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RetroRevival
December 10th, 2004, 12:28
Hi,

For the third issue of my fanzine I am doing a piece about DC emualtion and homebrew, talking about the amazing games ported over to the machine as well as emulation via the DC.

For the preface I am talking about the DCs history as a console and was hoping to get some information regarding how the homebrew scene started up.

Alas to no avail. * Spent many an hour on the net looking, but I guess I am looking in the wrong place.

Does anyone here know of a link or would be willing to inform me of how DC homebrew all came about? *I need as much information as possible really.

Your help is appreciated.

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevival.co.uk

Darksaviour69
December 10th, 2004, 13:29
you can go through the www.boob.co.uk news archive, it goes back to the very begining, but it all news posts.

there were a few posts in consolevision before it was hacked, about how it all started....

where is old man (dan) potter, he was here for it all.....

good luck

RetroRevival
December 10th, 2004, 14:57
Many thanks for your help.

It is appreciated.

quzar
December 10th, 2004, 15:21
Aeons ago when the earth was still cooling there was a Dream. This Dream was alone on the earth with nothing to do. Then the sun came up over the new planet, and in the brilliance of the light, the Dream was cast aside. This Dreamcast fell into a deep cave, unable to find the light.

One day, many years later, the Dreamcast was stirred, someone had begun to explore it's cave. It was a man named Dan. Dan picked up the Dreamcast and held it up in the light, for all to see. "I HAVE A DREAM!!!"

that concludes the first chapter of Dreamcast homebrew history.

:P

MetaFox
December 11th, 2004, 20:10
OK - here's the rundown of what I can remember:
November 1998 - The Dreamcast was released in Japan.
1999 - MilCD enhanced music CDs released in Japan. These were music CDs on regular CD-ROM that were "enhanced" with liner notes, pictures, videos, etc.
April 2000 - Skywalker of the demo group Hitmen released a demo called the "A.G.E-Demo" running on CD-R on a Dreamcast created using a PC to DC interface called the "DreamCast Debug Handler" at the Mekka & Symposium 2000.
May 2000 - Bleem for Dreamcast Gran Turismo 2 and Gameshark CDX were previewed at E3 2000 - they both used the MilCD format to boot independent code on CD-ROM media instead of the enhanced music CD data
May 2000 - Marcus Comstedt started documenting the MilCD format. He released his findings on his webpage, as well as several utilities and code to assist independent devlopers in creating their own CDs, and schematics for a DC to PC serial cable using the NGPC link cable as a base.
June 2000 - Utopia releases Dreamcast warez and "Utopia Boot Disc" - a hack of the teapot demo from the Katana devkit (they like to take credit for creating the Dreamcast "scene" - but I'd say that honor would go to Hitmen for first demonstrating a Dreamcast booting independent code and for the Bleem and Gameshark for first using the MilCD and inspiring the Dreamcast freeware community, then Marcus Comstedt documenting the process for all to use, wouldn't you? The hackers of Utopia surely weren't the "pioneers" that first booted code from CD-R like they'd have you believe, that's for sure. ;))
June 2000 - Dan Potter begins experimenting with using GCC as a means of compiling code written in C (as opposed to the ASM examples thus far written my Marcus Comstedt) not using official devkits on the Dreamcast
July 2000 - Dan Potter releases his freeware independent Dreamcast library, libdream.
July 2000 - WinCE development kit is "leaked". Boob.co.uk begins experimenting with it. Early programs such as the mediaplayer Boobplay are released as a result.
August 2000 - TheGypsy's WinCE media player, GypPlay, is released
August 2000 - the first emulator for the Dreamcast was released, Chuck Mason's NES emulator Gleem, written using libdream. (as a side note from what I just remembered - I was the one who used Echelon's selfboot program which had the IP.bin ripped from a commercial game instead of one created by Marcus Comstedt's program and sent the CDI to Chuck - which got him into the infamous fight over him stealing Utopia/Echelon's "work". whoops - I guess I totally repressed that. That's definately one that goes under the stupid things I wish I never did category).
August 2000 - Sintendo, Sin's SNES emulator written with WinCE is released
September 2000 - Boob!boy, CyRUS64's Gameboy emulator written with WinCE is released
September 2000 - Tubooboo releases Snes9x - Ngine, which was an SNES9x port on top of his Ngine shell environment, coded using libdream.
October 2000 - DreamSNES the SNES9x port by Marcus Comstedt and Peter Bortas written using libronin was released
November 2000 - AndrewK releases dcload, a program which eases the uploading of code to the Dreamcast over the serial port.
December 2000 - Win32 port of dcload
December 2000 - libdream becomes KallistiOS
December 2000 - Ganksoft's Brian Peek releases his port of the NGPC emulator NeoPoccott to Dreamcast using libdream
December 2000 - Bigboy releases his DreamSpec ZX-Spectrum emulator written using WinCE

