Want To Help Out?

[Christuserloeser]

[quote author=Wraggster link=board=news;num=1081709946;start=0#5 date=04/12/04 at 22:25:06]Christuserloeser if you were interested you could become our official DCEmu UK Reviewer [/quote]

Hmm. Maybe I am not the one who's able to do all reviews on my own Â*:-[
...but I'll think about it as this is a nice offer!

My English isn't that good, too. So it will take a native speaker to look my reviews through and to correct typos and stuff.

Anyway, I am gonna post my reviews here. Feel free to change them for grammar and so on. You can also cut them down or add some facts that I might have overseen.

Please gimme some feedback so I know what's okay and what's not and I can change these things for my next reviews/postings.

[Christuserloeser]

Originally written for the

DCEmulation Review Contest 2004
-------------------------------

NesterDC
--------
This review is based on NesterDC v7.1+b and NesterDC v6.0

One of the best emulators available for DC and probably the best known is NesterDC.

NesterDC is an almost perfect NES/Famicom emulator for Dreamcast. It's based on the original Nester by Darren Ranalli and has been ported to DC by Ken Friece (up to v3.0) and further developed by Takayama Fumihiko (up to v7.1).

Initial release (v1.0 by Ken Friece) was at 20th of Feburary in 2001. Takayama Fumihiko took over (his work) in September 2001 and improved his work since then. Â*The latest version by Takayama Fumihiko, on which this review is based on (NesterDC7.1), was released at 12th of February 2002.

Version 7.1 is the latest version of NesterDC including a nice themable GUI and a new menu font that allows more characters per line (long filenames in menu). The update v7.1+b also includes full Light Gun support added by Warmtoe and was released at 10th of March in 2003.

NesterDC offers full VMU support and allows you to save at any position in a game. Just press (R) + (Y) while playing to get to the VMU save state menu and select save state. That's it.
For further information have a look at KEYBIND, a text file that comes with your downloaded archive.

Performance is nearly perfect: NesterDC offers close to 100% accurate speed (NO frameskip noticable!), improved sound and bilinear filtering (improved graphics)!

Compatibility is awesome! I've recognized far more than thousand games that work perfectly and only a very few games that won't run properly with NESTER DC v7.1: Asterix, Big Nose Freaks Out, Bionic Commando, Clash At Demonhead / Dangeki Big Bang, Contra Force, Elite, Gemfire, L'Empereur, Lion King, Marble Madness, Nobunaga's Ambition 2, Parodius (Japanese ROM Parodius Da! runs perfectly!), Rygar, Tiny Toon Adventures 2, Widget and Zen - Intergalactic Ninja

The 4 player adapter is also emulated and supported by a few games like the Bomberman series, RC Pro Am 2, M.U.L.E., Gauntlet 2, Nintendo World Cup and Super Spike V'Ball.

Features
* Full VMU support - Save at any position you want!
* Saves configurations to VMU
* Easy to use and themable GUI with new & nice font in NesterDC v7.1
* You can choose between 5000 premade GameGenie cheats!
* Bilinear filtering (improved graphics)
* Extra sound emulation (improved sound)
* 4 player support
* Screen adjustment
* New in NesterDC v7.1+b: LightGun support

Edit: Check out http://dckb.dcevo.com for more information about NesterDC. - I took some information for this review from that site.

by Christuserloeser 2004

[Christuserloeser]

@Wraggster:

It'd be nice if you could post a comment to this review - so I know if and in which way I should update my others and post them here, too.

[wraggster]

sorry i over looked this, ill add it to the site

[Skyhawk]

I also found it a good read. Some of the games you say are not working in 7.1, are not in the compatibility list. So I gonna test them and add them in the list also.

[Christuserloeser]

@Wraggster:

Thx for posting my review!

Please take out the word "Edit:" as it really was meant to be as an edit of my post Â*


I thought this review should go here
under "Information"

...as this would make more sense so anyone will have the info right before downloading NesterDC.

