Tag Archive for 'Dreamcast'

My Sonic Adventure: Boiling Didn’t Work

Published by Scott on January 2, 2008 in Video Games. 6 Comments

I told my sad tale about the hoops I had to jump through to get an official copy of Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast. Let me tell you, that game is becoming my personal white whale. We broke it out at Christmas hoping for some high speed ring collecting fun only to discover it didn’t work. I couldn’t get it to load most of the time on either of our two “new” Dreamcasts. When it did finally boot up it would always freeze after the first battle against Chaos. The disc has a couple of tiny light scratches but nothing that should prevent it from playing.

I cleaned it up with a soft cloth first, naturally, but that didn’t have any effect on it. Next I bought a scratch repair / disc cleaning kit from Radio Shack. Still no improvement for Sonic but it did a nice job cleaning up Virtua Tennis and Rogue Squadron III, two other games we got that were in poor but playable condition. I should mention at this point that I didn’t bother contacting the eBay seller I bought it from because it had been quite a long time since I made the purchase and the game itself was only a buck-fifty. That’s how much it would cost to mail back and I’m sure I would have no chance of recouping the six bucks I paid for shipping and “handling.” (That’s how they get you!)

Then I remembered reading about how people got Xbox discs to work by boiling them in water. I figured it would be a fun experiment. Couldn’t hurt anyway. I did some some Googling to read up on people’s techniques and found this video on YouTube:

That’s pretty much exactly what I did, except I used a slotted spatula to lower the disc into the water. After drying it off and letting it cool, I stuck it in the Dreamcast and crossed my fingers.

At first I was really excited because it actually started up and and took me to the cut scene after my initial save point. “Hot dog, it worked!” I thought. My joy was short-lived however. It froze up while loading the Emerald Coast level and that’s all I was ever able to get it after that. Oh well.

I did some more reading around and found out that ten percent of the initial Sonic Adventure pressing was defective. Sega acknowledged it at the time and would replace the game with a working one. Something about the calibration being off on one of their gd-rom copiers. I figure I must be unlucky enough to have bought one of these bad discs. I guess they will play on certain machines without a problem though. No rhyme or reason to it, just a strange quirk.

I’m in no hurry to try to find a working copy of the game. Maybe some day it will turn up at Goodwill. I might even get the port for Gamecube since it’s generally cheaper and has a lot of extras. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. There’s plenty to play in the meantime…

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 2: Dreamcast

Published by Scott on December 24, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 5 Comments

I’m really excited to officially break out the Dreamcast tomorrow. I already had a sizable stash of games to go with it but I’ve picked up a few more since then. One title I really wanted to get was Sonic Adventure. I got it but what an ordeal! I took a chance at half.com and bought it from the person that had it listed cheapest. This seller only had feedback from four people, but all were positive. Turns out he is selling bootleg copies of games and trying to pawn them off as discs sent to reviewers.

The Sega Dreamcast can play cd-r’s but all of their games were released on the unconventional gd-rom format, which can hold up to 1.2 GB of information. The disc I got from this shady dealer was most definitely a cd-r. It says so right on the transparent ring in the middle! I know from poking around an underground game sharing network that Sonic Adventure is too large to fit on a regular cd-r. I could have downloaded the same free copy this person did, with deleted cut scenes, music downsampled from stereo to mono, and who knows what else hacked out. That’s not what I wanted and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. I didn’t call the guy on his bullshit but did tell him I thought I was buying the official release and requested a refund. He gave me my money back without argument and I soon found a “Buy It Now” deal for the real thing on eBay for about the same price.

I read about a similar scenario on the racketboy forums, did some sleuthing, and discovered they were talking about the same fellow. He’s got lots of rare Dreamcast games listed for cheap on both half.com and Amazon. So buyer beware! Here’s a comparison of the copy (left) and the official Sega release:

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I had a much happier experience purchasing a lot of Dreamcast sports games on eBay. I was looking to buy one of the 2K hockey games, which go for next to nothing by themselves. For twenty bucks (including shipping) I found not only that game, but seven more titles plus two VMU memory packs. That was an excellent deal, especially considering that the VMU packs normally sell for around $6-8 each plus shipping. The games came with their instruction manuals and jewel case inserts too. Score!

