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Games Entertainment

Is The Dreamcast Undead? 61

Posted by simoniker from the typing-of-the-undead dept.
PlaidG writes "An interesting article has been posted on Antigames.com about the community revolving around the yet-living Sega Dreamcast. It covers the reasons behind the continuing viability of the Dreamcast, and the thriving underground surrounding it." Quite apart from the cool stuff such as MP3 players or Dreamcast Linux you can hack around with, the array of great games now available so cheaply makes Sega's console very enticing, even past its prime.
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Is The Dreamcast Undead? More

Is The Dreamcast Undead?

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  • But try to find a cheep NIC card for the fancy stuff! The Dreamcast may be $50, but the NIC card is ~$150 on E-bay!

    • Re:Nice to know but... (Score:3, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      yes, it's cheaper to get a modem to your pc and hook the dc up with it's modem.

      that said, dreamcast is unbeliviable price/entertainment value, 'normal' people have lost their intrest in it. there's at leas as many GOOD games for it as there is for xbox.. ;) and the community is great. i espacially like the mp3 player that uses the vmu display for control so theres no need for a monitor/tv to play mp3's as you wish.

  • I'd pick one of those suckers up in a second, if I saw it (can't be bothered to order online). I mean, the sheer neat factor of the VMUs alone would be worth it, let alone the mods mentioned above.
    • Yeah the VMU's are great for making small games on. I was really hoping that the DC would become as popular as the MegaDrive / Genesis,.. but alas the crappy advertising is what imo let them down. The graphics were ahead of the time, but they didn't show screenshots or movies in their ads. :(
  • I have a DC, I love the DC - but all of these other *useless~I mean uses* are insane to me. I justify not buying Dreamcast games by purchasing the 'greatest hits' titles for the Xbox and PS2. I justify not using the Dreamcast as a PC by using a PC (which I can install any distro I want and doubles as an MP3 player). I do like seeing all the crazy modifications/hacks people do, but I would rather spend my spare time playing games instead of modifying the use of the hardware.
    • Well I justify using a Dreamcast as a NES by reminding myself that my brother gave away the NES and Gamestop inflates the price per console to about 70 USD, well above a PSOne.
    • Well, the nice part of the DC is that there are no hacks or mods required to run 3rd party software - just download and burn. Its simple, neet, sweet, petite.

      That, and some nice PC titles have been ported. Most of the major famous games that went open source (Q1,2, Descent, Doom, Wolf, ROTT, etc) have been ported to DC. Jumpnbump.

      Most notably, the SNES emulator is pretty friggin sweet for some games. Emulators in general are a pretty good feature.

  • The price is right! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thelenm ( 213782 ) <mthelen.gmail@com> on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:47PM (#5888152) Homepage Journal
    I recently got a used Dreamcast for less than $50 at Electronics Boutique, and the games sell for less than $10 or so. As far as I can tell, the hardware is just about as good as any other console, and at that price, it's hard to say it's not worth it.

  • well, undead is a pretty gray area (Score:4, Insightful)

    by peteshaw ( 99766 ) <slashdot@peteshaw.fastmail.fm> on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:51PM (#5888177) Homepage
    I mean, the Atari 2600 is technically undead because people still make new games for it, trade games, and even make goofy hardwood handheld versions of it.

    This is all uber-cool and very stimulating to my inner nerd self, but lets be real-- its not exactly giving the Xbox a run for the money.

    On the other hand, the dreamcast is a very nice little custom game platform. I am surprised no one has figured out commercial applications for a 50 dollar Windows CE based platform that has zippy graphics, a cd-rom drive, and a modem. Hey, add a crad reader and a tv and you could make it into an ATM!

    Oh well. I bought the Dreamcast for one reason, and one reason only. A reason that refuses to die even this very day. And that reason is....

    S E A M A N !

    (start Leonard Nimoy's voice)

    Welcome back. It is good to see you so.....
    (unnatural pause) ...soon
  • It ain't dead -- at least not until I get around to finishing Shenmue. I need to wait until the bars open so I can ask some sailors a question, and until I work up the patience to wander around all day waiting for sundown, the platform is still in business.

