THE SEGA DREAMCAST

Welcome to the section of my site which is devoted to the Sega Dreamcast.It may no longer be in production, but if you own one, then you can feel proud in the knowledge that you own of the most incredible, and revolutionary consoles ever made.People are easily swayed by advertising and hype, and unfortunately this alone persuaded many people into buying a PS2 rather than a Dreamcast, which ultimately convinced Sega to get out of the console market, and instead concentrate on producing games for all systems, such as the PS2 and Xbox.It's a real shame, becuase had people been aware about just how good this great console was, and it's excellant range of games, things may have turned out different.Instead people bought their console by brand, rather than the technological benefits, and then made do with a choice of mostly very average games, instead of the mostly excellant titles which were produced for the Dreamcast.Of course now, there are far more powerful consoles than either the PS2 or Dreamcast, such as the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.I appreciate technological advancement, and so I also own an Xbox, which sits side by side with my Dreamcast, But I have to say most of the DC games are more fun to play.It's not that I'm biased, I've been a collector of computers and consoles for a long time, and in there is even a Sony Playstation, which unfortunately has been stuck in a box for years, thanks to software like Bleem, as it means that I can play Playstation games on my PC or even the Dreamcast, at twice their original resolution.

So what is this section all about, well for people that already own the Dreamcast, they may be impressed to find out what actually makes it all work, and for those that missed out, perhaps I can make you see that it's still very worthwhile owning one, especially as the games are so cheap/

About The Console | My DC Games | Dreamcast Home Brew | Dreamcast Links 

New! Unusual third party accesories available

About the Sega Dreamcast

The Sega Dreamcast was released in the UK in October 1999, and with healthy pre-orders, and plenty of stock, most people who ordered one, actually got one.At an intial selling price of £199.99, it had the cheapest entry price for any comparable console system.The original Dreamcast pack contained the Dreamcast console itself, a joypad, RF connection lead, Dreamarena internet access CD, and demo games CD.

If you have never owned this console, you'l lnow find out why you've truly missed out on one of the greatest consoles ever made, and indeed why it's till well worth trying to buy one.Advice on doing so is provided towards the end of this section.If you already own a Dreamcast, then you'll feel proud to be an owner of something so revolutionary.

One of the first things that appeals to you when playing any game is the graphics, and let's face it, if you walk into any arcade, the Sega games have always stood out from the crowd, because their graphics are nothing short of amazing, even back in the days of Outrun.But as you can probably remember, trying to achieve the same experience at home has always been a bit dissapointing, basically because of the difference in technology.Typical arcade machines cost thousands, wheras the average console or computer was in the hundreds.It was because of this therefore that home conversions of arcade games, just didn't work very well, although there were some good attempts.The home version of Outrun for example, was anything from pathetic to OK, depending on the system, but we still bought them, as people have always wanted the games from the arcades at home.Sega's Naomi based arcade games are truly outstanding, so how is it, that the Dreamcast is able to run this games, with the same performance, or in some cases, improve on the arcade original?

Well, this is how it's done, these are the technical specifications:

• CPU: Hitachi SH-4, 200MHz clock rate, 360 MIPS (millions of instructions per second), 1.4 GigaFLOPS (floating-point operations per second), 128-bit 3D calculations, 64-bit data bus, 800+ MBytes/second bus bandwidth

• Graphics Core: NEC PowerVRSG, 3 million polygons/second peak rendering rate, Perspective-Correct Texture Mapping, Point, Bilinear, Trilinear and Anisotropic Mip-map filtering, Gouraud shading 32-bit z-buffer, Colored light sourcing, Full scene anti-aliasing, Hardware-based Fog, Bump mapping, 24-bit color, Hardware-based texture compression, Shadow and Light volumes, Super sampling

• Memory: 16 MB main RAM, 8 MB video RAM, 2 MB sound RAM

• Resolution: 640x448.

