shmups.system11.org

Yep. DC blows away PS2 for HD support.



I'd recommend doing a custom stick with a converter to get it to DC. Every actual DC stick I tried was pretty trash.

Also I know you already bought one but is it worth it for someone that already owns a PS2 is a resounding yes for me. I greatly enjoy both consoles to this day. Lots of titles are on other systems now (and Gamecube got a hefty number of former DC exclusives bitd) and Crazy Taxi is on everything but I'd only ever want to play it on DC.

All the Psikyo shooters are available on Switch now, but it's still awesome to play them on a CRT easily imo.

If you want to deep dive I always liked Napple Tale Arsia in Daydream. A neat little 2.5D platformer. Zusar Vasar is a cool racing game, it's basically worse than Pod Racer in terms of actually playing the game but damn if it isn't cool as hell. It's worth a burn at least. Maken X is a solid $5 action game.

Most of the library is fairly well known at this point but I'll just go ahead and mention that Bangai-O is awesome and the system is loaded with quality fighters and racing games.

the system really went out with a bang... it was a short ride, but what a ride it was. I remember seeing SoulCalibur for the first time at a buddy's house, he had the DC hooked up via s-video to a nice Trinitron set. My jaw fell on the floor... and my head exploded. lol. there are no words to describe how impressed and PUMPED UP I was a that very moment. One of my most vivid and favourite gaming memories of all time

First fighters I burned when I re-bought one 2 years ago, where SoulCalibur and Guilty Gear X(that last one also looks insane on DC on a 480p crt). And then the Capcom and SNK stuff of course.(shout out to Garou : Mark of the Wolves and The Last Blade 2. not exclusives, but nice to have on there. And of course SFIII:3rd Strike, MvC 2, CvS 2, Rival Schools 2, etc).

Guilty Gear X is AWESOME. It's one of my most played fighters along with Last Blade 2 and Mark of the Wolves oddly enough. KOF 98 is the nutter butters too.

sound like you need some range time to get squared away with iron sights

GGX and last blade 2 are the best two games on the system

well apart from shenmue 1 and 2 obviously

So I'm thinking about getting a DreamCast too. Should I buy a US, PAL or Japanese system? What are the differences, benefits and drawbacks of each? Are there any hardware revisions I should look out for?

I think, effectively, the only difference will be between PAL and NTSC, as far as which video mode the console's boot sequence and system menu will display at in SD. I believe all consoles are capable of all video modes regardless of region when running games.

This is true. Get a region free bios chip, and you'll be golden with any game from any region.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 3444691715

I personally went with the bios with stock bootup screen cuz I like my things to appear unmodded for all intents and purposes, but getting the dev bootup screen is certainly also a cool option.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

There are also some boot Discs to make to the DC Region free if you want to go non modder way. But I have heard rumors that These boot Discs wear the Laser out pretty fast. Not sure if is truth but in case it is, I am hunting down a NTSC U Dreamcast. I am playing 99 per Cent US Games anyway so having a decidated System for these region would be a cool Thing anyway. No Need for chaning the DC X Disc all the time anymore. And I can Keep my old Pal Dreamcast as a collectors item.

Any version of the Dreamcast Gameshark will also work as a region bypass disc.



Get the region you plan to have the most retail game discs for. I finally got a Japanese Dreamcast when I realized 90% of my games were Japanese, heh.

I use my 24.8" analog crt for everything up to and including my PS3. I have a 24" Sony PlayStation monitor for playing HD games but I rarely hook it up. My son likes to play driving games on my ProjectionDesign DLP in my living room which looks very nice at 110" but, almost everything PS3 and older looks better on the CRT.

Seeing games at exactly the right res and refresh rate makes me happy every time. As anyone who went to Sunday school will tell you, scaling makes baby Jesus cry!

You are a real classic gamer then in every sense of the word.I am more the LCD and scaler guy, and thats why I love consoles like the Dreamcast and the Gamecube which are quite HDTV friendly at least compared to other consoles.

But I also have some love for the saturn and for the Saturn getting an CRT is the better option. And if I want to get into lightgun games on the DC and the Saturn a CRT is a must have. Too bad they are quite hard to find. The newer 16:9 100 HZ CRT are really common, you find them literally everywhere but hunting down a older 4:3 TV is not that easy. But I won't give up on that task.

