Retroachievements Now Supports Dreamcast Games

It’s been a while since I’ve written for the yard, so apologies to the rest of the team for barging in like this unannounced but I recently realised a fantastic development in the scene had slipped through the cracks of the global Junkyard news network. Since February 2022 RetroAchievements has supported a selection of Dreamcast games!

Wait! Retro... what?

What is RetroAchievements?
RetroAchievements is a reward system much like XBOX Achievements or Sony’s Trophy system, integrated into the software emulation frontend, RetroArch allowing users to earn points for their favourite retro games by tracking game progress and recording it to their account.

Total accumulated points are calculated and displayed on users' profile pages, and if every achievement for a given game is unlocked, they receive a badge of honour for their profile.

My RetroAchievements profile page

Each set of achievements has a total of %200; %100 for getting them all and another %100 for doing it with hardcore mode enabled. Hardcore mode turns off save states, rewinds, fast forwarding etc, forcing you to play as you would have back in the day. So, if you want to get the full %200 of points, you’ll have to do it as they originally intended without any of the quality-of-life perks afforded to us by modern emulators. For example, in Headhunter, getting every achievement with hardcore set as ‘off’, will reward you with 700 points, but doing it set to ‘on’ will earn you a cool 1400 points. Finally, clear every achievement in a set on hardcore mode and you'll also receive a gold frame around your honorary badge (don’t worry though, you can still use regular VMU saves).

A snapshot of the Headhunter page

The second big component of the service is online leaderboards for retro games. These can take the form of high scores, speed runs or even something like number of enemies killed in a certain level, and are a fantastic way to bring players back to games from their past.

Some of the Crazy Taxi leaderboards can be seen on the right

These features are implemented, by a community of absolute heroes in my estimation, completely free of charge and without any advertising. While I’m no expert, I believe the way it works is that a dev searches memory addresses in a game's code to find variables that they can track, then set conditions using a single or even multiple of these variables which translate to achievements.

Kickstarter: Not every retro game gets a Dreamcast stretch goal

Another day, another retro game Kickstarter. Refreshingly, today's effort is slightly more interesting affair in that it is targeting the Nintendo 64 audience for a change, aiming to publish a near two decade old cancelled game from the era.

40 Winks (aka Ruff and Tumble) did see the light of day on the original playstation, but the Nintendo 64 port was cancelled when its publisher GT Interactive went belly up, and when Infogrames picked over the carcass, the game ended up in the chaff pile instead of the wheat. Piko Interactive has recently picked up the rights to the game, and have already secured their modest US$20,000 goal within one day. They plan to develop, test and manufacture some brand new minty N64 cartridges for the game, so that it can be finally realised in physical form all these years later.

Some good ol' 90s era 3D platforming (apparently, never heard of it)

Hang on, isn't this the premiere destination for all things Dreamcast? Why are we suddenly talking about the Nintendo 64? Well, with every successful Kickstarter campaign that features a retro, or retro-inspired game, it's only natural that the masses start shouting "Dreamcast Stretch Goal! Dreamcast Stretch Goal!" And with good reason.

A Quick Look At Sega Smash Pack

The Sega Dreamcast is a pretty versatile piece of hardware. Not only is it capable of running operating systems like Linux and Dreamshell et al, it is pretty adept at mimicking other console formats too. Since the early days of the Dreamcast, talented coders have been tricking the system into convincing itself it was a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Neo-Geo or even a Sony PlayStation. The latter example of console emulation on Dreamcast is well documented and eventually resulted in Bleem! being shut down by Sony's legal department, but let us also remember that Sega itself utilised the hardware of the Dreamcast to bring emulation to the masses.

While the inclusion of PC Engine and Megadrive emulators on certain Dream Passport internet browser discs is well known in the wider Dreamcast community, Sega opted to bring Genesis titles to the general populace in the United States via the Sega Smash Pack collection - an official release containing 12 retro titles from various eras in the company's illustrious history spanning both the 16 and 32-bit generations. I have it on pretty good authority that a PAL version of Smash Pack was in the works at Sega Europe (having both played a variant and by way of the article below as proof), but only the NTSC-U version ever saw the light of day.

Dreamcast Emulation Comes To Raspberry Pi 2

Got to be honest here - the Raspberry Pi hasn't really appealed to me at all. While I can see the point of this tiny programmable device and it's value as an educational tool, I've just never felt the need to actually purchase one. My standpoint on the the Pi may have just been shifted slightly though, because somebody has managed to get a version of the Reicast emulator up and running on the modest hardware. As reported on RetroCollect.com, the emulation isn't 100% and can get a little choppy (see TechTipster's YouTube video below for a demonstration) but from a technical perspective it's a pretty impressive feat. The Raspberry Pi 2 only costs around £30 in the UK and has decent specs including 1 GB Ram and a Cortex A7 processor, but is lacking horsepower in the GPU department. Regardless, this demonstration shows just how far technology has come - that a credit card-sized circuit board can convincingly emulate a system like the Dreamcast is nothing short of amazing. That said, nothing beats playing Dreamcast games on authentic hardware and this build of Reicast is still very early, but as a starting point the future looks very bright for this project.

