dreamcast.

[undexsym]

dreamcast.

 

[Null]

 

[matzesu]

Dreamcast got some quite cool Games, and having its own tiny lcd games in form of the Memory Carts was also quite cool ^^ My first Actuall TV Console where an PS2, but as the Pyra can emulate Dreamcast, and the Win Mini even Gamecube, i think when i think about the past, i had more likly got me an Dreamcast or Gamecube instead back then..

 

[ElPoco]

I wanted to vote Bangai-O but it didn't let me

 

[TeDaDeS]

I loved my Dreamcast. It wasn't the most populair console at the time in my region, making games expensive and sometimes hard to get. And the nice looking blue boxes containing the game would break too easily.
At the time Shenmue was 130DM (€66?) if I remember correctly, which was costly. I also had a VGA box.

 

[matzesu]

I did a Emulation Test Back then on Steamdeck, whit a "Survival Mode Beat em Up Challenge" (Play the Survival Mode on every Beam em Up until you lose, than play the next BMU, first on PS1, then on Dreamcast, and then PS2 and i did notice the Dreamcast Death or Alive 2 was about the same Graphics as the PS2 Part ..
But the Port for Dreamcast is Pyra Playable, and the PS2 Port is not ..^^

 

[kuru]

I guess I lost the little key chain which came with one of the last issues of SEGA magazine. It proudly proclaimed "128 bit" underneath the swirl.

Cant even find a picture of it, bummer.

Gotta preserve this for posterity.

 

[kuru]

Thought about DC games and I can only name one exclusive that I really liked: Metropolis Street Racer. Toy Commander was okay. Back in the day internet was the big thing for me. The 20 meters or so long telephone cable, a free Chu Chu Rocket game and later Phantasy Star Online were great. Loved the picture-based hot-key chat system. But all in all I had a lot more fun with the Saturn. Best SEGA console ever.

 

[PowerGod]

Dreamcast Death or Alive 2 was about the same Graphics as the PS2 Part

The Dreamcast even with an inferior hardware, had an incredible graphic optimization, it was able to remove from calculations all the graphic parts that were "outside" the displayed area, this was especially effective with 3D objects.

As far as I know, the first console that used a similar technique after the Dreamcast was the PlayStation 3.

 

[netcat]

I can only name one exclusive that I really liked: Metropolis Street Racer

Agree completely. But it’s too hard.

Rez is pretty cool.

GC had waaaaaay better games.

 

[kuru]

Agree completely. But it’s too hard.

Rez is pretty cool.

GC had waaaaaay better games.

Aye. Gosh darned hardest racing game I've ever played. Never made it past the Opel/Vauxhall coupe. But hey, they promised to give away an Opel/Vauxhall Roadster for the no. 1 on the leader board. Dunno if that actually happened though.

The Dreamcast even with an inferior hardware, had an incredible graphic optimization, it was able to remove from calculations all the graphic parts that were "outside" the displayed area, this was especially effective with 3D objects.

As far as I know, the first console that used a similar technique after the Dreamcast was the PlayStation 3.

It was the first to do culling? I assumed 3d graphics had always done that. Huh! That's cool...

Edit: Guess I should say: kudos!
*wink*

Edit2: Opel Roadster is basically a Lotus.

 

[TeDaDeS]

I also liked playing Phantasy Star online (1&2), MSR and DOA2. It also had Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, with keyboard + mouse support.

The Dreamcast had more memory available for textures and some other nice tricks, making it still have nice graphics compared to its competitors (PS2/GC).

I also enjoyed the VMU, although I didn't have much games to play on there. I had a Chao on it from the Sonic game, which was good enough for me.

 

[PowerGod]

It was the first to do culling? I assumed 3d graphics had always done that. Huh! That's cool...

I don't know what kind of algorithm was using, it was referred as "Hidden Surface Removal".

But that wasn't the only thing making faster the console, it had also a better managements of depth of field.

And the antialiasing was good too compared to the other consoles, making less detailed graphic better to the eyes.

 

[gunrock]

It also did transparency more cheaply - the PowerVR had optimisations around that to reduce or speedup the read-modify-write operations (I presume it happened in a cache on the card's texture ram?)

 

[matzesu]

So i wonder how Dreamcast Emulation is possible on Pyra and to a certain degree also on Pandora.. if PS2 and Gamecube where too much even for the Anbernic Win600 ..

The Dreamcast Emulator on Pyra lacks a bit the GUI, its just a File Explorer Type, Redream on PC got a much nicer GUI where the Game Files even got a nice Picture that represents the Game Boxart ^^

 

[ElPoco]

The PS2 had a very special architecture with many processors and units working in parallel, so it's more complex to emulate than the Dreamcast. It's also more powerful than the Dreamcast. The Gamecube architecture was simpler and closer to the Dreamcast but the hardware was far more powerful.

 

[netcat]

DC was also "windoze CE compatible". Iiuc this means it could run directX games, which also run on (lowest common denominator) commodity hardware. So easier to emulate, a lot of instruction overlap.

 

[rygD]

It's the only Sega console I own

 

[TeDaDeS]

The PS2 had a very special architecture with many processors and units working in parallel, so it's more complex to emulate than the Dreamcast. It's also more powerful than the Dreamcast. The Gamecube architecture was simpler and closer to the Dreamcast but the hardware was far more powerful.

Sure, but the Dreamcast released in 1998 (in Japan), PS2 in 2000 and the Gamecube in 2001. So the Dreamcast hardware was older compared to later consoles.
While the PS2 had a much faster GPU and CPU (295MHz/5,5GFLOPS vs. 200MHz/1,4GFLOPS) the hardware mix of the Dreamcast appears to be tuned for real-life use. Games on the Dreamcast loaded textures directly into VRAM and texture compression made this easy.
The PS2 only had 4MB VRAM and worse texture compression. The textures of the game could be cached into the regular RAM but will put a strain on the (better available) bandwidth between CPU<->GPU. So to get a good looking game required a good software architecture and hardware knowledge. I think this made early PS2 games look worse compared to the older Dreamcast as they sometimes only used the 4MB VRAM.
The hardware SSAA in the Dreamcast also made it cost-effective to use anti-aliasing which made the graphics look less jaggy.
The SuperH-4 was easier to migrate to for developers familiar with the Sega platform (32X & Saturn used the SH2) compared to the more complex but faster Emotion Engine in the PS2 making it easier for developers to have good performing games early in the life of th Dreamcast. Sonic Adventure 1 and Shenmue were also developed on the Saturn first and development was migrated to the Dreamcast.

So I think looking back it's obvious the more modern consoles looked better, although I distictly remember release games of the PS2 weren't always that impressive compared to Dreamcast ones. Keep in mind that the Dreamcast hardware was competitive if not faster compared to PC hardware from 1998. The hardware was impressive in 1998 and 1999 and could compete with the PS2 in head-to-head graphics comparisons (especially in early games).
It might be that the console was killed pretty early which makes the nostalgia factor higher. We are left to wonder if we would have been playing Half-Life (which was leaked) and Halo on the Dreamcast instead, list of those games: https://www.unseen64.net/category/sega/dreamcast/

 

[matzesu]

Strange: Since the last Update for the RetroBat i got an Message when i open Dreamcast Games there that the Bios File is Missing .. but its should be there as it was part of

Spoiler: Spoiler

an Biospack

and the Game i did chose was running fine..
Also its Loads straight in the Game itself and not in the GUI from Redream ..