Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: dreamcast

The Direction of Sega

Posted on by Viljami

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Sega and the statement that they made about not looking so much back. It has also been said that Sega is not a retro game company. They are going to focus more on modern video games. This makes me think about all the classic titles of the past. There is also a question about what new games we are going to see and will Sega bring back their most classic intellectual property like for example Sonic, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and so on.

Nintendo was the first game company to release a mini console. This happened with the release of mini NES that was followed by mini SNES console. This happened in between 2016 and 2017. It is not needed to say that these consoles were very popular. Sega released a bit later a Mega Drive mini console. We have also seen a PlayStation console of this kind among with some Atari, Amiga and Commodore 64 consoles.

Game consumers have been waiting and hoping for something from Sega like a mini Dreamcast or mini Saturn. It has now been stated that this is not going to happen. It is stated that Sega has no interest in bringing new mini consoles that would include some retro games. Instead it was said that the company wants to identify as a modern game company. Fans have also hoped to see something related to Sega CD and/or Sega 32X. This makes me think that we are probably going to see some new game titles that are going to be released in the near future.

I actually have this Sega Mega Drive classic/mini console that I bought for a cheap price, as always, some years back. If I remember correctly it cost me 60 euros. That is a cheap price for a retro game console that comes with several tens of games installed. It is very easy to hook up to your television screen as it has an HDMI connectivity included. It came with two controllers and they were very nice and of a good quality. Sega also released a bit later a second Mega Drive mini console that included some more games including some Sega CD games. There were a total of 53 games included. The first mini console had 40 games included.

For me, personally and as a video game enthusiast, Sega has been very important since the beginning of my interest in video games. I did play some PC games and tried out NES but Mega Drive was the first actual video game console that I owned back in the beginning of 1990s. The system was not so expensive at that time and it had many great games. I also had some friends that had a Mega Drive also so we could swap some games. My favorite games were Sonic 1 and 2, Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe just to give you some idea. Later I continued in this path and got my second gaming console and that was PlayStation 1.

As we are waiting for some news about new video games that are going to be released by Sega we also have to think that there probably will never exist a mini console made out of some classic game consoles or games. We just have to accept that and start to look in to the future. Will it be a bright one? We have to wait some more and just see how things start to shape up. What will we see when it comes to the future of Sega? What will we see in the future of video gaming? With these thoughts deep in our minds, or something clever like that I am now ending this blog post. I also wish you a very merry Christmas!

About Sega Dreamcast

Posted on by Viljami

Sega Dreamcast was released 1998 in Japan and 1999 in North America and Europe. Its game library consists of about 600 games. This is considerably lower than all games that were released to PS2, a console of the same era and console generation, that had several thousands of games in its game library.

Some other gaming consoles of this generation were Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2. So, Dreamcast was competing with these giants. This was an era in which we saw definitely more games released than we have in todays world of gaming. It has to said that the competition was tough. PS2 sold most consoles and had the most games in its library while Xbox and GameCube sold well but not as much as PS2. In 2001 Dreamcast was discontinued. It didn’t sell well.

Today Dreamcast is considered to be a definite gem as a retro gaming console. You can get the original console for about 200 euros. It is also possible to play it by emulating Dreamcast on a system like Recalbox that you can run on a Raspberry Pi 5 or PC. Raspberry Pi 5 has enough power to run Dreamcast emulation while some older Rasbperry Pi models might lack this power. We have to consider if this way of playing Dreamcast is actually legit or not. After all every Dreamcast game isn’t available.

I have solved this problem with buying this Dreamcast Collection for PC. I bought it a long time ago but it seems to be totally legal. This collection has four Dreamcast titles in it. While Sega quit manufacturing gaming consoles they still make video games for other systems. There are lots of good quality games still getting released by Sega. This tells something about their position as one of the most legendary game companies in the history of video games.

Sega’s history includes classic consoles like Mega Drive / Genesis, Master System and Saturn. However some of its products weren’t so successful. They did take a wrong direction with releasing 32X and Mega CD. They weren’t commercially successful which evidently lead to some financial problems that lead to discontinuation of Dreamcast.

