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Good Dreamcast games?


BassGuitari

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Thank you all for your replies! Lots of good stuff.

 

I've got:

 

-House of the Dead 2 (but the disc is partially cracked and won't work properly. :( ) and a gun controller

-Dynamite Cop

-Quake III Arena

-Vigilante 8: Second Offense

-Jet Grind Radio

-Airforce Delta

-Crazy Taxi

-Iron Aces

-Sonic Shuffle

-Sonic Adventure 2

-Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1

 

My brother actually has some Web Browser software for Dreamcast. Any idea if that's still useable?

 

Looks like you are off to a good start. The great thing about the DC is you can usually find games pretty cheap if you hit the pawn shops.

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Hey, congrats on the DC purchase. :) Dreamcast is an excellent "cult" system in my opinion, much like Saturn, and Neo Geo. Dreamcast has a great selection of fighters / action titles, and scrolling shooters (most of which are import only). I have *way* too many Dreamcasts myself. ;)

 

As I mentioned above, many of the best games are import only. DC's essentially a Sega NAOMI arcade setup with a little less RAM, so it's no surprise that the NAOMI ports are generally arcade perfect.

 

First off, I'd *highly* recommend grabbing a VGA adapter. The VGA signal's generated by the Dreamcast itself, so brand won't matter too much. Personally, I like the Performance brand box, because it has VGA / audio pass-through connections. Nice when you don't have to disconnect your monitor, and speaker cables all the time.

 

You and a few others have already mentioned some quality games including Shenmue (Looks fantastic in VGA mode by the way.), Sonic Adventure 2, House of the Dead 2, Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio etc. Might want to consider grabbing an Agetec arcade stick too.

 

Anyway, here are some other games I'd recommend. Most of them are vert/horizontal scrolling shooters. Naturally some are better than others, but I feel they're all worth mentioning. Import only unless noted:

 

Bangai-O (Import/Domestic: Interesting Treasure title. Fun, I'd check it out.)

 

Border Down (Little overrated, and on the expensive side. Good game though. Looks great in VGA.)

 

Cannon Spike (Import/Domestic: Highly recommended. Excellent action / "multi-directional" shooter, not so much a traditional scroller. Looks great in VGA.)

 

Capcom vs SNK 2 (Quality fighter. Arcade version runs on NAOMI hardware, and DC's essentially a NAOMI.)

 

Giga Wing (Import/Domestic: Great shooter, not too expensive.)

 

Giga Wing 2 (Import/Domestic: Pretty good, but it's a bit more expensive than the first. VGA compatible.)

 

Gunbird 2 (Import/Domestic: Excellent shooter, with lots of bullet spam. Classic Psikyo title.)

 

Ikaruga (Fun Treasure shooter. Overrated in my opinion, but worth checking out. Looks great in VGA.)

 

Karous (Released after Radirgy, gameplay is similar. Cel shaded, and looks good in VGA.)

 

Mars Matrix (Import/Domestic: Highly recommended. This is a great shooter. Classic Takumi title.)

 

Marvel vs Capcom 2 (Import/Domestic: Good fighter, though I prefer Capcom vs SNK 2 personally.)

 

PowerStone 1, and 2 (Import/Domestic: I'd recommend both of these. Great non-traditional "free roaming" fighters. Even better if you're playing against another person. Both look good in VGA.)

 

Psyvariar 2 (Yet another vert scrolling shooter. Fun to play, and looks great in VGA.)

 

Radirgy (This is a pretty good cel shaded shooter. Sure there are better shooters out there, but it's entertaining. You'll notice some Radiant Silvergun influences here, though RSG's obviously better. Not really a comparison. Looks great in VGA.)

 

Rez (music / rhythm / shooter combo, kind of unique. Rez is a relaxing "chill" game. Anyone who likes it knows what I mean. Looks great in VGA.)

 

Shikigami No Shiro 2 (Excellent game. Way better than the PS2 release, and again: Looks great in VGA.)

 

Under Defeat (Highly recommended. This plays a little like Zero Gunner 2 in the respect that you can rotate, and shoot in all directions. Looks great in VGA. One of the DC games I'll actually rotate my PC monitor for. :D)

 

Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram (If you've never played Virtual On, it's mech based 1 on 1 arcade combat. Great game, and it's VGA compatible.)

 

Zero Gunner 2 (Highly recommended. Excellent Psikyo helicopter shooter. Looks great in VGA.)

