How is your Dreamcast gaming going on?

[Note]

I didn't realize there was video issues with the PAL version of certain Dreamcast games, that's interesting to know. The only PAL game I have is Shenmue II, which I didn't experience any issues playing through when I finally went through it a few years ago.

Also, nice pick ups! It's great that they were on the cheap. Sega Rally 2 is a title I'm interested in as well. Have you had a chance to check it out yet? Curious about your thoughts on it.

[Reprise]

I didn't realize there was video issues with the PAL version of certain Dreamcast games, that's interesting to know. The only PAL game I have is Shenmue II, which I didn't experience any issues playing through when I finally went through it a few years ago.

It's a really, really small number to be fair. Most PAL Dreamcast games had a selection at the start of the game that would ask if you wanted to launch the game in 50hz or 60hz. A lot of the games that didn't have this option can be played in 60hz via VGA or by using the DC-X boot disc. Only a small number still have issues even after being forced. MvC2 runs fine in 60hz if using regular cables and RGB Scart. It's only when it's run through VGA that the issues occur for some reason. Grandia 2 and Virtua Fighter 3tb have issues though.

The most notable 50hz only games are RE Code Veronica and Skies of Arcadia. I ended up buying the North American version of Skies of Arcadia and the Japanese Kanzeban release of Code Veronica.

My Virtua Fighter 3tb arrived yesterday. It's in lovely condition. I swear Japanese games always seem to be in great condition. It has the Project Berkley disc too, which is an interesting thing to have when you're a huge Shenmue fan like me.

Edit:

IAlso, nice pick ups! It's great that they were on the cheap. Sega Rally 2 is a title I'm interested in as well. Have you had a chance to check it out yet? Curious about your thoughts on it.

Thanks. So I played Sega Rally 2 for a little while, only a short time, but from that I do feel it is even worse than I remember it being. The framerate is highly erratic. It shifts continuously between below 30 to 60 depending on what is on screen and it makes it really awkward to play. There are two cheat codes for the game that can either lock the game to 30fps or downgrade the graphics in favour of a more stable 60fps framerate. Apparently the locked 30 option is the one to go for since the "performance mode" is still fairly unstable. I'll try 30fps next time I play.

[marurun]

Sega Rally 2 suffers from being a WindowsCE-developed title. MS worked with Sega to provide DirectX 6 APIs for Dreamcast games and to allow developers to use Visual Studio for development, but a game also had to load the WinCE API environment to do that, which chewed up memory and CPU time. This was how MS got the necessary experience to launch the Xbox. It meant easier development and PC ports in some circumstances, but reduced performance since the CPU also processes all the geometry that’s sent to the GPU.

There’s been theorizing that the GPU had enough excess rendering capacity that being paired with a beefier CPU could have left the Dreamcast competitive with the PS2, not that such a swap would ever have actually been practical to implement. And it was largely NEC’s high defect rate on the GPU chips that left the Dreamcast so supply constrained at launch.

[RCBH928]

What is the beast and/or cheapest-without-sucking way to get Dreamcast amenably onto a modern TV?

Kaico HDMI adapter is the absolute cheapest-without-sucking way to get a Dreamcast connected to a modern TV. It uses the VGA output, so you won't be able to play non-compatible games, but that does only amount to a small number of titles. And some non-compatible games will work via VGA with the use of a boot disc.

Avoid other HDMI adapters like Pound cables, as they suck.

It really surprises me that there is big enough market for this kind of thing that companies are willing to manufacture a product and release... I mean its 2023 and new products for the Sega Dreamcast are being released? wow...

[marurun]

Dreamcast was the first console to really display attractive modern 3D graphics. N64 was first to do proper 3D models but the Dreamcast added adequate texture memory and rendering capabilities to be able to handle scenes that didn’t just look like cartoons. For a small number of us it made a supremely powerful first impression.

[Reprise]

It really surprises me that there is big enough market for this kind of thing that companies are willing to manufacture a product and release... I mean its 2023 and new products for the Sega Dreamcast are being released? wow...

Why? There has been a huge retro boom over the last few years. It's a niche market, but it's certainly growing. More casual audiences are rediscovering their old games and wanting to play them. The scene is quite big here in the UK. CeX is probably now the biggest video games shop on the high street here and a few years back they started selling retro consoles, accessories and games, and have been marketing them towards casual audiences as well as collectors/enthusiasts.