    Plus, I need to invest the time to figure out how to burn a CD with MAME and some ROMs. That should prolong its life.

  • Well unless you are playing a tech demo.

    The games that you can get for the dreamcast are still some of the very best games availible for any console. Plus you can pick up a new DC at some places for under $50 and the best games for around $10-$20.

    That is a hard bargin to pass up.

  • Better value than PS2, Cube... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wizbit ( 122290 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @12:09AM (#5888270)
    I am a student, and wanted to get this thing based solely on the fact that I'd be able to get it cheap and buy second-hand games for next to nothing. I see my buddies with Playstations and Gamecubes and I like most of the games they play, but my roommate and I have gotten literally HUNDREDS of hours out of my $14 NHL 2K2 - and I know my friend put Zelda Wind Waker down inside of three days (as soon as he beat it).

    The games are easy to back up (which, yes, makes them easy to pirate, too) so I don't have to worry about $60 going to waste on a PS2 DVD because of an errant fall or a little carelessness in loading the disc. The one concern I have with the DC is the laser motor - sites like DCEmu [dcemulation.com] seem to indicate this is a legitimate fear, as there are tools available on their site making backups a little easier on the DC's laser.

    I got my DC with a dozen games, two controllers and a memory pack for under $50. I bought more games but I still play the nucleus of old games and get at least a couple hours' use out of them every night. Needless to say, I am very happy with this purchase. :)
    • Not entirely true. DC games are not easy to "backup." Your originals will not be copyable through conventional means and even if you do copy the files in a game, they'll need to be cracked and probably modified to run under a standard ISO9660 FS. They're easy to "backup" because of a small group of people who cracked the games. Their efforts were possible because of a loophole in Sega's MIL-CD format allowed a game's contents--burned onto CD-R--to be recognized by the console. Copying these "backups" is ea
      • False. I dunno what games you're talking about, but of the ones I own (GD-ROMs), the copy sometimes IS as easy as copying the files. Often a header or special session mastering will be necessary, but this is well documented. And you can roll your own CD's from flat files (I've done it) - it's necessary if you wish to use the emulators on DCEmu or run LinuxDC, etc.
        • I'm talking about the following GD-ROMs I have: F355 Challenge, Vanishing Point, Unreal Tournament, Tokyo Extreme Racer 2, Test Drive: Le Mans, and a few more that I cannot recall. They're all original and you cannot use something like WinOnCD, DiscJuggler, Nero, CDRWin, etc. to copy these files, because the real data is in a section outside the first which is what most CD-/DVD-ROM drives will read. If it is well documented, I would appreciate a link because it would like to back these up!

          The well-document
          • i have copied vanishing point, TER, and test drive le mans using DiscJuggler. should add that even on my relatively old DVD/CD-RW drive, it reads the data track as well as the session info without issue.

            check out DCEmu [dcemulation.com], I promise, there's a lot of documentation on doing this.
            • OK, whatever you say. If it works for you, great. Never worked for me nor everyone who has legitimate GD-ROMs. Probably is why every topic on "backups" on that site results a topic closed along with people who state "no warez" and such.
              • my point was, it's easier to back up CDs than DVDs, especially since i am minus a DVD burner. i'm sorry if you've had no success copying your games; it's no reason to denounce me as a warez pirate. i was only trying to help.
                • Actually, my intention was not to denounce you as a warez pirate. Only the threads that had the word "backup" in a those forums and a lot of other DC websites refer to them as warez. I do appreciate your help and am open to ideas; however, I have never heard of people who were successful in using normal PC CD authoring programs in producing bootable commercial DC GD-ROMs ever since I have owned my DC since mid-2000.

                  You say the DCEmu has a lot of information; however, their focus is in-house software develo
  • On a pirate site which I shan't name, I saw, free for download, a collection of two Dreamcast emulation programs and all the games ever released worldwide for the platform. The collection weighed in at a staggering 3.3 gigabytes, compressed. I think there were some 2,000+ games. If it took you a day to get tired of a game, that's at least 6 years of no repeats.

