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Sega Dreamcast - Appreciation and Emulation Thread

PantsuJo

Member
I know some European and USA cool games but the Japanese line up is totally unknown for me. Advices are absolutely welcome!

I have just bought from Amazon Metropolis Street Racing, it will arrive in few days!

The first thing I suggest is Capcom vs SNK 2: sure, you will find on GC/Xbox/PS2 too but, trust me, having on DC is really "special".

If you like shmups (and have a good budget):
  • Border Down
  • Ikaruga (*)
  • Trigger Heart Hexelica (*)
  • Zero Gunner 2 (*)
  • Mars Matrix
  • Psyvariar 2 (also on Xbox OG)
The ones with the (*) are also on more modern platform (X360 and/or Steam) but the DC ones are pretty cool to have (and are only Japanese releases).

Check Frame Gride too, it's a sort of mecha-action game in a fantasy world, made by From Software.

If you understand japanese, I reccomend Sakura Taisen games, good RPGs with nice stories.
 

true Gek

Member
The first thing I suggest is Capcom vs SNK 2: sure, you will find on GC/Xbox/PS2 too but, trust me, having on DC is really "special".

If you like shmups (and have a good budget):
  • Border Down
  • Ikaruga (*)
  • Trigger Heart Hexelica (*)
  • Zero Gunner 2 (*)
  • Mars Matrix
  • Psyvariar 2 (also on Xbox OG)
The ones with the (*) are also on more modern platform (X360 and/or Steam) but the DC ones are pretty cool to have (and are only Japanese releases).

Check Frame Gride too, it's a sort of mecha-action game in a fantasy world, made by From Software.

If you understand japanese, I reccomend Sakura Taisen games, good RPGs with nice stories.

I think that I have a copy of Capcom VS SNK for GC somewhere in my room but that version is totally unplayable due to the GC controller >__> I think I will buy the DC version at this point!

For the Shmups, I'm not that good and I usually play the 3D ones like REZ or Sin & Punishment... Does the DC library contains similar titles?
 

PantsuJo

Member
I think that I have a copy of Capcom VS SNK for GC somewhere in my room but that version is totally unplayable due to the GC controller >__> I think I will buy the DC version at this point!

For the Shmups, I'm not that good and I usually play the 3D ones like REZ or Sin & Punishment... Does the DC library contains similar titles?

Well, REZ born on Dreamcast, before arriving on other platforms. I don't remember other rail shooters on DC like Sin&Punishment, sadly.

I can suggest two games: Cannon Spike (great arcade shooter made in 3D) and a Spawn arcade shooter too (very cool, especially if you like the comics).

You can also find some good lightgun shooters (but you will need to buy lightgun and use it on a CRT TV): House of the Dead 2, for example.
 

sarcoa

Member
I know some European and USA cool games but the Japanese line up is totally unknown for me. Advices are absolutely welcome!
Japanese DC games I've enjoyed:

Cool Cool Toon
Cosmic Smash
L.O.L.: Lack of Love
Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream
Rainbow Cotton
Roommania #203
Tokyo Bus Guide
Treasure Strike
Zusar Vasar
 

BANGS

Banned
Posting my custom Dreamcast. Mods include:

Paint job and new front sticker, USBGDROM with lid switch, fan mod, USBGDROM insert, battery mod, and a failed LED mod so the LED doesn't work at all anymore lol. I'll fix that one day, maybe...

 

kunonabi

Member
Oh, ok =/



I know some European and USA cool games but the Japanese line up is totally unknown for me. Advices are absolutely welcome!

I have just bought from Amazon Metropolis Street Racing, it will arrive in few days!

 
Cool Cool Toon   
Cosmic Smash   
Dead of Alive 2 Limited Edition   
Frame Gride   
Giant Gram 2000 All Japan Pro Wrestling 3   
Giant Gram All Japan Pro Wrestling 2   
Hundred Swords   
Mobile Suit Gundam EFF vs. Zeon & DX   
Nanatsu no Hikan  
Puyo Puyo 4   
ROOMMANIA #203   
Tako no Marine   
Treasure Strike   
Vermilion Desert

I tried to leave off the more language intensive stuff although i kept a few of the more interesting, quirky titles in.

