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Sega Dreamcast - Appreciation and Emulation Thread
- Thread starter Seik
- Start date
IrishNinja
Member
^wow, thought they forgot! haha
meanwhile, Project Y doesn't even have a name yet
meanwhile, Project Y doesn't even have a name yet
Bar81
Member
Why can't you just plug it in directly to the VGA box's female VGA out?
the new best game on dreamcast
IrishNinja
Member
as a Rastan fan, i have to agree with this
You're a Rastan fan? Have you tried Rastan 2 and heard of the 3rd one?
because I wasn't using a vga box for the vga connection, I was using this http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41jFlzM684L.jpg
IrishNinja
Member
2 is Saga, yeah? never really got into that one, it felt like such a break from what made 1 great...
only learned about 3 a while back so i watched a MAME playthrough on YT and i'd love to give it a go one day!
I have heard so much mixed things about this game, is it even any good?
I played Volgarr a lot on the PC, and yeah, its pretty great and have that "hard but fair"-vibe that the best old games did. Definitely getting it for the Dreamcast!
Is that supposed to be for Genesis only at first? If it turns out a good beat em up, hopefully they do a Sega CD version again.
Dunno...kickstarted since I liked what I heard about the Sega Genesis/CD version, and well...its not every day an old school style indie rpg hits retro stuff. Sounds kind of Phantasy Star ish which is a plus.
True that!
I got that VGA to HDMI converter I mentioned earlier. I'll write up some impressions another time but I've got something more urgent to talk about first. Converter seems to work all right though.
I'm new to the whole Dreamcast thing so I could use some help here. I bought a copy of Shenmue (PAL) which arrived faster than I expected, about two weeks ago, and a dreamcast which arrived later than I expected which would be today so I had no time to test that copy of Shenmue until today.
First of all, the discs look great. Some slight scratches here and there but I've seen far worse.
First time I played the first disc everything seemed fine. The Dreamcast made some peculiar noises here and there but I've heard before that's a thing it does. Menu loaded fine, first cutscene loaded fine, first area loaded fine. I walked around a bit and turned it off, I was just testing there.
So now I want to actually play the game. No problem I think. Okay, I enter the first disc. Menu loads fine. Cutscene starts fine. Then during that cutscene the game starts to stutter terribly until it slows down to a crawl and I turn the console off.
Okay, second try. When I select the disc my dreamcast boots that Sega logo and goes back to the console's menu. I try some more, turning the console off a few times in the process, but it continues to refuse to start the game.
I take out the disc thinking it might need some cleaning even though it looks fine. I do that, put it in again but no dice.
I power off the console and remove all cables completely and put it all back together. This time the game loads again, cutscene plays again, stutters once but the continues as normal... But it gets stuck at the loading screen. I don't know it if would've loaded the thing eventually but I waited a good 10 minutes. Dreamcast didn't make much noise either.
I tried the second disc out of curiosity and the menu loads fine but of course I can't start any cutscenes on that.
So now my question here is, do I have a bad disc or a bad console? I need to know which seller to contact about this. I've got no idea how to interpret this behaviour and it's the only game I can test with for now.
Both the console and the game were described as tested and working on eBay as far as I remember but I suppose that's not saying much.
I'm new to the whole Dreamcast thing so I could use some help here. I bought a copy of Shenmue (PAL) which arrived faster than I expected, about two weeks ago, and a dreamcast which arrived later than I expected which would be today so I had no time to test that copy of Shenmue until today.
First of all, the discs look great. Some slight scratches here and there but I've seen far worse.
First time I played the first disc everything seemed fine. The Dreamcast made some peculiar noises here and there but I've heard before that's a thing it does. Menu loaded fine, first cutscene loaded fine, first area loaded fine. I walked around a bit and turned it off, I was just testing there.
So now I want to actually play the game. No problem I think. Okay, I enter the first disc. Menu loads fine. Cutscene starts fine. Then during that cutscene the game starts to stutter terribly until it slows down to a crawl and I turn the console off.
Okay, second try. When I select the disc my dreamcast boots that Sega logo and goes back to the console's menu. I try some more, turning the console off a few times in the process, but it continues to refuse to start the game.
I take out the disc thinking it might need some cleaning even though it looks fine. I do that, put it in again but no dice.
I power off the console and remove all cables completely and put it all back together. This time the game loads again, cutscene plays again, stutters once but the continues as normal... But it gets stuck at the loading screen. I don't know it if would've loaded the thing eventually but I waited a good 10 minutes. Dreamcast didn't make much noise either.
I tried the second disc out of curiosity and the menu loads fine but of course I can't start any cutscenes on that.