    With a legacy like that, I'd expect it to last a good, long time.
    • The collection was for SNES.

      X_X;
      • Makes me wish there was a way to take back my previous post now. heh...

        Or better yet, when I hit preview how about I get shown all the other current replies at the same level so it ensures that someone doesn't make a correction while I'm typing up my post thereby making me look like an ass when I do post it.

        Hmmmm.. Nah. Taco would never go for it.

        (Wandering Mind Rant Over)
    • 2,000+? Obviously a lot more games were released in Japan and Europe than I was aware of, or they're including things like the SNES emulator and many roms and counting each as a seperate game, as only 248 Dreamcast games [sega.com] were released in North America.

      Even the SNES had far fewer than 2,000 games released for it if my memory serves me correctly.

  • Interweb Terminal (Score:5, Informative)

    by ahoehn ( 301327 ) * <andrew&hoe,hn> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @12:17AM (#5888312) Homepage
    Among the other mentioned uses, the dreamcast will work wonderfully as an interweb device. If you can find the keyboard and mouse attachments, or use one of the adaptors that Mad Catz sold for ps2 keyboards, it's very simple to set up the included web browsing software and have at it. All dreamcasts came with a built in modem, and if you can find one, the broadband adaptors work well also. If you don't want to shell out the money for the expensive and rare broadband adaptor, you can still connect your dreamcast to the internet through your PC's broadband connection using the guide here for windows [rr.com] and here for linux [kinox.org].
  • Damn, an Undead! Simon, cover me while I chant 'Turn Undead'!

    ....you meant "Is the Dreamcast Not Dead"?
  • but it's dying. At least mine is, anyway. Something has weakened the motor so that it cannot provide the necessary torque to bring the disc up to speed.

    Solution: After I turn the machine on, I open the lid and rapidly spin the disc with my finger, then slam the lid shut (like the propellers on old WWI planes). While the motor can't accelerate , it is apparently powerful enough to keep it going at a constant angular velocity. Besides, my friends get a kick out of watching me do it.

    • You know, a similar thing happened to my playstation. It was a very old unit, and in order to play games properly I had to open the top (the cd_lid_closed toggle was controlled by a switch) and spin the disk backwards. Without spinning backwards the disk would only spin up for a second before stopping. I have no theory why it did this.

      It also overheated a lot in the LA summer, and required manual cooling. Unfortunately, due to being electronic liquid water was out of the question. My roommate was quit

  • I Love my DC! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @01:41AM (#5888667) Homepage
    Last year sometime, our NES burnt out. We tried to replace the capacitor that blew, but it wasn't the exact one we needed and the NES will only run for a few minutes then die between reboots. So... I forget about it.

    A few months ago, I was really jonsin for some NES. I tried using an emulator on my iBook and my PDA, but it just wasn't what I wanted. I was thinking about making an NES controller adapter for my iBook or PC and then outputting to the screen, but that was a huge PIA.

    The other option was buying a new NES. After looking around some, I accidentally came across information about emulation on the Dreamcast. Did a little math, and found that it would likely be cheaper to get a DC than it would to get an NES that worked with some additional games!

    So, I bought a DC for $30 from Half.com. [half.com] I've seen them at my local Funcoland for $35 as well. Man, $30! For that $30, I have a machine that can not only play the NES games I have, but pretty much every damned NES game that has ever existed. Plus, SNES, Genesis, Sega Master System, and others! And, I don't have to deal with a super-crashy NES and all the associated mouth-wind-rituals involved.

    I am not sure if it is needed, but I made sure to get a DC manufactured before Dec 2000 (or whatever the cut-off is), so that I could easily burn CDs of ROMs and emulators as well as my own and other folks' homebrew software.

    I don't own one DC game though... I've been meaning to find out a couple decent ones and buy them cheap. But we've got the GameCube for that, so I've not really been motivated to look too hard.

    Can anyone reccomend any really good games that can be had for the DC that I couldn't get for the GameCube? I'd love to hear some reccomendations!