Of course, there some interesting japanese titles i havent tried yet as well.
 

true Gek

Member
 
Cool Cool Toon   
Cosmic Smash   
Dead of Alive 2 Limited Edition   
Frame Gride   
Giant Gram 2000 All Japan Pro Wrestling 3   
Giant Gram All Japan Pro Wrestling 2   
Hundred Swords   
Mobile Suit Gundam EFF vs. Zeon & DX   
Nanatsu no Hikan  
Puyo Puyo 4   
ROOMMANIA #203   
Tako no Marine   
Treasure Strike   
Vermilion Desert

I tried to leave off the more language intensive stuff although i kept a few of the more interesting, quirky titles in.

Of course, there some interesting japanese titles i havent tried yet as well.
Thanks!

I was also looking for arcade racing games!
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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Happy Sega Dreamcast Day 2018! Our beloved videogame system celebrated its 19th birthday on September 9, and I hope you had fun playing your favorite titles. I hooked my DC and immediately grabbed one of my all-time favorites, Midway's Hydro Thunder. This home version was a launch title on 9/9/99 and was translated by Eurocom, who were later responsible for the GoldenEye reboot on Nintendo Wii, among other things. This spectacular arcade racer offers roller coaster thrills, chills and spills, some extremely challenging competition and a wide variety of imaginative landscapes. They don't make racing games like this anymore.

I didn't see any specific threads to mark the occasion, so I wanted to post some photos here on the official DC collectors thread. Here is another Sega thread that needs to be revived (most of my energy these days is devoted to the Sega Saturn thread), so if you're a fan of this great indestructible console, please join in and share the love.
 

BANGS

Banned
Dreamcast is so beast that 20 years after launch it still has a huge community of devoted fans making games and peripherals for it... I really love most of the Dreamcast community. I wish the Shenmue community was half as cool lol...
 
Dreamcast month brought me an amazing get. I’m on vacation and checking the local Craigslist/kijiji, I found this:
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DC, 2 controllers, HOTD2 light gun and more 34 games, in excellent condition for about $180.
But how am I bringing all that back? Excess luggage here I come.
Great haul!
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
Just picked up Soul Caliber. Is there atill a community out there that talks about this game?

There certainly ought to be. Soul Calibur hasn't aged a day as far as I'm concerned. I was just playing for a couple hours last week to open the remaining art gallery items (only to unlock the final 2500-point gallery, d'oh). I would seek out the general Soul Calibur fan community. Even though they're probably focused on the more recent entries (and the upcoming SC6), there has to be some Dreamcast fans among their ranks.

Of course, you could just talk up SC here on the Dreamcast forum. Share, share!
 

BANGS

Banned
Soul Calibur is fucking sick and I also agree it hasn't aged at all. It's butter smooth and so in depth and fun...
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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(Source: Dreamcast, composite, Sony Trinitron CRT)

Here are some photos of Soul Calibur's art museum. This was always my favorite part about this game and greatly added to its sense of grandeur. I especially enjoy the fan art, such as the drawing of the girl handing a flower to Astaroth.

Kudos to Namco for going the extra mile with this game. They didn't have to put in so much effort to create a home version of Soul Calibur that absolutely destroys the arcade version and really made the Dreamcast shine. Indeed, given the system's lackluster Japanese launch (proving that Sega of Japan's bosses learned absolutely nothing from Saturn), it's a miracle that this videogame was ever made.

On a related note, I do wish Namco had made a side-scrolling beat-em-up that used the graphics from the Soul Calibur "Lizard Man Bridge" stage. That would be awesome.
 