You can find out more about the Raspberry Pi 2 on the device's Wikipedia entry here.

Source: RetroCollect.com

Dream? More Like Nightmarecast!

Long time, no write, fellow Dreamcast enthusiasts! When I first started writing for the Junkyard, I had assumed it would be easy for me to think up topics for one of my favorite systems of all time.

Apparently not. However, recent events lead me to a (potentially) troubling topic. Well, at least for me.

Emulators. (Disclaimer: Umm... I don't support piracy, emulators are tricky legally, don't steal from the companies, etc...)

They're great fun! I mean, without them, I would never have been able to play most of the Final Fantasy series. Or Earthbound. At one point, I had several programs, spanning from NES all the way to N64. Recently, though, I got a new laptop. Because it was a Mac, I needed to find alternate emulators, which was not as big a problem because I would have done so anyway. Gradually, I moved from generation to generation. NES & SMS --> SNES & Genesis --> N64 (that situation was complicated. Not a topic for this blog, however) --> PS1.

Then I reached a road-block. I obtained emulators for both GameCube and Dreamcast. I'll be the first to acknowledge that my snazzy Mac isn't all about what's under the hood, so to speak. But gosh-darnit I have 2.4 GHz processor and more than enough RAM for older generation emulation! These emulators, though, were still a pain! I'll save you the details from the GameCube one (I only tried a few games, by the dubs. The games are still pretty big to download.)

The offender for the Dreamcast emulator was called "lxdream." On my main source for Mac emulators, it was the only option available. Ech. Naturally (for me) the first game I try on it is Sonic Adventure. And then, because I must have a penchant for misery, Sonic Shuffle. After trying these games for just a few minutes, here's a tip, at least for Mac users considering running the Dreamcast:

Don't.

As I played through Sonic Adventure while writing this article, I had to deal with messed up graphics, choppy music, and controls occasionally sending me to fall into the water. I could understand the graphical and control issues, but the speed? Really? And in previous play-throughs, it locked up partway through the first level. Uggh. Oh, and certain audio samples were missing, or way too loud. Even their own site gave it a poor rating in the compatibility section.

The other game I tried was Sonic Shuffle. I'll admit, I didn't really try playing Shuffle until now. As per usual, it ran slow, but the graphical errors weren't as bad as Adventure's. The sound however, was practically nonexistent in-game. I think at some point it played something, but really softly. In-game was mute. Knuckles got to the first Precious Stone (sp? Not sure, don't care at this point) and the battle screen saw some weird graphical errors. Plus, the slowness of the emulator and having to wait through the CPU's turns made it unbearable to play, even for mere minutes.

Anyway, further play and writing would lead to an obvious conclusion: the Dreamcast emulator kinda works, but is far from finished. As it is, I own a Dreamcast and those games. I can enjoy Sonic Adventure or torture myself with Shuffle whenever I want. It is unfortunate that the emulator doesn't work, though, because of emulator features I appreciate: namely, save-stating and ROM hacks. Like, I dunno, a hack that makes the CPU characters less awful and cheat-y.

That all being said, I haven't tried any of the non-Mac-specific emulators, of which I've found at least 4. Through all these exploits with emulators, from the excellent ones to the mediocre ones, and these OK ones, I've gained more appreciation for console developers. The lesson I learned was that there is more to emulation than just raw processing power. It may seem obvious at first; however, I am one of the people who are disappointed whenever it is announced that a system is not backwards compatible.   I'd much rather have a good current gen console than one that plays older games, but at risk to the hardware itself.

TL;DR? Well, the simple point is that a crappy Dreamcast emulator helped me understand that emulation is not always a easy task to accomplish.

B# Major General out!

Once Upon A DreamShell

I bought a DreamShell SD card reader for about £5 from an eBay seller some time last year. After a few days, it turned up in the post (in surprisingly good condition too, considering it was sent wrapped in a folded piece of A4 lined paper) and I had a quick glance at some forum posts regarding ways to use the thing. All I could fathom was that I needed to burn some disc or other, and put some files on the SD card that should be inserted into the device before implanting it into the serial port on the back of the Dreamcast. And I won't lie - it looked like too much work; my mac wouldn't burn discs that the Dreamcast would see as anything other than a music CD and I couldn't really see what the point of the contraption was anyway. And so, the SD reader went into a box and was never thought of again...until now.

