Dreamcast: IT'S ALIIIIIIVE!

[Raiden]

Alright, so, things have been HELLA STRESSFUL lately with projects in grad school and stuff like that. So I figured I needed a de-stressing project. Thinking of what I could do, I decided I could try and fix my old Dreamcast. I had loved the system and spent WAY too much time playing the damn thing, but then it started doing what all Dreamcasts do and refused to play discs. And I'm not saying it stopped playing and I gave up. Nosiree, I was doing all kinds of voodoo to that thing, like playing with the system upside down or spinning the discs backwards before quickly closing it and starting it up, and that extended the life for a while, but the Dreamcast was just a poorly built system.

ANYWHO, I found about two other systems on eBay for $5 a pop, and ordered them, and spent my Thanksgiving weekend scavenging parts from the three systems to make one frankenstein working system. And now that I have a working system again, I'm thinking of searching for some new games I had always wanted to play but never had the budget for when I was younger. Any recommendations or tales of favorite Dreamcast games?

My library currently is:
- Grandia 2 (only game that refuses to play, which is upsetting since it's one of my top two favorite games)
- Skies of Arcadia (my other favorite game)
- Jet Grind Radio
- Tech Romancer
- Phantasy Star Online ver. 2 (it's lonely playing that game now without a server)
- Sonic Adventure
- Evolution 1 & 2
- Chicken Run
- Floigan Brothers
- Power Stone

[Kyanbu The Legend]

My Dreamcast has power failure issues. It resets itself when ever I cut it on.

It saddens me so. Anyway loved playing Sonic Adventures 1 and 2 on it. Evolution 1 and 2 I still haven't beat yet due to said problem.

And good god I played Jet Grind Radio to death.

This thread title made me think Sega revived it with a new Console.

You bastard...

[Nique]

Crazy Taxi 1 & 2 aren't bad if you mute the tv while playing.

[DarkDrgon]

I always thought the Dreamcast had bitchin' memory cards. That shit was nice, did what the Gamecube-GBA stuff did. only with a worse screen

[Arcanum]

Crazy Taxi 1 & 2 aren't bad if you mute the tv while playing.

What? But the music and sound effects are the best part of that game. The BEST!!!!

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I always thought the Dreamcast had bitchin' memory cards. That shit was nice, did what the Gamecube-GBA stuff did. only with a worse screen

Still bitchin' though. Expensive as fuck during it's prime but bitchin'.

[Nique]

What? But the music and sound effects are the best part of that game.

Dude the announcer was the worst.

[Hatake Kakashi]

Depending on the firmware of the Dreamcast you're using, you may be able to use it to play more than Dreamcast games. While the heyday of Dreamcast modding is well past, you may still be able to find stuff you can use with the NOPE project. UH-UH was basically a fun way to get the DC to play SNES games using a boot loader disk, an emulator on the disk, and a ton of roms of SNES games that were already on American shores, or even stuff that never made the trip overseas. If you're lucky, someone might even have made a worthy fan translation of the game. I do believe there's a translated copy of Seiken Densetsu 3 (direct sequel to The Secret of Mana) around the internet somewhere. LOLNO usually has a worthy selection of roms to choose from. Just for copyright law's sake, I must inform you that they're only legal if you have an SNES and a copy of the game that you'd be downloading. Of course you do, right?

[Jagos]

What? But the music and sound effects are the best part of that game. The BEST!!!!

That was too much Offspring.

[POS Industries]

Depending on the firmware of the Dreamcast you're using, you may be able to use it to play more than Dreamcast games. While the heyday of Dreamcast modding is well past, you may still be able to find stuff you can use with the NOPE project. UH-UH was basically a fun way to get the DC to play SNES games using a boot loader disk, an emulator on the disk, and a ton of roms of SNES games that were already on American shores, or even stuff that never made the trip overseas. If you're lucky, someone might even have made a worthy fan translation of the game. I do believe there's a translated copy of Seiken Densetsu 3 (direct sequel to The Secret of Mana) around the internet somewhere. LOLNO usually has a worthy selection of roms to choose from. Just for copyright law's sake, I must inform you that they're only legal if you have an SNES and a copy of the game that you'd be downloading. Of course you do, right?
Sorry, but we can't really support the "distribution of copyrighted ROMs" thing here for obvious legal reasons, regardless of your helpful disclaimer at the end.

Please make a note of it in the future.

[Hatake Kakashi]

Duly noted. Since my post was already edited, I won't go out of my way to adjust it. If people wanna know, well, that's what contacting in private is for, ne?

[Raiden]

I think the edits made it even better. The Nope Project sounds like something someone would do.

Anyway, for the power problem? There's a way to fix that through the readjusting of the power prongs, but that's an electrocution risk so I wouldn't recommend it unless you really know what you're doing.

And if all else fails, you can buy still-working Dreamcasts on eBay.

Really, the Dreamcast was a super awesome system that had two things going wrong with it. One was the hardware, which let's be honest was a piece of shit. They used a GD-Rom that almost no one makes anymore, the console itself was lazily put together, and it's just made to fall apart. But Sega has never had a good track record with the hardware of their consoles.

The other downside was just the software itself. Making ports of these games are really hard because of the programming not meshing well with other types. I point to the PS2 version of Grandia II for evidence.

[Hatake Kakashi]

Really, the Dreamcast was a super awesome system that had two things going wrong with it. One was the hardware, which let's be honest was a piece of shit. They used a GD-Rom that almost no one makes anymore, the console itself was lazily put together, and it's just made to fall apart. But Sega has never had a good track record with the hardware of their consoles.

The other downside was just the software itself. Making ports of these games are really hard because of the programming not meshing well with other types. I point to the PS2 version of Grandia II for evidence.

Given the kind of hardware that was actually available at the time, I'd say the DC was actually quite well done. While it is true that the techniques used to put it together were a bit sub-par, the quality of the actual components was excellent.

I still have two of the original consoles (released before Sega became aware of the modding projects on it) that are running strong, playing both DC games and other games with ease. Haven't had to do a thing to em except for blowing the dust out of them on occasion.