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Amateurs Pushing the Dreamcast's Boundaries
Wraggster writes "The Sega Dreamcast console, which died an early commercial death, has recently seen some amazing new projects mainly aimed at emulation. Recently, a coder named Bluecrab released a port of the Saturn emulator called Yabause for the Dreamcast. Also, GPF (Troy Davis) has ported the excellent Visual Boy Advance (Game Boy Advance Emulator) to the Dreamcast. Finally, yesterday it was announced that Nincest (Nintendo 64 Emulator), an early N64 emulator that played demos only, has also been ported to the Dreamcast. All the projects are somewhat slow, but the achievement of the work is not to be discounted. Who says the Dreamcast is dead?"
Having BSD on Dreamcast made the system appealing to me. Granted, NetBSD has been ported to every electronic device that has enough memory to hold the kernel. But there is a certain geeky alure to using a video game console as a terminal, or, as some people have demonstrated, even as a webserver.
I guess it's just the "I can do this" aspect that draws me to it. Just having the ability to tinker with things makes them more interesting.
Wouldn't "known as" be more appropriate? At least I hope so, otherwise his parents gave him a very unhappy childhood.
No sig for you.
There's plenty of emulators available for the not-so-dead dreamcast
http://www.zophar.net/consoles/dreamcast.html
Best part about the Dreamcast is that it can be found for as low as $15. I recently picked one up at EB. It was a great decision as I can get all the games I want online. These kinds of projects just make me even happier to have bought it.
I bought a dreamcast about a year ago to run my games. It makes a great emulator. I have tons of NES, SNES, and GB games on it. In fact I only have one actual dreamcast game. The Xbox can be modded to do this sort of thing also but when it is priced at 150 dollars and there is a 30 dollar alternative the dreamcast is a much better system for emulation purposes. I also have it set up to play VCDs as well as being able to use it as an MP3 player.
Dead or not, the Dreamcast is a full-featured system, with lots of potential for those who want to spend the time learning it.
Granted, somebody like me, who is employed full-time, and has very little time as it is, won't be spending too much time on it (I still have my Dreamcast, complete with broadband adaptor, keyboard and serial cable). But, for somebody who has some free time and wants to learn about the Dreamcast, there's a lot of knowledge that can be gained, and applied to other systems.
Never hurts to have it on the resume - as a matter of fact, I got my job interview at Sega in part due to the demos that I did on the Commodore 64 back in the early 1990's.
-- Joe
It's worth noting another recent breakthrough in the DC scene - a DC emulator for PC that works with real games at a playable rate.
:) I can now play rez on my PC.
Chankast is that piece of software, and it's a joy to see running
However, with DCs available at as low as 15GBP, it's silly not to pick it up. As a games writer, it's my favourite console I've owned, for the high quantity of top-notch games that were released in its short life. In fact, if you haven't explored the DC's back catalogue - I'd thoroughly recommend it. It's one of modern gaming's best kept secrets.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
Sega v. Accolade in the Genesis days determined that if a display of a trademark is required for the software to boot, it is legal to display it and boot even if the trademark isn't correct. Also, in the bottom right quadrant of the screen, a developer can insert an image at the same time as the Trademark Sega text is shown. Unnofficial developers such as bleem! (The commercial PSX emulator for DC) used this space to insert an image that basically says "-- Ignore that information right there, it's not true"
Scorta futuere amo!