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Dreamcast Homebrew Website Relaunched
Wraggster writes "Those who have never visited the DC Homebrew site, devoted to homebrew games and demos for the Sega Dreamcast, should be aware that it's just received an official relaunch, including over 230 pages of downloads of demos, games, ports, multimedia, and some great help pages too. New features for the site include a developer spotlight and homebrew spotlight - it's a resource well worth checking out." With titles like the great-looking Alice Dreams, there's some interesting material coming out of the unofficial Dreamcast coding scene of late.
There is Dreamcast emulator just released called Chankast so you can now enjoy the dc-homebrew scene even without Dreamcast.
There's already a rather large Dreamcast site called Boob. (Yes, that's the name. No, I don't know why it's called that.) I'm surprised the site wasn't in the writeup or any previous comments.
Before the console wars became the new hip thing there was the Dreamcast. No XBox or Gamecube just the DC and PS2. Both had their supporters but only one really changed the industry for the better, while the other is an on going money grab by an over-zealous (and too large) company.
Things that the Dreamcast changed:
The FIRST console to have online gaming. It came with a 56k modem for those horrid dial-up speeds and eventually had the ability to be expanded to broadband with an adapter. Phantasy Star was one of the first (if not the first) game to be online for a console and many games for the Dreamcast joined it. Including sports games and shooters.
This was pretty big. I mean web browsing with a controller is a pain (I would know). And first person shooters with support for the keyboard and mouse make it capable of rivalling some of the PC games in this respect
Unless I am mistaked this is the only console to date to have a VGA Adapter that had a purpose. It made the Dreamcast capable of using a PC monitor and games that were "VGA" Enable had better resolutions and looked way better than on even the best TV. These graphics can still rival PS2 and some occassion XBox graphics to this day.
The only thing some people complained about seriously was lack of a DVD player. But at the time PS2 was still ~$200 and the DC was already ~$99. For that you could have gotten another DVD player that actually would play movies and not just act like it could.
So not only is it a good thing that the homebrew site is back it is an excellent thing. We can finally have more games for the Dreamcast even it they are not officially sponsored by Sega anymore. It is good to see that this is one "dead" console that is not truly dead and may have a big enough fan base to keep it alive for some time to come.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."