 

***Honorable mentions***

 

Trigger Heart Excelica (While not a *bad* shooter, I felt it was rather mediocre... Worth playing, but I personally never got into it. Looks good in VGA.)

 

Trizeal (Probably could've put this in the larger list above. Fun game, but it doesn't really stand out either. Looks good in VGA.)

 

NOTE:

 

Many of the above games are expensive! Personally, I've spent a *lot* on DC titles in the past...only to keep them on a shelf, and play backup versions. (When you pay 50-70+ dollars for a disc, you don't feel like scratching it... ) Anyway, my point is: If you want to *try* an expensive game before you buy it, they're are out there. Dreamcast will boot backups without any mods.

Edited by RocketLawnChair
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Thank you all for your replies! Lots of good stuff.

 

I've got:

 

-House of the Dead 2 (but the disc is partially cracked and won't work properly. :( ) and a gun controller

-Dynamite Cop

-Quake III Arena

-Vigilante 8: Second Offense

-Jet Grind Radio

-Airforce Delta

-Crazy Taxi

-Iron Aces

-Sonic Shuffle

-Sonic Adventure 2

-Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1

 

My brother actually has some Web Browser software for Dreamcast. Any idea if that's still useable?

 

i do to and no cue

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  • 3 weeks later...
Ikaruga (Fun Treasure shooter. Overrated in my opinion, but worth checking out. Looks great in VGA.)

Overrated?!? Overrated?!? No such thing! Ikaruga is one of the best shmups of all time. The black/white element of the game adds a huge amount of strategy that is not found in any other shooter. Giga Wing is nice if you're a huge fan of bullet-hell, but if you want a shmup with more depth, Ikaruga is where it's at. ;)

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Ikaruga (Fun Treasure shooter. Overrated in my opinion, but worth checking out. Looks great in VGA.)

Overrated?!? Overrated?!? No such thing! Ikaruga is one of the best shmups of all time. The black/white element of the game adds a huge amount of strategy that is not found in any other shooter. Giga Wing is nice if you're a huge fan of bullet-hell, but if you want a shmup with more depth, Ikaruga is where it's at. ;)

Radiant Silvergun's overrated too, but it's still a great game. Prefer it over Ikaruga, actually. I play too many shooters. ;)
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Radiant Silvergun's overrated too, but it's still a great game. Prefer it over Ikaruga, actually. I play too many shooters. ;)

Hey, didya hear? Ikaruga came out on XBox Live. Total and complete gyp for anyone who invested in a (rather expensive!) Gamecube copy, and/or anyone who kind of like the identification of the game with the Dreamcast. Of course, it also exposes this great shooter to a lot more players. So six of one, half-dozen of the other. :)

 

Now to get Radiant Silvergun in a modern form. I (sadly) don't have a Saturn to play the original. :(

 

(Same problem with Nights, of course.)

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Also, what you do you folks think about Shenmue? I've heard it's amazing, and I've heard it's really boring.

 

I think it was an amazing game, which I found boring... I was actually sad about that at the time and it still bothers me a bit now. I figured it might have been that I just didn't have the time to put into it, but the time that I did put into it was both a marvel and a bit of a toil...

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Also, what you do you folks think about Shenmue? I've heard it's amazing, and I've heard it's really boring.

 

It's both. Imagine a fighting game that simulates training, or an RPG that simulates a 9 to 5 job. Imagine a sandbox game with a curfew.

 

For every reward the game offers, there is a disappointment.

 

Most are by design.

 

Some were avoidable.

 

If you want to know whether Shenmue is for you, look at an old postcard of a small Japanese town in the mid 80's, and ask yourself whether it would be fun to live there for one year...

 

As a minor.

 

With mild autism.

 

Who's nearly a ninja by the end.

Edited by A Sprite
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Also, what you do you folks think about Shenmue? I've heard it's amazing, and I've heard it's really boring.

If you want to know whether Shenmue is for you, look at an old postcard of a small Japanese town in the mid 80's, and ask yourself whether it would be fun to live there for one year...

As a minor.

With mild autism.

Who's nearly a ninja by the end.

That's a hilarious-yet-accurate description - nicely done. That said, I really enjoyed Shenmue (and Shenmue 2, which was better in almost every way). Definitely a love it or hate it game. If you're in the mood for a relatively slow-paced adventure/mystery with some fighting sprinkled in it's worth a play through.
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The best gun I have is the StarFire Light Blaster from Interact. I also have a Pelican Stinger, which (unlike the StarFire) has a built in Jump Pack. Both have a single VMU slot, but the StarFire's rapid fire is much quicker. Stay away from the Sega gun--it won't work with House of the Dead 2 or Confidential Mission. Silent Scope does work with one particular gun, but not the others. I forget the name of the gun it works with, but I know it's not the Sega one or either of the ones I have (we tried it with the Stinger already).

