Top 5 Dreamcast Urban Myths

[Cass]

Just a little bit of fun but let's have a look at some of the DC lore and myths - put your own top 5 or feel free to share any views or insight.

1. A Katana build of Half-Life is out in there in the wild somewhere?

More likely development switched to WINCE before anything substantial was completed.

2. Piracy killed the Dreamcast.

No one reason for me or smoking gun but as a teenager in the 90's everyone had chipped PS1. I think EA was a bigger reason.

3. A VOODO chip would have given us better graphics and performance.

Maybe but would it be enough to notice.The DC was very efficiently designed system and I think another 16mb of board RAM would have the biggest impact for developers.

4 The DC controller is the worst launch controller in gaming history apart from the N64.

I'm still not sure if I like it after all these years. Pretty well built to be fair but the PS2 controller was a generational leap.

5 We"ll all be disappointed when the Dreamcast mini launches but we'll still end up buying it :p

[Ian Micheal]

Code: Select all

Just a little bit of fun but let's have a look at some of the DC lore and myths - put your own top 5 or feel free to share any views or insight.

1. A Katana build of Half-Life is out in there in the wild somewhere?

More likely development switched to WINCE before anything substantial was completed.

There is it's not myth

2. Piracy killed the Dreamcast.

No one reason for me or smoking gun but as a teenager in the 90's everyone had chipped PS1. I think EA was a bigger reason.

It did not but killed major software houses wanting to put there games on un secure system that needed no mode chip
and pretty much any idiot with cd burner could steal your game..

Check how homebrew indie dev's feel when people post there brand new game in cdi.. and times that by 1000 for retail company putting millions in to a game..

3. A VOODO chip would have given us better graphics and performance.

Maybe but would it be enough to notice.The DC was very efficiently designed system and I think another 16mb of board RAM would have the biggest impact for developers.

It would have made it worst not better

4 The DC controller is the worst launch controller in gaming history apart from the N64.

I'm still not sure if I like it after all these years. Pretty well built to be fair but the PS2 controller was a generational leap.

Never liked the ps1 or ps2 controller best controller is the saturns dreamcast is fine much better then the n64's

5 We"ll all be disappointed when the Dreamcast mini launches but we'll still end up buying it :p

I'm not

[megavolt85]

1) It's not important for me
2) Dreamcast is still alive, company SEGA died
3) VOODOO would have raised the price of the console, but not the performance
4) Technically, the Dreamcast controller was ahead of its time, even today it takes the first place in its advancement, accuracy and reliability of hall sensors, not every controller manufacturer can boast
5) I have never bought and will not buy mini consoles, if I want to play on an emulator, then I can do it on a PC, Android TV BOX or Raspbery PI, I not crazy buying weak hardware for a big money (mini consoles for collectors , no matter what kind of iron is inside, the main thing looks beautiful on the shelf)

[dubcity]

I guess I'll add some controversy to this thread with some questions.....

1. Has anyone tried to license katana libraries from Sega since Dreamcast died? If so what happened?

2. Is it taboo to work with wince libraries as it is to use katana?

3. Who was best wince coder in Dreamcast scene?

4. Would extra 16mb ram help port Naomi titles to Dreamcast in the same way ram upgrade helped Xbox get chihiro arcade games?

5. GameCube discs have same capacity as gd-rom. Ithe system seems very similar to Dreamcast with capabilities. Does it use pvr also? How different are the libraries?

Stirring the pot but also looking for some comments and hopefully answers lol.

[Anthony817]

A Katana build of Half-Life is out in there in the wild somewhere?

More likely development switched to WINCE before anything substantial was completed.

There have been images circulating from a presumed Katana build for a few years now. If I remember the disc was for sale on eBay but the reserve was not met. It may have been posted 2 different times from what I recall.

Supposedly when Captivation was working on the game, it was developed with official Katana SDK. But then Sierra didn't like how long it was taking them, so they gave the project to Gearbox who were at the time only dealing with the upgraded remastered version assets and it was decided to just have them take over the full development and create a faster Windows CE port.

Some other information can be found here about this port.

Half-Life (Dreamcast port) Combine OverWiki

[ioncannon]

I guess I'll add some controversy to this thread with some questions.....

1. Has anyone tried to license katana libraries from Sega since Dreamcast died? If so what happened?

...

5. GameCube discs have same capacity as gd-rom. Ithe system seems very similar to Dreamcast with capabilities. Does it use pvr also? How different are the libraries?

1 -> As a person with a devkit and a small 3d engine who's porting it to DC using the official SDK.... I'd love to ask em if I ever get my game idea far enough.

5 -> PVR is a PowerVR format specifically made to be decompressed and loaded by the hardware quickly. It's still useable to this day on modern cellphones and such that use PowerVR chipsets. There is no reason that it would appear on other non-PowerVR systems, which most likely use S3TC compression like everyone else (DXT files).

[megavolt85]

2. Is it taboo to work with wince libraries as it is to use katana?2. Is it taboo to work with wince libraries as it is to use katana?

when used for non-commercial purposes, you are not in danger
even if you write a commercial game on the official SDK, then no one will sue you, if the current owner of SEGA wanted, he could sue any indie developer, because absolutely everyone uses a piece of code from SEGA

4. Would extra 16mb ram help port Naomi titles to Dreamcast in the same way ram upgrade helped Xbox get chihiro arcade games?

to transfer NAOMI 1 games, increasing the system RAM is not enough, it is also necessary to increase the SPU RAM to 8 megabytes and VRAM to 16 megabytes

[NeORomani]

Number #5 is SO TRUE XDDD

[CrashMidnick]

1) I do not care about that
2) To me, bad distribution network, Sony's marketing/communication for the PS2 and on top of that SEGA's financial difficulities led the DC to the grave.
3) Dreamcast was ahead of its time and price was good. They made the good choice.
4) I love the original DC controller, only the triggers can hurt because of their width. I never owned a Sony console because of its controller. The sticks are very badly placed (face to face)
5) I prefer to use original hardware or Redream.

[fafadou]

2) Dreamcast is still alive, company SEGA died

Thanks to you, all developers, and the whole community for keeping dreamcast alive.

I'm just learning that the first xbox was less selling than dreamcast during its first two years...