Let's play some Atomiswave games on Dreamcast!

As discussed in a recent article here at The Dreamcast Junkyard, Dreamcast-Talk forum members megavolt85 and yzb have been porting Atomiswave games to the Dreamcast. While many people reading this will no doubt get a lot of joy from playing these esoteric titles on an emulator - as did I initially - we thought we should get these titles running on an actual Dreamcast and see how they play with a standard HKT-7700 gripped in our mitts. So that's what we did!

Below is the fruit of our labour, which in reality was no more difficult than grabbing the various GDI files for games such as Dolphin Blue, Maximum Speed, King of Fighters XI, Samurai Shodown VI, Faster than Speed and Metal Slug 6, and dropping them onto the Compact Flash card which slots nicely into the side of the Compact Flash modded Dreamcast. Booting through DreamShell allows you to navigate to the files on the storage and simply boot them as you would any other game. I'm pretty sure this would work with any other type of solid state storage device you may have in your Dreamcast too, so let us know in the comments if it works with things like MODE or GDEmu. If you have any specific questions though, be sure to head to the FAQ on Dreamcast-Talk. Enough waffle, enjoy the video below!

Have you tried any of these games? If so, what are you thoughts? And are there any hidden gems on the Atomiswave crying out to be ported to the Dreamcast? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to head to Dreamcast-Talk, join the forum and thank megavolt85 and yzb for their stirling work.

7 comments:

pcwzrd13 said...

Glad you got the games working on the real hardware Tom! :)

If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out RetroDream. It's basically an alternative game launcher to use with CF/HDD mods. The UI is much nicer to navigate with a controller and it automatically saves your settings for each game which is awesome. I also found the compatibility to be higher as well for whatever reason. It actually solved freezing issues I was having with some of the Atomiswave games so maybe it would fix NeoGeo Battle Coliseum for you. You can grab RetroDream from the link below. You just need to copy the two folders to the root of your CF card and replace any existing files. I would make a backup just in case something goes wrong though. lol

https://dragoncity17.wordpress.com/2020/02/04/sega-dreamcast-retrodream/

You can also check out my compatibility list for the settings to use with each game:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-I8SkhBr5cNHcXZYPw9zsjQr0vKxePjvLsfvtgqzYf4/

Hiro said...

The master key has been found.

Tom Charnock said...

Thanks PC, your help with the loader settings was a huge help. Will certainly try this advice too :)

Anthony817 said...

I run them all 100% fine on my first gen GDEMU clone with Kingston 4gb class 4 microSD card. Not tested on my main SanDisk 128gb microSD card. But been enjoying the hell out of all of these. Aside from Dolphin Blue, I have not experienced any performance issues with it, they really have all ran full speed for me.

I know you mentioned years back you never burned DC games Tom, so hopefully with this CF card modded console and Dreamshell you are trying out way more homebrew for the system. Homebrew is one of the greatest joys of being a Dreamcast gamer. Especially my personal favorites, the classic FPS ports from PC. Hell, Dreamcast version of Half-Life has over a dozen mods, some nice total conversions that are all new gaming experiences. There is even a Super Mario 64 port on the system that is pretty amazing.

Unknown said...

Do you guys think that ever will be possible to play these games no regular cd-rom without any issues?

Def said...

If Atomiswave games are running on real hardware I would love to play some Lupin the shoot or other Naomi exclusives!
I have a Dreamcast in a Naomi cabinet ATM, only to play gun shooter games, it works great with the original lightgun, and on the 29" screen it's super immersive.
I would be so much easier for many people, especially now that Naomi spare parts are becoming rarer (a Naomi kit with guns and special bezel is too expensive).

Def said...

If Atomiswave games are running on real hardware I would love to play some Lupin the shoot, or other Naomi exclusives, do you think it would be possible to port them ?