Reicast - Dreamcast in your Pocket

Obviously, the best way to enjoy delights of the Dreamcast's exceptional catalogue of incredible games is to play on an original Dreamcast console, with an original GD-rom firmly ensconced in the disc tray. Yes, the VMU may beep and the GD drive may sound like it's grinding a sack of concrete to dust inside...but there's no better way to experience Spirit of Speed 1937 Blue Stinger Vigilante 8: 2nd Offence Soul Calibur. Got there in the end!

However, we here at the 'Yard appreciate that in 2014, not everyone owns a Dreamcast console, let alone a massive library of games be it due to financial or space-based reasons. Indeed, as is the current trend with retro games of all flavours, colours and creeds there are people out there who are intent on driving up the price of hardware and software to the point that it is no longer accessible to the average gamer. I'm not going to mince my words here - these hoarding traders are scum and I take great delight in telling them so whenever I spot a 'L@@K RARE' copy of Ready 2 Rumble on eBay with a Buy It Now price of £34.99. The Dreamcast Junkyard will not tolerate such activity.

With this in mind however, it is understandable that emulation is becoming very popular as it costs virtually nothing to get an emulator off the internet. Naturally, the whole legality of the owning of emulator software (or roms, as they're more commonly known) is a bit of a grey area but as long as you own the original software on a disk or cart, it's fine to own a back-up. Now the legal stuff's accounted for, here's the point of all that guff you just read: there's a new(ish) Dreamcast emulator available for Android devices! It's called Reicast, and you can get it from the Google Play store for your phone, tablet or even Ouya. Yep - the three people who still own an Ouya can now play some decent games, and as an added bonus you won't have to rub your fingers all over your device's touchscreen in order to earn some Kudos!

I personally don't own a single Android-powered device (unless you count my old Huawei Blaze which is rotting in a box in the attic somewhere...which I don't), so I haven't been able to try Reicast, but judging by some of the videos I've seen it does appear to be a fairly solid emulator. I would imagine that you'll need a pretty beefy device in order to run DC games at a decent speed (running Android 2.2 and above), and the software is still in the Alpha stage so there are likely bugs and issues to be ironed out. You may remember that we ran an article on NullDC for Android some time ago, but Reicast looks like it may be the better option for more casual users - there's plenty of documentation on the Reicast forum and there's an official website too. Bear in mind that you'll need to 'acquire' a Dreamcast BIOS file in order to get the emulator working, but if you've played DC games on Reicast either on your phone, tablet or Ouya, let us know about your experiences in the comments section. Cheers dears!

Dreamcast on BlackBerry...Surely Not?!

OK - I'm not afraid to admit this...I am a BlackBerry user. I have a BlackBerry phone and (sigh) I also have a BlackBerry PlayBook. It's a great tablet and does everything you'd want a tablet to do...and until RIM decided they weren't going to release the new BB10 OS for it, all looked good (well, OK-ish) for the future of the device. Oh, and that picture on the left there? I took that. Cool ain't it? Such a wasted talent. Cough. But this isn't an analysis of the future of the BlackBerry brand in the face of such monolithic competition from the iPhone/iPad/Android and the other lesser alternatives. Nor is it a look at my rather limp attempts at visual metaphors (Dreamcast? on Blackberry? See?!). No - this is a little look at something I spotted on the BlackBerry World 'app store' thingy this morning. Well, less of a 'look' and more of an appeal for further information. A bit like a telethon but minus the tele or the thon. Here, look at these horrifically blurred photos (incidentally, taken with my BlackBerry phone):

Don't be fooled - BlackBerry World is nothing next to App Store

Really sorry about the quality of these photos...

For the uninitiated (I'm guessing everyone reading this), that's what BlackBerry World looks like. But look closer:

There, next to 'Hot Asian Girls'

The 'No Reviews Yet' status sets alarms ringing

WTF?! What the hell is 'Dcast Emulator'?! Now, the PlayBook is a fine device for emulating Amiga, SNES, MegaDrive and even N64 games - it does have a 1Ghz processor afterall...but emulating Dreamcast games? I'm not so sure. There's a bit of a difference between emulating Lotus 3 or Mario Kart 64 and Daytona 2001. Indeed, this particular app only displays a single screenshot on it's page and the text simply reads 'Load ROM.' Also - it costs £3.50...and as there is zero information regarding this 'Dcast Emulator' on that there Google (or Bing either, for that matter - but we don't talk about Bing), I'm a little reluctant to splash out the price of a pint of ale on what could turn out to be a static page of outdated Dreamcast 'news' from Taiwan.

