What happened to all the non 8- and 16- bit DC homebrew games?

[+atari2600land]

I need a new Dreamcast game that actually takes full advantage of the Dreamcast capabilities and isn't a 8 or 16 bit port on something I can get easily on a system less powerful. What happened to the people that made Irides, or Inhabitants, stuff like that?

[Austin]

Irides and Inhabitants aren't too far off from the 8/16-bit type stuff you are talking about. They are both very simplistic games.

 

Full games of Dreamcast-era caliber are extremely time consuming to create, especially for a team of one or two. You need full teams of individuals to create something worthwhile (3D visuals, lots of content, complex gameplay, etc).

Edited August 29 by Austin

[dudeguy]

not sure but I'm right there with you in that id like a game that looks like it could've been sitting in a glass case at Target in the year 2000, only made in 2024

[roots.genoa]

Creating a Dreamcast game (that looks like one) is a lot more work than creating a game for the Atari 2600, for which a programmer can easily make the graphics himself and they'll still look as good as professional releases. That being said, it's true that a few years back, there were several Dreamcast games in development, while now it's mostly emulated NES and NeoGeo, or ports like the recent Duke Nukem 3D. It's just an educated guess, but I remember a couple of Kickstarter campaigns failing hard, so maybe it discouraged several homebrew developers.