Passable Dreamcast emulation now possible!

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SuitCase
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Passable Dreamcast emulation now possible!

Post by SuitCase »

I'll be a whore and post this myself. (Sorry Blaze, etc :|)

Surprising everyone (well, at least me) an alpha of the emulator "Chankast" just came out and it's really quite awesome. You can get it at http://www.chanka.org/ and some BIOS files can be downloaded <a href="http://users.bigpond.net.au/delightfuls ... r">here</a>. Put the files in the same directory, insert a pirated Dreamcast game (GD-ROMs can't physically work, so enjoy your punishment for being legitimate) and play.

You need a good PC to run this (2ghz+ seems to be the magic number) but it seems to run games at 50-75% speed most of the time, and it's pretty cool to watch. I tried Space Channel 5 Part 2, Samba de Amigo Ver. 2000 and Ikaruga and they all worked quite well.. some glitches in SC5, but they were all playable.. uh, sorta. Skipping frames doesn't work too well for music games. It's kinda useless for those with a VGA box\capture card\whatever but maybe in the future it'll be fun once they add some sort of network support to it.. virtual multiplayer on any 2-player+ game would be awesome!

Now I wish I didn't throw out my pirated copy of Rez..

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Segata
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Post by Segata »

<<Check this out.>>

For those of you like myself who refuse to put any Real Player garbage on your machine, I suggest you check out Real Alternative.

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Green Gibbon!
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Post by Green Gibbon! »

What about Saturn emulation? How can Dreamcast emulation be further along than Saturn emulation?!

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Segaholic2
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Post by Segaholic2 »

Try searching for something called Giri-Giri. I think.

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Post by Delphine »

About three people care about the Saturn GG!, and you and me are two of 'em.

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Crazy Penguin
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Post by Crazy Penguin »

Leaving me the third. Shit.

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Segata
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Post by Segata »

I've tried out Giri Giri. The two games I got it to work with worked flawlessly, but some didn't work at all. Seems to be hit or miss.

Anyway, I actually tried Chankast and I must say I'm a bit disappointed, as nothing actually loaded. It just froze with several different games before anything really happened. Probably has something to do with my pathetic graphics card and that fact that I think my RAM chip in my crappy prebuilt PC is dying. Grr...

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SuitCase
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Post by SuitCase »

<b>What about Saturn emulation? How can Dreamcast emulation be further along than Saturn emulation?!</b>
Probably because the Saturn is really badly designed and the Dreamcast is comparably one of the best-organised console designs of the last decade or so. Emulating a console designed for developer convenience is always gonna be easier than emulating one with chips thrown all over the place no matter the popularity (see PS2.)

Pull a Dreamcast apart and poke around, they're really cool!

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

But it's been nine years! There must be somebody who's cared enough to figure it out by now! The Saturn is an important system, it needs to be preserved!

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Esrever
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Post by Esrever »

They even emulated the 32X, for Christ's sake!

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Spazz
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Post by Spazz »

Delphine wrote:About three people care about the Saturn GG!, and you and me are two of 'em.
Leaving me the third. Shit.
Count me in as well...

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Post by Segata »

I guess that would make me #5. We should have Saturn army ranks.

I call General.

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Post by plasticwingsband »

I call Professor of Chaos.

Oh, and I want Saturn emulation as well.

Also: Who the fuck wasted their time making an emu for 32X?

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Spazz
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Post by Spazz »

I get Commander in Chief or whatever!

(W00t! I'm #4)

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Post by Spazz »

Everyone should know about Zophar's Domain. Anyways, here's a list of Saturn Emulators currently available:
http://www.zophar.net/saturn.html

I dunno witch ones actually work well, but I thought I'd just mention it here.

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Delphine
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Post by Delphine »

plasticwingsband wrote:Who the fuck wasted their time making an emu for 32X?
Someone who liked Chaotix, I'd hope, as there are no other games on it worth playing.

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Post by SuitCase »

<b>But it's been nine years! There must be somebody who's cared enough to figure it out by now! The Saturn is an important system, it needs to be preserved!</b>
Maybe we should just mourn the fact that rumoured "Satcast" never came out. Coulda been useful here. :P

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Post by plasticwingsband »

Delphine wrote:
plasticwingsband wrote:Who the fuck wasted their time making an emu for 32X?
Someone who liked Chaotix, I'd hope, as there are no other games on it worth playing.
Ah, I'd like to say that I enjoyed Chaotix as well, but even when I owned a copy, none of the 32Xs that I acquired actually worked.

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Post by Spazz »

plasticwingsband wrote:Ah, I'd like to say that I enjoyed Chaotix as well, but even when I owned a copy, none of the 32Xs that I acquired actually worked.
Mabey this could help?
http://www.sonic-cult.org/articles/32x/

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Post by Segata »

SuitCase wrote:<b>But it's been nine years! There must be somebody who's cared enough to figure it out by now! The Saturn is an important system, it needs to be preserved!</b>
Maybe we should just mourn the fact that rumoured "Satcast" never came out. Coulda been useful here. :P
You mean a Saturn emulator for Dreamcast? I don't think my heart can take that kind of excitement.
Last edited by Segata on Sun May 30, 2004 8:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by plasticwingsband »

Ah, yes. I've seen this before, but had forgotten where it was. Either way, it's a moot point right now, since I don't have a copy of Chaotix, nor any other 32X games. Thanks, though.

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Post by G.Silver »

plasticwingsband wrote:Ah, I'd like to say that I enjoyed Chaotix as well, but even when I owned a copy, none of the 32Xs that I acquired actually worked.
I used a rubber band to keep the game in tight, it seems it needed to lean forward a bit to actually boot up. For some reason Chaotix was the only 32x game I have that had this problem.

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Post by Esrever »

Delphine wrote:
plasticwingsband wrote:Who the fuck wasted their time making an emu for 32X?
Someone who liked Chaotix, I'd hope, as there are no other games on it worth playing.
What about Kolibri? Not to mention Tempo, the most stylistically inconsistent platformer of all time!

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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

As for Saturn Emulation, I've gotten SSF to work a little bit. Missing textures everywhere, but Clockwork Knight ran. (Christmas NiGHTS crashed half a second after I hopped in the Ideya Palace, though)

Saturnin seems to be coming along little by little and runs a handful of SVT games.

I'm impressed by Chanka. Although it doesn't run too well on my system, I am confident that Dreamcast emulation is well within my grasp now - things will speed up for me as they optimize it, plus there's always the possibility of me catching up with faster hardware.

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Post by SuitCase »

<b>I don't think my heart can take kind of excitement.</b>
You still living in 1999 or something?

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