So now my question here is, do I have a bad disc or a bad console? I need to know which seller to contact about this. I've got no idea how to interpret this behaviour and it's the only game I can test with for now.
Both the console and the game were described as tested and working on eBay as far as I remember but I suppose that's not saying much.
only way to determine if it's a bad lens or a bad disc is to test another game. probably worth trying to resurface the disc.
I was hoping something I mentioned would be helpful for identifying the problem but that makes sense yeah. I gotta say my money's on the disc for now. Dreamcast has been modded by a pretty reputable guy who's supposed to have done some maintenance too. Checked the lens, cleaned the internals etc.
But then again the disc looks absolutely fine? Really doesn't look like something I'd want to resurface. :/
How often is a Dreamcast supposed to make its printer noise by the way? I'm wondering if that's a sign of it having trouble reading the disc or just a regular thing a Dreamcast does whenever it loads. It's doing it a lot.
Also, it took me a few times but I have been able to get past that cutscene and loading screen again and everything seems good now? I can play the game just fine.
So maybe I should try to get to disc 2 and see if anything changes.
So damn weird though. I've never dealt with discs that work but only sometimes.
bennywhatever
Member
Is there a place that has recommended PC specs for the emulator? I know Dolphin prefers Intel CPUs, but I'm curious if I can get my AMD to run it decently.
the dreamcast is having difficulty reading the disc, what you're describing isn't that weird. the sound is normal. loading inconsistent amounts of data just reinforces that you've got a bad disc or a bad lens.
I haven't gotten to Shenmue's disc 2 yet but while I was able to play 1 for a while after an infinite loading screen now it's refusing to start again. I don't know when it decides to start and when it doesn't but right now it isn't doing it. I'm confident it'll work again if I try some more for some reason though.
So I tried to load the other discs while it was refusing the first one. 2, 3 and Passport get booted just fine, I haven't had any issue with those and I've tried multiple times, but whenever I go back to 1 it doesn't want to work right now.
I want to get to 2 first so I can see how it does during long cutscenes and loading screens but that all points to it being a bad disc right? I don't see why disc 1 would give a bad lens a difficult time more so than the other ones.
Dunno what to do if it's the disc though.. At least if it was the console I could repair it easily, I'm not sure if I want to mess with resurfacing a GD-ROM?
So I tried to load the other discs while it was refusing the first one. 2, 3 and Passport get booted just fine, I haven't had any issue with those and I've tried multiple times, but whenever I go back to 1 it doesn't want to work right now.
I want to get to 2 first so I can see how it does during long cutscenes and loading screens but that all points to it being a bad disc right? I don't see why disc 1 would give a bad lens a difficult time more so than the other ones.
Dunno what to do if it's the disc though.. At least if it was the console I could repair it easily, I'm not sure if I want to mess with resurfacing a GD-ROM?
I've resurfaced several GD-ROMs. It doesn't always work - but it has always worked for me
I'm guessing getting it done professionally would give me better results. There's a store near me that does that.
You don't need to do anything special with GD-ROMS right? I'm reading that they're more finicky but I assume they'd still be going through the same process.
Don't need to do anything special. I just bring mine to the video store.
Thanks!
My last question would be how long it's probably gonna take me to get to disc 2 in Shenmue?
Very likely it is now but I'm not gonna mess with my disc until I'm absolutely sure the problem lies there.
depends on how much time you spend at the arcade and if you know what you're doing
anywhere from 2hours to 10hours.depends on how much time you spend at the arcade and if you know what you're doing
I mean, I don't want to get too spoiled but I could still spend time at the arcade later on right? I really don't know how those discs are divided.
I don't want to rush things but I'd rather spend my time on side stuff on a disc that doesn't freeze during loading screens half the time you know?
I've been able to use my sewell hammerhead converter for almost 2 days now (had to get a F/F vga thing to go in the middle) and it works fine. it's really hard to tell but I think my tv stretches the image unfortunately and the option to change that is disabled unless I use component which I found interesting about it but it's not the end of the world if either the device is doing that or the tv. it's a tad on the bright side to where can barely see the "presented by" in the center but I might need to adjust the tv for that. other than that, the image quality is quite nice. not quite on the level as when I hooked it up to a 10 year old pc monitor I had no room for while I waited for it but still really great.
my capture card's hdmi out though hates it a lot haha which sucks. has like wii u gamepad levels of compression or artifacts with red colors and some slight chromatic aberration or something going when displaying on the tv through the device instead of directly plugged into it. the recordings and things though are perfectly fine at least.
my capture card's hdmi out though hates it a lot haha which sucks. has like wii u gamepad levels of compression or artifacts with red colors and some slight chromatic aberration or something going when displaying on the tv through the device instead of directly plugged into it. the recordings and things though are perfectly fine at least.