 

According to ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast_light_guns

 

Looks like the SRC Bio Gun may or may not support Silent Scope.

 

Ok, for me, here is how the Dreamcast became the newest system I came to really get into beyond the Atari Jaguar.

 

1) Saw "Typing of the Dead" at a anime convention. Thought that was just hilarious.

2) A kid from church had a broken Dreamcast, which I fixed for him, but played with the Dreamcast before returning.

 

From there it was all about the ease and effectiveness of Dreamcast emulators of retro platforms and how many game images are out there that can be burned to a CD-R.

 

Emulators I've tried cover Atari 2600, 5200/8-bit, ST, Lynx, and I've also tried Colecovision and Intellivision. All the above (were quite good I thought. And I've also tried emulators for the SNES, Genesis, and everyone has to try once Bleemcast... the Playstation emu for the Dreamcast. Just amazing even if it's not finished. (Some games work quite good, some not really at all. Bubsy 3D once works through the first level, and while I'm a huge Bubsy fan, this is probably a good thing that is all it does).

 

I've used the Dreamcast emulation of the Atari 5200 in many games of the 5200 high score club (and I'm not the only one).

 

The built in Dreamcast modem was great enough to get me surfing the web and IRC chat on the Atari IRC chat channels with Planetweb 3.0. When I got the Broadband adaptor (which can be bit pricey) I was able to not only surf the web faster, but could then play Quake 3 online, and get on BBS's using the port of Linux to telnet out. :D Now that was fun.

 

I've even played some Dreamcast games too. :D Yeh I must have tons of games to try out, but so far I've greatly loved Little Green Army Men (solved that twice) which is really a slight upgrade of the 3DO port, but still a wonderful game (N64 version is still best to me), Sword of the Berserk (A good hero with a big sword against everyone game), and beyond that, all light gun games. I have played the hell out of Virtua Cop 2 (A genesis port on the Sega Smash Pack disc and where the infamous SegaGen emulator came from), House of the Dead 2, Confidiental Mission. The Death Crimson games are good if you can get them for like... $2 or so and play through once.

 

But the Dreamcast is just awesome. I've even hacked Atari 2600 controllers to the Dreamcast...

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=121144

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  • 12 years later...
On 4/17/2008 at 2:56 PM, VW said:

If you like RPGs, definitely try Skies of Arcadia, one of my favorite RPGs ever. Deep story with a lot of interesting places to explore with both ship to ship and regular party combat.

12 year thread bump!   Ive been playing Dreamcast Skies of Arcadia and didnt see much talk about it in other threads. Ive owned this game since it came out, but BITD I only played it for a few hours, got stuck, and never returned. cafeman Jr played it through, in fact I later bought Skies of Arcade legends for GameCube and I never played that either! 

 

So, I've played through several hours and I feel this is a magnificent game. Those who have played it, I just rescued my Blue Rogues friends and escaped Valuan. However, I had the game sitting on a dialogue screen, DC on the carpeting,  for too long, and the system auto rebooted for some reason, so I will have to replay the railcar sequence and ship battle all over again.   I assume the old dC got too hot? 

 

So I will finally experience the game. 

 

Edit for future readers:  I just fought the red moonstone gigas,  and lost.  I can see now that the game is much larger than I thought. There is a betrayal of sorts but I saw that coming from the character's introduction.  Thanks for the recommendation of the game, rereading made me remember it existed and start to play it. 

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Soul Calibur - Still one of the greatest, and easily a contender for the greatest fighting game of all time.

Virtua Tennis 2 - Same goes for this when it comes to sports games.

LeMans 24hrs - One of the best racing games concieved, and this is the best version of it (runs a full grid unlike all the others). Split screen multiplayer on it is magnificent.

Grandia II - My personal favourite JRPG of all time. Love the fighting mechanic in it. Does something so fun that even though you can avoid encounters, I never did. I was totally overpowered by the end. Millenia is also the best character ever.

 

There may not be a massive amount of games for the Dreamcast, but the quality is very high for what there is. Some utterly stunning stuff that really still stands up today. Some stuff is getting silly expensive these days for it sadly.

EDIT - just noticed this was a necrobump, never mind.