BANGS

Banned
Yeah, back in those days the truly amazing devs really blew us away with content. Something like that would be about $200 of seperate DLC nowadays... if it existed at all...

Those artworks really made the game more immersive to me, made me invested in the characters and the game, and gave me a reason to beat those tough as nails challenges...
 

BANGS

Banned
As much as I love my Dreamcast, the Sega Saturn was my favorite Sega console ever.
My biggest regret was begging my parents for an N64 rather than a Saturn when I was a kid. So many amazing games I missed out on that I'm just now catching up on... If only I knew...
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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Here are some screenshots of Street Fighter Alpha 3. It's an excellent home version of the arcade (actually a Naomi-based variation) that features all the cool extras of the Playstation and Saturn versions. Sega fans will point to the Saturn version as the definitive translation, but I think this Dreamcast disc competes very nicely. The only problem, of course, is that the Dreamcast controller is an absolute steaming pile of pig vomit for 2D fighting games. It's fine for Soul Calibur, but everything else is a mess. You'll either need a Saturn adaptor or an arcade joystick.

I've never understood why Sega chose that particular controller design for Dreamcast. They only made a couple modifications to the Saturn 3D controller, but made it less comfortable and removed the masterful d-pad in the process. Really, all they ever needed to do was take the model 2 Saturn joypad and add two analog sticks like the Dual Shock. If they had done that, all would have been well.

Joypad issues aside, Alpha 3 on Dreamcast is excellent and a must for all fighting game fans. Hopefully, the prices haven't shot to ludicrous levels yet.
 

BANGS

Banned
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Here are some screenshots of Street Fighter Alpha 3. It's an excellent home version of the arcade (actually a Naomi-based variation) that features all the cool extras of the Playstation and Saturn versions. Sega fans will point to the Saturn version as the definitive translation, but I think this Dreamcast disc competes very nicely. The only problem, of course, is that the Dreamcast controller is an absolute steaming pile of pig vomit for 2D fighting games. It's fine for Soul Calibur, but everything else is a mess. You'll either need a Saturn adaptor or an arcade joystick.

I've never understood why Sega chose that particular controller design for Dreamcast. They only made a couple modifications to the Saturn 3D controller, but made it less comfortable and removed the masterful d-pad in the process. Really, all they ever needed to do was take the model 2 Saturn joypad and add two analog sticks like the Dual Shock. If they had done that, all would have been well.

Joypad issues aside, Alpha 3 on Dreamcast is excellent and a must for all fighting game fans. Hopefully, the prices haven't shot to ludicrous levels yet.
I actually love the Dreamcast Dpad, but I know I'm a rarity... Saturn for sure is the best...
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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Here are some screenshots of Test Drive V-Rally, an excellent rally racing title for the system that compares very favorably to the system's best. I popped the disc into my Dreamcast this morning and found myself having to tear myself away. After a couple races, the car handling clicked with me and I was having a blast.

The graphics are wonderful, offering 60 fps frame rate, sharply detailed textures, richly varied environments and a brilliant sense of speed. I really enjoyed seeing the cars take damage as you smack into walls and other cars. Your vehicles can flip over a little too easily, as though they were made out of cardboard, but you recover quickly enough that this doesn't become an irritant (like, for example, the crashes in the otherwise excellent Excite Truck).

V-Rally was highly praised by videogame critics when it was released, and I have to agree with them. This definitely belongs on the 'A' tier of racing games for Dreamcast. It's different enough from Sega Rally to not feel like a copycat or wannabe, looks and plays great and offers a lot of challenge.
 

Shinriji

Member
I've never played the JP Shenmue before, but the voices and BGM were always that muffled and poorly mixed?

It didn't helped that the constant CD reading noise got in the way of the actual game sound.
 

BANGS

Banned
I've never played the JP Shenmue before, but the voices and BGM were always that muffled and poorly mixed?