• Colors: 16.7 million

• Sound: Yamaha Audio Core, 32-bit RISC CPU, DSP for real-time effects, 64 sound channels, ,Full 3D sound support, Hardware-based audio compression

• Dreamcast Control Pad: Digital and analog directional controls, Dual analog triggers, Virtual Memory System data save unit

• Expansion Options: Modem: 33.6kb per second transfer rate (56kb in U.S.) Upgradable

• Operating System: Customized Microsoft Windows CE and Sega operating system

• Media: GD-ROM (GigaByte Disk-ROM) Drive - Maximum speed 12X 1.2 GigaByte capacity

• Console Dimensions: 7 7/16" X 7 11/16" X 3" , 190 mm (W) x 195 mm (H) x 78 mm (D)

• Weight: 4.4 pounds, 2.0 kg

• Release Date: Late 1998 in Japan, Oct 1999 in the UK

Well all of this goes together to form the inner workings of the Dreamcast, which look something like this..

Impressed?

The Dreamcast, managed to pack some of the most incredible technology into the smallest ever console, (OK the Atari 2600 Jr was smaller, but then it didn't have much inside!).Sega achieved great success with this console, a far cry from the ill fated but neverless impressive Sega Saturn.At the time of launch, stock was on the shelves, games were available, and it sold very well.It's a shame then that Sega, as Atari before them, never put much effort into marketing their product, if they had, then I'm sure things would have been different, but in the end Sony's massive advertising and hype won the day.

Like to buy one now?

.It was last seen in the shops a good few years back now, finally reduced to £49.99.If you missed out, you needn't worry though as you can always find them on auction sites such as Ebay, where you can also find plenty of bargain price games, and of course there is always your local car boot sale, and some stores sell 'pre-owned' consoles and games.In recent years weve also seen the release of new game titles for this console, as interest seems as strong as ever.It's also worth pointing out about the recent advances in 'home brew' software development for the console, which have made the console more versatile, with software such as Gyplay, which allows you to play VCD movies, or more recently work on a DivX player, which will allow the playback of DivX encoded films and MP3's, not to mention emulators, which can turn your Dreamcast into anything from a NES to a Megadrive, even a Playstation!

Visit Lik-Sang proud supporters of the Dreamcast scene, selling games and hardware

My Dreamcast Games

The Dreamcast had some of the most amazing and original games ever made, including the long awaited Metropolis Street Racer, a prelude to the XBOX's Project Gotham Racing?.Of course Sega had a lot of NAOMI based games in the arcades, many of which were ported to the Dreamcast with amazing results, many like the massive 18 Wheeler Pro American Trucker and Crazy Taxi actually improved on the CoinOp versions by adding even better graphics or extra levels etc.

One of the most anticipated ports was Daytona, an absolute killer in the arcades, the Dreamcast version didn't dissapoint it's fans.It played exactly like the arcade version, and with graphics to match, something that all the previous ports lacked.One of my personal favourites in the arcades was The House Of The Dead II, which I'd spent a small fortune on, so when it was announced that Sega were going to port this to the Dreamcast, I couldn't wait.Sega released it as a single game, and also as a box set bundled with their official lightgun.At the time, there wasn't enough stock of the lightguns to go round, and so Mad Catz released the Dream Blaster light gun (shown on the right), which I purchased, and in the end preffered over the official version.House of the Dead II was great fun to play, especially as it also featured a lot of extra's not in the arcade version.A while later Typing of the Dead was released, a similar game in which you basically had to type the shown word, as fast as possible, instead of shooting, a good use for Sega's Dreamcast keyboard, and a totally mad way of Sega teaching us all to type!. The Lightgun soon came in handy later, with the release of Confidential Mission, a very James Bond style game! (original arcade version shown above)

