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Dreamcast Homebrew Scene Continues To Thrive
wraggster writes "Sega's Dreamcast might have succumbed to a premature death as a mainstream commercial console, but due to the efforts of the amateur and hobbyist fans of the Dreamcast, the Dreamcast Homebrew site, now freshly redesigned, has over 200 free and legal games, demos and multimedia software for use with the Dreamcast. From DC Movie Player through Robotfindskitten, there's still a multitude of good free DC software out there."
And it runs NetBSD, too.
I love my Sega Dreamcast. The system was and still is great. Just wish I could find more network adaptors.
At an all-time low of $20 at EB.
:1
I wish awesome underground scenes like this received mainstream attention, but then I guess they wouldn't be too awesome anymore...
I'm one of the few geezers in New Zealand to actually buy a Dreamcast. I love the underground scene so I can use it to show off to my PS2/X-box friends.
The DC homebrew folks have made some nice ports of DooM and Quake as well, which I recommend folks check out. It's a great use for your Dreamcast, if you've been letting it collect dust.
If you do anything, however, try out NesterDC (my experience here). A great, featureful NES emulator which supports everything you could want, including a DC light gun acting as an NES light gun for games like Duck Hunt! (Also, don't forget that you should only download ROMs for the cartridges you own. Even if you don't own any, there are a good number of homebrew NES games in the public domain that you can use to try out the emulator itself. My NesterDC disc has all the homebrews I enjoy playing and the ROMs for my entire NES collection.)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The Dreamcast has it's NFS served by the Playstation2 which uses the X-Box for DNS/DHCP and a gateway. =]
Not that I'm sneering. I tried to run RFK on my XP box (my DreamCast is in storage), but the console mode doesn't approve of the DOS version. Had to fire up DOSBox 0.60. Not acceptable! Somebody has to do an NT port! Guess I'm elected...
I just have a few questions before I buy one.
A network adapter lets you connect it to your network, right? Is that the correct name for it? What can you do once you're on the internet? And is there a way to connect to a wireless network?
How do you connect a keyboard and mouse to one? Is there some sort of adapter, or it is a special keyboard for the DC?
If anyone could answer those it would be great!
Back in the early libdream days, you had to write your own routines for 2D graphics (3D was still off-limits) by writing directly to video RAM. Today, KOS supports 3D acceleration via the PowerVR chip, as well as support for various other pieces of once-mysterious hardware. And the SDL port lets you take a break from writing directly to video memory if you're doing 2D.
dcQuad is another Dreamcast project which I started working on after finishing the DC version of robotfindskitten. I've been messing around with SDL in Windows a bit lately, and I look forward to getting up to speed on the KOS implementation for my next project.
Instead of purchasing a gameboy advance last summer I upgraded my Ipaq 3630 to a Dell Axim X5. My plan was to use it as an MP3 player as well as being able to emulate SNES + Genesis games on it. After all, most of the decent games on the GBA are SNES ports anyway.
Although the Axim has a 400Mhz CPU in it, it really struggles to emulate the SNES or the Genesis. NES games are very basic. What I have found to be a good play though is a Game Gear / Master System emulator called CE/GG. I used to have a master system and playing Sonic, Sonic 2 and Sonic Chaos is superb. It's interesting that whilst Genesis games are far too slow to be playable, I've managed to get some SNES games going. (Not sure if this is the quality of the emulator or a reflection of the speed of the original system). Using PocketSNES as an example, by switching off the audio and skipping frames, Super Mario World for example is relatively playable. MODE 7 games such as Super Mario Kart are far too slow tho.
Not particularly related to the DC homebrew scene I know, I just thought it was interesting that 2 separate platforms had similar experiences with emulators.
The Romans didn't find algebra very challenging, because X was always 10
This is totally cool. I just checked out the refreshed DC Homebrew site, downloaded some .sbi's and burned a CD. Then fired up the ol' DC so me and my son could do a test drive.
This is some cool stuff, I may just add the DC to my list of platforms just for the pure fun of it! Kudos to all the DC homebrewers out there!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
What made me dust off my own Dreamcast is the great work being done by I.M.R. Technology. The 80's WOWpack - MAME is excellent and they seems to keep adding new project and versions almost weekly. Check it out.
Both homebrew and commercial games can be burned and booted without any modification to your Dreamcast. Note that you won't have any success with simply placing a Dreamcast game in your CD drive and trying to copy it - they're special discs called GD-ROMs. People dumped the games over the Dreamcast's serial port/broadband adapter, downsampled the movies, and put up selfbooting ISOs all over IRC. If the disc you get does not have two tracks (audio/data or data/data), you'll need to use the Utopia Boot CD. That homebrew boot CD might work as well - no guarantees.
-insert a witty something-
I personally think that DcDivX totally rocks. Alot of folks will claim that the movies are unwatchable as you must encode at lower bit rates, and mp3 audio must be encoded lower as well. But I believe if done properly, the movies look pretty darn good, I have had the best luck using transcode under Linux to do the encoding. Set the bitrate to 700 and your good to go.
I stopped by a GameStop today looking for a Dreamcast Lightgun. Turns out all DC games and peripherals are 30% off. With the system and a controller running $20 (before discount), you can get a great system cheap. The old saying is that variety is the spice of life. Pick up a Dreamcast and a bunch of games for less than it costs to buy one new $50 game for the current consoles. Then go home and try all kinds of new things from the homebrew folks. The Dreamcast was abandoned by Sega but is far from dead.