Quick Question on DC Emulation

rubius316 · Post by **rubius316** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 4:46 pm

Hello all, first I'd like to say sorry for being a noob to the emulation scene, but once i found this site and found out what the DC was capible of, I had to run out and buy one. Basicly my question is this. I noticed that the DC can emulate nearly any system out there, from the good old atari, to the PSX, and i think that rocks. Basicly, I have a few Sega Saturn games (Nights into dreams, & the jap version of Castlevania SOTN), but I no longer own a saturn. So I was hoping someone here knew if the DC could emulate saturn games, and if so how/where would i go to find info on it. If it cannot emulate them, is there any system that can, or will i need to hunt down a saturn again and mod it so i can play my jap SOTN? If anyone knows nething about this please get in touch with me via AIM, rubius316, MSN Messenger, rubius316@hotmail.com, E-mail, rubius316@hotmail.com, or via replying to this post. I would appreciate any info on this at all, and thank you all in advance. Sorry once again for being a n00b, and please dont flame me for asking ^^ thanks again, hope to hear something soon

TyBO · Post by **TyBO** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 5:03 pm

Hi... and welcome to the forums. I'm a bit of a n00b here as well, heh.

As far as I know, the Dreamcast is not capable of playing Sega Saturn games, and it won't be for a very long time.

Taken from the forum rules:

These consoles have not been emulated!

The following consoles are not fully emulated and only run demos slowly. Do not make posts asking why the emulator is so slow or why there is low compatibility.

Gameboy Advance

Sega Saturn

Nintendo 64

I think the main problem with emulating Saturn on Dreamcast is that people are still struggling with emulating it on the PC. No one is completely sure how the thing works.

Your best bet would be to pick up a used Saturn on eBay or at a local game store. Good luck.

rubius316 · Post by **rubius316** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:39 pm

Thanks for the reply and you have been VERY helpful, i'm going to go scan ebay now and c what i cant find, cause my local game stores dun carry them nemore. hopefully one day someone will figure out how to do it, sry again for the n00b ? cant believe the answer was right in my face, n i overlooked it *silly me* and also thanks for the welcome to the forum, i greatly appreciate it and hope to continue to post here, n find a way to do some new things with the DC that ppl havnt been able to do yet. ^_^

TyBO · Post by **TyBO** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:58 pm

Sure man... I hope you stick around and post.

rubius316 · Post by **rubius316** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:54 am

Thanks again, dun worry, now that I know the full power of the DC (or atleast things about it I previously didnt know lol) I'll be here a lot and leave some posts, ect ^_^ I plan to be around for a while at incase. I do have a few more questions though, and i am not sure if you would know the answers or not, but as always ne help would be appreciated ^_^. I have since re-read the rules, and am aware that they state that saturn isnt fully emulated, so I wanna appologize for the post once again. Since my last post, ive done a little more looking into things as far as emulation capabilities, ect so I hope I'm not still as much of a b00b lol. But here are my questions non the less--as n00b as they may be, and if anyone can help I'd appreicate it, and thank you in advance.

During my web searchs I found a few GBA emulators of the Dream Cast, (and am aware that the rules say it's not fully done, ect) but i was wondering if anyone else came across them like i did, and if they could recomend a specific GBA emu for the DC, or if they know of a decent one (i had to sell my GBA a while back along with all the games, for rent, bills,ect, and really wanna get a few titles back, and play them on the DC as I am not a huge fan of playing them on the comp, as i like the controler, n cant hook it up to the comp atm). So basicly in short Question #1 is does neone have a favorite, or know of a good GBA emu for DC (and once again sry for asking as i know its in the rules, but i did come across a few, and would like to know what ppl think from personal use, ect)?

My next question is about is BleemCast, the PSX emu for DC. I basicly wanna know if anyone has it and if it is worth paying for to get? I would also be intrested in knowing weither or not it takes ROM discs, like NES, SNES, ect, or if it can somehow read the origional or CD-R back up games, as well as if it is able to play import PSX games, as i have quite a few? Also I noticed that there were only 3 games listen on the Bleem section of the site--does this mean it can only play those 3 games, or does it play other games as well, cause if it's only for the 3 games listed, I dun know if i would get it...

