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."

Comments

DC emulators vs. PS2 emulators

[jvmatthe]

I've recently tried booting emulators of various types on my Dreamcast (latest post and this older one) and my PS2 (posts on modification and emulators). The homebrew scene for both of these is interesting, although the Dreamcast clearly has the more lively community. If only the Dreamcast had a bit more power, it could be the ultimate system (short of a Xbox, see the end of this post and the comments below it) for me, since it could handle Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Commodore 64, MAME, Quake, and Doom. As it is, however, the Genesis and SNES emulators (DCGenerator and DreamSnes, respectively) aren't very good. I had to go to PGEN on the PS2 to get a really good Genesis emulator. (Even then it has a bug; Earthworm Jim 2 has a control issue that makes it unplayable.) The SNES-Station emulator for the PS2 is also not as good as it should be, so the Xbox appears to be the only home console which can adequately emulate the SNES.

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.)

Re:NetBSD

[Lord Graga]

And Linux too ;)

Fun hardware.

[drwiii]

Without the hard work of Dan Potter, I wouldn't have gotten into it.

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.

Re:This convinced me to get a Dreamcast..

[illuminata]

The Dreamcast comes with its own web browser with the broadband adapter, so you can browse the internet on your TV. I browsed with dial-up and it works rather well. You can check your email as well. I know that at GameFAQs and possibly other sites you can download game saves directly to your VMU. The VMU is a memory card with an LCD screen that can give you in-game information, allows you to call plays in sports games on your controller, and even has its own football game for it.

You should be able to use your Dreamcast on a network as well, since you can run NetBSD and Linux on it. There is no hard drive adapter, however.

It should be noted that the broadband adapter will run you around $75-100, with even the browser needed with the adapter costing you quite a bit. The game servers have all been shut down now, and even when they were up, there weren't many broadband enabled games. The adapter came out right around when the system was dying and was only sold directly at Sega's site I believe.

As far as I know, there isn't a way to go wireless.

The Dreamcast has a first-party keyboard and mouse that plugs into your controller port, each of which you can buy separately. You can use your thumbstick as a mouse as well.