Dreamcast Emulator

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Adam Makin

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:11:30 PM8/3/24

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To go more in-depth, it had a Hitachi SH-4 RISC CPU at 200 MHz with 16 MBs of RAM and 8 MBs of VRAM. Additionally, on the graphic side, the console came with a PowerVR2 GPU at 100 MHz, which theoretically was capable of pushing 3 million polygons/second on-screen. The audio system had 2 MBs of audio RAM, which complemented a powerful 67 MHz Yamaha AICA sound processor with a 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU core. The audio chip could generate 64 voices with PCM or ADPCM codec and provided ten times the performance of the Saturn's sound system.

Also, Microsoft collaborated on the Dreamcast's development, and this partnership would continue later with the Xbox. What came out of this was the possibility for games to be developed for an optimized version of Windows CE (with DirectX) on each disc. However, Windows CE wasn't mandatory to use, and most developers opted for SEGA's development tools instead out of convenience. Even in major emulators, this aspect isn't implemented well.

In the same year of Dreamcast's launch, SEGA released the NAOMI, an arcade system board with similar components to the Dreamcast. Sammy's Atomiswave arcade board was also based on the Dreamcast and NAOMI.

A few years later, a successor of the NAOMI board was released in 2001, called NAOMI 2. It was a bit more powerful than its predecessor, having one more Hitachi SH-4 CPU and another PowerVR 2 GPU. Only 13 titles were released for this board.

While Flycast, redream and DEmul emulators can leverage the screen of the VM while the game is running, none of them allow you to play the standalone minigames developed for it (other than MAME, but it has no interconnect support). If that's what you're after, then you should probably be looking at VM emulators instead.

Several titles for the Dreamcast included mini-games that could be downloaded onto a VM. The Sonic Adventure series, for instance, included the Chao Adventure mini-game. In the game players could transfer Chao eggs to the VM and play to increase the stats of their hatched Chao, whereupon they could upload their improved Chao back into the Dreamcast game.[1]

Developer interest in Dreamcast emulation was previously hindered by the availability of the closed-source but "good enough" Chankast, and by less interest in the console relative to other 6th generation consoles. For the emulators that are either mature or maturing, a very large percentage of games work well, but some games still have problems and glitches.

Hot off the presses is our latest stable, version 1.5.0, marking the second stable release since the last progress report. In this past year, support has been added for multiple new platforms to make the emulator accessible, performance has dramatically increased, new features such as save states and cheat support have landed to make emulating more fun, and numerous accuracy improvements were made to continue polishing the overall emulation experience.

Back in July the first video of redream running on the Raspberry Pi 4b was posted. The plan at the time was to release it within 2 weeks, but other priorities came up and getting the Pi release to production quality was put on hold.

Last week we released our newest stable build, version 1.2.6; marking 6 months since our last progress report. During this time, many quality of life features have been implemented to make the emulator easier and more enjoyable to use, graphics have taken another step forward, and our audio emulation has finally reached a mature point where there are features yet to be implemented, but what's implemented now works great.

Was just randomly thinking and realised there was a game I never got the opportunity to play back in the day. It was on the Dreamcast. Is there an emulator to suit? Or a way RetroArch can run Dreamcast games?

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When an emulator does not appear on the Emulator Selection list, you can manually add it to your Emulator Setup. What you can do is to go to your Emulator Setup, open the 'Select Emulator' list and choose an empty slot. Then, begin filling in the parameters as needed. I think the easiest way to do it is to find an emulator that is already set up and use it as a point of reference. Of course, your paths will not be exactly the same and not all options will be used (depending on what features you are using), but that is the basics of it.

However, in your case, I notice from your GameEx.ini that you chose Retroarch with the Redream core for your Dreamcast emulation (Emulator #7). If you go to your Emulator Setup and view Emulator 7, you will notice the command line is the following:
Command: retroarch.exe -L ".\cores\redream_libretro.dll" "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]" -f
So, if you do want to have a stand alone setup of Redream, Emulator #7 would be a good one to reference.