Just the other day I took my son to a retro arcade in my local area that's doing really well. They have a lot of great machines, like Street Fighter Alpha 2, Crazy Taxi, Daytona USA, Tekken 3, Space Invaders, Pacman, Mario Kart GP and lots of others (pinball machines too). They have been so successful that they are moving to a much larger premises soon and they haven't been open long.

In the UK retro groups I am in you get a lot of people who have mostly stuck with modern consoles, moving onto the next generation whenever a new line of consoles come out, who have decided to pick up an old console to rediscover their youth. It helps that you can basically walk into any CeX in the country and pick up a retro console and some games, along with a two year warranty. Usually the first question they ask is "how can I get this hooked up to my TV cheaply and not have it look like crap?" They're not usually interested in finding an old CRT or too bothered about it looking the absolute best it can look with the least amount of lag possible; they just want a cost effective way of playing on their TV and for it to not look too bad.

I also agree with what marurun said about the Dreamcast being the first console to display attractive 3D models that look good on a modern display. I don't know what it is about the Dreamcast either, but its output is super sharp. I have tried PS2 and Gamecube on modern TVs via RGB, but they look rubbish compared to the Dreamcast via RGB (and definitely so compared to VGA).

Kaico even recently released a HDMI adapter for the Saturn, but it's not very good unfortunately. It uses S-video, which is a weird choice, since they're a UK company and in Europe we all used RGB to connect our Saturns which is vastly superior.

[RCBH928]

Why? There has been a huge retro boom over the last few years. It's a niche market, but it's certainly growing. More casual audiences are rediscovering their old games and wanting to play them. The scene is quite big here in the UK. CeX is probably now the biggest video games shop on the high street here and a few years back they started selling retro consoles, accessories and games, and have been marketing them towards casual audiences as well as collectors/enthusiasts.

around 2005-2013 retro consoles were not as popular as they are now so a lot of people neglected them leading to a lot of thrown out ones until the resurgence interest in retro consoles came back. I am thinking how many Dreamcast consoles survived, then how many are still working, then how many people have them and are interested in playing them then how many are interested to pay money to get the games and connect them to a modern tv. The market is sure tight for manufacturing an adapter just for that.

I mean, I think most people who want to play retro console games will just launch an emulator. Much more convenient and cheaper.

In the UK retro groups I am in you get a lot of people who have mostly stuck with modern consoles, moving onto the next generation whenever a new line of consoles come out, who have decided to pick up an old console to rediscover their youth. It helps that you can basically walk into any CeX in the country and pick up a retro console and some games, along with a two year warranty.

they give you 2 year warranty on a 25 year old consoles?

Dreamcast was the first console to really display attractive modern 3D graphics. N64 was first to do proper 3D models but the Dreamcast added adequate texture memory and rendering capabilities to be able to handle scenes that didn’t just look like cartoons. For a small number of us it made a supremely powerful first impression.

I also agree with what marurun said about the Dreamcast being the first console to display attractive 3D models that look good on a modern display. I don't know what it is about the Dreamcast either, but its output is super sharp. I have tried PS2 and Gamecube on modern TVs via RGB, but they look rubbish compared to the Dreamcast via RGB (and definitely so compared to VGA).

I do not consider Dreamcast a N64 competitor, but next generation compared to PS2/Gamecube. N64 compared to Sega Saturn and PSX.
I am guessing Dreamcast maybe had better resolution since I think it shares something with the arcade which was always with better graphics meanwhile PS2/NGC was aimed at home!? idk what I am talking about but I know what you mean

Kaico even recently released a HDMI adapter for the Saturn, but it's not very good unfortunately. It uses S-video, which is a weird choice, since they're a UK company and in Europe we all used RGB to connect our Saturns which is vastly superior.

What do you mean RGB? the 3 color component connectors? I thought those were only released near HD era. Prior to that I have seen SCART but I never knew what were they for. My region went from RF to composite to HDMI . We never used Scart or S-Video or knew why were they ever there.

Just the other day I took my son to a retro arcade in my local area that's doing really well. They have a lot of great machines, like Street Fighter Alpha 2, Crazy Taxi, Daytona USA, Tekken 3, Space Invaders, Pacman, Mario Kart GP and lots of others (pinball machines too). They have been so successful that they are moving to a much larger premises soon and they haven't been open long.

