Depressed about Dreamcast...

[DaMadFiddler]

Just took a look around. An increasing number of the old Dreamcast sites are either dust-covered or gone completely (seriously, DCEvo is gone?! and DCiberia has been replaced with a squatter site). There still seem to be one or two "commercial homebrew" games trickling out (GunLord looks pretty interesting, and I'm actually tempted to buy it), but nobody seems to stock Dreamcast parts or accessories any more. DC games are slowly climbing in value, and both games and systems are becoming less common--which makes sense, as it ages. But there doesn't really seem to be the kind of robust development community I'd expected.

I guess recent changes in the games industry (i.e. the rise of digital downloads, most notably the iPhone App Store, as a means of inexpensive, low-risk distribution for hobbyists and garage developers) have bled off most of the people who might have otherwise been interested.

I realize its heyday is long gone, and there will never be anything approaching the kind of activity we saw in the early 2000s. That's part of why I stopped coming here very often. But I really did hope there would be more than this. I suppose it's not too much worse than other consoles--while there is an occasional postmortem release (Pier Solar for Genesis, Battle Kid for NES, etc.) that makes a splash, most of the homebrew console development was a ripple effect of the emulation boom of the late 1990s. All of a sudden, people could access and do things with this technology that had always been out of reach before. The Dreamcast just happened to be the perfect combination of technologies at exactly the right time to ride that wave, and now the next wave is cresting.

Are there any significant Dreamcast titles in the works after GunLord, aside from the somehow-never-ending slow trickle of sh'mups? I know the Goat Store had pretty ambitious plans at one point, but that was a few years ago. The SD adapter is a neat (if long overdue) development, and could have been a game-changer if it had happened a few years earlier, potentially even allowing homebrew games to do things otherwise impractical on the Dreamcast: downloadable games, significant user-generated content in games, a platform for games to support add-on content without disc swapping, etc. But it came so late in the game that all it seems to be is a way to reduce stress on the laser assembly by using fewer CD-Rs.

It would be nice to see more releases, especially now that I'm financially stable enough to actually buy them and support the efforts. But it looks like that time has largely passed. I get it; it makes sense. You can make a better game more easily, for a lot less money and with appeal to a MUCH wider market, by targeting iOS devices or Android or Steam or (for those willing to jump through the hoops) WiiWare/PSN/XBLA. Dreamcast releases at this point are a novelty, and it's a wonder that they're sustainable at all.

That doesn't mean I won't miss it. My Dreamcast (and its accompanying library) was stolen a few years ago, as some of you already know, and I've gone back and forth many times as to whether or not to replace it. I've been leaning "yes" lately, before things get *too* rare and expensive, but even having a Dreamcast again won't replace what I miss the most: the excitement of trying out the latest build of a new project, or kicking ideas around for another game that has at least some marginal chance of getting made.

Is there still activity somewhere that I'm not thinking to check? Some new (or old) site that I haven't been reading? Even if this place is a ghost town, are there still small clusters of hobbyist developers turning out new Dreamcast projects somewhere? If there are, I can't find them. And I'd really like to.

[DaMadFiddler]

Incidentally, moments after writing this post, I won an eBay bid for Lack of Love. It's pretty much the only "official" Dreamcast game that I really wanted to play, but never did. I could never get ahold of a copy back in the day. I guess this means I'll have to track down a system after all

[Code-Red]

My biggest problem with the Dreamcast is it's god awful reliability. I've gone through more Dreamcasts than I have any other system. The GD-ROM is incredibly weak, and replacement parts are either expensive or hard to come by. I've got three Dreamcasts sitting in my closet, and not a single one of them works anymore, even after adjusting the laser.

If they found a way to boot ISO's (legally speaking) from a harddrive mimicking a GD-ROM, similar to the xkey on 360, that would be great.

[cube_b3]

Insightful read.

I don't think I can say anything that would alleviate your depression but we have some good games in development in addition to Gun-Lord (which is a neo-geo port).

Sturmwind which will come out this year is perhaps the first indie game that can rival some of the best internationally released Shumps (atleast with the graphics).

Age of the Beast would also be something special given how much Senile Team has accomplished with Rush Rush Rally Racing.

[Maturion]

I just asked darc about major changes on this site. I hope more is going to come.

[Christuserloeser]

I've mailed with DCDayDreamer and Curt Grymala and I really hope that we can bring DCEvo back online asap. It hurts me to see it offline.

I had a couple of updates to some of our downloads, as well as some unreleased ones that only required a little more polish before release. Then my HDD broke last year and I lost most of what I was working on. I am still planning to get that HDD fixed eventually but it costs quite a bit to get that done.

PS: I noticed that there are a couple of new Dreamcast sites, like http://dreamcast-talk.com or http://dreamcast-news.blogspot.de/

[ace]

Why did DC evo go down?

[Christuserloeser]

Long story short: bandwidth issues, lack of time

I've been toying around with some ideas on what to do with the site but I need to discuss them with DCDayDreamer and Curt Grymala first.

