Emulation for and on Dreamcast.

[DreamCastLover]

Ok folks I know there isn't a proper emulator for the Dreamcast yet but I am a moderator in this part of the forum, so I want to be of service.

 

If you want any help on burning any of the Dreamcast emulators such as DCGnuboy, Dreamsnes, Nester, Smeg, etc then post in this part of the forum and I will guide you through it. The same goes for any of the Dreamcast homebrew apps and games available. There are too many people who haven't took advantage of the fact that the Dreamcast can become a VCD player, an MP3 player, a SNES, a Gameboy color, NES etc (soon possibly online now that the modem code might be available) without any modifications whatsoever.

 

If you want to know about burning Dreamcast games, then I will help you with that too. Just post the problem and I will see what I can do.

 

I will also be posting a list of the best(and worst) DC apps so that people don't waste thier time. I will add to this later, I just wanted to get it started.

 

Dreamcast Emulation on PC:-

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Nightmare emu: This is a trojan, DO NOT use it.

Dreamemu: Has just been updated recently and can now emulate some of the basic homebrew stuff. No commercial games yet but it is making progress which is always cool.

Dreamer: The first that played commercial games. Has not been updated in over a year though.

Icarus: Currently in development. There are a lot of games now running on it although the speed is still low 10fps or so without sound but It is a step in the right direction though!

 

You will never be able to run actual Dreamcast GD-Roms on a normal cd-rom drive, but you will be able to play ripped games or games you rip yourself with a coders cable. I still think full speed DC emulation is a few years off, but we can all dream. It's in the name DREAMcast

 

Emulation on the Dreamcast:-

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There are so many different emulators available on the Dreamcast. I will list the best ones here with thier speed and what they emulate etc.

 

Dreamsnes(SNES Emulator):- Currently at version 0.9.8. Runs most games at 80-100% at the moment with sound. Special chips like the SA-1 or the C4 chip are now emulated. This means that you can now play games like Mario RPG, Kirby, MegamanX1-3 etc abeit some of them slowly.

 

NesterDC(Nintendo Entertainment System Emulator):- Currently at version 7.1. Runs every NES game perfectly with sound. 7.1b now has lightgun support so you can get your duck hunt kicks I however am willing to sacrifice lightgun support because version 6 still seems a lot better to me.

 

SMEG(Sega Master System & Game Gear Emulator):- Currently at version 0.84. This runs all SMS and GG games 100% with sound. Excellent emulator with the only bad point being that you can't save. So that means no Phantasy star

 

SMS Plus(Sega Master System & Game Gear Emulator):- First release v0.1 and My new favourite emulator. This has everything Smeg has and more. The most important feature being save support so now you can play all those excellent RPGs.

 

DCGnuboy(Gameboy Mono/Color Emulator):- Current at version 1.0.3-0.6. This runs most Gameboy and Gameboy color games 100% with sound. Some people might not see the point of playing handheld games on a TV screen but playing games like Zelda Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Mario Tennis and Pokemon(you know those games rule even if the cartoon sucks) will change your mind.

 

Segagen(Sega Genesis Emulator):- No longer being worked on. Segagen is the controversial emulator, ripped from the commercial Sega Smash Pack for DC. It runs most games at 100% but in a lot of games the sound is screwed up. Still worth a download though.

 

DCGenerator(Sega Genesis Emulator):- Updated on 24/05/03 and has been slightly optimized again. This is the homebrew Genesis emulator and currently it doesn't really support huge roms or sound. Hopefully things will progress in the next few months. MetaFox the author is working on a "create a game" app for non coders for the Dreamcast. So I would rather he spent time on that that this emu Especially since there are 2 more Genesis emulators being ported.

 

Genesis Plus(Sega Genesis Emulator):- First release and very impressive it is too. No sound like DCGenerator but runs most things I've tried on it at about 12-18 fps. Hopefully another release is due soon!

 

Dreamspec(spectrum Emulator):- At version 1.0, so finished. If you want to play all those old Spectrum games at 100% speed with sound on your DC then this is your chance. Jet Set Willy ownz j00.

 

ScuuvmDC (Lucasarts games Emulator):- Now at v0.4 Play all your Lucasart games on your DC. Games like Sam n Max, Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle etc. Well worth having if you have the cd versions of these games and feel like playing them again on your Dreamcast. Now even plays the Dig and Monkey Island 3

 

SarienDC(AGI Sierra Games Emulator):- Finished at version 1.1. Use this if you want to play your old sierra games on your Dreamcast. Games include Lesuire suit Larry, Space Quest and stuff like that. You can also play many of the fanmade AGI games on it.

 

Atari800DC(An Atari 800/5200 emulator):- Most games run really well. If you like ancient Atari gaming then this is for you heh.

