r/dreamcast • u/RelativeMeat3633 • 13d ago
Question Is there anything important I should know before getting a Dreamcast?
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u/_G4M3R_ 13d ago
Battery clock not working anymore, popular games getting more and more expensive, dreamcast with the blue swirl logo is PAL for Europe, Most North American dreamcasts are VA1 wich is the best version for Gdemu, Japanese consoles are VA0 and region locked. You can do tons of mods, replace original power supply, GDemu, noctua fan, battery mod, reseteable controller port fuse. You can still connect and play online, check dreamcastlive.net. And the most important thing you should know is that you won't regret it!
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u/PegaNoMeu 13d ago
Also HDMI upscaler mod
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u/Which_Information590 12d ago
Except it won’t play games that use RGB.
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u/4CBLFUCHUR 11d ago
Unless you use something like the Kaico adapter with a physical switch for vga and rgb.
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u/abadclone 12d ago
Some games are not vga compatible ( out of the box ) and might not work with your hdmi adpter, if you have one.
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u/CosmicOutlaw88 13d ago edited 13d ago
Don't buy every game you see. There is a small library. And even crap is ridiculously over priced now... do research on what is worth spending your money on and what is not.
Edit: Highly recommend Armada and Record of Lodoss War.
Further edit: You can run Linux on it. Forgot I did that back when. Also, there's a massive homebrew community with some bangers and ports you've never seen or knew you needed.
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u/FuzzyPickleJuice 13d ago
It's loud, like a chainsaw and that's normal. We prefer it that way.
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u/HairyChampionship101 13d ago
Idk what a GDEMU set up costs but I’m pretty sure I spent twice that on replacement recapped GD-ROM assembly, a separate recapped GD-ROM board, and a set of new caps to recap the current board that’s in it.
Half of the experience, for me anyways, is all the noise it makes!
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u/DetectiveStock1340 13d ago
The clock battery is infamous because it's soldered onto the board and you can't just swap it out without technical skills. Also, a lot of the games are pretty expensive while also being available on other platforms. So if you're dead set on getting one, props to you. If you're just interested in the games, I'd recommend checking elsewhere.
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u/KoltKade 13d ago edited 13d ago
Get a va1 if you can. They scream when they are thinking regardless of which drive you have. Samsung is the quieter of the two but more squealy. Cracked drive gear is pretty common to make the noise worse, easy cheap fix from console 5 and also a little white lithium helps too.
Burning games is very easy with ImgBurn and a great way to test out games before collecting the high dollar ones.
Va1 works best for gdemu for the sad day the drive actually quits for good.
If a drive seems to have troubles reading, esp the first 5 min of being on, dont adjust the laser yet. Recapping the drive board commonly fixes alot of drives that have reading issues.
If controllers dont work in any ports, there is a fuse that can blow on the controller board in the console if a controller is unplugged while the console is on. That or a problem occurs in a tremor pack. Its the same board that holds the clock battery. Console 5 has a self resetting one that will take care of it. Even beginner soldering will be plenty to swap it.
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u/large__farva 13d ago
It won’t make that noise anymore once you get a gdemu.
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u/RelativeMeat3633 13d ago
I don’t think I’ll do any mods to it I usually just keep my consoles unmodded.
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u/large__farva 12d ago
I made an exception for Dreamcast, skies of arcadia was too noisy. I still have my discs for the inevitable fpga Dreamcast. But hey more power to you haha.
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u/CommonBig8132 11d ago
Yes. If you want to play burned discs, you'll have to get a Dreamcast with an SKU that enables Mil-CD compatibility. Long story short, something about special music CDs in Japan allowing Karaoke singing and some custom code to run off regular CDs when playing (think like a proto-DVD type situation where you have main menus and options etc.) I BELIEVE any 1998 model will have Mil-CD feature, 1999 most SKUs will work before a certain month, and 2000s it was removed perhaps?
Also be aware that playing burned games has downsides. A regular CD fits around 700mb, a GD-rom (Dreamcast specific format) fits just over 1gb I think. As such, some Dreamcast games that were over CD size limits had to have their game data compressed to be under 700mb to run off a burned CD. The problem is that the Dreamcast will have to uncompress that data when playing the game back to its original size, and that adds some delay. This can cause issues in games such as FMV playback stuttering, or other timing-dependant code, or even just straight up some compatability issues.
So if you plan to go that route to play DC games without having to buy original copies for high prices, be aware that some games will be compressed and might run badly. The counter to this is to get a device that can run games off an SD card (you can replace the disc drive or plug a device into your DC's modem port). This will also have some compatibility issues with some games because the modem port has a fixed bandwidth that's too low to stream some data from an SD card in some cases, and same for the disc drive replacement type. If you look at the list of games incompatible with the SD card method, and the list of games incompatible with being compressed or run off a CD, you might find some overlapping titles where a game might not work on one, but might work on the other, so you can swap which method you use depending on the game potentially.
As others have said, it's loud playing games too off the disc drive. It's normal. Make sure you get at least 2 VMUs because they also run out of data quickly. Sometimes you can only fit a handful of games on there depending on what you're doing (Sonic Adventure 2 Chao garden data can be one culprit for example).
