So I've been thinking for some time now about buying an aftermarket SVGA adapter for my DC as using the yellow video RCA jack does not yield great results on my HDTV, although I still play it like that. However, this past weekend I decided to take a stab at DC emulation. Installed NullDC and then hooked up my DC to my PC via the good old BBA that I bought for PSO so very long ago, and after a bit of reading and configuring stuff I managed to actually create a CDI image of my Crazy Taxi.
You see, this whole ordeal got started Friday night when I was playing some Jet Set Radio on my PC via Steam. I've been slowly playing through the game yet again and it looks really great on my PC, much better than it looks on my DC on the HDTV via the yellow RCA jack. Well I got the urge to play some good old Crazy Taxi, so I broke out the DC and hooked it up and played it some but it really looks kinda crappy and low res on my HDTV even blurry. I decided to see if it was marked down on Steam for the Winter Sale and sure enough Crazy Taxi on Steam is $5 right now. I almost bought it, until I read that the Steam version lacks the Offspring soundtrack. That sucks balls, but then I also read that the steering isn't even analog! Even when using an Xbox gamepad with the analog stick, the Steam version of Crazy Taxi steers via digital inputs. I won't even pay $5 for that trainwreck of a port.
And thus, I made the decision to give NullDC a go.
And surprisngly, it worked very well! Crazy Taxi looks fantastic on my 24" LCD, and plays good as ever. I think I'm going to slowly start copying all of my Dreamcast games to my hard drive, I may need to buy a new HD though just to fit them all, lol. But the kicker was when I hooked my PC up to my 61" HDTV and played Crazy Taxi in glorious hi-res splendor. And I haven't even messed around with any SweetFX stuff yet or any other optimizations. Soul Calibur is definitely next, followed by Sega GT and then Skies of Arcadia. Might as well do this while my DC's disc drive still works, as it has thousands of hours on it already and I know it won't last forever.