Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been Ported to the Sega Dreamcast

Custom artwork by NRU07

Little Jimmy the Dreamcast fan sits in the school cafeteria at lunchtime. All his buddies sitting with him at the lunch table are exchanging enthusiastic stories of their experiences playing their new favourite video game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

‘And then I got 6 stars on my wanted level and I was on the run from the military in a golf cart!!!’

Little Jimmy nods and feigns laughter, pretending that he too can relate to all the hilarious tales of virtual carjacking and mass murder that his friends —who really shouldn’t be allowed to play the game for at least seven more years— relay at the lunch table. But Jimmy’s friends all own Sony’s newfangled PlayStation 2 console. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City didn’t release for the Sega Dreamcast. In fact, it seemed there hadn’t been any new releases for the console since his mom bought him NHL 2K2 back in February. 

He holds back tears as he stabs at his mac and cheese with his fork. There, floating in the luminous yellow sauce, the macaroni noodles resemble a broken swirl.

***

Alright, alright. Dumb introductory story aside, the news that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been ported to the Sega Dreamcast and the fact that you can play it today of all days is no April Fools gag. In fact, if you’ve been anywhere near the Dreamcast scene in the last few months, it is highly likely that you already knew it was being worked on, with results being produced at an astonishing rate, especially considering the same talented team —led by developer skmp— only just released their port of Grand Theft Auto 3 (known as "DCA3") back on New Year’s Eve.

The reason we're able to see a port of Vice City only four months later is because the majority of the groundwork was done when porting GTA3 previously, which used reverse-engineered source code from the RE3 project as a base. We caught up with skmp to get the lowdown as to how their new Vice City port came about so fast:

"Vice City uses the same engine (RenderWare) and the codebase is very similar to GTA3. We were able to use our RenderWare backend as is - with a few fixes, as well as most of the repack tools and in general apply changes from [GTA3] to the [Vice City] codebase. The main challenge was the memory usage of animations, as Vice City has much bigger animations that barely fit on memory. We ended up using a slightly more advanced way to compress animations — using hopf coordinates for rotations and delta encoding for the data. We had to separate animation players from animation sequences as players have decompression logic and state now. [...] Apart from that, it has been smooth sailing!"

skmp also mentioned that all of these new optimisations will be backported to DCA3 as well. Moving forwards, that means that him and his team will try to "keep the two codebases in sync", so whenever a fix or an optimisation lands for one, they will make sure it is applied and released for the other.

Credit to SWAT for these screenshots

So, how do you play the best sixth-gen Grand Theft Auto game on Sega's swan song console? (In my opinion, of course. Yes, I know that one mission with the RC helicopter was really awful.) Well, like with the previous port of Grand Theft Auto 3, you'll need to compile your own version from an original PC copy of Vice City that you've purchased. Head over to the project's GitHub page to download the files you need (the “Miami” folder), and if you need some compiling instructions, you can find them here. Once you have the CDI image created, you can finally play Vice City on a Dreamcast that can play burned discs, or if it has an optical drive emulator installed, load the image on your SD card and you'll be committing virtual felonies in no time.

Segagaga Encore: A Fan Recreation for PC - Alpha Footage Released!

Back in June, while scrolling the paragraphs of conversation that populate the Dreamcast-Talk Segagaga forum thread, I came upon a post from a developer known as Rengundo, who mentioned that he was working on recreating the first chapter of Segagaga in Unreal Engine 5. Sharing a short 27-second clip of some gameplay, it looked surprisingly faithful to the original. It was on PC, as opposed to the Sega Dreamcast, but —perhaps most importantly— it was in English!

After getting the chance to recently talk with Tez Okano about Segagaga, my appreciation for his game was at an all-time high. But I was soon hit with the sobering reminder that an English fan translation patch for the game continues to remain a non-starter, despite the community's best efforts. As detailed in the introduction to that interview with Okano-san, technical issues with in-game text hacking has been the main hurdle that has prevented any fan translation patch project of the game from reaching completion.

That was when I found myself wondering about Rengundo's project once again. Replying to a comment on his original video, it turned out he was still working on it. He had encountered some issues with Unreal Engine 5, but had since switched the project over to Godot, and confirmed that an update was due imminently.

A cutscene from Segagaga Encore, which uses Ross O'Reilly's open source translation of Segagaga.

On January 5th, alpha footage of what Rengundo was now calling "Segagaga Encore" appeared on YouTube, and well, it's looking really impressive! In the new engine, Rengundo had not only managed to effectively recreate the game's distinct graphical look and "Development Studio A" area, but also its opening cutscenes (complete with English dubbing), and its RPG battle system — all in widescreen. This remake will also feature modern quality-of-life improvements like free movement and cinematic camera angles. If you want to see it for yourself, I have embedded the video below.

