#dreamshell

Segundo postagem no perfil PCWizard no X, o Dreamshell – sistema operacional para Dreamcast que já teve cobertura aqui no blog ao comentarmos sobre o frontend RetroDream, que o utiliza – teve sua versão 4.0 full finalmente lançada: After more than 15 years, DreamShell 4.0 has finally graduated from "release candidate" to full release! Tons of great updates in this release!…

DreamShell (Dreamcast)

About DreamShell for Dreamcast

DreamShell is a bootable OS/loader for the Sega Dreamcast.  As you may know, there’s a data/serial port on the back of the console that hackers have been able to access.  You can actually buy a dongle to plug back there with a SD card and then burn a bootable CD to have the console boot up with.

I had bought a VGA adapter with a SD card slot from some Chinese outfit years ago to use with my Dreamcast.  I believe if you look around, there are people still selling the SD Card dongle.

So what can you do with this?  Well besides playing (some) Dreamcast games directly from the SD card, there are a lot of homebrew and emulators you can use.  Some of the Homebrew are DOS ports like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake.  They’re not perfect.

Neither are the emulators but they are a far bit better.  Don’t expect perfect emulation, but these do a decent job if you just want to play the games.

About the Dreamcast games; some games run just fine.  The problem is that the port on the back has slower I/O than the disc has.  So when you’re running a game that plays audio or pulls data constantly from the SD card, it really suffers in performance.  Games that cache into memory or barely pull information from the SD card run just fine.  I had no luck with Street Fighter Alpha 3 (it was just really laggy), but I was able to play Marvel vs Capcom just fine.  Some games, like Soul Calibur, run at a good speed but have a lot of graphical glitches or just lock up.  Now there are workarounds for both these issues.  People have removed audio tracks from games to make them play better (but of course without the audio tracks).  And for Soul Calibur there’s supposed to be a way to get past the selection screen locking up after you select your character.  

I found 20 or so games on the net that work great with the SD card and frankly I’m happy with just those , including: Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, HydroThunder, 4x4 Evolution, Marvel vs Capcom, Tokyo Extreme Racer, Crazy Taxi 2, Gauntlet Legends, etc.

@guacasaurus_mex released a VMU version of #FlappyBird ! Neat!

When the VMU was released alongside the SEGA Dreamcast, many considered it to be a revolutionary device. Most people fondly remember the tiny screen showing you images of the game you are playing, and spending hours training your Chao. YouTuber guacasarus_mex has been hard at work to reveal that Flappy Bird can now be playable on the Dreamcast VMU. Unlike the mobile version of Flappy Bird, the…