What was the year Sega decided to crack down on piracy?

So anyway, my friend is buying a Dreamcast and he wants it in his entertainment center to play audio CDs and also play emulators. Well from what I understand is that Sega decided to remove the Dreamcast's ability to read any type of CD-ROM past a certain date. What I would like to know is what date was that exactly?

 

They didn't remove the ability to read CD-ROM, they ditched the MIL-CD support which is where the (very obvious and kind of inexplicable) "exploit" was located. If your friend wants a CD player any DC will be fine, but for emulators that's not the case - quite why you'd want to run emulators on a DC, though, I wouldn't know (or for that matter, CDs... what's the attraction?). I believe the MIL-CD thing is only removed from US units and only in the last six months of production, but someone else here will be able to accurately respond to that side of the question.

 

There are some smashing Emulators for the Dreamcast. Want to play those Lucas Art point & click classics on the TV? Use a Dreamcast. There are also many many cool apps and home brew games. The latest Puzzle game, Wind & Water Puzzle Battles is far bigger and more advanced than half the crap that got an official release. There's also the likes of DUX,a very cool R-Type looking shooter out next month. None of these will work on a Dreamcast that isn't MIL CD Compatible from what I know. Also emulation for the Amiga, ST, 8 bit consoles all run fine. Get the hacked Bleemcast disc and you'll have access to 100's of fully playable PlayStation titles that look better running on the Dreamcast than on a PS2!

For those who don't have a XBOX or what ever, the Dreamcast is a nice way to go for some unofficial apps and emulation. Just forget about running the SNES since pretty much anything is unplayable and Mega Drive emulation has piss poor audio. however Neo CD is pretty much spot on and there's even a Neo Geo AES Emulator that works very well. The only problem is that it loads game data as the game plays.

Yakumo

PS: That post sounded like a rant but it's not meant to be :thumbsup:

 

As I can't be arsed looking it up and I know how much you like waxing lyrical on the dreamcast, does the Neo Geo CD emulator play real Neo Geo CD games using orignal media? Also using more then one hand how many good homebrew original games are there? Preferablely ones that aren't a shallow copy of something else...

 

I think the Mil-cd support was removed in November 2000. I cant find a source to confirm this at the moment.

 

look at the bottom of the unit, there you will have something like

(NUMBER) [REGION]

e.g. (1) [PAL]

you want either 0 or 1 but NOT 2 model 2 doesn't read MIL-CDs and was released in late 2000. if he already owns a model 2, there is a way to play burned stuff through the so-called data/data layout instead of a mixed mode audio/data cd.
use a tool called "bin2boot" for non-selfboot games, it will create a data/data cd. or take the cdi, open it with discjuggler, delete the audiotrack and bin2boot it!

 

http://sokonuke.chu.jp/distinction.html

This is a way to tell the year of production from the DC's serial number (for Japanese consoles). Partially according to this and another source I didn't bookmark late 2000 seems right (at least for Japan).

 

I tried out Beneath a Steel Sky once. Almost immediately I wondered what the fuck I was doing with a pad in my hands. I considered searching around for my Dreamcast mouse, which is 3rd party unusable shit, and then realised that what I was doing didn't make sense. SCUMMVM is great and all but it might as well be run on a computer with a suitable interface.

Anyway, I'm not averse to homebrew on the Dreamcast. It's just that the emulators on DC were pretty ugly, for the most part (or they were, been a few years since I've looked into it but no significant progress had been made for MD, SMS, NES or SNES for a while), and I'd much rather play the real thing.

The Bleemcast beta is fun to tinker with but it has no save support, which essentially makes it worthless for many games, and most games have glitches. It's an impressive feat and I loved playing around with it, but it's certainly no substitute for an actual PSX or PS2.

 

megadrive emulation is crappy if you use the sega hacked emulator which is crap.
BLackaura build of genesis plus for dreamcast works great with perfect sound, also gens4all from chui is quite good as well, he's developing it.

 

Neither of them run consistently at 100% framerate, or they didn't last I looked. It's not like I'd use them anyway.

 

Yes, original Neo CD or CDR discs are good.

OK, homebrew as in original games and not ports of PC stuff I take it. Here's a list.

Last Hope - H-Shooter
DUX - H-Shooter
Ginger Sisters - Platformer
XOP (Never got a release but I have 3 builds of it) - V-Shooter
Wind & Water Battles - Action Puzzle
Beats of Rage and the many mods - Scrolling Beat'em Up
Counter Strike DC (Actually a Half Life mode) - FPS
DRILL (Have great promises but they never did complete it) - V-shooter

There's probably others but I've been out of the DC Home brew Scene for quite some time now. All the above are very good games worthy of an original release. SenileTeam, the makers of Beats of Rage have two other games in development http://senileteam.com/games.html

Yakumo

 

Ok thanks guys.

 

So that's things not based or converted from PC Games or other console games and to the spirit of homebrew (ie free or cheap).
[quoteLast Hope - H-Shooter[/quote]
As it was released commercially I don't count it as homebew. Ignoring the fact that a lot of copies were bought by people who had no intention of playing it but just to sell on Ebay. If they really cared about the game so that everyone could play it then they would have released it as a paid download or something rather then a good game that collectors want.

Not out but will be released commercially so again I don't count it as a homebrew game.

So good that I can't find any reference to it on Google at all...

But a available as a free PC game download so doesn't count, the fact the DC release if it did ever happen would be commercial rules that out too.

Conversion and commercial.

So far the only piece of "homebrew" here but it's a genre that has aged far too badly to be any fun.

Oh the irony...

Would have been released commercially from what I have read so again don't count it.

Anyone want to add anything to this?

 

Beats of Rage is still great fun to play. I take it you're not a real fan of side scrolling beat'em ups.

As for Home Brew, I was under the impression that this meant anything that wasn't made by a professional game studio.

I made a mistage with the title. It's called Giana's Return. It's based upon an old C64 platformer. There's also another platformer called Donk in the works.

Yakumo

 

Thats a pretty good way to be sure to get a compatable unit, but I just wanted to add that there are still alot of 'model 2' Dreamcasts that will play the audio/data 'Mil-CD' format as they still have the older bios revision.

Also November 2000 is the date whan the changed bios started to appear in retail units, but its not a definite cut-off date as the older bios chips continued to be used for quite some time after that, especially at certain Dreamcast manufacturing plants. I have seen January 2001 Dreamcasts which still had the older bios revision.

The new bios was only used in the last US and Japanese Dreamcast 'model 2' revision - never in PAL Dreamcasts as PAL units are all 'model 1' and there never was a PAL 'model 2' (to the best of my knowledge)

 

I have a dreamcast, gamecube & ps2. Only the ps2 gets any homebrew now. If I can find a decent divx player for the gamecube that can stream from a samba share then I would be tempted to use that for watching stuff upstairs.

I've avoided the xbox, but it probably is the best to go for. I've found the ps2 does all I need to and you can run homebrew with just a memory card.

 

The xbox is simply the best console for homebrew ever. It is so simple to softmod then hooking up FTP. It's so easy.

 

Xbox is great with XBMC installed. Also excelent for fast access to console emulators. I started off with a X3 chip but later removed it and softmod insted

 

Yeah the xbox is what really got me into the whole modding/homebrew scene.