The past year.....

cheatachu72 · Post by **cheatachu72** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 7:38 pm

Alright, about a year ago my dreamcast took a dump on me and quit working. I havent been able to find a replacement since then until yesterday. When I last left Scherzo was just releasing Super Famicast.

So whats new

I have a fresh DC and a spindle of CDR's....point me into the right direction of the must haves.

Thanks in advance

Sweater Fish · Post by **Sweater Fish** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 3:31 am

A coincidence. I've been gone for a year, too (a little bit longer, actually) and just finished checking everything out and burning new homebrew and emulator compilations.

Super Famicast (and DreamSNES obviously) haven't made any real progress towards playability. There's a TurboGrafx emulator called huCast ported by Quzar, but it's not yet ready for prime time, either, in my opinion. The really cool thing, though, is ifnally Neo geo CD emulation and it's fast and high quality; there's Neo4All by Chui and NeoDC by Quzar. There's also finally an Amiga emulator (UAE4All also by Chui) that i haven't tried, but am looking forward to. There's also some new PC interpretters like REminiscence (plays Flashback) and Raw DC (plays Out Of This World...but it doesn't seem to work with my version of the game) and SCUMMVM DC just keeps getting better and better.

Also, there's this Fenix thing now (that's Chui's work, too, apparently) which is a game scripting engine ported over to the Dreamcast, which allows a lot of GP32 games to be run as well as some PC games and even one original Dreamcast game (so far). To be honest, I'm not terribly impressed with the majority of games for it, but there's a few good ones and who knows what it might mean in the future. (I haven't looked at it all, but is it such a simple scripting engine that a version of it could be made that runs directly on the Dreamcast, say with a disc image that includes a lot of cookie cutter graphics (which is what a lot of the Fenix graphics look like already)? That'd be cool.)

In homebrew and ported games:

Alice Dreams (maybe this demo is more than a year old)
Bugs (a simple SI/Galaxian game, but well done and fun)
DCastle (really nice looking, though, not yet as fun to play as I had hoped)
DC Squares (gets my vote for best game of the last year)
DC Stunt (just a small demo, but a lot of fun and shows a ton of promise)
Joggle (excellent word puzzler, just too bad it's got a limited number of levels)
Noiz2sa (I used to dream about this game getting ported to the DC, but I never thought it would really happen)
Super Mario War (another port, this one of a game I'd never played, but it's killer)
Dragons Of Rage (Beats Of Rage mod)

That's not everything that camme out within the last year, by a long shot (it seems like this has been a really killer year, especially for homebrew), but they're the things that I'm liking the most.

...word is bondage...

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 1:03 pm

Visual Troy advance was released april 1st. Very good.

Caboose · Post by **Caboose** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 7:24 pm

Dark Savant0 wrote:Visual Troy advance was released april 1st. Very good.

April fools?

Pyrite · Post by **Pyrite** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 7:41 pm

cheatachu72 · Post by **cheatachu72** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:50 pm

Sweater Fish wrote:A coincidence. I've been gone for a year, too (a little bit longer, actually) and just finished checking everything out and burning new homebrew and emulator compilations.

Super Famicast (and DreamSNES obviously) haven't made any real progress towards playability. There's a TurboGrafx emulator called huCast ported by Quzar, but it's not yet ready for prime time, either, in my opinion. The really cool thing, though, is ifnally Neo geo CD emulation and it's fast and high quality; there's Neo4All by Chui and NeoDC by Quzar. There's also finally an Amiga emulator (UAE4All also by Chui) that i haven't tried, but am looking forward to. There's also some new PC interpretters like REminiscence (plays Flashback) and Raw DC (plays Out Of This World...but it doesn't seem to work with my version of the game) and SCUMMVM DC just keeps getting better and better.