It didn't helped that the constant CD reading noise got in the way of the actual game sound.
I've only played the undub version and it does seem like the music overtakes the voices sometimes...
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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The Ultimate Dreamcast Rankings (Official Dreamcast Magazine, March/April 2001)

Here are magazine scans from the final issue of Official Dreamcast Magazine's article ranking every Sega Dreamcast game released to that point, not counting the games reviewed in that issue. I wanted to share this with everyone for posterity, as it has always been very useful for me as a reference for collecting and writing. As this was written in early 2001, many of the system's latter titles were not included, such as Phantasy Star Online, Sonic Adventure 2, Ikaruga and the 2K2 sports games. Some of these rankings will raise eyebrows among today's collectors and diehard gamers (who love everything and won't tolerate any criticism), but this is a valuable document of its time, reflecting a strong bias towards innovation and against older genres such as shoot-em-ups, beat-em-ups, wrestling and anything 2D.

Personally, I'd love to see the staff of OFDC reunite to complete these rankings to include the full US software library, and perhaps even include some of the post-2001 indie games as well. Somebody ought to contact Chris Charla and ask him about that.
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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Test Zone Archive (Official Dreamcast Magazine, March/April 2001)

This review archive also appeared in the final issue of OFDC, containing short capsule reviews of all Dreamcast videogames reviewed during the magazine's run. It's very unfortunate that they didn't continue to publish any more issues, as software titles continued to be released throughout the year, but this is a great archive for classic videogame fans and players alike.

I loved this magazine, it was an absolute must for all DC players. The writing was very solid and their reviews were honest, critical when necessary, but always fair. Heck, I miss videogame magazines and wish the tradition of games journalism and criticism would endure. You can thank the internet and excessive fanboy-ism for putting an end to that.

The first photo shows the complete pages, and all the following ones are closeups that you can read more easily. Enjoy.
 

JORMBO

Darkness no more
Bought a Dreamcast today at a retro shop for $60. Looking forward to diving into a few games. I ordered a VGA to HDMI cable that should be here Monday. Dreamcast had a great line up and I was really sad when Sega announced they were done supporting it.
 
Bought a Dreamcast today at a retro shop for $60. Looking forward to diving into a few games. I ordered a VGA to HDMI cable that should be here Monday. Dreamcast had a great line up and I was really sad when Sega announced they were done supporting it.
What games do you plan to play?
 
Starting with Tomb Raider the Last Revelation since I am in the mood for some classic TR. On my list to grab are Sonic, Chu Chu Rocket, Legacy of Kain and Skies of Arcadia.
If you like Dead or Alive, try out Ultimate Fighting Championship for Dreamcast. Totally underrated fighting game. Really cool grab/chokehold system.
 

Gargus

Banned
Wonder what the chances are of a dreamcast mini?

I hated to sell mine and my games. About 2 years I bought a house and sold everything from the ps1 backwards so I could afford to get new appliances, garage doors, redo my deck with trex, paint for every room, etc. Guess adulthood got the better of me. But I'd love to have a mini just to relive some games. Although from what little I know it wouldn't be an easy task for sega. Hell I'd pre order a Sega CD and Saturn as well given the chance.

Watching YouTube videos just doesn't cut it.

This thread makes me sad.
 
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cireza

Member
Wonder what the chances are of a dreamcast mini?

I hated to sell mine and my games. About 2 years I bought a house and sold everything from the ps1 backwards so I could afford to get new appliances, garage doors, redo my deck with trex, paint for every room, etc. Guess adulthood got the better of me. But I'd love to have a mini just to relive some games. Although from what little I know it wouldn't be an easy task for sega. Hell I'd pre order a Sega CD and Saturn as well given the chance.

Watching YouTube videos just doesn't cut it.

This thread makes me sad.
I would not wait for a Dreamcast Mini (even if it could happen), especially when you see how good the picture is on HDTV for this console. You can invest in a Dreamcast, an Akura Box and eventually burn some games (a lot of them of very cheap anyway) or, why not, look out for a GDEMU (pretty sure there are cheaper versions on the internet now). Not meant to disrespect the creator, but the guy has been keeping the prices high and the quantities low, ordering from him is almost impossible...