    • Re:I Love my DC! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:18AM (#5889119)
      Dreamcast had so many great games it's unbelievable:

      - Shen Mue 1 (unbelievable adventure/fighting game)
      - Shen Mue 2 (sequel to previously mentioned unbelievable adventure/fighting game)
      - Rayman 2 (available on other systems)
      - Bangai-O (incredibly fun Shooter)
      - Skies of Arcadia (I know you said something you *can't* get on GC, but I had to list it off anyway)
      - Grandia 2 (too good not to list, despite it being available on PS2)
      - Soul Calibur (nearly the best 3D fighter ever made for console)
      - Virtua Tennis 1 & 2 (I loath sports games. I played the hell out of these until my hands bled. Very fun 4 player)
      - Powerstone 1 & 2 (pretty fun multiplayer titles. I can only really recommend if you have 3-4 players involved)
      - Crazy Taxi 1 & 2 (semi-entertaining driving games)
      - Sword of the Berserk (relatively decent hack and slash for fans of the manga by the same name. You'll like it more if you're already familiar with the series)
      - Chu Chu Rocket (very fun four player puzzle game)
      - NFL2k1 & 2k2 (very fun, addictive and well designed football games. I hate sports games but I played these as much as the tennis games)

      I have bizarre taste in games, but that's everything I really enjoy on that system. There's a few others to check out if you're really bored, but I can't guarantee you will see the beauty in these titles the way I do:

      - Zombie Revenge (insanely cheesy Zombie killing action. horrid controls, horrid plot, budget game all the way, but it's so very fun to play)
      - Samba De Amigo (very quirky and really addictive music title. I recommend tracking down the maraca controllers)
      - Seaman (not incredibly good, but too quirky and unique not to list)
      - Space Channel 5 (same as above, not too incredible, but really strange and fun)
      - Vanishing Point (Interesting racing game. Not the best, but killer stunt driving tests that will make your head hurt)
      - Wild Metal (this game is horrid. For some reason it addicted my best friend and I in the multiplayer, so we played it for more hours than your average RPG. Interesting use of basic physics in gameplay, good variety of weapons, and it was pretty fun. Very reminiscent of Scorched Earth. Really bad game though, you've been warned)

      Hope I didn't leave anything out. With that said, I hope you at least pick up the Shen Mue games. Those two games alone have honestly been the the most amazing experiences I've had in a game since I was a wee lad. Nothing else like them.
    • Record of Lodoss War - A Diablo clone and in some ways improves on Diablo. A very long game and fun game. A little difficult to find though.
      Daytona USA - This game is great fun! This is a spot on perfect arcade translation.
      Wacky Races - This one is great fun too. Racing around with Captain Caveman is just too cool to miss. :)
      Any of the Sega 2kx sports games... They're all pretty fun if you're into sports games. Try to get a 2k1 or 2k2 if you can though as it will have more features than older versions
    • I ordered my dreamcast before it came out on amazon. I'm just one of those guys. I still have it hooked up on the rack along side my xbox, ps2, ... down to my still running nes and master system. the DC gets plenty of play on a couple of classic games that you could probably get for $10 or download with whatever means you kids use these days. The list is as follows:

      1) Soul Calibur - Probably still my favorite fighting game. I mean, you beat people with dope weapons? Respect.

      2)Any of the Sega Spor

  • DC!! (Score:1)

    by nekoes ( 613370 )
    Yeah, I gotta say that even though it is supposedly dead, it -still- justifies the $50. All the games you can get for dirt cheap, and the hax0r scene is pretty alive. Up until recently I was still playing my DC more than my PS2 and Xbox combined, Skies of Arcadia and Grandia 2 were really great. I guess you can pick up both titles for gc, ps2, xbox or whatever. Probably at the price of the DC + a game though. Oh well. DC is still hardcore.