While we all obviously want a fan translation patch of Segagaga to be released someday for the Dreamcast, this outside-the-box approach of delivering at least something playable in English —in this case the first chapter— is certainly not something to be sniffed at, especially when it looks this good. Intrigued to learn more, I got in touch with Rengundo to ask him all about the Segagaga Encore project.

DCJY: Hi Rengundo, thanks for agreeing to answer our pressing questions about your Segagaga Encore project. We're really loving what we've seen so far, and are excited to get into the ins and outs of the project with you. First though, we must ask: when was the first time you encountered Segagaga? What was it that drew you to the game?

Rengundo: Thanks for inviting me to answer these questions! I first heard about Segagaga in early 2023 while looking around forums for interesting games to potentially translate. The strange name immediately caught my attention, and the more I learned about it, the more intrigued I became. I’m not sure there’s anything quite like it. It’s this wonderfully self-deprecating, meta take on Sega’s own struggles at the time, where two high schoolers are tasked with saving the company from bankruptcy. 

What truly fascinates me is the way Segagaga blends humor and commentary on the gaming industry. For instance, its “battle system” revolves around arguing with Sega employees. After each battle, there’s a chance to negotiate salaries with the employees, trying to bring them onto your team at the lowest possible rate to maximize your budget. A lot of its jabs at industry practices, like rushing out unfinished titles to boost sales during high demand, still feel very relevant today. It’s such an interesting little game that it’s impossible for me to ignore.

Various technical hurdles with hacking Segagaga have been blamed for why we don't have an English fan translation patch for it already. Was your recreation of Segagaga on PC an attempt to take matters into your own hands and bypass the roadblocks that face the Dreamcast version?

Absolutely. By the time I learned about Segagaga, there was some decent progress on many of the hurdles, though there were notable issues that still remained. As someone new to the Dreamcast modding scene, and seeing the nearly two decades of failed attempts to make an English version, I didn’t feel confident in my ability to create a translation patch. I had the idea of making the game in Unreal Engine, as it didn’t seem too logically complicated if I only focused on the RPG parts. I decided to recreate the first chapter of the game, hoping that part of the game being playable in English could build interest and support for patch efforts. 

For the earliest version, I ripped the player’s sprites from VRAM to make a sprite sheet for him and put some basic movement code together. I shelved the project when new people announced they were working on a translation patch. But after more than a year with no updates from them, I decided to pick it back up and have been making progress since.

Grand Theft Auto 3 for the Dreamcast - DCA3 Alpha Version Now Available

Japanese cover art mock-up courtesy of Dreamcast-Talk user k-do.

Most of you will likely know that a port of Grand Theft Auto III for the Sega Dreamcast has been in the works for some months now. Indeed, those outside the niche Dreamcast scene may have even heard the news given that the project gained coverage across the broader gaming press earlier this year, attracting everything from wide-eyed amazement through to cynical befuddlement. Back then, spectating the porting work was possible because the project was out in the open, with every ounce of progress laid bare for the public to see in real time.

In recent weeks though, this dynamic was lost as those at the heart of the project shifted to working in a behind-the-scenes fashion - most likely to reduce the risk of Rockstar putting the kibosh on the project before it had a chance to bear fruit. As such, we went from hearing near-daily updates, to a radio silence that carried the potential to feed cynical thoughts: where's my freaking GTA 3 already? What are those lazy no-good schlubs doing? Maybe a port wasn't feasible all along! and so on, and so forth. Fortunately though, even with the absence of a cheerleading public, it seems that the rapid pace of development didn't slow down one iota, as today the alpha version of DCA3 (top marks for this pun lads) has been released.

What does it stand for though? Can you do better than 'divine car abduction III'? Let's hear your suggestions in the comments please.

What does this mean exactly? Well, it means that, with a little jiggery pokery, you can compile a version of GTA 3 that will run on your Dreamcast. Given that it is an alpha version, bugs and occasional crashes are to be expected. Nevertheless, many testers have reported running the game for extended periods without issue, and, in my experience, the alpha version looks gorgeous and runs far better than I had expected it might. The controls map quite naturally on to the Dreamcast's regular controller (for the most part), and, perhaps most importantly, those who wish to progress with Claude through the game's infamous gangland story are be able to save progress to a VMU (although using one which is otherwise empty is recommended).

