Recently got a CRT and have been hooking up my old systems to it. Never got a chance to play Dreamcast on one since I bought mine just a couple years ago. Felt like I transcended when I finally did
The Dreamcast has such a utopian vibe to it that just fits nice weather!
I remember vga patching all my Dreamcast games to play them in glorious 480(i?) on my 19” acer crt back in like 2000
Soul caliber was the best
The Dreamcast’s VGA output was a game-changer.
The utopia bootdisk, the second patched version that forced games into vga mode even if they didn’t support it, was the shit (when it worked and didn’t break the game haha)
Also just a crazy time where standards were much more oriented towards the consumer. I remember I wanted a vga box but they were $50-100 at the time and I couldn’t afford that. So I just made one. They were deadass simple to make. The only exotic parts were an octal buffer (at the time and still now like $1) and a connector for the Dreamcast av port. Otherwise it was just standard shit, a small handful of cheap and very easy to source resistors, caps, diodes, a basic switch, and a vga cable. You could also give it s-video out very easily with 2 caps and and the standard din connector for s-video, which was easy to source back then (radioshack would have most of this at the time)
https://gamesx.com/grafx/dricas.gif gamesx still has the schematic I used up (just in case you thought I remembered all that shit haha). Super simple.
Nowadays that kind of thing is impossible. You simply want to add a device between your console and tv to capture video or extract audio? It’s a goddamn nightmare because hdcp and drm are baked into everything. Prevents absolutely no piracy btw, every single streaming show, bluray, 4k uhd bluray, dvd, etc has been ripped and posted in full quality, but it’s absolutely necessary to have this even though it drives up complexity and costs
Was the second Utopia boot disk the one with the 3D model of a reindeer? Thats the one I had
There was only 1 utopia boot disk (the spinning reindeer). The second was the same thing but modded by scene group to change the background image (kept the reindeer) and force vga mode even if the game didn’t support the official vga box, which didn’t work sometimes
https://cdromance.org/dc-iso/utopia-boot-cd/ has screenshots of both, the bottom with the little alien fella is the original
The weird part is the vga patched one didn’t actually support vga mode itself so when you used it that way you had to boot the console, your screen would be blank, wait, change disks after a minute, then if it worked and the game booted your screen would pop on. You basically had to be used to the process with a/v cables and do it blind, which to be fair if you were a 90s kid that grew up on disk swapping ps1 backups was pretty much a given
But then like a few months later (I think it was) echelon started releasing self booting games so no one cared anymore and soon after you could vga patch the games directly
Ah yes, the ever-present “VMU with dead battery” beep on startup.
Yeah I really need to replace that thing lol
Anyone else played Powerstone? =D
I never had it back then, but I had the demo disc and we played that for hours. Just two characters and one stage, and that still gave us endless fun.
I played Power Stone 2 with a friend last weekend (the new rerelease on steam, not on a Dreamcast) and it was great. A perfect “pick up and play” couch coop game.
Unfortunately, not when it was new and I had friends 😔
It was one of those games I’d see on the shelf a lot, but it (the box) didn’t wow me and didn’t know anyone else who ever played it. But damn was I missing out.
And power Stone 2! Man I’m so appreciative I was 14 in 1999 when Dreamcast came out. My friends were all about video games.
Expansion packs instead of dlc.
Game patches instead of seasons.
No micro transactions.
No ads in games.
I’m gonna go reminisce and tear up a lot.
No, but I’ve always wanted to get a copy!
Both Power Stone games are on the recent Capcom Fighting Collection 2.
Really good collection
Thats one clean CRT!
