So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

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So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by MethodGit »

Perhaps someone could care to educate me on this one, or if there were any "politics" behind it. I would've thought VGA would be the best display option for all Dreamcast titles, yet there were a few games I seem to recall that would pop up a message at startup stating that the game does not support VGA output.

Surely this would a catalyst for running a "backup" version of a game (instead of a GD original) as you could at least manually patch those to force VGA support?

I look forward to your responses.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Ex-Cyber »

My best guess is that some companies couldn't afford (or just didn't want to deal with) the additional QA testing. IIRC, a few games actually have VGA support in the code but have it disabled via the disc header.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by cube_b3 »

So what dos that mean some games won't work with my vga adapter or they will just run on SD rather than HD?
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Ex-Cyber »

The BIOS won't boot some games if a VGA cable/box is attached (unless it's a switchable one set to composite/s-video or RGB). There's a list floating around somewhere, but from memory I know that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999, and Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh won't boot.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Grimlock »

If there are any specific games anyone wants to know about just ask me. I have almost every Dreamcast game. I have all the American titles, all the European exclusives, and almost all the Japanese exclusives. I'm 24 titles short (all Japanese) of having every game.

I also keep extensive records of which games function naturally with VGA, which ones require Codebreaker to force boot them into using VGA, and which ones can't use VGA at all.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by cube_b3 »

You mind sharing the list rather then the number of your collection?
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by |darc| »

Here is a decent list for reference:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/05/ ... -list.html
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Maturion »

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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Grimlock »

This list is in an odd format, I could share it it would just take me a while to convert it.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Christuserloeser »

MethodGit wrote:Perhaps someone could care to educate me on this one, or if there were any "politics" behind it.
It's mostly US and EU games that don't have VGA support enabled.

My guess: Didn't care / didn't know / forgot to.


There are exceptions though: Some of Capcom's Japanese Matching Service games don't support RGB nor VGA (RGBHV), which some assume was meant to prevent people from using them in public locations like arcades, cafes, bars, etc. pp.

European games that were optimized for 50Hz display (like Code Veronica) don't support VGA because it would mean that it wouldn't comply with the VGA standard anyway (640x480p60). But even those could be patched/tricked so they'd at least work on some European CRT monitors - but they wouldn't work on HDTVs because they wouldn't accept 50Hz via VGA.

MethodGit wrote:Surely this would a catalyst for running a "backup" version of a game (instead of a GD original) as you could at least manually patch those to force VGA support?
All that's missing would be a flag in the IP.BIN bootsector, so yeah, they could be "patched" by adding this flag.

BILAL_XIA wrote:So what dos that mean some games won't work with my vga adapter or they will just run on SD rather than HD?
Games that don't boot in VGA can be tricked to work in HD by simply booting them with the VGA adapter/box/cable unplugged. Once the cable is plugged in, the Dreamcast switches to VGA mode.

Grimlock wrote:This list is in an odd format, I could share it it would just take me a while to convert it.
If you could post it in DCEmulation's Wiki it would be appreciated :)
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Grimlock »

I will when its complete. I'm only a few games away from owning all titles.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Grimlock »

Okay, so, I'm only one game short now. But I don't expect to get it any time soon.

Anyway, I have a generically exported HTML with all the data on it.

Is there anyone who would like to take it and create a better database with it?

Christuserloser I'm kind of aiming this at you.
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Re: So why did some commercial DC games not support VGA?

Post by Christuserloeser »

Well, I would try to convert it to Wiki to post it at Wikipedia, here and at DCS. :)
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