So - the reason for this post then. Have you bought Dcast Emulator? Is it an actual emulator or is it just a load of rubbish? Do own a PlayBook? (I know there's at least one other PB owner out there!). Let us know in the comments box (I know that makes me sound like one of those Youtube whores who can't get enough of their own voices and/or faces. Sorry). If nothing comes up, maybe in the near future I'll take the plunge and waste £3.50 on something I know is too good to be true. But for now, the mystery of Dcast Emulator remains unsolved.

*cue X Files music*

NullDC...On Your Phone

We've all seen the Treamcast and the other unofficial portable Dreamcasts created by very talented gamers with perhaps a little too much free time on their hands. They're pretty nifty little(ish) contraptions in the main - I mean, who wouldn't want to be able to play Spirit of Speed or Championship Surfer on a crowded train?! Sadly, the electrical engineering skills required to fashion such a device were not bequeathed unto us all, fellow Dreamcasters. For instance, I recently tried to replace the fuse in the vacuum cleaner's plug and ended up setting the curtains alight (long story, only 3% factual). But wait! What's this? Somebody has come to our aid! No longer do you need a doctorate in soldering in order to take your Dreamcast experience out of the dingy bedsit you call home:



That's right - now (or at least sometime soon) you can play DC games on your Android device! As you can see from the video, this new incarnation of the NullDC emulator for Android is in an early stage of development, but I still think it's pretty impressive. If they can sort out the frame rate issues, then this looks like a very interesting little app. Sadly, this particular Dreamcaster won't be able to experience it first hand due to the fact that I have a BlackBerry phone and tablet thingy, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

An N64 emulator for the Dreamcast? Surely not!

We've all seen that the Dreamcast can be quite the clever piece of kit when it comes to emulation. The fact that it can run Playstation 1 games at more or less full speed via Bleem is impressive enough, but now it looks as if someone has found a way to run Nintendo 64 games on it! Even more surprisingly, it has apparently been done by simply porting a PSP version of the emulator over with almost zero extra work, and at least for Super Mario 64, it runs with almost all the graphics intact! There is no sound and it runs at 10fps at the fastest, but this is still an incredible feat! Here's a video that the programmer named Simpson474 put together:



It really does seem too good to be true, doesn't it? Dcemu.co.uk has all the technical details:

Daedalus for Dreamcast
I have ported two versions of Daedalus to the Dreamcast, mainly to see how the performance would be. Both versions only use the interpreter core of emulator and neither version has support for sound or saving. Both speed and graphics are far from being playable, and I can’t imagine that a N64 emulator can ever run at 25+ FPS on the Dreamcast. This emulator is not completely without optimization, the graphics plug-in for example uses the TA directly to get the maximum speed. However, the CPU core is completely free of optimizations and there is no DynaRec available. It would be a lot of work to implement a working DynaRec core for the Dreamcast and there would be only little RAM left to be used for the DynaRec.

Compiling the emulator
I used gcc 3.4.6 and KOS 1.3.0 for compiling the emulator. The Non-PSP-Version has a makefile made by me (which is not very good) and for the PSP-Version a modified version of the original makefile is used. There are no project files for an IDE included.

Using the emulator
Both emulators are available as scrambled 1st_read.bin and DaedalusDC.elf file. The scrambled file is intended to be burned to a disc (not tested) and the DaedalusDC.elf file can be used with dc-tool and a serial programmer cable. There is no real user interface; the emulator only scans the root directory of the inserted disc. The ROM filenames should have no spaces in them and I recommend using short filenames for the ROMs.

Non-PSP-Version
This is the faster of both versions, but has more limitations. This version only supports ROMs that match into the RAM of the Dreamcast. There are 16 MB RAM available on the Dreamcast. 4 MB are used for storing the N64 RAM. Up to 8 MB are used to store the N64 ROM and the remaining RAM is used for the emulator. The only game that goes ingame with this version seems to be Super Mario 64.

PSP-Version R8
This version gets rid of the 8 MB ROM limitation, but therefore it is even slower than the older version. There are some games that go ingame (Mariokart, Zelda – Ocarina of Time, Rugrats in Paris – The Movie), but there are a lot of graphic glitches. In Zelda – Ocarina of Time for example you only see parts of the GUI ingame after ages of loading.

Further Development
Because I’m sure that this emulator will never run playable, I won’t continue the development. This was just a test for me to see, how the SH4 would perform emulating the N64. I ported the emulator nearly one year ago (as you can see from the PSP-Version R8, currently there is PSP-Version R13 out) and since then I have not worked on this port. Some days ago I found my video that I have captured after the development and thought I could upload it on Youtube. I did not think that someone would be interested in perhaps the slowest emulator on earth.

Did you catch any of that? Nope, me neither! It's still pretty darn impressive, and who knows, maybe someone out there with the knowhow could get this running even better! Very exciting times, indeed, my friends.