What are some good games for Dreamcast? There are some role-playing-games like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II, a boxing game, Ready 2 Rumble, many 2D fighting games, some 3D fighting games, like Virtua Fighter 3tb, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, Resident Evil – Code Veronica and many others. The game library is in its entirety a very solid and of good quality. I think that finding a bad game for Dreamcast is a difficult task to complete.

I do have some critic also about Dreamcast. The fact that the controller only has one analog stick makes playing first-person-shooters a bit clumsy. You have to map movement and aiming differently than you would with a better gamepad. Also when compared to some newer consoles Dreamcast lacks some power. But it has to be said that when considering it to be a retro console it handles its business very nicely.

It would be great to get something from Sega today that would be legit and also of good quality when it comes to retro gems like this one. There would definitely be many gamers that would like to buy a mini console, a remake or a completely new game from some of these classic titles. We have to see and wait for what the future holds for Sega fans.

New and Better Controller for Mobile Video Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

I just got this piece of joy by mail. It is Turtle Beach Atom which is a controller for mobile devices. Actually it’s for smart phones. It cost me only 70 euros. I have seen this model being sold for about 100 euros. So, I got some discount.

I have been thinking about bringing my retro gaming to a zone of emulation. You know that you can fit every released NES game to a 237 MB of disk space. And all SNES games would take 1,7 GB. If you consider it you can probably get a micro SD card that has 128 GB of space for maybe 20 euros. That should hold a lot of games.

Of course only the required disk space isn’t the only matter that comes to consideration. You would certainly like to have a system setup that can handle as many high quality retro games on as many consoles as is possible. I figured that you need at least 512 MB of RAM, about a half of a GB, for running a Dreamcast emulation. I started to think about getting a new phone. It would cost me about 200 euros. I checked some smart phone models. They all seemed to have 2 or 3 GB of RAM. Then I remembered that I have an old phone laying around. So, I decided to use that.

Of course only the RAM that is available is not everything that an emulator needs. My old phone has decent level of performance. The model is Huawei P10 Lite. It is an old phone from 2017. I haven’t used it since the beginning of 2021. That is when I bought a new phone. Let’s consider some specs of my P10 Lite. It is capable of displaying Full HD quality video. That’s 1080 x 1920 pixels. It has 3 GB of RAM. It has a processor that is octa-core which translates to “4×2.1 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53”. I am not a big specialist on multiple core processors. The phone only has 32 GB of space so it definitely needs a memory card. I did have one laying around so I decided to put it to good use.

I set up some emulators. Duckstation was one that I installed. I also installed Retroarch which can handle many systems. I aimed for being able to play at least systems including GameCube, Dreamcast, PS1 and Nintendo 64. You don’t actually need a lot of power for playing games on systems that are older than SNES. I didn’t think to play newer systems like PS3 or Xbox 360. Some might want to play also PS4 on an emulator. That would require a higher permance personal computer. I am not saying it’s not possible.

So I am currently charging the battery of my Turtle Beach Atom controller. I have installed already some games. I picked one game from here and another game from there. PS1 emulation seems to be running fine and I am able to play N64 games also. Even only this is very satisfying. I remember having some tough luck trying to set up a Lakka OS based system some years ago and then I struggled with PS1 and Dreamcast games. I had an old PC that could quite handle the performance.

I am ready, soon, to try to test some games. At this time things seem to be working fine. I have to wait for about 2,5 hours for the battery to charge. It was then promised that the controller would be functional for 20 hours. This is a huge upgrade to the controller that I used with smart phones earlier. I have written a blog post about it in this blog earlier. I have broken the glass of my screen of my P10 Lite. I didn’t want to show it. That was the reason why I didn’t include ít to this blog posts featured image.

I hope this blog post gave you inspiration. There is a very good guide for someone that wants to build or assemble a system like this for retro gaming. Here is the link:

Android Emulation Starter Guide