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I also bought a VGA cable from the racketboy store so I can plug the Dreamcast directly into a computer monitor. I haven’t tested it out yet but it’s supposed to offer a clear, crisp picture. And finally, I found a third party light gun for a couple of bucks from Goodwill so I can blast some zombies in House of the Dead 2.

Helen’s Big Score

Published by Scott on December 10, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments
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Helen called me from the local Goodwill while out shopping yesterday. Seems they were having a little sale. Every now and then they’ll pull out a table from the back and cram it full of a particular item or a group of things that fit a theme. I’ve seen mini-sales for phones, rollerblades and sandals, coffee makers, vcr tapes, and books among other things. This time it was video game consoles and controllers! Controllers were $2.02 a piece and consoles, sans power cords or connector cables, only $8.08. She described to me everything they had and I had her pounce on:

  • NES controllers- There were five of these, which was perfect. We only have one official one plus a pair of crappy third party knockoffs. I have two extra NES consoles that I plan to refurbish some day with no controllers. That little problem is now solved.
  • Sega Dreamcast consoles- I’ve already written about the one I bought myself for Christmas. They’re versatile machines and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a couple of spares for that price. Helen grabbed two of the three they had for sale. I plan on having mine hooked up to my computer monitor so I’ll give one to the boys. Unfortunately the other is in need of repair. It’ll boot up fine but I think the controller port is blown. I guess that’s a common problem in Dreamcasts and a simple matter of replacing a resistor. Sounds like a fun rainy day project to me. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with it after I get it going again. I may give it as a gift to a certain soon-to-be family member who would appreciate the NES emulation.
  • Dreamcast controllers- Duh. Needed these to go with the consoles. Helen bought the four they had.
  • Gamecube controller- We already have four in fine working order so we’ll either keep it as insurance or give it to one of the boys’ friends.

Helen also picked up four SNES games, but I’ll tell about those in a future post describing our obscene Christmas game haul. All in all, it was a pretty awesome day for a retro game fan down to the Goodwills. Thanks Helen!

Retro Game Explosion Part Five: Sega Dreamcast

Published by Scott on October 28, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 4 Comments

Just before we took our trip to South Carolina, the local Goodwill got in a stack of Sega Dreamcast games and put them for sale at three bucks a pop. The only thing I really knew about the system was that it was beloved by longtime gamers. Went home and did some reading at Racketboy, a simply amazing retro game resource, and decided I should probably pick up a few in case I ever came across a Dreamcast. I put together a list of recommendations from that site and bought:

  • Crazy Taxi
  • Tennis 2K2
  • SoulCaliber
  • The House of the Dead 2
  • Resident Evil Code: Veronica
  • Sega Rally 2
  • Cannon Spike

After a couple of weeks of monitoring Dreamcast auctions on eBay, I saw what looked like an awesome deal. For $41 including shipping I got a Dreamcast, two controllers, one VMU memory card, two rumble packs, and three games: Quake III Arena, Silver, and Shadow Man. All of this stuff plus the initial games I purchased are my Christmas present. I figure we’d gone a little crazy with the retro systems since June and another one now would be a bit much. Plus it gives me something to look forward to.

I have been sneaking it out after the kids go to bed however. Again thanks to Racketboy and this article, I have discovered the seedy underworld of emulation and ROMS. The Dreamcast will read CD-R discs without any chip modifications, making it possible to play NES games on it. Pretty darn cool. I’ve tracked down all of the necessary software and figured out how to burn a self-booting disc consisting of an amazing collection of NES games.

There’s also a homebrew scene in which people have developed their own Dreamcast games. DCEvolution has free collections of these games where you simply have to download an image file and burn it to a disc. As recent as last year there were commercial releases of homebrew games. Kind of crazy, considering the Dreamcast came out in 2000 and has been out of production since 2001.

And if great commercial games, emulation, and homebrew weren’t enough, techno smarties have long since figure out how to rip backup Dreamcast games. I found a little group that shares torrents of impossible to find or prohibitively expensive games like Ikaruga and REZ. No, it’s not even close to legal but I’m not losing sleep over it. Instead I’m counting down the days until Christmas when I can break this awesome system out permanently!