I am surprised those still work. Like 10 years ago I saw a local arcade here and the CRT screens were completely off in color looking yellow and purple from being turned ON all the time and the buttons must have been damaged over the years. Include in there all the electronics stuff that fail over time. Unless you mean the cabinets have built in LCD screen with an emulator computer in the cabinet and a modern arcade joystick installed.

[Reprise]

I am too lazy to multi-quote, but:

1. There are loads of working Dreamcast consoles . Picking one up is easy and fairly inexpensive (but not as cheap as it was a few years ago. It's also really easy to replace the disc drive and install a device to run games off of an SD card or external hard drive, if the disc drive is shot.

2. The answer to your question is enough people are interested for these devices to exist. As I mentioned, there are HDMI adapters for loads of different "old" consoles now. Companies are releasing new controllers and peripherals for these consoles all the time. Retro-bit were used by Sega to release brand new official controllers (replicas of the original thing) for the Mega Drive/Genesis and Saturn (both wired and wireless) recently and they have been working on a Dreamcast controller for ages that hasn't been released yet.

3. A lot of people will try emulators, but they become cumbersome for those who don't want to have to mess with them to get every game working flawlessly. They have come a long way, but they aren't perfect. A lot of people find it easier and more convenient actually to just buy a cheap old console, plug it in and play.

4. They do indeed provide a two year warranty on 25 year old hardware. Everything is tested prior to being sold. Is it wise? Probably not, but it's their business model and it works for them.

5. Yeah, the Dreamcast was next gen and a competitor to PS2, Gamecube and Xbox (although was pretty much dead by the time the other two came out). But it was the first one on the market and the jump felt huge at the time. For reference, the N64 came out in 1997 in the UK and Dreamcast came out in 1999 here, so to us especially, it felt like a massive jump. Especially when we saw all the screenshots and videos coming out in 1998 when it was announced and then hit Japan.

6. RGB is Scart (although Scart can carry S-Video, composite and RGB signals). RGB is superior to S-video and composite, but I can't remember the technical reasons why. I think it supports 480p and 480i, maybe up to 576i. Not sure. Component would be your nearest equivalent.

7. Surprised the machines still work? There's a mixture of original arcade hardware, but also companies have been creating official reproductions of them too. I guess the original hardware can always be refurbished and maintained.

[Ziggy]

SCART, or its equivalent but not pin compatible JP-21, can carry an RGB video signal. RGB = red, green and blue. There is also a sync signal, so it's really RGBs (or sync on green, sometimes). Although component video (YPbPr) has red, green and blue connectors, it is not the same video standard as RGB.

RGB would be the purest form of video that most retro consoles use. Think of RGB has the video language that the consoles "speak" in. Other video standards are encoded from RGB and make sacrifices.

For S-Video, instead of having separate red, green and blue color channels, it smashes them all into one color signal called chroma. Then it has another signal for brightness (color intensity) and sync, called luma. You will sometimes see luma referenced as Y and chroma as C.

For composite video, it smashes all of the video information (color, brightness, sync) into one signal, which is why it ends up being the crappiest looking of these three. Composite video is officially called CVBS for composite video blanking and sync.

Component video, or YPbPr, is strange. The Y is the same Y from S-Video, it has the brightness info and sync signal. But the Pb and Pr are weird, they aren't the blue and red signals. From what I understand, they are the difference between those colors and green. The TV or display takes the YPbPr and figures out from that what red, green and blue should be. The reason being is because apparently green makes up most of the video signal, so taking it out saves bandwidth. RGB SCART only officially supports 480i/576i (although you can force 480p from a Dreamcast over SCART to a Framemeister, 480p over RGB SCART is not a real standard) which makes sense because it was intended for the CRT TV era. Component YPbPr supports up to 1080p.

VGA also uses a type of RGB signal, but is not compatible. VGA uses a separate horizontal and vertical sync signals, sometimes abbreviated as RGBHV and is 31 KHz. With RGBs (15Khz) the H and V sync are combined and sometimes referred to as composite sync. Check out My Life In Gaming on YouTube, they have a lot of great videos that explain all of this better (and probably more accurately).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 9D2YQ4rwnZ

[Reprise]

Thank you, Ziggy! That's some brilliant information. It's really interesting to know and understand how the different video signals work.