Sega Dreamcast

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I'm thinking of getting one of these if I can get one at a good price and I would love to hear about people's experiences with this system. At the moment, there are three main things that are holding me back:

1) Controller

The gamepad looks quite bulky and difficult to use. Is that the case?

2) Colour

The descriptions on eBay suggest that the DC is quite prone to yellowing

3) Emulators

One of the main attractions for me is the availability of emulators for the DC; especially MAME. How good is the emulation?

Also, it would be great to hear about some of the games on the DC and how good they are and whether they're worth buying.

Yes, the Dreamcast controller is big. It is bulky. It feels heavier than it should. You need to stick a giant VMU (memory card) into the front of the controller to save games, and individual VMU's don't carry much memory at all. That being said, when playing games, it isn't overly difficult to use the controller because most games have pretty good control setups.

The plastic on the Dreamcast tends to yellow with repeated use. However, this yellowing doesn't affect how well the system works.

As for how well the Dreamcast emulates games, I have no idea. I've never emulated anything on my Dreamcast.

Many of the games available for the Dreamcast seem to be high-res ports of older PlayStation games (for example, Resident Evil 2 and 3). There are notable exceptions to this. Shenmue, Sword of the Berserk, Dynamite Cop, Ikaruga, and Sonic Adventure are all excellent games. Those are the titles I'd recommend.

The Dreamcast was one of the greatest old gaming systems. It's graphics at the time were the best, it is unfortunate that there weren't that many games released for it. I manged to play about 15 games for dreamcast and I loved most of them.

The controller although large seems to work in your hands no problem, very easy to get used too.

Had a dreamcast for many many years, no yellowing. Never heard of that before, maybe it's an early/later model.

during the days of dreamcast dying out, I had heard of people using dreamcast emulators. Never used one myself but my guess is they work.

If you're into sports try Dave Mirra BMX (GOOD MUSIC, awesome tricks, good graphics, and large playground), NBA 2K, or NFL2K + any additional 2K series are just amazing and feel like they're even above some of the NBA/NFL games out today that's how smooth they run. Those are some of the good ones that I actually remember. There was this really interesting game which I always wanted to try. It's in the top 25 of DC games on IGN, called "SEAMAN" You basically take care of a fish with a mans head, or a mans head with a fish body that's voiced by leonard nimoy. This fish has a mind of it's own... very interesting game from what I've seen of it. Might as well try it. Was just looking at the top list and saw an old game that I enjoyed back then... It's called Powerstone, there's also a Powerstone2 which was good. This is a fighting game. Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 is good, never tried it on DC, but on other platforms and it was an amazing sequel to thps. Oh wow Crazy Taxi/Taxi is also a game that was very enjoyable. Jet Grind radio was really cool, used cell shaded graphics for a crazy rollerblading game.

It's unfortunate they only made it for two years and then quit. There were lot of problems with the system I remember hearing so they released a second version of it fixing all the bugs for it. Both systems were the same.


I remember it was one of the earliest gaming systems you can use to get online with but you needed a phone cord to connect online.

The VMU also doubled as an early portable game machine; Skies of Arcadia, for instance, used the VMU and its controller buttons to play a simple minigame about the navigator Pinta and his quest to collect unusual items (which would then become part of the inventory aboard the Delphinus, after he was recruited). The Moonfish sidequest in the GameCube adaptation Skies of Arcadia: Legends was inserted in order to take the place of the missing minigame. (They also added the Angel of Death storyline, although this seemed more of an attempt to fill in the backstories of Vyse and Aika than anything else.)

No.

It's actually very comfortable, I was surprised when I first held one...I'd put it somewhere next to the GameCube as far as comfort/usability goes. Switching between the d-pad and the analogue stick feels so natural, that often times I find myself using the wrong one without even noticing.

Though the AB/XY buttons are a little too far apart as far as Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena are concerned, it still works alright. The only real gripe I have is that the d-pad doesn't work very well for Street Fighter (a lot of jumps when you meant to press forward), but it's nowhere near as bad as the 360's d-pad, or even the original XBox's.



I've never heard or seen anything about this. The DC does come in several different colors though, some being more pricey than others.



