Ok folks I know there isn't a proper emulator for the Dreamcast yet but I am a moderator in this part of the forum, so I want to be of service.

If you want any help on burning any of the Dreamcast emulators such as DCGnuboy, Dreamsnes, Nester, Smeg, etc then post in this part of the forum and I will guide you through it. The same goes for any of the Dreamcast homebrew apps and games available. There are too many people who haven't took advantage of the fact that the Dreamcast can become a VCD player, an MP3 player, a SNES, a Gameboy color, NES etc (soon possibly online now that the modem code might be available) without any modifications whatsoever.

If you want to know about burning Dreamcast games, then I will help you with that too. Just post the problem and I will see what I can do.

I will also be posting a list of the best(and worst) DC apps so that people don't waste thier time. I will add to this later, I just wanted to get it started.

Dreamcast Emulation on PC:-
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Nightmare emu: This is a trojan, DO NOT use it.
Dreamemu: Has just been updated recently and can now emulate some of the basic homebrew stuff. No commercial games yet but it is making progress which is always cool.
Dreamer: The first that played commercial games. Has not been updated in over a year though.
Icarus: Currently in development. There are a lot of games now running on it although the speed is still low 10fps or so without sound but It is a step in the right direction though!

You will never be able to run actual Dreamcast GD-Roms on a normal cd-rom drive, but you will be able to play ripped games or games you rip yourself with a coders cable. I still think full speed DC emulation is a few years off, but we can all dream. It's in the name DREAMcast

Emulation on the Dreamcast:-
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There are so many different emulators available on the Dreamcast. I will list the best ones here with thier speed and what they emulate etc.

Dreamsnes(SNES Emulator):- Currently at version 0.9.8. Runs most games at 80-100% at the moment with sound. Special chips like the SA-1 or the C4 chip are now emulated. This means that you can now play games like Mario RPG, Kirby, MegamanX1-3 etc abeit some of them slowly.

NesterDC(Nintendo Entertainment System Emulator):- Currently at version 7.1. Runs every NES game perfectly with sound. 7.1b now has lightgun support so you can get your duck hunt kicks I however am willing to sacrifice lightgun support because version 6 still seems a lot better to me.

SMEG(Sega Master System & Game Gear Emulator):- Currently at version 0.84. This runs all SMS and GG games 100% with sound. Excellent emulator with the only bad point being that you can't save. So that means no Phantasy star

SMS Plus(Sega Master System & Game Gear Emulator):- First release v0.1 and My new favourite emulator. This has everything Smeg has and more. The most important feature being save support so now you can play all those excellent RPGs.

DCGnuboy(Gameboy Mono/Color Emulator):- Current at version 1.0.3-0.6. This runs most Gameboy and Gameboy color games 100% with sound. Some people might not see the point of playing handheld games on a TV screen but playing games like Zelda Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Mario Tennis and Pokemon(you know those games rule even if the cartoon sucks) will change your mind.

Segagen(Sega Genesis Emulator):- No longer being worked on. Segagen is the controversial emulator, ripped from the commercial Sega Smash Pack for DC. It runs most games at 100% but in a lot of games the sound is screwed up. Still worth a download though.

DCGenerator(Sega Genesis Emulator):- Updated on 24/05/03 and has been slightly optimized again. This is the homebrew Genesis emulator and currently it doesn't really support huge roms or sound. Hopefully things will progress in the next few months. MetaFox the author is working on a "create a game" app for non coders for the Dreamcast. So I would rather he spent time on that that this emu Especially since there are 2 more Genesis emulators being ported.

Genesis Plus(Sega Genesis Emulator):- First release and very impressive it is too. No sound like DCGenerator but runs most things I've tried on it at about 12-18 fps. Hopefully another release is due soon!

Dreamspec(spectrum Emulator):- At version 1.0, so finished. If you want to play all those old Spectrum games at 100% speed with sound on your DC then this is your chance. Jet Set Willy ownz j00.

ScuuvmDC (Lucasarts games Emulator):- Now at v0.4 Play all your Lucasart games on your DC. Games like Sam n Max, Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle etc. Well worth having if you have the cd versions of these games and feel like playing them again on your Dreamcast. Now even plays the Dig and Monkey Island 3

SarienDC(AGI Sierra Games Emulator):- Finished at version 1.1. Use this if you want to play your old sierra games on your Dreamcast. Games include Lesuire suit Larry, Space Quest and stuff like that. You can also play many of the fanmade AGI games on it.