That should cover the history of the Dreamcast independent development community - if you want me to dig deeper for later releases let me know. :P

curt_grymala
December 12th, 2004, 10:40
Hey - thanks for that Meta. I've posted that as our first article in the Homebrew Knowledge Base over at DCHelp.

RetroRevival
December 16th, 2004, 17:25
A million thanks Metafox, just what i was after.

Had a nice email from Dan Potter himself outlining his involvement too in the scene.

Once again, thank you to everyone.

Regards
Simon

DanPotter
December 16th, 2004, 19:13
I mainly took things other people did and regurgitated them into a more easily usable form. :D At least until the PVR stuff, and then KOS.

RetroRevival
December 17th, 2004, 20:27
Ok, the article is going well but I have come to another stumbling block.

I understand that the MIL-CD format allowed the use of unconventional code due to the fact that it would allow booting from a cdrom. *I also understand that Sega removed cdrom support for the MIL-cd format in DC production in October 2000.

What I am at a loss with is how unconventional code was made to boot on a machine after this date. *Surely the likes of the Utopia boot disc and selfbooting games used the flaw in the MIL-cd support? *If this is so, how do these programs still work on machines that were manufactured after October 2000?

I am assuming that there is something in the code (IP.bin / bootfile.bin?) that amends the DC bios at runtime, thus allowing the cdrom to boot.

Or am i missing something here?

A plain old english explination would be good here gents, im not looking for a technical explination as such :-)

Once again, many thanks for your help.

Regards
Simon

curt_grymala
December 17th, 2004, 21:25
What I am at a loss with is how unconventional code was made to boot on a machine after this date

To put it quite simply, it doesn't. However, you have to understand that it was only certain units that were manufactured after that date, and all of those units were NTSC machines. If you happen to come across one of the machines that doesn't boot CD-R's, there is no way to get it to boot CD-R's. There are a lot of theories out there about getting it to work, and there are even quite a few tutorials, but a lot of respected members of the scene (MetaFox included) try with a small gleam of hope each time we come across one of these theories, and always find out that those DC's still will not boot CD-R's.

RetroRevival
December 17th, 2004, 21:25
So are you saying that all UK PAL machines will play non official software, irrelative of the date of manufacture (even after October 2000)?

Does anyone know when the UK PAL mahcines had their production stopped?

Regards
Simon

curt_grymala
December 17th, 2004, 21:27
Heh. We posted at the same time. ;D

curt_grymala
December 17th, 2004, 21:31
So are you saying that all UK PAL machines will play non official software, irrelative of the date of manufacture (even after October 2000)?

Does anyone know when the UK PAL mahcines had their production stopped?

Regards
Simon

Basically that's what I'm saying. All PAL machines (whether they're from the UK or not) should play CD-R's. I've heard rumors about a small number of factory reconditioned DC's that ended up getting the new bios installed, but I don't know for sure if any of those were PAL machines.

I don't know when UK production stopped.

RetroRevival
December 17th, 2004, 21:33
Basically that's what I'm saying. All PAL machines (whether they're from the UK or not) should play CD-R's. I've heard rumors about a small number of factory reconditioned DC's that ended up getting the new bios installed, but I don't know for sure if any of those were PAL machines.

I thought you was, just wanted to clarify it.

As it is a UK based fanzine, the article is UK biased, hence the reasoning for asking the question.

Thanks again (hope you do not mind me aksing all these questions!)

Regards
Simon

curt_grymala
December 17th, 2004, 21:37
Thanks again (hope you do not mind me aksing all these questions!)

Not at all. I'm always glad to see the DC getting a little bit of publicity, and I'm always happy to help.

Eric
December 17th, 2004, 22:47
I heard with the NTSC machines if you had that problem now running a CD-R make an image that is Data-Data instead of Audio-Data and that should fix it?

curt_grymala
December 18th, 2004, 07:35
There are a lot of theories out there about getting it to work, and there are even quite a few tutorials, but a lot of respected members of the scene (MetaFox included) try with a small gleam of hope each time we come across one of these theories, and always find out that those DC's still will not boot CD-R's.