Not so much =/

I do have a copy of MAME burned, I haven't played around with it too much, but I remember I did try a few games and it was kind of slow. Can't remember how old the games were...I might have to find that disc and give it another try sometime. It comes with three different versions of MAME, one for three different eras of games, for better optimization.

There's a Genesis emulator that works really well, except the compatibility is kind of low, so there's a lot of games that suffer garbled graphics and what-not. They've released a newer version since I last burned it, I haven't tried it yet.

SNES emulation I've heard is slow so I haven't bothered.

NES emulation is good. SMS and GG emulation is good.

Honestly, I haven't touched any emus on the DC in ages, since the Wii does such a stellar job at it (though I haven't tried MAME on the Wii yet).



I've never heard that. The only thing I've heard is that there's a rumor that there are certain revisions of the console that won't run CD-Rs.



No, they made a broadband adapter for it.

The VMU was very helpful is some games. In Resident Evil 3, the VMU screen would show your ECG condition, so you never had to switch between the game and item screens while playing. And Sonic Adventure had the VMU be used to raise Chao's.

My DC arrived today and I think I've fallen in love. The gamepad handles like a dream (as good as the GameCube pad, if not better); the games I've played so far (Crazy Taxi 2 and Jet Set Radio) are awesome.

It's a travesty that this console didn't get more air-time with the general public.

Okay, so I pulled out my old MAME disc today, and I was wrong...it isn't slow so much as it's...well...I couldn't get any games to run without crashing =)

i own one and it's used and hasn't turned yellow yet, i'm not sure how old it is but it looks to me like it was used quiet a bit.

if you are buying one make sure you know what video cables it has, it comes with the cable style [the older style], or avi [newer style with red yellow and blue]. mine had the older style, i was not happy.

as for the controller it takes some getting used to espeashily if you have a ps1\2\3 gamecube or something else with a average size controller. the analog stick is a bit fincky [or well mine is] memory cards are pretty crappy and don't hold much stuff.

as for homebrew i never tried it and i never will. but there is a certain year where dreamcasts were made unhackable, so if you want one for homebrew it has to be a older model.

A friend gave me one of his spares a few months ago, but eh, finding good games for it in my area is pretty tough. It's all the same NFL game or demo disc lol.

You should give eBay or Amazon a try. All the good stuff goes on the internet.

yeah amazon or ebay, anything for the dreamcast is a bear to find, though there not many games out there for it, i got mine because i've wanted one for years when i was younger sonic was my first fav character, so getting a dreamcast sega's lost system was symbolic to me. because i was pretty dang good at sonic adventure 2 on the gamecube, i had one last mission to a-rank knuckles last space mission, and then i accidently deleted my save file, i was never able to play an action game for years after that.

dang now i want to fire it up again, i've got several games for mine.

I bought one brand new from ebay 3 years ago,but it is original brand new,it ws cheap since there were many in stock,i don't know now though.

I like the controller of the Dreamcast. Yes it is big but it's shaped well so that it fits in your hands. I prefer it a lot to the Xbox (original) controllers which I just couldn't physically get my hands round (small hands).

As for the yellowing, yes this has happened to one of my Dreamcasts. I kept it in the conservatory for a long time, which is why it has gone yellow. Grey games consoles and sun don't mix (I've heard that UK SNES consoles were also prone to yellowing in sunlight).

Don't know about the third thing... however I must warn you to look after your parts because if something breaks, it's very difficult to find a replacement. The RF lead broke on mine and I couldn't just replace it with a new one because it was specially designed to fit the DC. Hence the reason I now have 2 Dreamcasts

Game wise- it depends on what you're interested in. Jet set radio and Crazy taxi are two of my favourites. I also enjoyed playing Sonic adventures (if you can ignore the horrendous graphic errors!), Chu-chu rocket (simple but addictive)... actually random thing here... I just looked in my drawer and found three games I don't remember buying! I seem to have Soul Calibur, Ecco the dolphin and Sega rally championship! I might get back to you on those then!

I still haven't beaten the game "Herc's Adventure"

Mind you I was trying to when I was 4 or 5, though no excuse.

By far one of the Funnest consoles I've ever played, though.

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