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Dreamcast - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Dreamcast(Japanese: гѓ‰гѓЄгѓјгѓ г‚гѓЈг‚№гѓ€,Hepburn: Dor. Д«mukyasuto?) is a home video game console released by Sega on November 2. Japan, September 9, 1. North America, and October 1. Europe. It was the first in the sixth generation of video game consoles, preceding Sony's Play.
Station 2, Nintendo's Game. Cube and Microsoft's Xbox. The Dreamcast is Sega's final home console, marking the end of the company's 1. In contrast to the expensive hardware of the unsuccessful Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast was designed to reduce costs with "off- the- shelf" components, including a Hitachi.
SH- 4. CPU and an NECPower. VR2 GPU. Released in Japan to a subdued reception, the Dreamcast enjoyed a successful U. S. launch backed by a large marketing campaign, but interest in the system steadily declined as Sony built hype for the upcoming Play. Station 2. Sales did not meet Sega's expectations despite several price cuts, and the company continued to incur significant financial losses.
The Dreamcast (Japanese: ドリームキャスト, Hepburn: Dorīmukyasuto?) is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998 in Japan, September 9. Historique [ | le code] Genèse [ | le code] Logo de la Dreamcast hors Europe Dès 1996, Sega déclare travailler sur un nouveau projet de console, connu alors sous.
After a change in leadership, Sega discontinued the Dreamcast on March 3. Dreamcast units were sold worldwide. Although the Dreamcast had a short lifespan and limited third- party support, reviewers have considered the console ahead of its time. Its library contains many games considered creative and innovative, including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio and Shenmue, as well as high- quality ports from Sega's NAOMI arcade system board.
Hi, I’m not looking at my PC right now, but I can tell you that I run Dreamcast games almost perfectly on NullDc 1.6 or something like that. Features. Windows CE is optimized for devices that have minimal memory; a Windows CE kernel may run with one megabyte of memory. [10] Devices are often configured.
The Dreamcast was also the first console to include a built- in modem (5. K) for Internet support and online play. History[edit]Background[edit]Released in 1. Sega. Genesis (known as the Sega Mega Drive in Europe and Japan) was Sega's entry into the fourth generation of video game consoles.[1] Selling 3. Genesis was the most successful console Sega ever released.[2] The successor to the Genesis, the Sega Saturn, was released in Japan in 1. The Saturn was a CD- ROM- based console that displayed both 2.
D and 3. D computer graphics, but its complex dual- CPU architecture made it more difficult to program for than its chief competitor, the Sony. Play. Station.[4] Although the Saturn debuted before the Play. Station in both Japan and the United States,[5] its surprise U. S. launch—which came four months earlier than originally scheduled[7]—was marred by a lack of distribution, which remained a continuing problem for the system.[1. Moreover, Sega's early release was undermined by Sony's simultaneous announcement that the Play.
Station would retail for US$2. Saturn's initial price of $3. Nintendo's long delay in releasing a competing 3. D console and the damage done to Sega's reputation by poorly supported add- ons for the Genesis (particularly the Sega 3.
X) allowed Sony to establish a foothold in the market.[5] The Play. Station was immediately successful in the U. S., in part due to a massive advertising campaign and strong third- party support engendered by Sony's excellent development tools and liberal $1. Sony's success was further aided by a price war in which Sega lowered the price of the Saturn from $3. Play. Station–even though Saturn hardware was more expensive to manufacture and the Play. Station enjoyed a larger software library.[5][1. Losses on the Saturn hardware contributed to Sega's financial problems, which saw the company's revenue decline between 1.
Furthermore, Sega's focus on the Saturn over the Genesis prevented it from fully capitalizing on the continued strength of the 1. Due to long- standing disagreements with Sega of Japan,[1. Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske became less interested in his position.
On July 1. 6, 1. 99. Sega announced that Shoichiro Irimajiri had been appointed chairman and CEO of Sega of America, while Kalinske would be leaving Sega after September 3. Sega also announced that Sega Enterprises cofounder. David Rosen and Sega of Japan CEO Hayao Nakayama had resigned from their positions as chairman and co- chairman of Sega of America, though both men remained with the company.[1. Bernie Stolar, a former executive at Sony Computer Entertainment of America,[2. Sega of America's executive vice president in charge of product development and third- party relations.[1. Stolar did not support the Saturn due to his belief that the hardware was poorly designed and publicly announced at E3 1.
The Saturn is not our future."[1. After the launch of the Nintendo 6. Saturn and Sega's 3.
As of August 1. 99. Sony controlled 4. Nintendo controlled 4. Sega controlled only 1. Neither price cuts nor high- profile games were proving helpful to the Saturn's success. Due to the Saturn's poor performance in North America, Sega of America laid off 6.