Eric - believe me, that's been tried. It simply isn't true, unfortunately. :'(

Darksaviour69
December 18th, 2004, 13:04
Does anyone know when the UK PAL mahcines had their production stopped?

Regards
Simon

from reading from my old official dreamcast mag (issue 17)


Sega,....have confirmed that the production of the Dreamcast console, in its current form, will be suspended at the end of March.

the whole "current form" thing was that pace had bought rights to produce set-box dreamcasts (like you sky box), but that never happened :-/

curt_grymala
December 18th, 2004, 17:14
I'm guessing that means March of 2001?

Mental2k
December 18th, 2004, 17:48
Didnt they manage to reduce the DC to one chip or somethin, i think i remember reading that in a magazine, and they could put it on a pci card or somethin, so in conjunction with a pc gd-rom unit you'd be able to play your dc games on the pc.

RetroRevival
December 22nd, 2004, 08:39
Hi guys

I have pretty much finished the article now, and was wondering if you could look at the "history" part of it to see if it makes sense at all :-)

If you want I can post the text on the board?

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevival.co.uk

Darksaviour69
December 22nd, 2004, 09:01
yeah we can have a look at it for you, if you post it we can all correct any mistakes, if there are any! ;)

Cap'n 1time
December 22nd, 2004, 09:02
I was going to post somthing like, Beware the Ides of March! But I decided to look up the word Ides first because I thought Ides was the middle of a given month. According to dictionary.com...

Ides -
The 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar.

So to say "beware the ides of march" would be implying that somthing bad were going to happen the 15th of march and the date given by DC mag which states that "Sega,....have confirmed that the production of the Dreamcast console, in its current form, will be suspended at the end of March". THE END OF MARCH!

Now with the confirmed understanding of "Ides" is my IQ has grown from that of a carrot to a block of lettuce.

Thats all i wanted to say.... Carry on.

RetroRevival
December 22nd, 2004, 09:08
Ok guys here it is......please correct me on anyhting that you feel is not correct.

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevial.co.uk

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Launched in the UK on the 14th October 1999, the Sega Dreamcast was to become a legend in the very short time it graced our retail shelves, and even more so since its commercial demise.

Innovation and originality was at the forefront of the Dreamcast profile as it was the most powerful home console the world had seen. It was a smaller home version of the Naomi arcade board (see box out) and came with a 33.6k modem as standard (the first console to support it out of the box). Future keyboard and mouse capabilities and a great catalogue of original games was not enough to ultimately compete with the likes of the Playstation and Nintendo 64. Domination of the market by Sony, along with imminent arrival of the next generation machines, coupled with doubt over the system (due to the failure of the 32x and the Saturn before it) eventually sealed the fate of arguably the best console ever.

After only having been available in the UK for just 17 months, Sega announced in March 2001 that it was to stop production of the console in a bid to restructure themselves as a “software only” company after some four years of financial losses.

As soon as the announcement was made third party games developers began to drop off the DC bandwagon and by the end of 2001 game production was all but over. Only hardcore publishers in Japan continued to release games after this (Ikaruga possibly being the best of the bunch), with the last game from Sega themselves being Puyo Puyo Fever in early 2004.

Even though the Dreamcast has been commercially dead for some three years or so, the emulation and homebrew scene goes from strength to strength, with some offerings being equivalent if not better than anything that was commercially released. In fact the only other console to come anywhere near as close to the Dreamcast in terms of homebrew development is Microsoft’s Xbox. If you are looking at playing retro games on your TV, the Dreamcast is a great way to get initiated as you can pick one up for around £20 now, and the best thing about it is that you do not need to modify the machine, unlike the Xbox.

Sega against the Pirates

The DC homebrew scene was never meant to happen as Sega had a host of anti-piracy methods installed in the console to protect their profits. They had seen that cartridge based consoles piracy was virtually non existent due to the cost of buying a programmer and blank cartridges. However it was decided that Sega’s Next Gen machine would need a cd based format (due to the amount of data needed for each game), and therefore the piracy situation would probably change. They decided that they needed to create a cd system which would be hard, if not impossible to copy, thus stopping the appearance of pirate games as much as they could.

