Dreamcast walks again...

[Jack Szagreus]

..albeit with a Frankensteinian gait.

The first casualty of the current 'console wars' was Sega's Dreamcast. Now that Sega has pretty much shitcanned releases for their box, you'd think it would be another doorstop - but no!
In the face of it's quiet demise and the flashy gewgaws of Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, the Dreamcast has become my favorite system.
Now, despite the thriving 'back up copy' scene for its excellent stable of games, there's a whole other world of console emulators designed to run on the DC. That's right! console emulators that RUN on your Dreamcast.
Currently, there are emulators written for the following - and while they vary in how successfully they work - they're all very worthwhile:

Sega Game Gear
Sega Master System
Sega Genesis
Neo Geo Pocket
NES 8-bit
SNES (!)
Game Boy/Color
MAME Arcade ROMs
Sierra On-Line AGI
Atari 2600 (!)
Commodore 64
Spectrum 48k
Odyssey 2
Colecovision
Midway z80 Laser Disk
MSX (!)
Sega SG-1000/3000

AND..
It can play MP3's on CD-ROM
VCD with varying quality
and DiVX movies, so I hear.

And I know... "BIG DEAL!" right?
Well, when you figure you can pick one up for about 50 bucks and spend a few hours and a few dollars to put pretty much ALL the SNES and Genesis games on about 5 self-booting CDs - that are then portable AND playable - the answer becomes pretty damn clear.

I think.

[Dennis]

Even further down this road I have heard rumors about applications for the Xbox that would allow you to play all of the Dreamcast games on it.

I own the Colecovision Dreamcast CD and I like having it because it saves the wear and tear on my Colecovision.

[mongycore]

exactly where can you get these self-booting disks for purchase? I'd sit down and try make one myself but haven't had the time to do so lately.

I came across this highly informative site <a href="http://www.dcemulation.com/" target="_blank">DC Emulation</a>, be warned though there a number of pop up ads when visiting. Nearly a step by step guide of how to do it all with links to Emulators/ROMS. If anyone else wants to give it a shot, click on the <a href="http://www.dcemulation.com/" target="_blank">link.</a>

[Ryo Hazuki]

My DC and PS2 still get about the same amount of playing time, because I play Shenmue 2 so much, and I thinking of beating Skies of Aracdia again.

[Dennis]

I got my Colecovision CD on ebay.

[Jack Szagreus]

Having The XBOX running console emulation might very well be the thing that would get me to buy it over the other uber-consoles. As of yet though, the emulation scene seems focused on the DC.

DreamSNES is staunchly freeware and the creators get pretty irritated when they find it for sale, but as for where to get disks for purchase I'd assume ebay. Though since it took about 5 minutes to put together the self-boot image file for DreamSNES (using a handy program called JIMBOOT) I don't see much point in buying already made disks.

Besides, with my taste in SNES games, I'd much prefer assembling my own library of ROMS. There have been some real gems I've discovered that I'm not sure would make it onto just any purchaseable disks:

GoGo ACKMAN!
The Bomberman Series
Gundam V
Terranigma
Super 3D Noah's Ark
Wonder Kitchen Ajinomoto
Godzilla Kaiju Fighter
Sonic the Hedgehog (SNES Hack)
...and last but not least...
Steven Seagal in The Final Option

dcemulation.com IS a great site for all this stuff, but they've got no ROMs on-site. If you're looking for SNES ROMs, may I suggest cherryroms.com, as they've got an awesome selection.