Of course most arcade games don't have much of a longevity factor, as they are designed for short bursts of gameplay, rather than spending a whole afternnoon blasting zombies.However, if you preferred something which stimulated the brains a lot more, then Resident Evil - Code Veronica was, and still is a must have game, atomspheric, it's a real immersive experience, but even this game is over shadowed by what is perhaps the most costly, advanced RPG type game, ever made, Shenmue.Shenmue was a semi real time adventure, in which you seek to avenge your fathers killing, you wake up, interact with people and objects, and try to gather information and clues, at the end of the day you can go to sleep, or relax for a while lisitening to the cassettes you've purchased in the local shops.It's a fantastic game, spread over 4 discs, it'll take you some time to complete, it took me around 3 months, playing to the early hours.The thing that really grabs you is the attention to detail, for instance you can wander into an arcade and play real Space Harrier, or Hang On, or later in the game when you have to get a job to earn money, and end up driving a forklift truck around the docks, shifting crates to specific locations.Yu Suzuki, is probably one of Sega's most respected game creators, having produced many of their successful arcade games, and Shenmue, and Shenmue II are in my opinion his most ambitious and successful games to date, and make owning a Dreamcast a worthwhile investment just to play this game.Some of the more popular titles in Sega's CoinOp ports are now being made available on the PS2 and the XBOX, which will at least allow gamers to appreciate that Sega have for a long time, been making some of the best games in the business.I'm proud to have my Dreamcast sitting side by side with my new XBOX. 

Here is a list of games from my collection, click game name to see Dreamcast.ign.com review if available.Games marked with an asterix '*' make use of the Lightgun

18 Wheeler 'American Pro Trucker - Arcade/Driving

Blue Stinger - Action/Adventure - Review

Coaster Works - Construction/Sim

Confidential Mission - Arcade/shooter*

Chu Chu Rocket - Online/Puzzler - Review

Crazy Taxi - Arcade/Driving - Review

Dance Dance Revolution - Club Mix (Jap)

Daytona USA 2001

Dead Or Alive 2 - Arcade/Fighting - Review

Ferrari F355 Challenge

House Of The Dead - Arcade/Shooting - Review*

Le Mans 24 Hour

Metropolis Street Racer

Monaco Grand Prix Simulation 2 (Jap) - Simulation/Racing

Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Action/Adventure - Review

Sega GT (Jap) - Simulation/Racing - Review

Sega Rally Championship 2 - Arcade/Racing - Review

Shenmue

Soul Calibur - Arcade/Fighting - Review

Tokyo Bus Guide (Jap)

Tokyo Highway Challange/Tokyo Extreme - Simulation/Racing - Review

Tomb Raider 4: The Last Revelation - Action/Adventure - Review

Vanishing Point

Virtua Cop - Arcade/shooter*

Who Wants to be a Millionaire

Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol 1

Zombies Revenge (Jap) - Arcade/Adventure - Review

Dreamcast 'Home Brew' Software

Sega may have ditched the Dreamcast, to concentrate on the Software market, but even this year there have been new releases appearing.The most exciting new area of dreamcast software though is perhaps the increasing emulation releases.It is now possible to play many older consoles on your Dreamcast, such as Sega's own Master System & Mega Drive (Genesis), or Nintendo's Gameboy, NES, Super NES, or in the near future a Playstation.More recently, some arcade emulators have been developed such DreamPac, Phoenix, and perhaps the best thing of all versions of Mame have been developed allowing you to play 100's of classic coin-ops.There are even commercial offerings such as Bleem's Bleemcast pak's, each one allowing you to play a different Playstation game, only with much enhanced visuals.It's not just games which are being developed either, GyPlay is actually a VCD player, which when burned with a movie file to CD-r, allows you to watch VCD's via your Dreamcast, you can also get a commericial offering from Lik-Sang, which even has a remote control.You can also get software to enable your Dreamcast to not only play Audio CD's but MP3 CD's.

To use some of these you'll need a bootdisk, one inadvertantly came free with an early edition of DC-UK magazine some years ago in the form of a demo disc of Action Replay's CDX, which it was discovered could also be used as a boot disc to allow you to play imports!.I've got this disk myself, and it works fine with my Japanese Sega GT, and Zombies Revenge games (This disc is legal, since it's a demo).The boot disc most used with emulators though is the Utopia boot disc, which is available on the net as an ISO file which can be burned to CD (don't ask me where you can get this as it is illegal!).More recent emulator releases are designed to be burned as self-booting discs, which no longer require the boot disc.