They came up with their own proprietary format, the GDRom, which was in essence a 1GB CDRom disc of the same physical size. Initially the GDRom was the perfect method to stop the copying of games. Blank GDRom discs were not available (and never would be commercially), and the blank space in between the low and high density tracks was not by-passable by normal CDROM drives. All was looking good.

In April 2000 a guy who goes by the name of “Skywalker”, a member of the demo group Hitmen, released the “A.E.G-Demo”. It was shown at the “Mekka & Symposium 2000”, an annual demo scene meet for all computers and consoles, held in Fallingbostel. It was created with the “Dreamcast Debug Handler” (a PC to DC cable and software) and ran off of a normal CDRom disc on a totally unmodified console. The DC world was stunned, and so was Sega.

The A.E.G Demo gave hope to other programmers, and they slowly started to see what they could create, however the Debug Handler was more than cumbersome to create and use, so coders all over the world started to look for alternatives. Help was to arrive for them from an unusual and unpredicted source.

Sega’s protection methods in the Dreamcast’s hardware itself had been breached by Skywalker and he had proven to everyone that homebrew software could run on an unmodified machine. Sega, still concerned about software piracy were comforted by the fact that they still had the ace card up their sleeves in the form of their GDRom formatted discs. For now the games themselves were safe.

Mil-CD & Bleem

Back in 1999 Sega launched the Mil-cd format in Japan. It was created as an enhanced format designed to improve on the then current cd music media by fully utilizing the space on the 1GB GDRom. The idea was to allow the inclusion of additional elements such as video clips, image galleries and extra data not normally found on the already standardised CD-Extra format. It was planned that new music cds would include full screen video, internet capabilities and enhanced navigational interfaces, to take advantage of the DC’s ability to play them. It would be this new music cd format that would be the thorn in the Dreamcast’s side as it would allow the booting of code from a CDRom bypassing the need for information to be stored on GDRom.

Fast forward to May 2000, and a small company called Bleem Inc had wowed onlookers at the E3 show with information on a new piece of software for the DC called Bleemcast (A port of their already popular PC Playstation emulator). The demo they showed was touted as an emulator that would not only enable you to play PSX games on your Dreamcast, but also enhance the experience, as it would use portions of the consoles hardware to dramatically improve those games. What was remarkable was that it was an unofficial product and more importantly it used the DC’s ability to play the MIL-cd format, which was the way Bleem Inc managed to bypass the consoles protection mechanisms.

Initially promised as a pack of four emulators, each able to run 100 games, Bleemcast was eventually released in 2001 as a set of three discs each emulating only one title each (Gran Turismo 2, Tekken 3 and Metal Gear Solid) before Bleem Inc went bankrupt. The reason for them shutting up shop are not crystal clear however it is rumoured that Sony offered to pay off Bleem Inc’s massive debts if they stopped production of all Playstation emulators, which obviously included Bleemcast.

It was a shame, as Bleemcast is an exceptional piece of coding, and proved that the Dreamcast had great potential for homebrew coders to create truly amazing programs. Even today the enhancements that Bleemcast gives over Gran Turismo 2 cannot be matched by the backwards compatibility of the Playstation 2 and its Emotion Engine, which shows you just what the DC was, and is still, capable of.

Not so long after the success of the Bleemcast announcement at the 2000 E3 show, a guy called Marcus Comstedt started to document the MIL-cd format. It was known for some time that MIL-cd would allow unauthorised code to be booted from a CDRom disc, so he went about disassembling of the Dreamcast and found that it was possible to self boot programs by placing an audio track before the data track and then scrambling the binary information. He posted his findings on his website along with sample code and tools that would let other coders create their own bootable Dreamcast cds.


Utopia


In June 2000 the famous Utopia Boot Disc was released, along with pirated Dreamcast ISO images, by a warez group named Utopia. They took all the glory in being the first group to release pirate games for the Dreamcast, however it was the hard work of Skywalker, Bleem Inc and Marcus Comstedt which made it all possible (albeit they were working towards developing the homebrew scene – piracy was simply a horrible side effect of their combined work.)

The Utopia boot disc used the MIL-cd structure to boot specific code into the consoles RAM which would then execute and allow the loading of unauthorised programs and imported games (bypassing the region coding) as well as pirate games. What made this more accessible to the DC community was the fact that it could be burned onto a normal CDRom disc with a normal cd writer, and the fact that you did not need the console modified with a mod chip or other device to use it. People all over the world were using copied software in the knowledge that their warranties were still intact.

