Emulation

[Neapolitan Ice Cream]

Well, this has been a revelation! The Dreamcast was a power-house for its time, outputting graphics at 640 x 480, or VGA.

But.

You can download something called "ReDream". It's a Dreamcast emulator, or, simply put, something that allows you to play Dreamcast games on your Mac, Windows or Linux PC.

The advantages? Near perfect quality. And instead of VGA quality, it cleverly re-engineers the games to make them shine anew at 4K HDMI resolution! With image smoothening and other tricks! It makes the games sit up and sing

Here's my library so far:















Impressive, no?

 

[kdonnel]

The last console that I considered mine was an Atari 2600, well I played the Wii some with the kids but that was their console.

My gaming occured on the 2600 or at an arcade.

So about 15 years ago I built a MAME cabinet. I probably had as much fun building the cabinet and control panel as I have had playing it.

I ended up putting MAME and Stella on it and primarily play Duck Hunt, Golden Tee, Galaga, and River Raid.

The kids didn't play it much until they got older. Once they hit late high school/college it was suddenly really fun for them and their friends.

How well do the game controls work with ReDream? Can you use a controller that is close to the Dreamcast controller or are you stuck using the keyboard and mouse?

Building the arcade style controller for my MAME cabinet was fun and it is what gives the same feel to playing. I bought real arcade joysticks, I have one centrally mounted 4-way for games like Pacman, and a player one and player two 8-way for games that used 8-way joysticks and lots of real arcade buttons. For most games there are a lot of extra buttons but there are a few games that needed 6. The trackball doubles as the mouse. The coin door is operational but you can also just press either of the green buttons to insert a quarter.

Retro gaming is fun.

 

[TippyThomas]

I have a Raspberry Pi that I installed RetroPie on and enjoy playing games now that I never got to experience as a child. I don't do it often but it's nice to have when I'm in the mood to waste some time.

 

[Jennasis]

The last console that I considered mine was an Atari 2600, well I played the Wii some with the kids but that was their console.

My gaming occured on the 2600 or at an arcade.

So about 15 years ago I built a MAME cabinet. I probably had as much fun building the cabinet and control panel as I have had playing it.

I ended up putting MAME and Stella on it and primarily play Duck Hunt, Golden Tee, Galaga, and River Raid.

The kids didn't play it much until they got older. Once they hit late high school/college it was suddenly really fun for them and their friends.

How well do the game controls work with ReDream? Can you use a controller that is close to the Dreamcast controller or are you stuck using the keyboard and mouse?

Building the arcade style controller for my MAME cabinet was fun and it is what gives the same feel to playing. I bought real arcade joysticks, I have one centrally mounted 4-way for games like Pacman, and a player one and player two 8-way for games that used 8-way joysticks and lots of real arcade buttons. For most games there are a lot of extra buttons but there are a few games that needed 6. The trackball doubles as the mouse. The coin door is operational but you can also just press either of the green buttons to insert a quarter.

Retro gaming is fun.

View attachment 828544

DH built an arcade cabinet too! It has all the original NES on it as well as SNES, Sega, colecovision, AtAri and I think Playstation.

 

[BrianL]

The last console that I considered mine was an Atari 2600, well I played the Wii some with the kids but that was their console.

My gaming occured on the 2600 or at an arcade.

So about 15 years ago I built a MAME cabinet. I probably had as much fun building the cabinet and control panel as I have had playing it.

I ended up putting MAME and Stella on it and primarily play Duck Hunt, Golden Tee, Galaga, and River Raid.

The kids didn't play it much until they got older. Once they hit late high school/college it was suddenly really fun for them and their friends.

How well do the game controls work with ReDream? Can you use a controller that is close to the Dreamcast controller or are you stuck using the keyboard and mouse?

Building the arcade style controller for my MAME cabinet was fun and it is what gives the same feel to playing. I bought real arcade joysticks, I have one centrally mounted 4-way for games like Pacman, and a player one and player two 8-way for games that used 8-way joysticks and lots of real arcade buttons. For most games there are a lot of extra buttons but there are a few games that needed 6. The trackball doubles as the mouse. The coin door is operational but you can also just press either of the green buttons to insert a quarter.

Retro gaming is fun.

View attachment 828544

Nice MAME cab! I can't tell, but does it have a spinner? That's the one thing that's so hard to get right with emulation.

 

[jimmymc]

I use PCSX2 and RPCS3 for my old library of games all the time. PS2 was my only console for a long time, so I still have quite a few disks.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I use Dolphin for the Gamecube and Wii and the graphical upgrades for the Gamecube games especially make it extremely difficult for me to play those games on the original hardware.

 

[kdonnel]

Nice MAME cab! I can't tell, but does it have a spinner? That's the one thing that's so hard to get right with emulation.

No, no spinner.

 

[BrianL]

No, no spinner.

Aw, man, no TRON then. That's always been hard to emulate because of the very custom controls. Same for the old Star Wars arcade games wotht he sweet control yoke:

 

[Neapolitan Ice Cream]

How well do the game controls work with ReDream? Can you use a controller that is close to the Dreamcast controller or are you stuck using the keyboard and mouse?

My Xbox One wireless controller is almost flawless, but there is a little niggle about it that I can't quite place. No biggie. Besides, I'm getting a Dreamcast controller adaptor in the post any day soon, so in theory, perfection is in my grasp.

 

[Neapolitan Ice Cream]

Just backed up my copy of Shenmue II... now I can play on the move via my laptop!