[Stryfe]

If they found a way to boot ISO's (legally speaking) from a harddrive mimicking a GD-ROM, similar to the xkey on 360, that would be great.

Are you referring to this early work?
http://www.videogameperfection.com/2011 ... -momentum/

[mankrip]

Well, I'm still coding. Slowly, though a bit faster. It's like a therapy for me.

[|darc|]

I've mailed with DCDayDreamer and Curt Grymala and I really hope that we can bring DCEvo back online asap. It hurts me to see it offline.

Who controls DCEvo's twitter? I tweeted @DCEvo yesterday that I want them to come back, I'll host the site. They responded that they'd get with me but I don't know who I was talking to.

@Maturion, I'll respond to you in a little bit.

[DaMadFiddler]

So, um... funny how that works.

Eva (my gf) just got a PR job, but is worried because she can't type very fast. She was really excited about this job when she applied for it, and (through sort of an odd tangential conversation that'd take far too long to recap here) I ended up promising I'd get her Typing of the Dead if she got the job. She started last week, so I started looking for copies.

Since we both have Macs (and no Windows), the Dreamcast of course seemed like the best way to go. Plus, it's an excuse to get down off the fence about whether or not to replace my lost collection.

I managed to snag this system on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/310396146464

Good deal, eh?

And now, there's a guy about an hour's drive from where we live who's selling off a positively massive collection of games. I just made a deal with him that'll get me nearly all of the US titles I want, which means it's time to start bargain-hunting the imports.

It also means I'd like to start looking for any current/upcoming independent releases to support. I think I'm going to skip Rush Rush Rally Racing just because I never really cared for top-down racers (i.e. Super Offroad), but so far I'm looking at the following:
- Irides
- Wind & Water Power Battles
- NG:DEV newcomer bundle (Last Hope, Fast Striker, Gun Lord) http://www.ngdevdirect.com/product_info ... 5db87d2d8c
- Sturmwind

My Dreamcast was stolen in 2008, so I haven't been paying very careful attention to releases since then. Is there anything else I should be aware of?

Anything particularly big in terms of homebrew? (Did SmashGP ever get ported, for example?)

And--dare I ask it--is there anything new in the works? I haven't heard of any upcoming releases beyond Gun Lord and the much-delayed Sturmwind.

I've been thinking more and more about the Dreamcast lately, which is what led to this post. And now, over the last several days, a number of things have all come together at once to put it all back together for me. I just wish there was more of a "scene" left.

[DanteJay]

My biggest problem with the Dreamcast is it's god awful reliability. I've gone through more Dreamcasts than I have any other system. The GD-ROM is incredibly weak, and replacement parts are either expensive or hard to come by.

That's a bit strange. My launch console from 9/9/99 still reads like new, but all I've ever used were either original copies or Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs (the best CD-R media around). Also, everyone I know with a Dreamcast has no read issues. What CD-R media have you used on it?

In my years of selling/repairing consoles, I'd definitely say the DC's reliability is average (much like the Xbox 1). The reliability of the PS2 and Xbox 360 on the other hand, is just awful.

[Maturion]

I still play with my Dreamcast, although it has become rarer in recent years. But hey, the Dreamcast is going to be 14 years old now! Still, I've never again seen a that ground-breaking and forward-looking video game console as the Dreamcast. Even 11 years after its productions had been stopped, new games are still published. Talking about these new games, GunLord is probably the most promising indie game ever and while we've seen many shmups, Sturmwind seems to be extremely accurately and well done. As NG:DEV.TEAM is now working as a full-time developer and therefore we are likely to see more Dreamcast games from them in the future. Asides from commercial releases, there's still a lot of free homebrew stuff. The Dreamcast is still far from being dead. Considering the fact that the Dreamcast is so old now, its community is in a pretty good condition. It's just old and huge sites that are languishing. I hope we get at least this site here back to some of its old glory.

[DaMadFiddler]

Maybe Darc (et al) can start working out a deal with some of the owners/maintainers of various dying sites, and incorporate their content (and contributors?) into DCEmu? It'd be quite interesting--and more than a little amusing--to see all the various splinter sites end up "coming back home" here.

[Maturion]

That's something I'd like to see since a long time, too.

[DaMadFiddler]

And yes, I'm definitely preordering Gun Lord. Are there any US-specific retailers selling it, or should I just use the NG:DEV.DIRECT site?

[Maturion]

Btw, what about registering old domains that were once used in the scene and redirect them here ? I Gott some spare money.

[DaMadFiddler]

Btw, what about registering old domains that were once used in the scene and redirect them here ? I Gott some spare money.

I'd imagine that could get expensive fast, with not a lot to gain from it.

[ace]

Maybe Darc (et al) can start working out a deal with some of the owners/maintainers of various dying sites, and incorporate their content (and contributors?) into DCEmu? It'd be quite interesting--and more than a little amusing--to see all the various splinter sites end up "coming back home" here.

Agreed, that would be really cool.