State of Dreamcast Emulation?

[Zach]

Just curious what the state of things is.. Are there one or two good emulators out there, with good performance and compatability? I'm not going to have to go to 50 different sites to find the best plugin am I?

In the process of acquiring a substantial collection of DC games, and my brother used to own one so I know he might be interested in that too.


Are used consoles available pretty cheap? (sub-$50 range)

[AnAutisticDog]

Sorry I can't answer you, but I spent about 8 hours last night trying to get some Dreamcast emulators to work. The only one I could get to work was NullDC. NullDC is supposed to have good Compatibility.I started playing Jet Grind Radio for a bit and my PC isn't that powerful, but it ran just fine.
From my personal experience, I think that there is a certain way to set it up, that you ""HAVE"" to do to make the emulator work.
I eventually had to search forever for a version of NullDC that someone had already configured everything so it works, and it has all the plugins needed (I think it does). The Controller plugin worked too, I was surprised because everywhere I read it said that NullDC did not support gamepads.


I'm new to Dreamcast Emulating, so I could be wrong.
BTW. Zack, check your PMs.

[FatTrucker]

Demul and NullDC are currently the best of the crop. Compatibility is very good, being roughly where PS1 emulation was about 18 months or so ago. Don't know how it is over there but over here DC consoles, games and peripherals can be had for hardly any money from sites like Ebay. (I recently bagged an unboxed but working DC, 12 games, controllers, VMU's and a lightgun for £22.

[alcoatjez]

In the process of acquiring a substantial collection of DC games, and my brother used to own one so I know he might be interested in that too.

I would suggest buying the real thing then. DC games are dumpable, but it takes extra hardware (BB adapter) to do it. Most DCs can play back-ups too ;)

[ulaoulao]

NullDC IMO, hands down..

[william wallace]

I know that NullDC 1.0 Beta 6 November 2007 is the best Dreamcast emulator because it supports all controllers. Not the April release because you have to install it in you program files. Or if that's what you want look for April 2007 release.
The latest release NullDC 1.0.3 August 2008 is inferior as it doesn't support control pads.
I wish they hadn't even released this version because of this. I hate using the keyboard for any games, although it works for Nintendo NES okay. Maybe they will have this fixed within the next month.

[FatTrucker]

Use a pad conversion app like xpadder or joy2key. Eventually someone will get around to doing a plugin to reinstate the pad support.

[Ashbo]

i'm kinda new to this emulator stuff
but i do know that when i save one it goes into a compressed(zipped) folder
yet ever time i try to save any dreamcast emulator, my computer and the other one in the living room want to save it as a .rar document

since y'all were talking about it anyway, i was wondering if maybe you knew if it was messed up or something.

[Ashbo]

And that's not just for nulldc.
that happens with every dreamcast emulator on every website i've gone too.

[Zach]

RAR is a very popular and very efficient program, often much better than ZIP and can achieve higher compression.

All you have to do to open the files you download from the web, is use WinRAR, at www.rarsoft.com

It's free to use and doesn't cripple itself, but unless you register will have to deal with a registration nag screen every once in a while.

[Ashbo]

so i'll i have to do is download RAR, open the emulator with that, and it'll work??

[Zach]

Yes, pretty much.

Although you don't run it after you open it in WinRAR, you use winRAR to extract it to a folder of your choice. The default is usually the name of the RAR or if there is a directory at the base level, just extract the directory wherever you want. Then you run the emulator.

You have to have dreamcast GDI's (the original game format) or hacked playable CD images of course (I don't know if you can use a drive with DC emulators). And you probably need the Dreamcast BIOS too. We can't tell you where to get games or BIOS files, as they are copyrighted software.

[retroguiden]

I switch between NullDC and Demul depending on the game. I'm not sure I would say that it's up to PSX emulation level 18 months ago but perhaps i've just played the wrong games. All the games I've tried (with the exception of Sonic Adventure 2) has had major flaws. But it is *much* better than when I tried it a year or so ago.