The Dreamcast Appreciation Thread

[David]

My favourite console of all time.

Any other fans?

Any haters? (if so, BOOOO! )

So many amazing Sega arcade games. House of the dead 2, daytona, virtua tennis

And also so many great non Sega games. Power Stone, soul caliber, marvel vs capcom 2.

Quirky games, sports games, fighters, it had some amazing stuff

For a wrestling fan it had giant gram, fire pro and toukon retsuden which are all fantastic too

So. Hoorah for DC

[theantmeister]

I got my Dreamcast on launch day. Still remember trying (and failing) to use the Dream key to connect it to the internet along with 1000s of other new Dreamcast owners

It was a great little console though. I bought Speed Devils with it and played the hell out of that. Then Crazy Taxi arrived, along with Soul Calibur, I must have spent 90% of my time on the Dreamcast playing those two games. I dread to think how many times I've heard Offspring's 'All I want'

[English Invader]

I can confirm that the PC versions of Crazy Taxi 1 and 3, Virtua Tennis and Sega Bass Fishing all work on Linux flawlessly through Wine.

Big fan of the Dreamcast myself. I would love to see some kind of compatibility layer (not an emulator) that would allow one to run GD-ROMs on a PC. It would be great to get MSR, Shenmue and the original Soul Calibur on my desktop. The Dreamcast hardware is just PC friendly enough for it to be possible,

[Rayne]

I never owned one at launch (I seem to remember these being absurdly expensive in the UK) but did buy one years later when the system officially 'died'.

It's a strange system...I have a lot of love for SEGA, and I enjoyed a few of the releases, but I never had any real love for the system. After a week of play I quickly sold it on.

May you had to own one at the time?

[merman]

Some great games, some poor decisions.

[outdated_gamer]

Big fan of the Dreamcast myself. I would love to see some kind of compatibility layer (not an emulator) that would allow one to run GD-ROMs on a PC. It would be great to get MSR, Shenmue and the original Soul Calibur on my desktop. The Dreamcast hardware is just PC friendly enough for it to be possible,

Here's the DC's graphics chip based graphics card for the PC:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vid ... w,131.html

It was a fairly mid-range card by the time it hit the market but that didn't stop the DC from having impressive-looking games. It might have lived a very short life but for the time being it was the most exciting console on the market with great game variety.

[MadManDan79]

I'm always going to love Sega whatever machine they made. The dreamcast is a nice little machine in its own right.

[Matt_B]

I can confirm that the PC versions of Crazy Taxi 1 and 3, Virtua Tennis and Sega Bass Fishing all work on Linux flawlessly through Wine.

Big fan of the Dreamcast myself. I would love to see some kind of compatibility layer (not an emulator) that would allow one to run GD-ROMs on a PC. It would be great to get MSR, Shenmue and the original Soul Calibur on my desktop. The Dreamcast hardware is just PC friendly enough for it to be possible,

That's not going to happen unfortunately, unless you're adding pretty much the entire guts of a Dreamcast to your PC. Otherwise, the CPUs have completely different instruction sets so that at least would need to be emulated and the graphics card was of a dead-end lineage that modern GPUs would lack sufficient bare metal compatibility with.

Still, the current state of Dreamcast emulation is pretty good. It's a heck of a lot better than for the Saturn, that's for sure.

[Antiriad2097]

Dreamcast was the first system I actively collected for and got me going buying up older stuff that I missed out on, so it was both a blessing and a curse.

Didn't get into it until it was long dead, then did lots of reading up, mastered the art of creating bootable discs, got the cable to rip my own, even managed to get an autobooting rip of Giant Gram 2000 circulating because the previous one needed a boot disc so I fixed it.

Was heading for a full set of games, then realised the ones I had left to get were mostly not very good, having already obtained ISOs of them. Still, had 100-150ish at one point, though I've sold a few off as I realised I'd never play them. Still got a bundle I need to unload.

Good hardware though, held up well for years past its sell by date, though some things are starting to look a bit clunky. Great for arcade stuff, certainly, and I always wanted Jet Set Radio from the moment I saw it. Home to a few quirky things as well - I have maracas, dance mats, numerous lightguns, fishing controllers, an arcade stick, a Pop n Music controller, mouse & keyboard, microphone, steering wheel... possibly more I've forgotten.

[NickThorpe]

I was there 'til the end, man. I have fond memories of hanging around in the Dreamarena chat rooms, anxiously awaiting even those last few PAL games (particularly Headhunter and Rez) and then realising that there was so much more going on in Japan that I had to start importing. I started up a Dreamcast site, and kept buying games right up until Karous became the last official release in 2007. I have well over 100 legitimate games for it, though the collection could easily withstand some thinning.

Didn't get into it until it was long dead, then did lots of reading up, mastered the art of creating bootable discs, got the cable to rip my own, even managed to get an autobooting rip of Giant Gram 2000 circulating because the previous one needed a boot disc so I fixed it.

God, didn't the cable method take forever? You can get a good GDI rip for emulation in less than an hour, these days.

[RodimusPrime]

I was one of those that was there at the start and hung on till the end as well. You really needed to get into importing to make it bearable.

never really liked the controller though, luckily I got a Saturn adaptor that allowed me to use a Saturn controller for all the superb shooters and fighting games.

[oldtimer]

Iwas lucky enough to buy a brand spanking new "old stock" dreamcast a few years ago from a defunct indie games shop along with a brand new keyboard, mic and mouse.

Its never been opened to this day , as i have another couple of dreamcasts to play on , although its rare even they come out now.

[Sephiroth81]

I still have my very yellowed Dreamcast. It was quite a cool little bit of kit and really brought home arcade experiences like never before (even if Sega Rally 2 and VF3 could have been better ports).

Crazy Taxi was/is amazing. Had so much fun trying to perfect the crazy jumps. May play through Shenmue 1 and 2 again soon before the release of Shenmue 3 next year.

[English Invader]

I can confirm that the PC versions of Crazy Taxi 1 and 3, Virtua Tennis and Sega Bass Fishing all work on Linux flawlessly through Wine.

Decided to take my chances with the Windows Steam client and was rewarded with fully functional ports of Ikaruga and Jet Set Radio.

[oldtimer]

Can you still go online with the dreamcast ??? and do online gameing??? fantasy star etc?