The Sega Dreamcast Thread

[Rogue Trooper]

I guess I have been lucky, thus far, as I have never had the resetting issue with any of my Dreamcast systems. Only issues I have ever had are dead systems due to the Laser being dead or the drive being worn out. Then again, maybe if more people stopped playing pirated Dreamcast discs, perhaps there wouldn't be the huge issue. I like the idea of the SD Adapter as for homebrew it's an awesome idea. Sadly, I generally don't see it being used for that as most people seem to be more than happy to just use it for Piracy. Dan Loosen is one of the guys that will tell you that 80% of what killed the Dreamcast in the end was Piracy. It's also one of the reasons that us in the US never got REZ or Shenmue 2, and who could blame Sega? Why make the effort to release the games here if they are already on the Internet for free and getting tons of Downloads? It's one of the Reasons Sega was more than happy to move Shenmue 2 to the XBOX in the US. Very sad for people like me who had been drooling over the game too. Same with Head Hunter as well.

Piracy often been a double-edged sword, it was reported as another key reason the Atari 800XL range failed over here as it was rampant and cracked games appearing long before they hit retail, so why would publishers etc support the A8 range when folks just not buying games.It was rife on the Playstation 1, but ironically drove hardware sales in some quarters as people that would'nt have normally bought a console were buying a PS1 and 'silvers' (copied games) for £5 a shot, hell used to see people selling silvers at car boots down here, ditto with PSP, so rampant people were advertising mod your PSP for CFW on the notice board, lot of people bought PSP's just for this, but then got bored, moved to iPhones, jail broke those...my friend had a wii console, i bouhght her 2 Wii games for Xmas 1 year, she then had her partner mod that to run copies.....

Sadly there seems to be a 'mentality' among many that once they've bought hardware, games should be 'free', clearly no idea how industry works is the nicest way i'll say it.

[Rogue Trooper]

Canned Dreamcast games then:

Stampede IO Productions, strange one, a 'herding' game with you as Farmer Blow and faithful dog, shep, you have to round up various animal groups, but the innovational aspect of game design was the sound:

Each species was assigned an instrument and a melody, which could be interactively mixed and panned depending on animals position in the enviroment.

Developers struggled with the game mechanics though, as you'd be controlling farmer and dog, dozens of control methods tried and abandoned, including using the DC's Mic to whistle commands for the dog to obey....

[Rogue Trooper]

JSR team talking on power of Dreamcast when making the game:

'we studied the Power VR2 very closely and we have been able to make things that are impossible on a Playstation2...the textures are colourful and very detailed.The PS2 would not be able to handle them because of it's weaker memory.another example we exploited one very interesting aspect of Power VR2, the modifer volume, managing the shadows in a very realistic way and in real time.The game runs 16 characters without any lag in performance  at 30 fps.There is is a very high number of polygons.We reinforced this aspect by using several techniques to make this polygon number greater.'

[zapiy]

Scud Race tech demo on Dreamcast

Only ever got as far as a 'Tech.Demo' shown behind closed doors in Sega Japan sadly (and Sega claimed reason it never got converted was because Dreamcast was a new start for the company, so needed new games-err, so how do you explain VF3 getting converted for launch then Sega?), but here's DC Scud Race...

That looks awesome... first time i have ever seen that.

[AmigaJay]

Only ever got as far as a 'Tech.Demo' shown behind closed doors in Sega Japan sadly (and Sega claimed reason it never got converted was because Dreamcast was a new start for the company, so needed new games-err, so how do you explain VF3 getting converted for launch then Sega?), but here's DC Scud Race...

Remember this video well!
The real reason it never made it out of the arcade was because at the time Sony owned the rights to Porsche cars in home games.

[dougtitchmarsh]

Just seen this interesting video and thought someone here might like to pull apart some "facts" lol
6 Awesome Dreamcast Facts! -- Fact Surgery

[TrekMD]

Pretty cool.  I like these videos.  I wonder how much time it takes to make them.  Interesting facts too!

[Shadowrunner]

Just got an email telling me the long delayed DC game Redux: Dark Matters is finally done and shipping. This was the first Kickstarter I backed over a year an a half ago so I'm really happy I will be able to play it at long last.

Here's the the new trailer they just released today
Redux Dark Matters Release Trailer (Dreamcast)

You can order the game from their website http://hucast.com/product_info.php?language=en&info=p12_redux-dark-matters-re--sega-dreamcast-.html&

[tomwaits]

Redux:Dark Matters is also available from play-asia. They're a little cheaper than ordering from Europe... at least for US residents. I'll probably buy this and Neo XYX next month.

[dcultrapro]

Yup I got mine in the mail! V happy and hopefully this will mark the first of many for 2014! Shaping up to be a good year for dreamcast

[zapiy]

Great stuff, may have to get these ordered now.

[TrekMD]

Just saw this and thought it was an interesting comparison...NTSC vs PAL!  And it starts off Dreamcast week on CGR!

[align=center:n55rg5zz]Sega Dreamcast PAL vs. NTSC, what's best?[/align:n55rg5zz]

[Antiriad2097]

Only issues I have ever had are dead systems due to the Laser being dead or the drive being worn out. Then again, maybe if more people stopped playing pirated Dreamcast discs, perhaps there wouldn't be the huge issue.

I do wish people would stop peddling this myth. There's nothing about a game on CDR that makes it wear out the drive any faster than an official GDR. Official games crunch and grind the drive just as much as copies.

I can't help but wonder if the origin of the myth simply comes down to games available. Easy access to cheap/free copies means more games and thus more time spent playing the system, wearing out the drive in a 'shorter' timescale (in months/years) due to heavy usage.

There's certainly no evidence to support CDR damage, nor any proven source, just constant repetition of the myth. It does make you wonder if Sega started the rumour.

[tomwaits]

T2K is right. It's not a myth.

CD-Rs can definitely wear out drives more quickly than pressed media. Using cheap CD-R media or burning at faster speeds than the media can handle will cause repeated retries as the laser struggles to read the data. Dreamcast piracy started around the same time that CD burners and media became affordable for the masses. People were rattling off 4x or 8x burns on the cheapest media they could buy... wearing out Dreamcast drives.

The Dreamcast is also unique in that the data is read from the outside of the GD-Rom to the center. Official GD-Roms were structured with frequently used data along the outer edge of the disc to decrease load times. Early game rips were burned from the center of the CD-R and made no effort to optimize file layout.... adding further wear to the drive. Pirates eventually started padding the start of the data with dummy fills to push game data to the outer edge and started re-arranging file layout to match the GD-Rom, but the early rips had a lot more grinding and slower loading than original discs... wearing out Dreamcast drives.

[zapiy]

Just saw this and thought it was an interesting comparison...NTSC vs PAL!  And it starts off Dreamcast week on CGR!

[align=center:k9e59j06]Sega Dreamcast PAL vs. NTSC, what's best?[/align:k9e59j06]

Very interesting Trek.. Thanks for the vid.