 

DCStella(Atari 2600 emulator):- Pretty much 100% emulated with graphics and sound. There are a couple of PAL games that dont' work and the "paddle control" code doesn't work yet. Apart from that this emulator is near perfect.

 

Dreamfrodo(Commodore 64 emulator):- Currently at v0.92 Finally a decent C64 emulator for the DC (no offense to Bigboy ) Pretty much full speed for everything. I've not experienced too many crashes either so get it now people.

 

PCSXDC(Sony Playstation emulator):- Currently at Alpha 1.4. Version 1.3 was running most games at 3-7fps with only software rendering. In this version there seems to be a moderate speed increase of 1/2 fps and also full screen mode. Once again, when it makes use of the PowerVR chip then we could be looking at (free) playable PSX emulation on the Dreamcast. Much better than the 3 currently available with Bleemcast.

 

Bleemcast Beta(Sony Playstation emulator):- Bleemcast beta has been released and this means that you can now play a lot of other PSX games on your dreamcast. Many things run at playable speeds and I recommend giving it a try. It would be nice to get the source code for this somewhere so that all PSX games could be optimized to use it.

 

OswanDC(WonderSwan/WonderSwan Color emulator):- Recently updated to 0.15 to add sound support. This should be a great emulator once sound is fully implemented.

 

Neopockett(NeoGeo Pocket emulator):- Currently at v1.0. At the moment there is no sound and it runs a lot of games waaaaaay too fast but it is still worth putting on a cd along with a few other emulators to try it out.

 

Dream Engine (TG-16 PC Engine emulator):- Currently at v0.01. This runs a lot of games at near full speed and everything else at around half speed. The author has recently stated that there will be a full speed emu with sound in the summer so woohoo for that.

 

[D]Colem (ColecoVision Emulator):- Currently at v0.99. This has full speed, full sound for everything and if you get it from dcemulation it comes with 300 roms.

 

There are also a ton of single game MAME releases for the DC. Games like Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, Simpsons Arcade, Galaga, 1943 and many many many more.

[Mag]

hehe !! you just gave me an idea !!

 

http://216.127.72.111/~admin8/forum/showth...s=&threadid=494

[DreamCastLover]

Updated

[alexis]

is there any neo geo emulator for dc?

[DreamCastLover]

is there any neo geo emulator for dc?

 

The best Neo Geo emu for the DC at the moment is probably Warmtoe's MAIM(Dreamcast version of MAME). At least it seems to be the fastest but with slightly less compatability. The max rom size is about 4.5Mb so you can only really run old, old games. Old stuff like Fatal Fury will run 80% - 90% with sound, baseball stars 2 the same. There are some improvements being made though and if Warmtoe can fix the possible memory leak then games of 10Mb could be played on the DC. The 16Mb of Dreamcast Ram is what restricts us. If it had double that, then even some N64 emulation would be possible...it's a shame. Anyway, I will add this info and the info about the other 3 MAMEs for DC to my faq soon enough

[alexis]

thanks for the info man, so there is no way i could burn roms on a cd for then playing them on dc?

[DreamCastLover]

thanks for the info man, so there is no way  i could burn roms on a cd for then playing them on dc?

 

Yes there is. I will stick a tutorial up for you later when I come back.

 

Edit: I was going to write a tutorial for you but there is already a good one. If you go to This siteyou can download the files you need, get game compatability lists and also follow the tutorials to make a selfboot cd. There isn't much new stuff that runs on this but its still fun for a while.

[alexis]

sp if you can burn em on a cd why does the ram restrict you from using big roms?

[DreamCastLover]

sp if you can burn em on a cd why does the ram restrict you from using big roms?

 

Well because the Dreamcast is restricted by it's memory. On any emulator on the DC the game is loaded into memory. So even though the emulator could easily play the biggest ROMs, the Dreamcast can't run them because of the memory restriction. Since it's emulation and not an actual port (programmed to use the DC hardware and not the hardware of the emulated machine) of the game, we get restricted

 

eg The DC has 16Mb of RAM. The emulator takes up 9Mb of RAM, so that leaves you with 7Mb left to load your roms into memory.

 

I think it would be possible to add extra RAM to the DC though, I am just not sure that it would be worth it. The Xbox will probably be the best bet for Neo Geo and Arcade emulation because it has an 8GB HD (much faster access than a CD) and also 64Mb of RAM

[DreamCastLover]

Updated to the newest versions and to include some info about great new emulators like Sms +, Genesis Plus and Dreamfrodo etc

[MarkT2256]

Ive never had dreamcast, but ive got a question about it.

 

Are you still able to play online with it, and if so how much does it cost?

 

I remember games like Nba2kX and stuff and was wondering if they still functioned online, since i never owned a dreamcast.