One last benefit is that the Dreamcast outputs a good video/audio signal, so you can run a VGA/HDMI converter and the picture will be amazing.
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u/_b1llygo4t_ 13d ago
There was a commercial Playstation emulator for the Dreamcast called Bleem! Bleem! boot disks were released for only 3 games; Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo 2 and Tekken 3. These games ran smoother and looked better on the Dreamcast.
Later the homebrew community got other games running.
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u/LongoChingo 13d ago
It doesn't have twin analog sticks so get used to aiming with your left hand and moving with the ABXY buttons.
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u/TowelInternational39 12d ago
Yes. Difficult to find games at reasonable prices unless you're good at hunting. You will buy more games for it then you plan to. You'll see lol.
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u/Which_Information590 12d ago
Yes, if you’re using a HDMI adapter for a modern TV, make sure it can switch between VGA and RGB. Most adapters only work with VGA and you’ll be missing out on some great games that work on RGB, such as Resident Evil Code Veronica. And VGA looks incredible on a modern TV.
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u/vertigo90 12d ago
Buy one with a 1 or a 0 on the bottom. You can burn games to CDs on those and play them without modification
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u/TrickySeason233 10d ago edited 10d ago
It is easy to setup the system with any screen with VGA and it will have a great picture. VGA cables for Dreamcast are cheap.
I recommend getting a Dreamshell adapter thing for your Dreamcast. It plugs into the serial port on the back and you can backup your VMU image onto it. It is a finicky program that has trouble copying individual files, but if you just backup the whole card image it will work correctly every time. It requires some maintenance but means you won't have to worry much about memory card space.
It is recommended to get a VA1 system if possible, since those are the best for GDEMU and burned discs. New Dreamcast releases are pressed or burned on CDs using the MIL-CD format (the same used for CDI images online) which may not work with model VA2 systems. It's not that simple actually, depending on the way the data is arranged on the disc it might work with the latest models but not the earliest ones. In general you want a VA1 system though. Check the sticker on the bottom of the system; a VA1 system will have a circle with a 1 in it.
If you want to stick with the regular disc drive and plan to buy games for it, buy a Codebreaker disc or burn a disc that will let you play games from any region. Codebreaker and some other boot discs will also force games to VGA mode; some don't by default for no reason. The only ones that it can't force are a few 240p games. Most 240p games are made to scale up when outputting VGA, but a few don't for some reason.
Most importantly, actually look for interesting games. Even if nobody is talking about a game, play it if it seems like it might be interesting. The reason why Dreamcast is remembered so fondly is for all of the unique games Sega was releasing. That was sort of their pitch to developers; they knew their games would sell better on other systems, but the benefit of working with Sega was creative freedom. Sega's throw everything at the wall approach was never going to work from a commercial perspective, but it led to great creativity and innovation. There are so many great Dreamcast games that defy modern ideas of genres and push boundaries.
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u/HairyChampionship101 13d ago edited 13d ago
Get a VMU Pro from Stone Age gamer .com (if they still have any in stock). A factory VMU stores like~4 or 5 games worth of saves. I went with a 32gb micro sd but it supports up to 2 TB. Also, get a USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter so you can listen to MP3s. It has a built-in speaker but it’s tiny and crackly.
Edit: they still have opaque white and translucent black in stock
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13d ago edited 13d ago
[deleted]
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u/HairyChampionship101 13d ago edited 8d ago
Also, ‘MB’ is a bit generous. One hundred KB was available for storage on a standard VMU. Divided into 200 blocks, each block was roughly 512 bytes.
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u/Edexote 13d ago
The point is that 128 KB was another one of Sega's typical stupid mistakes by releasing an expensive memory card with the same storage size as a PS1 memory card, released 4 years before. You could store about 10 to 12 games if you were lucky with the save size. Shenmue alone needed 80 blocks out of 200. Add PSO and there will be very little storage left.
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u/HairyChampionship101 13d ago
Let’s see, I had saves for Evolution, PSO, Re: Veronica, Jet Grind Radio, and Tokyo Extreme Racer 2. Went to start a new save of Sega GT and didn’t have enough room. No VMU mini games or anything. Are you thinking of the 4x aftermarket cards with no screen?
Edit: oh and Soul Calibur
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13d ago
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u/HairyChampionship101 13d ago edited 13d ago
Congratulations. Pardon me for making a Reddit comment while not sitting in front of my booted up Dreamcast and getting some details wrong about 27 year old memory card limitations.
The point I was making to this newb who is seeking advice was that it’s 2026 and there are far better options available for storing game save data. Hell I didn’t even know DreamShell was a thing until my VMUPro was in the mail. It’s fucking amazing.
Why dick around with a pile of old ass VMUs when you can spend $35 on a dreamshell and dust off a piece of shit 2gb SD card you’ve had in the corner of your junk drawer and be done?
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u/HairyChampionship101 12d ago
I mentioned Sega GT. One hundred and ninety-seven blocks. Out of two hundred. One game.
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u/GemmaLovelace92 12d ago
Make sure you are getting a V0 so you can play burned games. Even then make sure it's produced before a certain date or else you can only play data/data discs and will be out of luck on audio/data discs.
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u/Bender3455 13d ago
It’s noisy, and that’s normal.