I thought the Saturn was a mistake as far as hardware was concerned. The games were obviously terrific, but the hardware just wasn't there."—Bernie Stolar, former president of Sega of America giving his assessment of the Saturn in 2. As a result of the company's deteriorating financial situation, Nakayama resigned as president of Sega in January 1. Irimajiri.[2. 4] Stolar would subsequently accede to president of Sega of America.[2. Following five years of generally declining profits,[2.
March 3. 1, 1. 99. Sega suffered its first parent and consolidated financial losses since its 1. Tokyo Stock Exchange.[2. Due to a 5. 4. 8% decline in consumer product sales (including a 7. ВҐ3. 5. 6 billion (US$2.
Shortly before announcing its financial losses, Sega revealed that it was discontinuing the Saturn in North America, with the goal of preparing for the launch of its successor.[2. This decision effectively left the Western market without Sega games for over one year.[4] Rumors about the upcoming Dreamcast—spread mainly by Sega itself—leaked to the public before the last Saturn games were released. Development[edit]As early as 1. Sega would collaborate with Lockheed Martin, The 3.
DO Company, Matsushita, or Alliance Semiconductor to create a new graphics processing unit, which conflicting accounts said would be used for a 6. Saturn 2" or an add- on peripheral.[2. Development of the Dreamcast was wholly unrelated to this rumored project.[3. In light of the Saturn's poor market performance, Irimajiri decided to start looking outside of the company's internal hardware development division to create a new console.[3. In 1. 99. 7, Irimajiri enlisted the services of Tatsuo Yamamoto from International Business Machines to lead an 1.
United States, which was referred to as "Blackbelt". Accounts vary on how an internal team led by Hideki Sato also began development on Dreamcast hardware; one account specifies that Sega of Japan tasked both teams,[3. Sato was bothered by Irimajiri's choice to begin development externally and chose to have his hardware team begin development.[3. Sato and his group chose the Hitachi. SH- 4 processor architecture and the Video.
Logic. Power. VR2 graphics processor, manufactured by NEC, in the production of their mainboard. Initially known as "Whitebelt",[3. Dural", after the metallic female fighter from Sega's Virtua Fighter series.[3. Yamamoto's group opted to use 3dfx. Voodoo 2 and Voodoo Banshee graphics processors alongside a Motorola Power.
PC 6. 03ecentral processing unit (CPU),[3. Sega management later asked them to also use the SH- 4 chip.[3. Both processors have been described as "off the shelf" components.[3. In 1. 99. 7, 3dfx began its IPO, and as a result of legal obligations unveiled its contracts with Sega, including the development of the new console.[3.
This angered Sega of Japan executives, who eventually decided to use the Dural chipset and cut ties with 3dfx. According to former Sega of America vice president of communications and former NEC brand manager Charles Bellfield, presentations of games using the NEC solution showcased the performance and low cost delivered by the SH- 4 and Power. VR architecture. He further stated that "Sega's relationship with NEC, a Japanese company, probably made a difference [in Sega's decision to adopt the Japanese team's design] too."[3.
Stolar, on the other hand, "felt the US version, the 3. Dfx version, should have been used. Japan wanted the Japanese version, and Japan won."[3. As a result, 3dfx filed a lawsuit against both Sega and NEC claiming breach of contract, which would eventually be settled out of court.[3. The choice to use the Power. VR architecture concerned Electronic Arts (EA), a longtime developer for Sega's consoles. EA had invested in 3dfx but was unfamiliar with the selected architecture, which was reportedly less powerful.[3.
As recounted by Shiro Hagiwara (a general manager at Sega's hardware division) and Ian Oliver (the managing director of Sega subsidiary Cross Products), the SH- 4 was chosen while it was still in development and following a lengthy deliberation process because it was the only available processor that "could adapt to deliver the 3. D geometry calculation performance necessary."[3. By February 1. 99. Sega had renamed the Dural "Katana" (after the Japanese sword), although certain hardware specifications such as random access memory (RAM) were not yet finalized.[3. Knowing that the Sega Saturn had been set back by its high production costs and complex hardware, Sega took a different approach with the Dreamcast. Like previous Sega consoles, the Dreamcast was designed around intelligent subsystems working in parallel with one another,[3.
According to Damien Mc. Ferran, "the motherboard was a masterpiece of clean, uncluttered design and compatibility."[3. Chinese economist and future Sega.
CEO Brad Huang convinced Sega chairman Isao Okawa to include a modem with every Dreamcast despite significant opposition from Okawa's staff over the additional $1. To account for rapid changes in home data delivery, Sega designed the Dreamcast's modem to be modular.[3. Sega selected the GD- ROM media format for the system.[4.
The GD- ROM, which was jointly developed by Sega and Yamaha Corporation, could be mass- produced at a similar price to a normal CD- ROM,[3. DVD- ROM technology.[3.
Running Sega Dreamcast Games on Your PC with null. DC – Techgage. As a gamer, one of the worst experiences is finding out that your favorite console is reaching its end- of- life stage. Yet, it’s inevitable.