It was not long before the boot disc was discarded as warez groups found ways of incorporating the boot code into the released ISO, thus eliminating the need for a boot disc at all.

Sega buy off Kalisto

Sega were losing money on the hardware as it was, let alone the money they were losing due to lack of software sales through the ever increasing piracy scene. They had to do something fast, and so they started shutting down websites that were advertising or offering the Utopia boot disc and associated games ISO’s.

One of the biggest ISO release groups at the time was Kalisto (not of Kalisto software house fame). It is regarded in Dreamcast circles that they were the first to contribute a number of things to the scene including PAL / NTSC conversions, self booting pirate games (without the need for the Utopia boot disc) and the removal of the dummy file from games (which too was included as a copy protection mechanism).

It is reported that Sega contacted members of the group and offered them stock options in Sega themselves on the promise that the group were to stop releasing pirate games immediately. This has never been confirmed, and in some instances ridiculed, however it would not be the first time this type of thing has happened. Pompey Pirates of Atari ST warez fame were offered bribes and products to stop releasing cracked versions of games, however, although they apparently accepted the goodies on offer, it never stopped them releasing the odd game or two down the line.

When Kalisto eventually bowed out of the DC warez scene (to turn their attentions to Playstation piracy apparently) a new group called Echelon instantly appeared who could do everything that Kalisto could do and a little bit more. It is considered and accepted in the piracy scene that Kalisto and Echelon are one and the same, but whatever the true story behind this really is, unfortunately for Sega, the pirated game releases kept coming and their debts kept growing.

¬DC Homebrew Takes Off

In June 2000 Dan Potter decided to experiment with compiling code without the need for the official Sega development kit, and just one month later he released his work as LibDream, a freeware independent Dreamcast library, which would become the defacto software that many coders used to port over the first emulators, games and applications.

In the same month the WinCE development kit was “leaked” and a group of coders operating from Boob.co.uk used it to release an application called Boobplay (an mpeg and avi player).

August 2000 was a busy month with not only another movie player released in the form of GypPlay, but this was the month in which the first emulators were successfully ported over to the console. Gleem was a NES emulator written by Chuck Mason using LibDream, and shortly following that the SNES emulator Sintendo was released written with the WinCE development kit.

Many other emulators and applications appeared, made with both the LibDream and WinCE development kits, and in December 2000 LibDream evolved into Kalistos, which is still in use, and supported, by homebrew coders today.

The popularity of the Dreamcast took off virtually overnight as more and more applications, emulators and pirate games appeared. Sega were selling consoles by the bucket load, however they were selling them at a loss, and the lack of game sales meant that they were building up a large debt very fast.

Sega rapidly changed the code in the Dreamcast in an attempt to stop unauthorised code from being booted, and as of October 2000, NTSC machines had additional code installed in the bios which would not allow booting of any code from CDRom whatsoever. This stopped unofficial games and programs running on the newer consoles once and for all, however it was too late by then, the damage through piracy had been done, and the console was condemned to the grave in early 2001 when Sega officially ceased production.

The compromising of the Mil-cd format was probably the main reason for the demise of the machine as it helped create the pirate scene in the first instance, however in a strange twist of fate, if it was not for the MIL-cd format the homebrew scene may never had happened.

RetroRevival
December 22nd, 2004, 09:10
Forgot this bit....

-------------------------------------------------------

The Future Of The Homebrew Scene.

Admitedly, the current homebrew scene on the Dreamcast is not as strong as it was in late 2000, but that does not stop the coders writing new software and updating older programs.

With the likes of the Beats Of Rage Mods, the ability to play MP3’s, VCD’s and even Divx (to a point) and the ever increasing amount of people buying consoles, the future of the homebrew scene is looking good.

There are many websites out there now that include the freeware tools you need to code and compile a project on the Dreamcast. There is even information on the beginnings of coding itself, and with some of the best programmers around there is always a helpful hand available from one of the many forums.

The community spirit and helpfulness have even helped me in writing this article after I asked a few of the members on the DCEmu forum to advise me on a few things, and it is this spirit that will keep the Dreamcast living on for a while yet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I think I need help with this bit :-)

Any help from the guys in the know is appreciated.