Atari800DC(An Atari 800/5200 emulator):- Most games run really well. If you like ancient Atari gaming then this is for you heh.

DCStella(Atari 2600 emulator):- Pretty much 100% emulated with graphics and sound. There are a couple of PAL games that dont' work and the "paddle control" code doesn't work yet. Apart from that this emulator is near perfect.

Dreamfrodo(Commodore 64 emulator):- Currently at v0.92 Finally a decent C64 emulator for the DC (no offense to Bigboy ) Pretty much full speed for everything. I've not experienced too many crashes either so get it now people.

PCSXDC(Sony Playstation emulator):- Currently at Alpha 1.4. Version 1.3 was running most games at 3-7fps with only software rendering. In this version there seems to be a moderate speed increase of 1/2 fps and also full screen mode. Once again, when it makes use of the PowerVR chip then we could be looking at (free) playable PSX emulation on the Dreamcast. Much better than the 3 currently available with Bleemcast.

Bleemcast Beta(Sony Playstation emulator):- Bleemcast beta has been released and this means that you can now play a lot of other PSX games on your dreamcast. Many things run at playable speeds and I recommend giving it a try. It would be nice to get the source code for this somewhere so that all PSX games could be optimized to use it.

OswanDC(WonderSwan/WonderSwan Color emulator):- Recently updated to 0.15 to add sound support. This should be a great emulator once sound is fully implemented.

Neopockett(NeoGeo Pocket emulator):- Currently at v1.0. At the moment there is no sound and it runs a lot of games waaaaaay too fast but it is still worth putting on a cd along with a few other emulators to try it out.

Dream Engine (TG-16 PC Engine emulator):- Currently at v0.01. This runs a lot of games at near full speed and everything else at around half speed. The author has recently stated that there will be a full speed emu with sound in the summer so woohoo for that.

[D]Colem (ColecoVision Emulator):- Currently at v0.99. This has full speed, full sound for everything and if you get it from dcemulation it comes with 300 roms.

There are also a ton of single game MAME releases for the DC. Games like Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, Simpsons Arcade, Galaga, 1943 and many many many more.

hehe !! you just gave me an idea !!

http://216.127.72.111/~admin8/forum/showth...s=&threadid=494

Updated

is there any neo geo emulator for dc?

The best Neo Geo emu for the DC at the moment is probably Warmtoe's MAIM(Dreamcast version of MAME). At least it seems to be the fastest but with slightly less compatability. The max rom size is about 4.5Mb so you can only really run old, old games. Old stuff like Fatal Fury will run 80% - 90% with sound, baseball stars 2 the same. There are some improvements being made though and if Warmtoe can fix the possible memory leak then games of 10Mb could be played on the DC. The 16Mb of Dreamcast Ram is what restricts us. If it had double that, then even some N64 emulation would be possible...it's a shame. Anyway, I will add this info and the info about the other 3 MAMEs for DC to my faq soon enough

thanks for the info man, so there is no way i could burn roms on a cd for then playing them on dc?

Yes there is. I will stick a tutorial up for you later when I come back.

Edit: I was going to write a tutorial for you but there is already a good one. If you go to This siteyou can download the files you need, get game compatability lists and also follow the tutorials to make a selfboot cd. There isn't much new stuff that runs on this but its still fun for a while.

sp if you can burn em on a cd why does the ram restrict you from using big roms?

Well because the Dreamcast is restricted by it's memory. On any emulator on the DC the game is loaded into memory. So even though the emulator could easily play the biggest ROMs, the Dreamcast can't run them because of the memory restriction. Since it's emulation and not an actual port (programmed to use the DC hardware and not the hardware of the emulated machine) of the game, we get restricted

eg The DC has 16Mb of RAM. The emulator takes up 9Mb of RAM, so that leaves you with 7Mb left to load your roms into memory.

I think it would be possible to add extra RAM to the DC though, I am just not sure that it would be worth it. The Xbox will probably be the best bet for Neo Geo and Arcade emulation because it has an 8GB HD (much faster access than a CD) and also 64Mb of RAM

Updated to the newest versions and to include some info about great new emulators like Sms +, Genesis Plus and Dreamfrodo etc

Ive never had dreamcast, but ive got a question about it.

