means more money for Sony, since Dreamcast owners will now buy more Playstation Games.
To me, this looks like something of a desparate act.. How does Sega derive any additional revenue from this? I guess they'll sell a few copies of Bleem, but with the current legal climate in the US with regard to copyright infringement etc, surely Sony could claim Sega are circumventing a copyright protection mechanism - i.e. PSX discs are intended to be used only in PSX consoles, and have a special mechanism to prevent them being copied or played in other players. Bleem have already won in court, but whats to stop Sony from re-suing Sega for a similar infringement and winning?
Personally, i think Sega has every right to do what they are doing, but Sony certainly has the $$$ to buy the law, at least in the US.
The previous case was heavily based on the fact that PCs did not directly compete with the consoles for sales - i doubt this holds true with regard to Dreamcast vs PSX/PSX2.
Perhaps i would buy a dreamcast if i knew my warezed PSX games would run on it, since they won't run on a PSX2 until MOD chips or similar devices become available for it (Which is when i'll consider buying a PSX2). I know thats 'wrong' and all, i guess i'm just an evil man.
I'm all for this capability being provided, i just don't see it as being a very pivotal decision for Sega, as it simply cements Sony's position as the manufacturers of the One True Console in the minds of everyone.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
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I have a Dreamcast, and this type of thing just made my day. It seems that Sega really knows where to go in this age where they know the following invariants about console gaming:
That's it. However, Sega seems to be taking the right direction. By supporting emulation of games, Sega is showing that older games are a viable source of revenue, even if it's a pittance compared to what they used to make, it's still something. Also, it might even revive a market for a long dead console. How many of us have wished for a good old Nintendo or Genesis after playing some of our favorite games in an emulator?
I like what Sega is doing, and I'll definitely be on the preorder lists for Bleem! when it comes out for Dreamcast
Also, for more E3 spectaculars (such as a WarCraft III trailer and PS2 news), check out dailyradar.com
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