Regards
Simon

Darksaviour69
December 22nd, 2004, 09:13
you could say 16 days after the ides of march......

btw IQ has nothing to do with Knowledge, it about how you perform under logical tests, thats why you IQ does not change (much) though your life.... also high IQ does not = very smart ......but it helps ;)

Darksaviour69
December 22nd, 2004, 09:23
btw only the PAL system had a 33.6k modem, the US and japan had a 56k, also the dreamcast (in the UK) was beating the PS in hardware sales for the first time in xmas 2000

yamaha invented the GD, sega got it from then

also the dc did not fail because of warez, but that was one of many reasons.... having said that i did read some where that sega stated that it was the lack of hareware sales and not software sales that cause them to stop and the software sales per owner was quite high.... but i not too sure

RetroRevival
December 22nd, 2004, 09:38
btw only the PAL system had a 33.6k modem

I am writing from a UK viewpoint so I am only talking about UK mahcines, hence the fact that I only mentioned the 33.6K (just added that NTSC machines had 56K modems)


yamaha invented the GD, sega got it from then

I have a boxout with this info in it, maybe I should have said so.


also the dc did not fail because of warez, but that was one of many reasons....

Changed....

Any more?

Regards
Simon

Darksaviour69
December 22nd, 2004, 09:44
i can't see much wrong, its a great write up, i its the best write up about the scene i have seen.... so i was wondering, this would be great for newbies, could we put you articale page on dcemu (just the history), with you credited as auther and link to you site, with something like " ...for the complete story visit www.retrorevival.co.uk issue 3..." what you think?


also you should say something about Dc Tonic, it was given out at E3 2001, http://www.cagames.com/dctonic.php

RetroRevival
December 22nd, 2004, 09:49
i can't see much wrong, its a great write up, i its the best write up about the scene i have seen....

Really?

Well to be honest it has take about a week to do (also have done some reviews on homebrew games, emus and applications to go with it ("best of the bunch" type of thing.)


so i was wondering, this would be great for newbies, could we put you articale page on dcemu (just the history), with you credited as auther and link to you site, with something like " ...for the complete story visit www.retrorevival.co.uk issue 3..." *what you think?

Sure why not?

I will say this though, lets see if anyone has any other amendments in the next day or so, *and as soon as I have the finished product (with amendments) you can have the entire article if you want? *Pictures, reviews, history and all?

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevival.co.uk

Darksaviour69
December 22nd, 2004, 09:53
I will say this though, lets see if anyone has any other amendments in the next day or so, and as soon as I have the finished product (with amendments) you can have the entire article if you want? Pictures, reviews, history and all?

of course, i can't see anything wrong, but i bet Dan or Meta could ;)

btw as i was saying DCTonic, http://www.cagames.com/dctonic.php incase u did not see my edit

RetroRevival
December 22nd, 2004, 10:05
btw as i was saying DCTonic, http://www.cagames.com/dctonic.php incase u did not see my edit

DC Tonic is included in a boxout in the "reviews" part of the article.

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevival.co.uk

curt_grymala
December 22nd, 2004, 11:11
Fast forward to May 2000, and a small company called Bleem Inc had wowed onlookers at the E3 show with information on a new piece of software for the DC called Bleemcast (A port of their already popular PC Playstation emulator).

Not quite true. By all accounts I have read, Bleemcast was an entirely different animal from the Bleem for PC. It was not a port at all. It was, in fact, written entirely from scratch by the Bleem team.

If you check out the emu knowledge base on DCHelp, there's a section devoted to Bleem that explains a lot of that. You can go directly to that section by clicking here (http://dcevolution.net/DCHelp/dckb_content.shtml?bleem).

The articles were originally written and compiled by Skyhawk a few years ago. English is not his native tongue, so there are a few gramattical and spelling mistakes that I have not had a chance to look over yet. However, you can still get the gyst of it from reading those articles.

Other than that little tidbit, everything else looks pretty darn good to me. It's really nice to see everything summed up in an article like that. I would also like to mirror that article in the DCHelp Knowledge Bases once it's finalized, if you don't mind.

RetroRevival
December 26th, 2004, 19:49
Hi Guys,

Nearly done, just finishing a few bits off and need a favour if I may be so brave to ask?

I need a decent picture of the Utopia Reindeer. Anyone got one? Google shows a blank for me.