I really want to get into Light Gun games on the DC and the Saturn so a CRT is a must have.

I'm a light gun aficionado myself, so I have to tell you that if you don't already have them, the PS2 kicks the Dreamcasts butt for lightgun games. And EVERY Saturn light gun game I've tried, the PS1 version of that game is better.

Sure, the Saturn and DC might have some few games the Sony's don't, but as a whole there's really no comparison in my eyes - just a FYI if you're looking to get those Sega systems JUST to play light gun games on, I would look elsewhere.

That being said, if you already have the Sony systems, and love light gun games, definitely pickup those others to get even more light gun game fun.

Thanks for the info. The Sega Systems are already in my collection, so I would not get them just for light gun Games Checking out the Sony Light Gun Shooters is a good advice. I do not have a working Ps1 anymore but 2 working PS2. So I could check out the PS1 and PS2 shooters easily. I will do that for sure. Didn't know that there were so many nice light gun games for the PS1 and 2. I just did not noticed it back then I guess.

Will change that aspa and check them out.

It's a combination of being a purist / perfectionist and a logical mind. For close to the price of a good scaler like a Framemeister you can still buy a brand new tri sync crt arcade monitor. For someone like me with a love of arcade games and someone with space in the basement, it's a no brainer.

However good any scaling option is, games almost always look and play best in their native res. I am sure the DC will be no different.I love that I can play SF2 in 240p and then switch to 368p when I play Daytona and then go to 480p for Naomi games.

I don't know where you live but 4:3 crt displays are not at all hard to find in America or Europe. These devices were In almost every home of the planet. For 480p on the Dreamcast, it is even easier because most 4:3 CRT pc monitors are capable of displaying 31khz and they are being thrown away.

I am coming to a similar conclusion after trying to shop for DC light gun stuff. It doesn't look like any good light guns were made for the system or, if they were, they are not readily available now like they are for the PS1 / PS2. The official Sega and Madcatz ones look horrible. The DC seems weak for peripherals generally.

The PlayStation benefits from Sony locking in Namco. The official Namco Guncon 2 guns are cheap, easy to find and head and shoulders above any other home light gun I have used. It's up there (in terms of accuracy and quality) with their arcade guns. It makes all the difference.

When I try and play with my PS Desert eagle guns, it's just not fun, even though they have recoil because the shot doesn't go where you aim. You see the crosshairs jumping around when you try and calibrate while the Namco one stays put.


Still, I am ok with using each console for it's strengths. The PS2 for light gun games, my PS3 for driving games, Dreamcast for Naomi games and my PC with Groovymame for every arcade game before the Naomi.

BTW, How addictive are the Time Crisis games.... I bought all of them (except 4) and it is arcade nostalgia heaven!

With Freemcboot and the $15 Guncon 2's on eBay, it's a no brainer. You want to buy or download: Time Crisis 1, 2, 3, zone and extinction, then.... Vampire Night, Both Virtua Cop discs, Ninja Assault and Star Wars Rebel assault as a minimum.

Stick to official Namco guns (at least to start so you know what good looks like).

PS1 and 2 are similar in the how they work to most Namco arcades, albeit the arcade systems are usually more accurate as they have a more involved calibration process.
They have no lag compared to tracking systems like Wii.

Take TC1 for example, its one of the most accurate systems ive played on, has a 5-6 point calibration process. Then theres that garbage port they made for the PS1...

No idea what happened there when Point Blank ported so well.

I kind of gave up on Dreamcast shooters, didnt feel like there was much skill involved just alot of shooting.

One must have title for PS2 is Revenge of Jesse James, has the TC1 feel to it.

Maybe it's because my arcade monitors are still relatively new and bright but I find the Namco Guncon 2 guns to be just as accurate (if not more) than their arcade versions.

I take my son to one of the last arcades near where I live and they have the Time Crisis, House of the Dead and Jurassic Park games as well as newer PC based ones like Terminator Salvation. The Namco stuff is usually good (except when the cabs use old failing rear projection monitors). The Sega guns are all terrible. The Namco home ones are way more accurate.

It is also possible to hook up and use a real arcade Time Crisis (1, 2 or 3) gun to a Guncon 2 board and use it on the PS2. That indicates that the tech they use is at least similar.

I plan on getting one of those SD Card mods to play games off an SD Card.