Also inevitable is the fact that fans will create an emulator to make sure that the platform never dies. Luckily, pretty- well every console prior to and including the Sega Dreamcast have stellar emulator options available. That = a lot of gaming potential. Nearly five years ago, I wrote a how- to entitled “Game Emulation in Linux“, which as the title implies, talked about getting various emulators working under the OS along with a gamepad. At the end, I stated, “The only other system I really wanted to see an emulator for, but didn’t, was the Sega Dreamcast. I guess we can’t have it all!” This sentiment was directed at Linux, but the truth was that the options were ultra- limited for Windows as well. As it’s been a while since I last gave any Dreamcast emulator a test, I decided to once again seek out the available options and see how they fared.
To my surprise, I found two popular choices: DEMUL and null. DC. For various reasons, I didn’t have luck with DEMUL at all, after a couple of nights of testing. DC on the other hand, I had working no problem, so that’s the focus of this article. Unfortunately for Linux and OS X users, neither of these emulators are designed for either OS – though Wine might be an option on the Linux side. What Makes null. DC Great. It’s open- source.
Want to contribute? You can! The most important factor that sets an emulator apart from the rest is how well it works. In the case of null. DC, my overall experience has been amazing – much better than I anticipated. In all of the games I tested with null. DC (about 8. 0), each one that worked delivered the same audio I’d expect to get from the console, and for the most part, the same could be said about the graphics. There are occasions where texture glitches occur or fonts may not render ideally through the emulator as they would on the console, but so far I haven’t encountered any problem too notable.
You might have noticed that I mentioned “each one that worked” above, and that’s because not all games are going to work with null. DC. The limiting factor is Win. CE. If a game happens to use it, then it will not work in null. DC. It’s worth noting that DEMUL does support Win. CE, so that is one thing that does set the two emulators apart. Select games that run on Win. CE and subsequently won’t operate in null.
DC are Resident Evil 2, Armada, 4×4 Evolution, Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX, POD Speed. Zone and Ducati World.
If you’re familiar with emulators, chances are you know how tedious it can be to find the right plugin for each module of a console, such as graphics, audio, gamepad and so forth. This is one area where null. DC shines (or doesn’t, depending on your view), as it pre- bundles all of the plugins right inside of the main package.
That means that you’ll be able to get going fairly quickly without having to hunt down different plugins from a bunch of different websites. The downside, however, is that if one plugin doesn’t really agree with you, then you are somewhat out of luck.
I’ve been unsuccessful in trying to find alternate plugins for null. DC. Setting it Upnull. DC doesn’t have much of an official website, but rather is hosted via Google’s ‘code’ project hosting here.
You’ll want to download the non- NAOMI version of the emulator, and then extract it. There’s no installer for this emulator, so wherever you extract it is where it will run from. Like most emulators, null. DC requires a BIOS to operate, and adding to the similarity, it’s the one thing that doesn’t come included with the program. The reason for this is that the developers don’t want to risk angering Sega’s lawyers, and I don’t blame them. A quick Google search for ‘null. DC BIOS’ will yield quick results, or for a safe download I recommend grabbing it here.
You will need to place the BIOS and other files in the archive into the ‘data’ folder within the null. DC folder. Once that’s done, null. DC should load up without a hitch. If it complains about not being able to find the BIOS, double- check that it was extracted to the proper folder (‘data’) and also that its naming scheme is appropriate (‘dc_boot.
Your first stop should be Options > Select Plugins. The first four options can be left alone; it’s the “Maple” section that’s to be tackled. Maple is the plugin for gamepads, VMUs and other things. For some reason, I couldn’t get my Xbox 3. I changed it to “Puru. Puru Dreamcast Controller”. For extra save space, I added a second VMU to the first gamepad, and then two more to my nonexistent second gamepad.
At this point, there’s just one more important thing to take care of: gamepad configuration. To handle this, you need to go to Options > Maple > Port A > and then use the configuration tool for whichever plugin you’re using. Here’s the configuration screen for Puru. Puru and also how I have my Xbox 3. With gamepad configuration dealt with, you’re effectively done and ready to go. You might however want to spend a couple of minutes looking through the various tweaks in the Options menu, such as changing the default region or altering some of the graphics modes.
Two options I personally enable are Per Triangle under the Sort section in the Power. VR menu, and also Extra Geom under the Aspect Ratio section in the same menu. The latter option helps reveal more of the game on each side, effectively making 4: 3 games run with a widescreen ratio. This is not done by stretching, but rather revealing the extra area that the console itself would crop out.
You will see some garbage on the sides on occasion, but the widescreen effect once in a game that supports it is generally worth it. DC has the tendency to crash on occasion, so once all of your configuration tasks are handled, I’d recommend closing down the program and reopening it before loading up a DC game, just in case.