A key reason that you will need to compile your own alpha version, rather than simply download a ready-to-go .CDI or .GDI, is that players are expected to have their own legitimate version of the game. Morals and ethics aside, this is obviously an absolutely essential step to ensure the preservation of the porting project - any moves that have even the slightest whiff of piracy risk incurring the wrath of some extremely well resourced legal teams.

A sight to behold. Not the undecorated walls... GTA 3 on the Dreamcast!

Fortunately, compiling instructions are available. So, as long as you are capable of following these, have bought a copy of GTA 3 for PC (Rockstar offer a digital version with Vice City and San Andreas for a reasonable price), and have a Dreamcast that can play burned discs or has an optical drive emulator installed, then you should be good to go.

It would be wrong to drop this piece of news and not say something about the significance of the release. Really, it's hard to overstate what a monumental achievement the port is. In less than a year, an international crew of enthusiastic developers ('The Gang'), led by the mastermind skmp, have applied their skills to voluntarily deliver one of the defining games of the sixth console generation to the Dreamcast - a game that had begun development on Sega's swansong console, but instead ended up fuelling the stratospheric success of the arch-rival PlayStation 2, shifting 11 million copies for that console alone. 

In the intervening years the possibility of GTA 3 running on the DC has cropped up again and again as a topic of conversation in the scene, whether that be the technical flavour of 'could it be done?' or the alternative history variant of 'what if it had been?' The latter conversation may still plod on forever more, but the former is now totally dead and buried. Evidently, with the right skills and commitment, use of the free development library KallistiOS, and access to reverse-engineered code, it has now been definitively proven that the Dreamcast is more than capable of running this game.

Image created by Brazilian Dreamcast supremo NaiSan.

Of course, what is on offer right now is only an alpha version, but given the team's track record, it seems highly likely that the project will progress on to further iterations that buff out the rough edges. For now, all that's left to do is hear a few words from 'The Gang' themselves...

Dream Disc '24 Game Jam - More Details and an Interview with the Organisers

On the 23rd of October, the organisers of the Dream Disc ‘24 Game Jam revealed their forthcoming event to the world, and, in the days that have since passed, their announcement has produced quite a buzz, not only within our niche scene, but across the wider gaming world too.

For some, the title of this hotly anticipated 'jam' may be confusing though, so let me break it down in lay terms. A game jam is a time-restricted event at which developers of various kinds will conceptualise and begin creating games. Much like a musical jam, the idea is that people with complementary skills will band together, sometimes with total strangers, and experiment in an open-minded environment. The hope is that the focused attention these conditions produce will result in some innovative results. Alas, it’s always a possibility that some of the outputs will be hideous abominations, but the learning and networking experience can be useful in and of itself nonetheless. 

In the case of the Dream Disc’ 24 Game Jam, developers are being encouraged to congregate online around itch.io and the Simulant Discord between Friday 20 December and Friday 3 January to “collaborate, build, tinker and show off” their projects. That being said, projects that were begun prior to these dates can be submitted, and entrants are welcome to drop by and introduce themselves whenever they may wish. In another wise move from the organisers, it’s also the case that, in addition to games, software utilities and even hardware can be accommodated for too.

So, that clears up the sticky issue of what ‘jam’ means. What about the ‘Dream Disc ‘24’ part? Well,  thanks to one of the event’s main sponsors, Orc Face Games, the top ten entries (as judged by expert panel) shall subsequently be featured on a physical CD-ROM to be made available to the public for the cost of shipping alone. If that wasn’t enough incentive, there is also a cash prize pool to be shared by the top three entrants. This currently stands at close to $900 USD, and in a peculiar twist of fate has been buoyed by advertising income that had been set aside for a contest to be hosted by the website DCEmu 15 years ago that never materialised. Those funds are now finally being put to good use thanks to one of the administrators of that OG website, darksaviour, digging them out all these years later. Of course, the pot is likely to grow further too as news spreads and additional donations are received. 

Halloween 2024 Compilation released for the Sega Dreamcast!

Looking for something to do this Hallows Eve? Perennial Dreamcast developer Ian Micheal and Adam Burrell have got you covered with his latest Dreamcast compilation release, especially for Halloween.

The compilation features a number of spooky themed games from older systems like Castlevania Bloodlines, Splatterhouse 3, Ghostbusters and even a Halloween-themed ROM hack of Sonic The Hedgehog! My personal pick is the long lost Game Boy Color version of Resident Evil - here to play through in full. All together, there are a whopping 20 games to get stuck into and so you'll have plenty to do in between your pumpkin carving.