I am already regretting ordering a US Dreamcast instead of an American one. People are charging silly money for NTSC U Marvel vs Capcom 2. There are tons of them available on eBay and every one of them states how rare this title is...The Japanese version is not much better but it's within reason. I can feel a region free bios mod coming on.

I guess I have to find a place to download DC games and learn how to patch them. All the safe sites I use for everything else don't offer DC games. What file format am I meant to be looking for? Is it .cdi?

It looks like there are no reasonably priced arcade sticks for the DC so those $40 PS3 to DC adapters look like the best option as I already own a Capcom PS3 fight stick.

You could always burn games

of course burned games work on any region system! no need to patch them



Regarding guns : pretty much all accounts I've read say that the official gun(Hkt-7807) is very decent. Not the prettiest though, but it should fare decently still

It's not worth getting a Dreamcast Lightgun and I have just about every stupid DC accessory except the maracas.

Also, MVC2 is cheap enough for a Japanese copy: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sega-Dreamcast ... :rk:1:pf:0

$21 obo shipped from Japan. Anything that good for $25 or less in the current climate isn't bad tbh.

Buy the Japanese version of every fighter you would want basically, plus GGX is Japanese only. I paid $22 for a Japanese copy of Last Blade 2 a few years ago, even then I would have never found a US copy for that price. I think I paid like $15 for Techromancer. The list goes on and on and all these games have zero language barrier.

If I had a gameshark to spare, I'd just send you one. It's the best region bypass option to me, but I HATE modding consoles.

I don't mind doing mods if they are within my skill-set or if it is something I could learn on YouTube but installing that DC region free bios chip looks very difficult. There is just so many connections that are tiny and close together. Soldering each pin without shorting it to the next one could well be beyond my patience.

For the price others are charging to do it for you, you could just buy a Japanese Dreamcast. The Japanese always got the best selection of games for Sega stuff.

If you get a GDEMU, it'll boot games from any region, and GDMenu can force most of them into 480p RGB. The handful of PAL games I threw at it (Rez, ChuChu Rocket!, Planet Ring, Stunt GP, Toy Racer) booted into 480p@60Hz without issue, although Planet Ring looked like it was still showing PAL-sized graphics which were getting cut off at the bottom (Was the only game that even seemed to remotely have an issue).

Yeah, .cdi is the version that will work on a regular CD. The others are the versions from the GD-ROMs, so a little too big for standard CDs. Honestly the US Dreamcast is not a bad choice, I've found that most games can still be had for mostly reasonable prices. If you don't mind getting them loose, GameStop has pretty good prices for the more expensive ones on their web site. Sometimes you get a dud, but their return policy is lenient so not a huge deal.

Regarding MvC2, as others have said you could get the JP version but IIRC the characters were unlocked by visiting arcades or some nonsense like that, so you have to find a save file online to load to your memory card to unlock them these days.

The GDEMU looks like a much easier mod than replacing the bios chip. Much more in my skill set. The difficulty looks comparable to replacing a laptop GPU vs the bios mod which is comparable to threading a needle while wearing boxing gloves.

What format do games need to be in for the SD card?

The only site I have found with DC games so far has them as .dat files. Is there anything that can be done with that?

The supported formats are listed on the GDEMU details page on the GDEMU WP site:

• GDI (for GD-ROMs)
• CDI
• CCD+IMG+SUB
• MDS+MDF
• ISO (as data carriers for homebrew)

Personally, I prefer using GDI, because it's an exact dump of the discs and contains all the data; whereas formats like CDI and CCD were used for CD rips, which may have had audio recompressed or cutscene videos removed to cut down the overall image size.

From what I've read, you will want to use this SD card formatting application to format your SD card, and then you may want to use this application to help load images into the correct directory structure for the GDEMU and edit titles for the game list in GD Menu.

Thanks.

I managed to find somewhere with CDI files and against all odds it didn't fill my laptop with viruses.

I had to reset everything to factory after downloading imgeburn. For anyone here who intends to download that program, use the last mirror. Every other has virus that will wipe you out.

Am I correct in assuming that, with a CDI file, I can just burn it with Imgburn or do I need to do some additional patching like you do for PS2 games?

For discjuggler files on ImbBurn you still need a plugin, don't you ? Or you simply use discjuggler instead.