Also, there's this Fenix thing now (that's Chui's work, too, apparently) which is a game scripting engine ported over to the Dreamcast, which allows a lot of GP32 games to be run as well as some PC games and even one original Dreamcast game (so far). To be honest, I'm not terribly impressed with the majority of games for it, but there's a few good ones and who knows what it might mean in the future. (I haven't looked at it all, but is it such a simple scripting engine that a version of it could be made that runs directly on the Dreamcast, say with a disc image that includes a lot of cookie cutter graphics (which is what a lot of the Fenix graphics look like already)? That'd be cool.)

In homebrew and ported games:

Alice Dreams (maybe this demo is more than a year old)
Bugs (a simple SI/Galaxian game, but well done and fun)
DCastle (really nice looking, though, not yet as fun to play as I had hoped)
DC Squares (gets my vote for best game of the last year)
DC Stunt (just a small demo, but a lot of fun and shows a ton of promise)
Joggle (excellent word puzzler, just too bad it's got a limited number of levels)
Noiz2sa (I used to dream about this game getting ported to the DC, but I never thought it would really happen)
Super Mario War (another port, this one of a game I'd never played, but it's killer)
Dragons Of Rage (Beats Of Rage mod)

That's not everything that camme out within the last year, by a long shot (it seems like this has been a really killer year, especially for homebrew), but they're the things that I'm liking the most.

...word is bondage...

thanks that is awesome.

it is much easier to let someone else do the work than to actually do it yourself

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 2:35 pm

Caboose wrote:
Dark Savant0 wrote:Visual Troy advance was released april 1st. Very good.
April fools?

I dunno. Just saying its very good someone released it.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:42 pm

...and http://www.DCEvolution.net started releasing new images more frequently too

Don't forget to buy the latest GOAT releases! You can download a demo of Inhabitants

crc73 · Post by **crc73** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 3:08 am

I've recently discovered the DC homebrew scene myself - lots to do and see, the pointers above are very helpful, thanks. (I agree, it's good when someone in the know can lay some groundwork).

Today I've discovered a "Fenix" folder on one of the sites, and am downloading some of the files to try later tonight. Which Fenix games are worth getting, and which are the ones to avoid? Metal Slug 32x looks great, but how much is there to it?

Sweater Fish · Post by **Sweater Fish** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 6:51 pm

crc73 wrote:I've recently discovered the DC homebrew scene myself - lots to do and see, the pointers above are very helpful, thanks. (I agree, it's good when someone in the know can lay some groundwork).

If you haven't really played any DC hoomebrew at all, there's definitely more to try than what I mentioned n my post, that was just the best stuff of the last year.

For someone who's never tried any Dc homebree, I'd also add these:

Amanda The Witch's Apprentice (so so simple, but well done and incredibly addicting)
Cool Herders (wild and funny party game)
dRxLax (this is my all-time favorite Dreamcast homebrew and one of my favorite games on the system, period...if only it had AI)
DC Circus (difficult to control, but once you sort of get the hang of it, it's too damned funny)
Giana's Return (a nice 2D platformer with pretty--though lo-res--graphics and good music)
robotfindskitten (there's not much of a game here, but it's still funny as hell and I find myself coming back to it again and again)
Simon (this is just a video version of those old Simon electronic toys we used to have; just like the real thing, it's simple as hell and addictive as hell)

Go to http://www.sbiffy.com, by the way, to get all these games (and the rest, too, since you might as well try everything for yourself) and burn them all to one disc with a nice menu, etc.

Today I've discovered a "Fenix" folder on one of the sites, and am downloading some of the files to try later tonight. Which Fenix games are worth getting, and which are the ones to avoid? Metal Slug 32x looks great, but how much is there to it?

Personally, I don't dig most of the Fenix games. A lot of them are barely even games (including metal Slug 32x unfortunately) and most of them that are games have really bad gameplay. Some of the ones I'd recommend trying out are:

The New Gyruss
NazcaDreams
Space Dodger

There's some other decent ones, too, but I can't recall them all right now. Hopefully, there'll soon be an easy way to add Fenix games to the same Dream Inducer disc as the stuff you get from sbiffy.

I love the homebrew scene and it's nice to see more people getting into it. Emulation on the dreamcast gets too much attention, in my opinion. The homebrew is what's really cool.

...word is bondage...