Regards
Simon

kaseman101
December 27th, 2004, 02:54
hullo every1,

kaseman101
December 27th, 2004, 02:58
um... sry 2 sound so stupid... but how exactly DO u post a pic.?
ive got a picture of ur Utopia Reindeer, but well, im not 2 computer smart

wraggster
December 27th, 2004, 05:05
click reply then you will see a box with browse in, click that and point it to the picture.

dont use the quick reply box as nothing will show

RetroRevival
December 27th, 2004, 13:27
Its ok guys,

I managed to get access to an old verison of the dcemulation website (jan 2004) and found it there.

Give me a day or so and I will have the article finished. Will post here when it is done for all to enjoy :-)

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevival.co.uk

RetroRevival
December 28th, 2004, 19:49
Ok guys,

Its done (finally).

How do you want it? At the moment its a PDF as it has been formatted in a DTP program ready for inclusion in my fanzine.

Let me know.

Darksaviour69
January 4th, 2005, 09:44
pdf is fine, ta ;D

RetroRevival
January 12th, 2005, 19:20
Guys,

I have decided to hold the article back until it is published in the next issue of my fanzine (due in few weeks)

As soon as it is released I will be in contact and you can have it to do with as you please.

Darksaviour69
January 13th, 2005, 04:47
ok, thanks ;)

RetroRevival
February 21st, 2005, 23:22
Right guys, if you still want this PDF, where do i send it?

Regards
Simon

kgenthe
February 22nd, 2005, 02:30
Future keyboard and mouse capabilities and a great catalogue of original games was not enough to ultimately compete with the likes of the Playstation and Nintendo 64.

The Playstation 2 (some might even say "the hype of the PS2") killed the Dreamcast. The Nintendo 64/Playstation 1 weren't really directly competing (2 different generation). The UK and US both saw an amazing launch of the dreamcast (through the holiday 1999 season). I would say E3 2000 (about 7-8 months after launch) is when the Dreamcast started struggling. Sony had successfully talked people/gamers/press into waiting for the PS2, and thus the demise of the dreamcast began.


The reason for them shutting up shop are not crystal clear however it is rumoured that Sony offered to pay off Bleem Inc’s massive debts if they stopped production of all Playstation emulators, which obviously included Bleemcast.

I think Sony's massive lawsuit was the nail in the coffin for the Bleemcast.

just my $.02

fackue
February 22nd, 2005, 07:32
Best article I've read yet. I'm download Issue 3 right now.

DanPotter
February 23rd, 2005, 17:39
The Playstation 2 (some might even say "the hype of the PS2") killed the Dreamcast. The Nintendo 64/Playstation 1 weren't really directly competing (2 different generation). The UK and US both saw an amazing launch of the dreamcast (through the holiday 1999 season). I would say E3 2000 (about 7-8 months after launch) is when the Dreamcast started struggling. Sony had successfully talked people/gamers/press into waiting for the PS2, and thus the demise of the dreamcast began.

This ought to sound familiar to PC users. It's similar to the way Microsoft typically takes over a market. They start hyping some product they haven't released (or in some cases even started to work on), convincing people to wait to get theirs instead of the competetor's product. Then once the competetor is dead or dying, they swoop in and buy them, and make their product theirs (or come out with their own, typically crappier product). Yay monopoly!

RetroRevival
February 23rd, 2005, 19:21
I have still go this PDF here if any of the admins wanted to contact me and host it?

Use the Contact Us form on my site and I will get back to you.

Regards
Simon

Retro Revival
www.retrorevival.co.uk

Eric
February 24th, 2005, 01:59
Dan i totally agree with your post and look at what happened to Sega North America. After Sega was bought out we lost alot of good coders from the Sega Sports staff and Sonic Team. Notice we havent had a Sonic game with a story line just these team up/fighter Sonic games. They are good but Sonic Team has no clue on a good story line do to the fact we lost good coders. Now i just heard this stuff and if i am wrong then dont accuse me of nothing.

Eric

Darksaviour69
February 24th, 2005, 13:24
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victim of his own success!

RetroRevival
February 24th, 2005, 17:46
Well i was not expecting that I can tell you.

Woke up this morning to find that I had used 5gb of bandwidth in the last 2 days !

A lot of it has to do with the DC article which people have liked, along with some of the other articles that are in Issue 3. I personally think that the success has to do with the fact that it is very different to what is currently in the marketplace, not to mention the fact that it is free.

All sorted now though, hosting company are happy that i have thrown them some more money :-)