Serge85
Member
Well guys, I've been waiting for the GDEMU preorders to open for a while now... but a couple of days ago I read something about modding the DC to read games off a Hard Drive (https://fnhack.wordpress.com/)
I have a DC with a sucky laser, so I began to work on it and now I have a 160 GB Hard Drive attached to my console, (I also did the SD Mod) and it works beautiful!
Next, I'll do a bios mod for loading dreamshell without the need of a CD.
I have a DC with a sucky laser, so I began to work on it and now I have a 160 GB Hard Drive attached to my console, (I also did the SD Mod) and it works beautiful!
Next, I'll do a bios mod for loading dreamshell without the need of a CD.
sixteen-bit
Member
Anyone familiar with this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOo5Kay9fcU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOo5Kay9fcU
IrishNinja
Member
hey, been meaning to ask - anyone go tan extra DC with a working drive? still need to replace my dead one and trying to find an option on the cheap
this is awesome man, congrats! post impressions with it as you go
shit, i should finally give up the hope of finding a BBA for a fair price & just try this
this is awesome man, congrats! post impressions with it as you go
shit, i should finally give up the hope of finding a BBA for a fair price & just try this
SpikedGunner
Member
Actually, I bought the BBA a few years back...I really should use it more often.
Any recommended browsers/games? I used to love taking images from the net and use them as tags in JSR.
Any recommended browsers/games? I used to love taking images from the net and use them as tags in JSR.
IrishNinja
Member
^where'd you get it? did you swing one from a yahoo JP auction?
I recently came into posession of a dreamcast thanks to a generous forum member on another forum. It arrived today and although I've had to order some controllers (he didn't have any spare) and an RCA cable I'm enjoying it a lot so far.
Still don't have my second controller + VMU thing as the ebay seller I brought it from is no longer registered with ebay so I've had to grab another one and ask for a refund, but other than that I played a bunch of Daytona USA (one of my favourite racers ever), Chu Chu Rocket and Jet Set Radio today. So much fun.
Still don't have my second controller + VMU thing as the ebay seller I brought it from is no longer registered with ebay so I've had to grab another one and ask for a refund, but other than that I played a bunch of Daytona USA (one of my favourite racers ever), Chu Chu Rocket and Jet Set Radio today. So much fun.
socksfelloff
Member
There were some bad batches of games shipped for the DC and I believe shenmue was included. My disc 1 also always froze so I just burnt a new disc 1 and went on. Disc 2 and 3 were fine.
SpikedGunner
Member
yea, a while back, came out to like $50 (not counting middleman stuff). There is some slight yellowing and it came without the box, but it works, especially since when I last tried it I was able to connect wireless by way of the OG Xbox's wireless adapter.
IrishNinja
Member
godadmn, congrats on that - so jelly!
IrishNinja
Member
so did anyone pick up Ghost Blade? CGR seemed to dig it, mostly
Genesis Knight
Member
I bought it. It's average, and I have a hard time seeing why I'm supposed to want to play it over all the other good Dreamcast shmups, or Saturn shmups, or... Hucast needs to change who they outsource their artwork to and find somebody who can put some spirit/personality into the work.
sixteen-bit
Member
I feel like he digs everything, lol
sad news about the show ending tho. gonna boot up truxton and pour one out for the homie.
IrishNinja
Member
yeah...Mark pretty much said just that, too - even named Mars Matrix/'Giga Wang/etc, can't imagine much comes out these days that touches the best of the genre on the Saturn either
he's fair on this one, i think! and yeah...me too, that and some Cosmic Carnage =/
Genesis Knight
Member
Yeah, his vibe has always been less objective criticism and more "hey guys this is cool, look at this!"
sixteen-bit
Member
IrishNinja
Member
D.Lo
Member
Wow.
StevieWhite
Member
So I threw together a little video on Zombie Revenge... thought you guys might enjoy it.
https://youtu.be/xYEfw16NBZE
Hoped to get a little better capture quality, but I'm still basically happy with the result. Thinking about doing a soundboard for this game too.
https://youtu.be/xYEfw16NBZE
Hoped to get a little better capture quality, but I'm still basically happy with the result. Thinking about doing a soundboard for this game too.
Genesis Knight
Member
Dynamite Cop was made for arcade and SoR was made for home consoles, and I think there's a corresponding difference in the difficulty curve and the philosphy behind the difficulty balancing (eat your quarters vs. provide a challenge).
So, don't feel bad.
I theorize that there are a lot of classic games like this that people claim to really like and even recommend (all based on a kind of theoretical admiration) but don't actually take off the shelf and play.