How Long B4 We Have A Dreamcast Emulator On the PC?

K

KrispyKremer

New member
On the PC, we have emulators for just about every console up to (and including) the Sony Playstation. With newer faster cpus and graphic cards, how long until we can expect to see a Dreamcast emulator? I'd really like to check out Soul Calibur and Virtua Tennis, but buying the console for these 2 games isn't worth it to me. Besides, with the system no longer in production, we can't honestly expect the software list to grow as most companies have moved over to the PS2, GameCube and X-Box.

Any ideas?
 
well i think there are a lot of great games on the dc, i think it will be really hard to get a good dc emu going with todays computers, as for the software list there are hundreds of dc titles, hehe best console i ever bought, some n64 games are hard to emulate on todays pcs, the dc pushes alot of polygons so it might be a long time before we have a good emu for it
 
Not to mention the issue of getting CD drives to read GD-roms...unless you have some external hardware but that would make it really expensive. Whatever happened to that PC "Dreamcast on a chip" thing they were contemplating awhile back?
 
Yah, the problem with hardware capable of reading/copying 1GB GD-ROMs is a big hinderence. I can't see too many games being posted on the web either.
 
With DVD drives becoming more and more common, wouldn't the GD format be less of an issue, size-wise? Granted, I don't know the technical ins and outs, but in a year or two when we've got more powerful pcs, I'm sure someone out there will be able to come up with an emu.

It's unfortunate this may be the only way future generations even know about some of the fantastic titles that are available, and this includes not only consoles but arcade emulation as well.
 
MyTMouse said:
Yah, the problem with hardware capable of reading/copying 1GB GD-ROMs is a big hinderence. I can't see too many games being posted on the web either.
Click to expand...

plenty of games all over the web, you just gotta know where to look, i have over 70 i have burned to a regular cdr, there are dc emus but i dont even bother cause i dont think my pc is fast enough to run them, i dont think the gdrom is as much an issue as todays pcs not having the power to run them at a playable quality
 
Are there any REAL DC emus that actually run commercial games now? (the closest I've seen are only able to load the SEGA startup screen and not much else)? I thought the ones I came across were all either fake or another opportunity to distribute malicious attachments.
 
Yah I know that there are DC games you can download but nowhere near as many as you would get like say SNES ROMs that are so much smaller. DVD games are going to suffer the same fate. Sure there will always be people to host 4GB+ games but few and far between
 
dc and psx games are just as easy to get as snes roms if your on a fast connection and know where to look, im also seeing a whole lot of ps2 games popping up on some irc servers
 
How does that work anyway? You mean you can just burn a game to a regular old CDR and the console will recognize it? I thought most of these games exceeded the capacity of a normal 800MB CD? Don't all of these proprietary formats exist for a reason?
 
yep just burn on a regular cdr, im not sure about the ps2 but the dc games you can do that way, most will actualy fit on a 650mb cd, noy sure how it works but it does and free games kick ass:D
 
MOldyfish, to a major extent the GD Rom was designed as a deterrent to piracy. (As no standard cdrom drive can read these discs). That was until some clever individuals found a way to mod the neogeo pocket/dreamcast link so that it could link the dc to a home computer (to use the gdrom drive). :)
 
PS2 and DC games are easy....

PS2 and DC games are easy....

When they rip a DC game, basically nothing is lost (except for huge games.... Skies of Arcadia) and it fits on a 80 min cd...

PS2 games are a little harder, as most Ps2 games are Dvd.. Alot is ripped, and most it movies, stereo sound converted to mono, but it is very playable. You need a Neo2 chip and a gameshark 1.4 to enjoy a copy ps2 game. The DC games now, are all self booting......


Sh4d0wh4x0r Out.......
 
As far as I knew most PS2 games are still being produced on 650MB CD's...most games don't need the space a DVD disk provides yet. Anywho, the bigger games get the less people there will be to host them or download them. Broadband is still not available in a lot of areas. I can't see people downloading full DVD games on 56K modems :D
 
lol

lol

that doesn't emulate dreamcast
it let's dreamcast emulate PSX
useless pice of software as it only emulates Gran Tourismo
 
Boy has this thread gone off topic! ;)

With the power increases of today's systems, I figure it's simply a matter of time before some creative programmer releases an emulator for the PC that plays Dreamcast discs.

Eventually, I won't be surprised when we get a PS2 emulator, but don't expect one for another couple years. By then we'll have 5GHz machines anyway. Plus, by this time hopefully either a majority will be using broadband or we will have moved on to fiber lines.

Sega would be wise to release one (an emulator for the PC) themselves. It would be much cheaper than the hardware, and by doing so they could continue to sell the software and make money.
 
There will always be emulators or attempts at emulators but you have to consider this. People making emulators aren't getting paid for it...at least not that I know of. They are doing it in their own time just out of their own interest. Emulators at best are crappy. The SNES has been out for a long time and there isn't one emulator that can play all the games. In fact, I doubt there are any emulators that are 100% perfect and this is with older, less complex consoles. The N64 is an example of a machine that is hard to emulate. Only a couple emulators out there can actually play a few commercial games decently. As the consoles get more complex and games get bigger I think emulators are going to die out quickly. Who has the time/will to make a good emulator? While still being possible It's very doubtful. If emulators for older consoles are so shoddy and unreliable what makes you think things will improve?
 
ZSNES IMO is pretty damned close to being perfect nowadays and has only a handful of games that are incompatible now (and that list shrinks with every release, even got Star Ocean working to some extent). Like you said, there will always be emulation attempts for every console but I think it's more of a "climb the mountain because it's there" mentality rather than always financial reasons (though donations are always nice ;) ). Realityman and the rest of the team gets bragging rights for being the FIRST to write an emulator that plays commercial N64 ROMS at a decent framerate.
 
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