If you don't feel like gaming, you can also enjoy an animated movie called The Hallow Tree from 1993, or fire up the jukebox to listen to classics like Monster Mash, This is Halloween and Pet Cemetery.

It has to be said that as usual, the presentation of this compilation is impeccable. Ian works wonders with a menu system that makes most modern games bow their heads in shame. 

Available for free download, you can run Ian's gift to the community on a GDEMU or you can burn the CDI to disc. You can find the download link here.

If you like what you see, Ian has made compilations like this before for the Dreamcast - including a Christmas special from 2023 and of course his excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, which in all honestly is better than the official collections released recently!

On behalf of the entire Dreamcast community, we'd like to wholeheartedly thank Ian for this free release as well as everything else he's contributed over the years.

Doom 64 Ported to the SEGA Dreamcast!

Released back in 1997, Doom 64 brought a levelled up spin-off of the game-changing PC first-person shooter to the Nintendo 64. Since its release, the game has garnered a cult following, thanks in part to its atmosphere, with some even calling the game "terrifying". While Doom 64 saw some great ports to modern consoles in 2020, perhaps more interesting are the various homebrew ports, whether that be converting Doom 64's exclusive content to work with Doom source ports or even a port to the Nintendo DS.

Well, on July 16th 2024, the SEGA Dreamcast got added to that list of things Doom 64 has been ported to, and you’re probably wondering if it’s any good. Hell yes, it is. What the extremely talented Jnmartin84 has created here is equal to that of a AAA port and runs flawlessly. Plus, you can actually see what's going on in this version compared to the original! Doom 64 has definitely found itself a new forever home on the Dreamcast. To see this port in action (with commentary), definitely check out this new video from our pal (and previous guest on our podcast) Video Game Esoterica.

Now that you've watched that delightful footage, to actually play Doom 64 on your Dreamcast (or even an emulator), is a little bit more complicated. Presumably to avoid legal trouble, Jnmartin84 has released the source code for the port on GitHub, along with the tools that you'll need to build and play the game. Obviously you can follow the instructions in the ReadMe there, but it's mighty complicated, so perhaps seek out the .cdi, which I'm sure you'll find if you search around long enough. Does the legality really matter to you if the end result is a guaranteed trip to hell anyway?

Will you be playing Doom 64 for Dreamcast? How do you think it compares to the Nintendo 64 original? Let us know in the comments below, of via one of our social media channels.

PlayStation Emulation, Silent Hill 3, Metal Slug, New Indies and more on Dreamcast! - Dreamcast News Round-Up July 2024

It's 2024, we’re now into July, and the SEGA Dreamcast is still not dead. Critics are baffled. "It was supposed to have been declared dead in 2001, dammit!" - some PlayStation 2 owner, probably. In fact, there's been so much Dreamcast news recently that I've found it hard to keep up with it all, so in an effort to convince you all that I'm still in the loop (perhaps not sanity-wise), I've rounded up all the best items of recent news into one post. So, here's everything that has happened in the world of Dreamcast recently...

Indie and Homebrew

Or "bedroom coders" as people used to apparently say back in the '80s. I wouldn't know, as I literally didn't exist. Anyway, this supremely talented bunch are doing some cool stuff with software on the Dreamcast. Let's take a gander.

A huge breakthrough in Dreamcast development...

Credit: Orc Face Games

A few weekends ago, Ross Kilgariff, the Dundee-based maestro behind the highly anticipated Dreamcast indie HarleQuest and head of Orc Face Games, dropped the Junkyard a DM about a big breakthrough in Dreamcast development which will result in a significant performance upgrade for new games being developed for our beloved platform. Take it away, Ross... 

"We (Orc Face Games) recently hired TapamN to get the HarleQuest! engine running as fast as possible. For those who don't know, he's one of the best programmers in the unofficial Dreamcast scene, with over 20 years of experience and he's helping elevate everyone's understanding of the platform. 

While optimising the code, he found a critical bug in the operating system that's used as a basis for many unofficial projects including HarleQuest!, Simulant Engine, Spiral 3D and more. This operating system, KallistiOS, is a community-driven effort to provide re-usable code that makes Dreamcast development easier for everyone.

The issue is quite technical but I'll try to keep it simple. There's a special kind of memory inside the CPU called the cache. It's way faster than RAM, but also way smaller (only 16KB in the Dreamcast's case). Normally the cache works automatically and doesn't need any special programming - it just stores things you've accessed recently so it's faster to get them next time. However, the Dreamcast's CPU has a special feature called OCRAM that lets you take control of half the cache manually. This can let you get great performance, but you need to actually program it. It's not on auto-pilot anymore. 