Are you still able to play online with it, and if so how much does it cost?

I remember games like Nba2kX and stuff and was wondering if they still functioned online, since i never owned a dreamcast.

I think in October or November it won't be FREE anymore. So I am not really sure. I however never have been online with my Dreamcast... not sure

Well you can still play online although Sega has shut up shot on most of it's games. I'm pretty sure you can still play Quake III, Phantasy Star Online, some unreleased (warez ) bowling title and a couple of other games. And it's free if you use a free ISP.

Hopefully someone will figure out a way to get the games running on homebrew servers because it would be excellent if you could play PSO with your friends for free and without the worry of hackers or anything like that

Not to mention there could maybe be some kind of online support for emulators which would also rock.

what about a n64 emu?
is there one out at the moment

is there any sites where i can find out how to get my DC online?

do u still have to pay for the call though in the uk?

No but there have been plenty of fake ones. I think we will see GBA and N64 emulators as they are possible, despite the lack of RAM, but it won't be for a while yet.



You can still get online pretty easy. Just plug your modem into the phone line and get a browser. I think you can still send away for a free Dreamkey 3.0 browser from sega Europe but I'm not sure. Dreamkey 3.0 also comes with Phantasy Star Online v2.0 so you could get it that way. If you can't you can use http://homebrew.dcemulation.com/xdp/xdp.html. It's a homebrew browser with lots of added extras and works just as well.

If you are on dialup then you can use your own ISP with both Dreamkey and the homebrew browser. It's just a case of putting in your ISP phone number and username and pass, very simple. If you are using broadband then you will need to get a broadband adaptor and they don't come cheap.

This is a list of games that are still working online: http://dcog.netfirms.com/

Hopefully at some point there will be a way of getting good homebrew servers going. It would be nice if sega released the protocols to work the modem because then nobody would have to worry about the servers going offline and it's not like Sega would be losing money from that. Anyway that won't happen until they stop making new DC games in Japan (not that it's likely to ever happen even when they stop selling games )

What is a coders cable? How would I get one?

Thanks for the great info, got questions though.

About that PS1 emulator, how does does it compare in terms of performance to an actual PS1? You mentioned something about frames but I didn't get it. Also, is it able to play copies or only originals?

The PS1 emulator doesnt have very good speed or sound it runs at like 8FPS MAX or at least the one i have does, just wait, someone will fix it

What is that nes and snes thing? How does it work, do i down load them and burn their images onto a cd and play them like a regular rom or what?

NES, Nintendo Entertainment System

First US Nintendo Console, Kicked off gaming in the US (how can you not know what NES is?)

SNES, Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Nintendo's Second US system

I know what they are, the little system with the cartriage that you had to take out and blow a couple of times for it to work(ahh..the good old days) yeah i got a tutorial and dcemualtion and it worked perfect but i just cant get the game genie to work, i see the screen with the codes but i dont know how to activate them(how do you?) and if i got that to work then i sould be able to get any other bootleg to work? or do i have to go and reset the memory? because when i loaded the nester rom on my dc it asked for me to set the clock and i dont know if it was you who stated when it asks you for the clock then it means that the internal memory was reset.

hmm well to activate the cheats you just go into the menu and then pick your code and press start

repeat again for second code

and third

and fourth....etc

its a pain in the ass if your going to use alot of codes

and your internal memory was only reset or the internal battery is only dead/dying, if it asked you to set the clock every time you boot your DC, or just very very often

Leaving your DC plugged in all the time keeps the internal battery charged and this usually fixes it because eventually it will be charged again, leave it plugged in and dont play it for at least 6-8 hours (its really hard i know ) but even rechargable batteries die after awhile you might have you open your DC and take out the internal battery and try to find a new one thats rechargeable and the same kind, or if you can find the right voltage try to solder some batteries to the contacts because finding one of these batteries is VERY hard...or at least for me it was

It only asked me to do it that one time, but i got some bootlegs to work, i guess it was the first that i had tred didnt work, thats why i was asking(thanks for the nes info) oh yeah and i had found a site well.txt that talked all about the dreamcast like i didnt know you werent atcually suppsed to turn off the dc to change games, you where supposed to actually open it while it was running and then turn it off i think, i was gonna psot it up but i lost the url, i'll try to find it again.