So if you're interested in trying out some of these emulators, follow these steps

• Make sure you have a CDROM burning package, I use Nero or WinOnCD

• Visit DCemulation, there are others, but this is my favourite, because everything you need is under one roof

• Make sure you have plenty of blank CDR's, burning CD's can be a tricky process, and so you may end up with more 'coasters' than actual game CD's

• Use the Help files!

Dreamcast related sites

Here is a useful selection of links to quality sites with Dreamcast related content, if you have a Dreamcast related site you'd like to have added here, then email your site details.

gameplay.com sells discounted consoles, games, and accessories.

http://www.sega-europe.com/ the official Sega Dreamcast site for Europe

dreamcast.ign.com massive commercial site, with heaps of news, reviews & images etc

www.segaweb.com another great established site

www.segadreamcast.net here's a great site for dreamcast news and more

www.dreamcast-hq.net/index.shtml a fairly new up and coming site, great layout and content

Unusual Third Party Accessories

Would you like to own a Naomi coinop system in your room?.OK not very likely as they cost a small fortune, howvever take a look through Ebay, buy yourself a second hand Jamma cabinet, and then use the DC to Arcade accessory to turn your Dreamcast into an arcade machine, it'll even cost you money to play!.This hardware conversion basically allows your Dreamcast to connect to the standard Jamma coinop hardware.

Fancy playing Sega's manic dance game Samba de Amigo, yeah I know it's great fun, but the controllers are very expensive, around £99 I believe.Help is now at hand though with these third party controllers, which are much cheaper, at around £30.You can also get the Dance Dance revolution game for Dreamcast, the game made famous in the arcades and on the PSX, and third party Dance Mats are also available at around £20-£30

OK the Dreamcast is great at playing games, and also thanks to homebrew software playing MP3's, Jpegs etc, but what if you could play back movies?.This next item is the VCD Playback kit, which comes complete with a remote control.Of course some DVD players can also play VCDs, but if yours doesn't, then this is a great alternative.Of course playback quality is greatly affected by the quality of the recording on the disc.Most pirate films, are produced in VCD format, which can normally be found at your local car boot sale, although I would search Ebay for original titles.It's also a great format to use for producing home movies, which I do, no not that kind!.

This next item is extremely sought after, and to be honest I don't know much about, except that it's produced in the far east, and is Dreamcast copy, with a built in TFT monitor, that can also playback VCD with no extra hardware.I have only recently discovered this, and believe that it costs around £250-£300.Now if they could sell an official version, licensed from Sega, then I'm sure this would sell like hot cakes! (sorry a traditional English expression), basically meaning they would sell S!*t loads!.

This is the Smart Joy, which is a controller adapter, allowing you to use PSX controllers with your Dreamcast, obviously very useful for steering wheel kits especially, as there were only 2 produced for the Dreamcast that I know of.

As far as I know this next item, the DreamEYE was only released in Japan.It's actually an official Sega product.I'm not sure of it's details, but imagine it would work as a digital camera/webcam, available long before Sony's 'latest' accessory the EyeToy.

OK this next item isn't an accessory, it's a game, but what make this different, is that it's the 1st homebrew game to be made available commercially, with proper packaging.It's a sort of DDR style game, only more challanging, ' Mobile Tactical Dancing Action'.You can order a copy of this from Lik-Sang, who to this day are a great source of Dreamcast products, and one of the few large companies to still fully support the console.

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Ok staying with games, I'm sure you've all heard of this one, Bleemcast, a port of the famous PC Playstation emulator for the Dreamcast.3 discs were released each allowing a different PSX game to be played (I've recently heard rumours that a universal version is available on the net).Unfortunately Sony didn't take to kindly to this being released, perhaps because it made their standard PSX games look so much better than it did on their own console.It was a long and very costly battle, which was eventually won by Sony.The developers of Bleem deserve a lot of credit, for being able to produce something so amazing, and also for having the sheer guts to go up against Sony in the 1st place.

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