What Should Beginners Know About The Dreamcast?

[racketboy]

I'm starting a new series (even though I'm in a middle of a bunch) called RetroGaming 101 where I just run down the basics of a given console to give them a quick head start.
I started with the Dreamcast:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/02/ ... guide.html

I think I hit most of the basics, but maybe I overlooked a helpful piece of information.

Feel free to contribute a sentence or paragraph to add to the piece.

[howardb]

Hi, I'm new here.

I saw that you've put up some info about emulation of the Dreamcast on the PC in your article, but I was wondering if you'd want to put any information up about what emulation the Dreamcast can handle; is it any good at running SNES/Megadrive/NES emulators etc.? Incidentally, I've never had any luck burning emu discs for the DC, but I do have a nice coaster collection.

Nice article!

[racketboy]

Hi, I'm new here.

I saw that you've put up some info about emulation of the Dreamcast on the PC in your article, but I was wondering if you'd want to put any information up about what emulation the Dreamcast can handle; is it any good at running SNES/Megadrive/NES emulators etc.? Incidentally, I've never had any luck burning emu discs for the DC, but I do have a nice coaster collection.

Nice article!

Yeah, I will be expanding the guides out a bit when I get time. This is just the "101", so I will have others that build on the topics.

Eventually, I should have a pretty in-depth guide to get everyone well-educated

[Zork]

The need to buy multiple VMUs, a problem I've recently had. I didn't realize how small VMUs really were in terms of capacity. Some games take up a lot of space on these things like Soul Reaver, which takes up at least 50 out of 200 Blocks, it's 50 or more. Shenmue and a lot of racing games end up taking up a lot of space as well.

[racketboy]

The need to buy multiple VMUs, a problem I've recently had. I didn't realize how small VMUs really were in terms of capacity. Some games take up a lot of space on these things like Soul Reaver, which takes up at least 50 out of 200 Blocks, it's 50 or more. Shenmue and a lot of racing games end up taking up a lot of space as well.

Yeah, and what sucks is that if you don't watch it, a bunch of random games (that you hardly save progress on) will eat up a bunch of blocks. I'm always finding myself cleaning off misc save files.

[neohx_7]

The need to know that you'll need an arcade stick or a good PSX adaptor to play fighting games decently.

[racketboy]

The need to know that you'll need an arcade stick or a good PSX adaptor to play fighting games decently.

Good point --- I hated trying to play Marvel vs Capcom when I first got my Dreamcast....

[neohx_7]

The need to buy multiple VMUs, a problem I've recently had. I didn't realize how small VMUs really were in terms of capacity. Some games take up a lot of space on these things like Soul Reaver, which takes up at least 50 out of 200 Blocks, it's 50 or more. Shenmue and a lot of racing games end up taking up a lot of space as well.

Yeah, and what sucks is that if you don't watch it, a bunch of random games (that you hardly save progress on) will eat up a bunch of blocks. I'm always finding myself cleaning off misc save files.

I've had great luck with the high capacity mem cards using multiple virtual cards. Never found a good one for PSX, but the 4M one for Dreamcast is great, plus it has a parallel port adaptor for game saves. Make sure you also mention that the DC has similar crappy rumble support to the n64.

Btw, this "beginners" content would make more sense as faqs or in a wiki than an article imo. That way it can be expanded and updated.

[Pullmyfinger]

Plays backups out of the box

Modchip can be installed to play imports

Utopia can be used to play imports

Get a VMU and a 4 page memory card

Use a VGA Box on 3d games and S Vid on sprite based games

There are numerous compilations of emulators and homebrew apps.

Many originals load much faster than their backup counterparts

Backups may have stuff ripped or downsampled

There are VMU savefile compilations too in case you don't have the time to unlock everything in all games

Puyo Puyo Fever and the Capcom "For matching service" games can be played in english

[sv650touring]

looking forward to new content...

Here's what I could think of:

Dreamcast is very small by console standards

It has cooling fans and is noisy and can build up dust

It is often finicky with media (well, mine have been at times - may just be crappy CDRs)

It is much more prone to failure than the Saturn was

Its hardware has a lot in common with PDAs

It had no multitap, but 4 controller ports standard

It is the only console besides XBox with adapters available to use Saturn Controllers (and the Xbox adapters aren't actually available any more)