Places like Lik-sang sell them for around $20 - 25

you can find them other places for cheaper though if you use google, i got mine for around 12 bucks including shipping

Excuse me, I read that Dreamer can run Commercial games, but I have a Problem... I downloaded "Sword of the Berserk" but apparently it is a.CDI format, and Dreamer Asks for a.ISO file... What can I do?

find a CDI to ISO converter...

search CDI2ISO on google or something

good luck getting this to run unless you have like a 8GHz computer with an ATi Radeon 9800 512MB DDR (not out yet, but confirmed )

Why would Dreamer require extremely powerful PC specs? I mean the console isn't that powerful compared to a PC.

I think it's because roms and stuff run off of the pc's memory and drive, as apose to running off of the "cd". Think of it like some guy making shoes run with his mind(pc ram and stuff) as appose to him running in the shoes(the console) i think sibathecrazykillerdog might have a better logical explanation.

I've been burning new cup coasters for the past few days. I have the mamed front-end emu up & running fine, but I can't get my roms disk to work. It shows the roms on the respective list, but they simply refuse to load when I press start, or any other button on my Dreamcast controller. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thx in advance!!

hmm, it may be the Rom, or the particular emulator your trying to play it with isnt compatible, also, whenever you switch a disc in your DC, wait at least 20 seconds before you do anything

I read somewhere that you can actually get the dreamcast to run high-meg neogeo games at or near full speeds by getting it to read the audio from the disk instead of loading all of it into the ram. If so, does this mean that svc chaos, & kof2k3 can be run from the dreamcast via mame or any other type of emu?

I've never heard that befor but i doubt it.

yeah thats true, but the emulator is hard to find, and you have to go through this whole conversion process with the Roms

By the way, anything worth emuating on the DC (That ive tested, or bothered to post ) is linked to on my website

The link is in my Sig

tell me how it is called an di will find it

Oh yeah, people are making a port of neo geo cd to the DC, theres already a version out but it plays some games slow and some with no sound. It's still in working progress but i've got an xbox so i probably wont use my dc for this but it's still very good news.

how about bleemcast, does it emulate psx or it just run a few preset games

bleemcast beta disks emulate many games, but generally not that well. There are exceptions though.

As for neogeo games on dc, you can only run very small-sized games. Kof2003 will certainly not run (the dreamcast has very limited ram: 16mb)

i just wantet to run kof 96,, and just if there is no slowdown so i guess i just can forget about it

Yeah thats if you're using it as an emualtor, what im talking about is a port which means the games isn't loaded into the DC memory but ran off the disc instead.

I have a few Dreamcast iso but i have no Dreamcast emulator to play them.. I was wondering what the best emulator that plays most roms?

Chankast is the best emulator as of now.
You can get it from http://www.chanka.org

Be sure to check out Chankast Utilities..
http://chankast.1emulation.com

Thanks. I have that emulator but it hates me because it won't work with me. i downloaded everything and it won't let me load my games in just the bloody bios.

The games need to be selfboot in order to work in Chankast.

How do I get the iso's to self boot???

first u gotta check if the structure is right(1audio+1data track) or (2 data tracks)but its never a single track(those are not selfboot) u could go to here to find tools and guide.i would suggest using bin2boot or bin2boot_gui,first u should turn the non selfboot game into a cue and bin file take the bin drag in to the bin2boot gui and it automaticly makes it selfboot and out comes a disk juggler image.

I did that and i still can't get power stone or Megaman - War of the Past to play on the emulator. I even tried Exoskeletor Selfboot GUI and that didn't work and i even redid the bios and it still doesn't work. any advice???

I'm 99% sure it's nothing to do with boot issues as 95% of DC games are self-booting anyway, including the Megaman, if it is the Supernova one, as I just burned it to check and it does boot by itself.
If u want to be sure just grab a game that is specifically labelled (SB) to confirm it. I think theres a v small Mr driller on Supernova atm that Im sure is SB.
Anyway hardly use Chankast as i have a dc but seems most non-playing games issues stem from an incorrect/corrupt bios file. Ensure that u have the correct one and also the latest Chankast too ( i know its obvious but some people... ).

Here follows my honest opinion - buy a cheap second hand dc and just forget about chankast. Save yourself the hassle, plus quite a few games need the DC controller to get the most from them.

If u like I could send u a small SB game to verify things.

I do get my roms from supernova. Is supernova bad with dreamcast games? cause all the playstation roms i get from supernova work with epsxe and psxeven.