My last question revolves Mame. I've tried to look things up for it, but havnt found enough info to go on and decide weither or not it would really be worth investing the time to get, ect. Basicly I am trying to find out what types of games it supports, is it all older titles, like pac-man, ect (not that there is nething wrong with the pac, as i love it), cause my main goal if i would get MAME, would be to get the rockman arcade i've heard a lot about. I thank you all for your patiants with me, sorry for asking noobish questions, and eagerlyawait a reply ^_^ thank you again in advance

Cormega · Post by **Cormega** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:18 am

Hello and Welcome Rubius

, as far as Bleemcast goes it only supports the games listed. The developers decided to stop producing disks for the dreamcast due to heated legal issues with sony. The dreamcast gba emulator plays some games but realize that a gba rom holds up to 100 to 200 mb maybe more. The dreamcast can only support up to 16 mb of data at one time, so mostly you'll be playing homebrew games, but it does work to an extent. Now for mame, developers have made several mame emulators for dreamcast. The most popular one around here are the WOWPACKS. However, there is none that I have seen that plays games around circa-1990 and beyond. Although the pc-mame emulator will play the megaman arcade games as well as most cps2 games for that matter, it has yet to be done on the dreamcast. I hope I helped you rubius

TyBO · Post by **TyBO** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 9:33 am

About GBA emulation: Since the GBA is still a fairly new console, it packs a lot of power. As Corgmega said, trying to emulate GBA is usually a bit too much for the Dreamcast to handle. Nearly all games run at unplayable speeds. It's best to just emulate GBA on your computer, or better yet, buy another GBA!

As for Bleemcast: bleemcast does not emulate all PSX titles that are availible. Instead, there are 3 bleemcast discs that you can buy, and each one allows you to emulate a single PSX game. Those games are Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo 2, and Tekken 3. I'm not sure if it can play back-up discs or import versions of these games. I bought the MGS and GT2 bleemcast discs, and I'm really glad I did. The textures in both games are cleaned up nicely, making it look a whole lot better then it ever did on Playstation.

curt_grymala · Post by **curt_grymala** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:59 am

rubius316 wrote:My last question revolves Mame. I've tried to look things up for it, but havnt found enough info to go on and decide weither or not it would really be worth investing the time to get, ect. Basicly I am trying to find out what types of games it supports, is it all older titles, like pac-man, ect (not that there is nething wrong with the pac, as i love it), cause my main goal if i would get MAME, would be to get the rockman arcade i've heard a lot about. I thank you all for your patiants with me, sorry for asking noobish questions, and eagerlyawait a reply ^_^ thank you again in advance

There are a few MAME emulators designed to support single romsets that will play some newer titles (there's one for Simpsons, one for TMNT, and about 10 or 15 others). However, the multi-game MAME emulators only support older games (a lot of games before 1990).

The WowPack is the best multi-game MAME emulator available.

Sweater Fish · Post by **Sweater Fish** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 12:17 am

Cormega wrote:The dreamcast gba emulator plays some games but realize that a gba rom holds up to 100 to 200 mb maybe more. The dreamcast can only support up to 16 mb of data at one time, so mostly you'll be playing homebrew games, but it does work to an extent.

GBA games are measured in megabits (Mb), not megabytes (MB). The Dreamcast's memory is 16 megabytes, which is equal to 128 megabits (8 bits in a byte). I don't really know what the sizes of GBA games are, but I should think that quite a few of them were less than 128 megabits and so could fit into the DC's memory. Keep in mind that in addition to the game ROM, the emulator and other random stuff has to resident in memory, so even though the DC has 128 megabits of memory, it couldn't actually load 128 megabit games.

Unless other memory spaces like sound memory were used. I know there was some talk of trying that once, but I don't know how easy it would actually be.

As I recall the Neo Geo arcade emulator could only load games up to ~80 megabits (~10 megabytes), so maybe that could be taken as a baseline of what to eventually expect for GBA emulation, too.

...word is bondage...

Quick Question on DC Emulation

Quick Question on DC Emulation

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