    However, only downside are the VMUs. While they are really novel, th

  • Undead, but not alive (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @02:49AM (#5888892) Homepage Journal
    Let's not make such a big deal every time hackers find new uses for remaindered hardware. It doesn't mean that the Dreamcast (or the Newton, or the Atari 800) is risen from the dead. It means exactly the opposite -- all the sales channels are liquidating at fire sale prices, and the hackers are benefiting. But now, because when they're gone, they're GONE !!!!

    A long time ago, I worked for Convergent Technologies, which partnered with post-breakup AT&T to produce the first commercial hardware to be sold under the AT&T label. (Before the breakup, AT&T was a utility, and thus not allowed to sell hardware commercially.) This was (dig the irony) "Project Safari". The biggest result of this collaboration was the Unix PC [taronga.com].

    Now, AT&T spent about $1 billion on this project. Paid most of it to Convergent to fill their supply chain with these boxes. Which they never even tried to sell, because upper management decided to concentrate on IBM compatibles. Almost all got remaindered away to various hackers who jumped at the chance to buy a serious Unix workstation for less then it cost to manufacture the thing. Hundreds of people got their introduction to Unix this way. Not a bad thing, but not a ressurection either.

  • Wait, was the DC ever alive anyway?

    But all joking aside, the DC rocks. Sega just has really bad luck with gaming systems. The genesis did really well, but the sega CD and 32x bombed. Which was sad, because sega CD had some really solid games.

    Bah, I'm too tired to rant.
  • My DC is one of five or six consoles currently sitting in front of my TV. I ended up getting it with the help of my mother after a couple of junkies broke into my house and took my Playstation and something like 80 games. (God bless drugs.)

    For arcade fighting, especially 2D, no other console can beat the Dreamcast. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were two of the coolest games I've ever played, you can get discs of old ROMs (SNES and Megadrive) to play on a DC, and finding older games and/or ISOs is pretty easy now
  • I am fortunate enough to own an Xbox, a Gamecube, a PC (and a mac, but we won't go there..) as well as a dreamcast. I can honestly say the DC gets more use that the rest put together.
    Ikaruga, Rez, Gigawing, Soul Calibur, Zero Gunner, Mars Matrix - all waiting to be bettered.
    If your in the UK don't look at it as a cheap platform though - most of the best games are imports costing up to £50 a pop.
    • Rez is absolutely amazing. Too few people have given it a go, imo. That last level is just ... wow.. May not be my favorite level, but still wow. :) To be honest, I still haven't finished it. I guess I should probably do that today. (Just finished univ.; suddenly have lots of free time before I get a job. ;)

      Incidentally, I wish they'd hurry up and do their production run of the new Dreamcast BBAs. It's getting more than a little annoying; I could really use mine now..

  • Dreamcast is terriffic for its price and ability to run Linux and NetBSD off CDs. Ive always wanted to put a beowulf cluster of dreamcasts on my resume.. but have yet to buy the first dreamcast. The problem is I'm always considering PS2 that might fall in price after the PS3 is debuted, which has native Linux support. The dreamcast also has its BBA thats too expensive.. dont you just wish it had an ISA slot instead?
  • Standing in EB, one can see used Capcom vs Marvel 2 DC for $35US, and then turn around and see the same title for PS2 for $39US.

    This is one of the reasons I decided to break down and get a PS2. The games I wanted were availible on current platforms at nearly the same if not better prices.

    Now, indeed there are some good cheap games out there: Tokyo Xtreme Racer ($14.99), SF3 Double Impact ($14.99), Virtua Fighter 3TB ($8.00, I was dancing over that one), Shenmue ($19.99), ShadowMan ($14.99). But on the who
    • What? You mean you don't want one of the 50 (yes, I may be exagerrating here) different football games that all the stores seem to carry?

    • You're standing in a national chain of price-hiking game stores and expecting a bargain on, well, anything?

      Sorry, but places like EBX, Electronics Boutique, Software Etc., and really any other game shop that is big enough to live in a mall, are major clip joints. "Trade in your old system (like, say, a Dreamcast :) plus fifty of your old games and we'll give you a two dollar credit towards a new game, and price your old stuff to sell at just a bit under original retail!"

      Try the game shops that live in s

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