Thinking of making my own "Dreamcast 2", just speculative for now

I had this idea the other day of trying to create my own console out of a (physically) small pc and appropriate emulator. Since the DC is my favorite console ever and I love sega games, I thought it would be the best choice for this project to use an appropriate emulator such as NullDC or Demul, where there could be support for DC, Naomi, Naomi 2, Atomiswave, maybe Hikaru down the line, etc. With support for the arcade systems that succeeded the dreamcast/naomi 1, the game library would be opened up to a variety of high quality games that saw releases on later non-sega consoles while still having the compatibility with a DC game library if a non-mame emu is used. With a focus on the sega created hardware (and corresponding sega games) only, for intents and purposes, this would be a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast in my mind.

Why do this? I want to research doing this just because of my own interest in Sega, the dreamcast, and 21st century Sega games. It would be a neat conversation piece, and it would be great to have a dedicated system that meets my gaming/sega interests and moves a little bit beyond the dreamcast era. As many of the games on the DC were ports of naomi arcade games, and because many of the same publishers continued creating games on the later hardware (sega, sammy, SNK, etc) the "feel" and genres of games on the Naomi 2 and Atomiswave (fighters, racing games) would be in line with what I would expect from a later sega console or continued Dreamcast support after 2001.


Because this is just something I've been kicking around in the back of my mind, and I'm not a hugely knowledgeable tech guy when it comes to emulators, this is a list of topics I have questions on. Any input on the feasibility of any of these is appreciated:

-What do you think would be the best emulator for this purpose now? What do you think might be the best emulator for this purpose in 2 years? NullDC is now open source, runs fast and has great compatibility even on slower hardware, but unlike Demul or Mame, doesn't appear to support atomiswave (or Naomi 2?). Mame emulates only the arcade systems, but may be easier to work with for creating the console feel with some of the mame community frontends and modifications for loading games and quick booting of the emulator that the mame arcade cabinet builders have created. I'm not familiar with the state of Naomi/atomiswave emulation in mame these days, but I'm assuming from the multi system focus of mame, that it is much worse than either of the dedicated Dreamcast emulators now. Nevertheless, this project is going to take some time to think through, and there will likely be advances in emulation before I act on the concept.

-Inspired from mame cabinets: quick booting into the emulator from the bios. The less I have to see of a command prompt or Windows booting up on my TV, the more of a "console" feel the systems will have. Is there any way to cut down the startup time for booting any of the current emulators outside of mame?

-Do any of the emulators currently support booting of a game merely by placing an appropriately burned CD or CD with arcade rom image into the CD drive? (I suppose the answer to this is probably a no)

-Any suggestions on hardware? I'm definitely in just the research and planning phase of this project right now, but I'm open to hearing any suggestions or considerations for hardware. Outside of proposed system specs, what would be good to use for a TV out? Maybe just keep it simple with an external VGA to TV out cable. Any alternatives to hooking up a DC controller to a PC outside of the "3 in 1" converters? I could buy 4 of these and hack them up to save space and work them into an appropriately designed plastic case, just wondering if there is a cheaper or easier way



Thoughts? Opinions? Flames?:cur_sonic:

 

Good luck with that. I wanted to do something like that with one of my many old NES systems.

After using NullDC for a long time before I bought the Dreamcast I have now which I got back in 2009, I would say that PC emulator single handledly got my back into retro gaming, bar none!

Pretty funny considering I was a total PC graphics whore in 2008 after buying my then new ATI 3870X2 for Crysis.

Just from experience, I would say go with NullDC, it is very compatible, and runs very good.

I am sure you could fit a mini-itx PC board inside a Dreamcast shell with major shoehorning going on, but it is possible, we all remember that Blu-ray PC in a Dreamcast shell.




There was even a similar thread I found here that discussed it back in 2006, WAY before we ever found this place.

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12144

Why stop there? Why not buy an iPod Nano and put it in your VMU for kool factor?





Anyway, that would be my modern Dreamcast 2 if money wasn't an object.

 

I'm not planning on fitting this inside a dreamcast shell, my focus is on getting a pc setup with emulator to emulate the DC and post DC era of sega arcade games, and make it look and function as close to a console as possible. (quick boot, largely joystick interface, tv display, sexy plastic console-like case). The ipod vmu is cool but the vmu is going to have no functionality with my project. If I'm using an emulator, saving a game is going to go to a harddrive, and any of the commercial adapters for the DC controller>PC don't have any kind of support for the vmu. The arcade games I'm mostly interested in emulating don't have any kind of functionality for it either of course

 

So getting to the point, you want to make a console with dreamcast compatible hardware and a PC setup that emulates dreamcast games in a plastic console-like case. Your main focus is to make the hardware ressemble as much as possible to the sega dreamcast.

Good luck! :thumbsup:

 

This might be useful http://scottjarvis.com/page105.htm

Best of luck with it, sounds interesting.

 

Yeah that's the idea! Although I would actually say more than emulating dreamcast, I am most interested in having the support for the Dreamcast related arcade systems (Naomi, Naomi 2, Atomiswave, etc), and being able to use a DC controller, or similar PC gamepad.

So, in short. This is kind of like those mame arcade cabinet ideas, except I want to do a mock home console (pc with a console-like presentation) that is focused on 21st century Sega arcade emulation. Also, just to get this out of the way - aesthetically speaking, I don't care at all that the PC "console" shell looks like a Dreamcast case or not, I just want it to look like a game console -stripped down simple presentation with gamepad ports, power/reset buttons and a CD drive, and not a big PC tower with a dozen things on the front.

This does look interesting and maybe useful. Thanks.

The mini itx boards look good too. It'll probably be the route to go in order to have a compact console type presentation.

 

After researching the state of Naomi and its derivative systems' emulation over the last few days, I've decided the state of emulation and cost of powerful enough components isn't really at a suitable level for this project yet (preferably under $600 to build the system). I'm putting things on hold for a year or two - the emulation will likely be better quality wise, more of the arcade games will be emulated, and components will be cheaper.