Plug this on an HDTV and the results are really good. I played some Garou Mark of the Wolves after lunch, you can even put scanlines with the Akura Box, so that's great for the few SNK games that are 480i/p only.

I tried 18 Wheeler this week as well, but this is not really worth checking. It looks pretty good and has some pretty great physics though, but it is a very short experience.
 
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Meesh

Member
So I finally, after all these long years, bought a Dreamcast in mint shape at my local used games boutique. Just need a second controller and VMU.
I bought Grandia 2, besides Soul Cal and Shenmue, what else should I pick up?
 
Wonder what the chances are of a dreamcast mini?

I hated to sell mine and my games. About 2 years I bought a house and sold everything from the ps1 backwards so I could afford to get new appliances, garage doors, redo my deck with trex, paint for every room, etc. Guess adulthood got the better of me. But I'd love to have a mini just to relive some games. Although from what little I know it wouldn't be an easy task for sega. Hell I'd pre order a Sega CD and Saturn as well given the chance.

Watching YouTube videos just doesn't cut it.

This thread makes me sad.

That would be entirely possible after a Master System/Game Gear Mini actually!

40 games could easily get on there from SEGA to Capcom to a few smaller developers who are willing to add them.

I saw a game on Youtube called Baldr Force EXE and wanted to ask if it is a good game? (I know it has eroge in it but that's mainly on the PC version)

If so, is it better on DC or PS2?
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
Once again, I'd like to state that my preference is not for another pile of "mini" consoles with pre-packaged videogames, but a single console that offers all Sega systems for digital download. Offer a Netflix-style monthly fee with unlimited access to everything on SG-1000, Master System, Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast.

Heck, even offer physical releases in deluxe packages like Criterion Collection. Tell me you wouldn't immediately buy Panzer Dragoon Saga with a booklet and set of color postcards, or Phantasy Star 2 with the original hint book, or any number of Saturn/DC classics that never left Japan.

Sell the hardware for $99 and offer the subscription for $10/month. Tell me that wouldn't be totally awesome.
 
Once again, I'd like to state that my preference is not for another pile of "mini" consoles with pre-packaged videogames, but a single console that offers all Sega systems for digital download. Offer a Netflix-style monthly fee with unlimited access to everything on SG-1000, Master System, Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast.

Heck, even offer physical releases in deluxe packages like Criterion Collection. Tell me you wouldn't immediately buy Panzer Dragoon Saga with a booklet and set of color postcards, or Phantasy Star 2 with the original hint book, or any number of Saturn/DC classics that never left Japan.

Sell the hardware for $99 and offer the subscription for $10/month. Tell me that wouldn't be totally awesome.
I think the boom of "limited print" boutique shops (Strictly Limited, Limited Run, Super Rare Games, Fangamer, Play Asia, etc etc) is an early sign of this idea coming down the road. Everything is cyclical. After CDs took over, no one would've said vinyl is coming back, yet here we are. The fact that some of these shops are even reprinting old PS3, NES, SNES, and N64 games is further proof. Fan-made "repros" are already quite easy to find and buy.
 
There's no official thread on a potential "Dreamcast mini", and since this article is speculation (not an official press release) I figured this would be a good spot for it:

The-Mini-Dreamcast-a-miniture-version-of-perfection-and-the-dream-line-up.png



A pretty good list.
 
So I finally, after all these long years, bought a Dreamcast in mint shape at my local used games boutique. Just need a second controller and VMU.
I bought Grandia 2, besides Soul Cal and Shenmue, what else should I pick up?
Street fighter III 3rd strike, second impact, new generation.
Power stone 2
Crazy taxi
Capcom vs snk
Shenmu 1,2
There are too many good dream cast games cant remember, check a top 100 or something.
 
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