Does anyone play emulators on their dreamcast ?

[androiddreamcast]

We all know that the use of emulators are commonly used on modern computers and smartphones for basically all systems except more current gen but do you guys play any emulators on dreamcast like for the nes, snes , megadrive and ps1? , would you guys make use of a saturn emulator if a good one existed for the dreamcast?

[DR TEAMCAST]

Well yeah if one existed, probably. I've always wondered why we do not have a working nintendo 64 emulator by now

[scaryred24]

Well yeah if one existed, probably. I've always wondered why we do not have a working nintendo 64 emulator by now

I agree since the N64 is a pain to develop for anyways, even though the Saturn which is worse has superseded the N64 in terms of emulation. Just take SSF vs Project 64 for example.

As of a Saturn emulator on a Dreamcast, no. There are so many thing missing in the Dreamcast to even make it remotely playable. There is instantaneous saving, MPEG encoding, better controller, peer to peer telecom, proper 2D rendering, the list goes on. That doesn't make the Dreamcast any worse off, it's just less means more in this occasion. I would have better off having both systems. The Saturn is it's own thing and I would like to keep it that way. I might be sounding a little harsh, but it isn't like the Megasis with Master System support, or PS2 with PS1 support, or even Wii with GameCube support and even Wii U with Wii support. In the end, Sega was so diverse with their hardware that it wouldn't even make sense to do that and I am completely okay having both systems dedicated to it's own library.

[DR TEAMCAST]

Or a PSP emulator. Even if it was just the cross media bar

[Green Ranger]

Well all know that the use of emulators are commonly used on modern computers and smartphones for basically all systems except more current gen but do you guys play any emulators on dreamcast like for the nes, snes , megadrive and ps1? , would you guys make use of a saturn emulator if a good one existed for the dreamcast?

I've played NES, SNES, PS1, Neo Geo, Game Gear and Game Boy (Color) emulators on the Dreamcast before. If a full speed Sega Saturn emulator was available for the Dreamcast I'd love to try it. Sadly I don't think that'll happen.

[lastcallgames]

I've played a few emulators. I need to burn the Neo Geo one, since it's one of the few DC emulatable systems I don't own.

[krssn]

How well does the Neo Geo emulator work? Is it at full speed?...

Also, Neo Geo CD or cartridge-based games also?...

[scaryred24]

How well does the Neo Geo emulator work? Is it at full speed?...

Also, Neo Geo CD or cartridge-based games also?...

It's almost full speed. There are some slowdown that wouldn't happen on the real hardware, but is like 97% accurate to the clock speed. As of the game medium it's AES/MVS. I don't think the Dreamcast is powerful enough to run the CD read block of the Neo Geo CD.

[Green Ranger]

How well does the Neo Geo emulator work? Is it at full speed?...

Also, Neo Geo CD or cartridge-based games also?...

I've used Neo4All to play Breakers and Top Hunter which are both Neo Geo CD games. If there is any slowdown, it is very minimal. You can also take a look at this Wikipedia page which has a compatibility list for Neo4All- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeoCD

[BlueCrab]

As of a Saturn emulator on a Dreamcast, no. There are so many thing missing in the Dreamcast to even make it remotely playable. There is instantaneous saving, MPEG encoding, better controller, peer to peer telecom, proper 2D rendering, the list goes on. That doesn't make the Dreamcast any worse off, it's just less means more in this occasion. I would have better off having both systems. The Saturn is it's own thing and I would like to keep it that way. I might be sounding a little harsh, but it isn't like the Megasis with Master System support, or PS2 with PS1 support, or even Wii with GameCube support and even Wii U with Wii support. In the end, Sega was so diverse with their hardware that it wouldn't even make sense to do that and I am completely okay having both systems dedicated to it's own library.

As someone who is fairly well versed in both the Saturn and Dreamcast hardware (although, moreso on Dreamcast), most of the problems you've mentioned are pretty minor...

Instantaneous saving is a non-issue, because you can easily defer writing data to the VMU and do so in a thread. The extra RAM in the Dreamcast means you can just "save" to RAM and write it out when it's convenient, so complete non-issue.

MPEG is a non-issue because almost no Saturn games made use of that extra hardware. It was an extra piece of hardware that you had to buy separately -- the system didn't do it natively. Almost no games "required" the MPEG card (the MPEG edition of Lunar Silver Star Story is the only one I can think of), and I'm pretty sure that no games outside of Japan did (since the MPEG card wasn't released outside of Japan, IIRC). That, and decoding MPEG in software isn't that hard, for what the Saturn would be doing anyway (at the most, you're looking at 320x240 resolution, most likely). The Dreamcast can handle full-fledged VideoCDs in software, so there's no reason it couldn't handle basically the same thing off a Saturn disc.

The controller is one you might have a point on. I wouldn't necessarily say it was better, but it certainly had more buttons. Of course, you can pretty easily get an adapter to use an actual Saturn controller on the Dreamcast, which kinda makes that somewhat moot.

Peer-to-peer telecom is a non-issue because, once again, almost no games made use of that feature (and it required extra hardware, yet again). Plus, that's not hard to do on the Dreamcast either, after all (we do have full network support, including a modem driver in the homebrew SDK).

Proper 2D rendering... Well, you can do anything that the Saturn hardware does with some fun tricks on the Dreamcast's video hardware, but it is a bit of work to do right. The Saturn's VDP1 maps very nicely on top of the PVR in the Dreamcast. VDP2 is where the "fun" lies here. It's probably easier to emulate that fully in software than to try to map it on top of the PVR, which is what I do in the DC port of Yabause.

That all said, emulating the Saturn is a bear of a problem even on PCs, so you're not likely to ever see a full-speed Saturn emulator on the Dreamcast, even though most of the issues mentioned here are moot points. The problem is much more of a technical problem than it is due to the issues you've covered. There are some nice tricks and shortcuts that can be taken, but it's still a very difficult task.