 

Also: Skies of Arcadia is actually better played on the GameCube if you have the choice of which platform to get it on. Slightly less grindy (it's still pretty grindy), but worth it.

 

As for overheating, it's got a tiny fan in there, which it very much needs. If you're running it stock it might need cleaning out a bit. If you're running with an optical drive replacement, it can bugger up the airflow without the drive there, there are 3D printed things that can help with this and you can also remove the 12v regulator as nothing uses it. I'm pretty sure there are guides for that on t'interwebs somewhere (RetroRGB is usually your friend for this sort of thing).

Edited by juansolo
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I'm playing SoA via disc. Still on disc 1. I am running VGA to HDMI and it looks, and sounds, magnificent!  I do plan on trying the GCN port next. But that will be via component on a Wii,  and I've read that there is a sound quality degradation on the Legends port, so for now I'll grind away in happiness with the DC original.  

 

Yes this was a necrobump but we can always use more Sega talk here. 

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6 hours ago, juansolo said:

LeMans 24hrs - One of the best racing games concieved, and this is the best version of it (runs a full grid unlike all the others). Split screen multiplayer on it is magnificent.

Have you ever played MSR? Metropolis Street Racer? If so how does LeMans compare in single player mode? I love MSR and I think I bought the dreamcast just for that game (after playing it on a friend's machine I think.)

 

As for a 12 year necrobump, I think my dreamcast has been in the closet for at least that long. ?

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MSR is much more arcadey. LeMans rides the line between sim and game quite nicely. Single player it can be a bit hard until you get into the swing of it. If you pick it up I recommend sticking to the 911's (which will put you to the back of the field) and working up from there once you've got the hang of them.

 

It's the multiplayer where it really shines as the rubber-banding is so well balanced to not feel unfair on the other players and just keep the racing close and competative. I still remember some of the races I had with my brother and friends from back in the day, it's so well done.

 

There's a bit in Skies of Arcadia where you traverse a sort of zone (I'm trying not to spoil anything). What I will say is that this is easily the most frustrating section of the game and I've no idea how you were supposed to do it without drawing maps of what goes where, which would take forever. I totally went online for that bit and didn't feel bad about it.

Edited by juansolo
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Little story for y'all...

 

Around when the PS4 and Xbone came out I lost all interest in gaming. I sold my 360 and PS3. The only consoles I had left were the Dreamcast and the GameCube that I'd chucked up in the loft years previously and had no intention of ever selling. The current stuff I was just done with. So it was for a few years I just didn't bother and didn't really miss it.

 

Then I got a craving... I went up into the loft and pulled the DC and GC down, went through the games and found a couple I had that I'd never played. They were Grandia II on the DC and Skies of Arcadia on the GC. I played them both end to end one after the other. It completely re-kindled my love of video games and reminded me that I just didn't need photorealism or online BS to play a damned good game. After that I bought a WiiU and sunk a scandalous amount of hours into Xenoblade Chronicles X.

 

That is what got me on this retro trip. Prior to this I'd only had all these machines when they were current. For that Grandia II and Skies of Arcadia have a dear place in my heart. Helps that they're both bloody brilliant.

Edited by juansolo
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5 hours ago, juansolo said:

There's a bit in Skies of Arcadia where you traverse a sort of zone (I'm trying not to spoil anything). What I will say is that this is easily the most frustrating section of the game and I've no idea how you were supposed to do it without drawing maps of what goes where, which would take forever. I totally went online for that bit and didn't feel bad about it.

Similar. SoA has frustrated me twice already. Last night, in the southern Ocean kingdom in the moonstone mines, in hindsight it wasn't that tough but I could not find my way through, plus every 20 steps there is another random encounter fight. It was getting late and I could not save until I completed it, so I searched YT for a video, and voila, there was the path I kept missing.   

 

Concerning MSR, I didn't play it until after I had already played Project Gotham Racing on Xbox. Thus it didn't impress me as much as it should have. But I bought test drive Le Mans on day one, and it was a fun and impressive and challenging racer that I played for a long time. The attention to detail and the number of cars on screen at one time was unbelievable back then. I remember discussions about this game at the Dreamcast technical Pages forum where one of the developers joined in. 

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On 6/6/2020 at 7:35 AM, juansolo said:

 

LeMans 24hrs - One of the best racing games concieved, and this is the best version of it (runs a full grid unlike all the others). Split screen multiplayer on it is magnificent.

 

 

This the same game as "Test Drive Le Mans," or a different title?

 

 

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