Been so impressed with this that I think it deserves its own thread. ReDream has come in for some criticism as it's a paid emulator, but there's a free version which is great and does everything I'd want. It plays pretty much everything for the Dreamcast, auto configures your controller, downloads artwork for the games and , most significantly for me it auto detects the format of the disk and the games just... work. GDI, ISO, weird files with seperate audio tracks, it doesn't care and it all just works. This post would be longer, but I'm off to complete Toy Commander, which I started in 2001.

I was surprised how far along Dreamcast emulation is, although I'm not sure why it wouldn't be as I've been using Demul to play a few Naomi-based shooters that chug on MAME (can't for the life of me get Atomiswave ones working at all, it just complains about the bios despite the file being there). Mostly I was looking to play the DC version of Bangai-O and this runs it great although there seem to be a few screen elements missing and I'm not really familiar with the game enough to notice things that are wrong. It's great to be able to play stuff like Mars Matrix with the additional modes from the home release rather than just the arcade, now I just need to find the games on their own as I don't really want to download the 250GB of what I'm assuming is a full set. A fiver for high resolution seems like a pretty good deal, this kind of stuff must take crazy amounts of work but with sprite based shooting games I doubt it'd make an awful lot of difference, 3D ones like Exzeal do look amazing rendering at 1920x1080 on Demul though. It would be great if 360 emulation worked as well, then I could finally pack the console away as at the minute it's just a dedicated Radiant Silvergun machine.

I'm getting an older junker - core2duo - off eBay. Cost me 25 sheets. It's gonna be a Clone Hero machine plus other low-end emu stuff, but am looking forward to chucking this and PCSX2 at it. Will report back!

Virtua Tennis 2 hangs indefinately after the first six or so points in any match. Also per-pixel sorting is only supported on OpenGL 4.5 and above. OSX only supports up to 4.1 while they switch focus to that new Metal API, so you only get per-triangle sorting, meaning anything complicated like Ryo's face in Shenmue is all glitched up.

But the Saturn port of Sega Rally at least keeps a consistent frame rate, which the Dreamcast port of Sega Rally 2 fails to do - in fact I remember there being a whole load of slowdown. I bought my Dreamcast on launch day with SR2 being one of the games I got with it, and as a massive fan of the original on the Saturn at the time I found it a massive disappointment. Put it this way - I sold it on before too long, whereas I still have my original Saturn copy of the original Sega Rally. I've never played SR2 in 60Hz though, so it could be a shitty PAL port I guess.

Have you tried the Supermodel emulator? I think it's able to run Model 3 based games now and since it's the arcade you wouldn't have the problems that came with the port (assuming the emulation has improved, I've not tried it myself).

Dreamcast emulation had always been beyond my ten-year-old computer. PlayStation 2, sure. Gamecube? A breeze. But Sega's last hurrah in the console business remained elusive. The likes of emulator DeMul could passably play a half framerate game of Cannon Spike, but Cannon Spike without full speed is no Cannon Spike at all.

And now! Just this week! I was alerted to the existence of ReDream, a terrific emulator that calls to mind the similarly terrific PPSSPP (for, er, PSP) with its very user-friendly interface and laudable quality of just working. This brilliant tool, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, played nearly every game I threw at it, and I threw pretty much all my surviving stuff as well as some of my friends'. Marvel Vs Capcom 2? Flawless! Crazy Taxi? Crazy flawless! Fur Fighters? Furry good indeed! The only thing it choked on was Tech Romancer, but in its defence I didn't go squirrelling through any documentation to see if any settings change would kick Capcom's obscure mech-'em-up into gear.

In the contemptible absence of any alternative short of buying Sega's extremely meagre and highly compromised re-issues of the likes of Sonic Adventure, Space Channel 5, etc, I heartily endorse ReDream. It's free to use, but there is a small single payment of $5 required to unlock multiple save states as well as HD rendering modes. Your mileage may vary on whether you feel this is necessary, but it's worth bearing in mind that emulation is good and important and we should support it as the most accessible form of games preservation on the planet.