The bug is that since November last year, OCRAM mode was being enabled by default in KallistiOS. This meant every game was saying "give me manual control over half of the cache" on startup, then simply not using it - in effect being left with only 8KB of automatic cache instead of the full 16KB. 

As soon as we made the KallistiOS community aware of this they got straight to it and fixed the bug within a few hours. Falco Girgis identified the cause and worked with darc and BBHoodsta to coordinate the fix. The developer responsible for the Doom 64 port (jnmartin84) verified the fix and reported that with this change along with another optimisation, the busiest areas of the game don't chug any more and play much more smoothly. 

On one hand, it's unfortunate that the bug occurred in the first place, but the benefit is that all those cool 3D demos and games we've been seeing recently will be able to pull the latest version of KallistiOS and might get an automatic speed boost. 

Hopefully this is one step closer to seeing more high-quality games on the platform. I have a good feeling about 2025."

Thanks to Ross for letting us in on this big development and for supplying us with an explanation. The future sure is bright for Dreamcast game development! Speaking of Ross, last month he put out the first part of a video series showcasing the results of his "What Dreamcast Gamers Want" survey, which is well worth a watch.

The Dreamcast Directory: Websites We Love in 2024

Late last year, in a gratuitous act of procrastination, I authored a piece for the Junkyard that surveyed the hefty range of Dreamcast websites that had sprung up in the console’s “post-Sega” era but which had sadly since bit the dust. In reality that piece was an excuse to indulge in some nostalgic daydreaming about the period when I first came across the console as a nerdy teen: a bizarre time when the burgeoning unofficial world (Goat Store, Beats of Rage, Treamcasts) sat alongside the last vestiges of Sega’s official involvement (idiosyncratic Japan-only shmups and surprisingly resilient online game servers).

As this list of deceased Dreamcast websites was pretty lengthy—and could have been even lengthier if not for a couple of oversights—readers could be forgiven for assuming that the hobby of maintaining websites dedicated to a 25-year old console was fading away. Fortunately though, they would be badly mistaken, and therein lies the purpose of this follow-up: to shine a light on the plethora of websites that are alive, kicking, and proudly serving the Dreamcast scene in 2024.

In no particular order, I present to you the Junkyard’s comrades-in-arms:

Dreamcast-talk (https://www.dreamcast-talk.com) 

Founded in 2004, and thereby pre-dating the Dreamcast Junkyard by a year, Dreamcast-talk is undoubtedly the lodestar of the scene. The website’s founders set out to establish a forum where DC-heads of various stripes could converge to chew the fat, sans what was perceived to be the overly restrictive administrative practices of certain prior forums. Dreamcast-talk quickly achieved that goal, and has continued to do so persistently and reliably for two decades now. Theoretically it's a fairly easy gig: set out a bunch of themed boards where relevant topics can be discussed, weed out spam or egregious flaming, and undertake technical maintenance from time to time. In practice though, maintaining a forum can be a bloody nightmare, and the fact that a day rarely goes by without fresh posts being made or a new member signing up is a testament to how important Dreamcast-Talk remains. 165,348 posts made and not out: as solid an innings as you are likely to see from an internet forum. When the gold anniversary hits in 2054 I promise I’ll deliver a better present than a couple of paragraphs in a rambling blog post…

DCEmulation (https://dcemulation.org) 

DCEmulation is another of the scene’s OGs that is still trucking in 2024. Actually, screw that. Given that it was founded in September 2000 (!), and is by my estimation the oldest Dreamcast-focused website to grace the worldwide web today, it would only be fair to say that DCEmulation is the OG of the scene. When the historians finally turn their academic gaze to our beloved little white box, DCEmulation will probably be mentioned in every other footnote. 

As the name suggests, DCEmulation’s initial focus was on documenting and discussing the development of emulators designed to run on the Dreamcast. Naturally, due to the type of audience and contributors that flocked to it, this focus quite quickly broadened out to cover Dreamcast homebrew development in its entirety. A few years in, spats between admins resulted in some splitting (which is succinctly summarised by our German brethren at Sega-DC.de), but thankfully this behaviour wasn’t endemic. In fact, efforts turned from splitting to amalgamation in 2010, when DCEmulation incorporated the forum for the unofficial Phantasy Star Online server, Sylverant.

Although the DCEmulation Wiki has now been mothballed, the forum, which alongside the Simulant Discord server is home to some of the most knowledgeable Dreamcast coders out there, is still in active service after 729,068 posts. Props to [darc], Bluecrab, and the whole DCEmulation community for keeping the show on the road all these years.