I've always wondered about the importance of a special review section :-X

Suggestion for a better & easier start for Newbies into the DCEmu scene:

I like the way the Emulators are listed on DCEmu.co.uk, but they should be listed like *Best one first* if there are hundred of different emulators like its the case with NES or SMS/GG so ppl will burn the most advanced one first! and then check out the others, too if they wan't.
I remember that I was kinda disapointed back then at my first visit of DCEmulation.com after recognizing that the huge list of available ones were mostly work-in-progress ones and I didn't really know with which one to start

@ Captain Skyhawk

I've used your compatibility list for my compilation and I've recognized a few wrong and some missing entries.

Suggestion would be to wait until this "I know two games that won't run with NesterDC" thing at DCEmulation (Link) is over and then update the list.
I'm gonna check the wrong entries I've mentioned.

[Christuserloeser]

Originally written for the

DCEmulation Review Contest 2004
--------------------------------

DreamSNES
-----------

This review is based on DreamSNES v0.98

The famous DreamSNES is a really well done port of Gary Henderson's Snes9X (a portable Super NES / Super Famicom emulator) to the Dreamcast by Marcus Comstedt, Peter Bortas, and Per Hedbor.

Initial release was at the 10th of July in 2000. The latest version 0.98 on which this review is based on, was released at the 31th of October 2002.

DreamSNES offers a beautiful graphical user interface (GUI) with nice anime/manga-esque graphics by Kathy Choi and a very good high-quality MP3 player. The original release containes cool electronic music by Jan Warnstam (Soil Of Sound, search his website (Link) for suitable additional tracks.

Additional you can create a file (ROMS.LST) using ROMLST.EXE (Link) by The Krypt (Link) and place it in the games directory of your DreamSNES disc to speed up the listing of your games. DreamSNES v0.98 will use the names listed in this file instead of scanning the ROM header of each game (what will happen if a game isn't listed in ROMS.LST).

Though DreamSNES v0.98 is very good and hard work, it won't run certain games at all (see compatibility notes below) and none in real fullspeed. You'll always notice frame skipping on most games but most of them are very playable and some actually reach original speed...

Most parts of the code used in DreamSNES is in C++, a portable but slow programing language. The DreamSNES team rewrote the 65c816 SNES CPU specific code to SH4 assembler (machine code) to get faster emulation results and it shows: During porting process and further optimizations, emulation speed has almost doubled over the several releases of DreamSNES.

But depending on the type of chipset used in the original cartridge or the amount of graphical data displayed at once, there are games left that will run very slow.

There are ways to improve speed with DreamSNES: Turning off the sound might help performance. Also disabling transparency effects speeds up some games but might not be useful on games which make extended use of these effects like Terranigma or Bahamut Lagoon. Turning on CPU optimizations might help too but breaks emulation of a few games. Try playing around with these options to get the best performance.

Compatibility is awesome. Most games ever created for the SuperNES will run with DreamSNES. I've tested almost 900 different games with DreamSNES over the last year and I've to mention that compatibility is even better than it was with the original SNES9x release v1.38, on which DreamSNES is based on.
It won't run games with copy protection (I`ve noticed only two games until now), S-DD1 compression (like Star Ocean and Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 2 - check out SuperFamicast that'll allow you to play these games) or DSP-2 (like Dungeon Master, other games with later versions of the DSP-1 chip implemented might not work, too).
Then there's the SA-1, a fast 65c816 processor clocked at 10MHz that's actually the same as inside of the SNES itself (clocked with a max of 3.58MHz) but with some additional features like a very fast RAM. SA-1 emulation is partially implemented in DreamSNES so it runs Super Mario RPG. The only other games that are known to use the SA-1 are Kirby Superstar (runs very slow) and Parodius 3 – Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius (crashes).

Features:
* VMU support for games with back-up memory
* Saves configurations to VMU
* Very nice and easy to use GUI (including screensaver & mp3 music on menus)
* Bilinear filtering (improved graphics)
* 4 player support
* Mouse support
* Disc swap

The current version 0.98 of DreamSNES lacks the following features:
- Save state support for saving at EVERY point in a game
- Configurable sound playback to select 22, 32 or 44.1 kHz
Â*(at the moment sound playback is at 22kHz)


Christuserloeser 2004

[Christuserloeser]

Originally written for the

DCEmulation Review Contest 2004
-------------------------------

SMSplusDC
---------
This review is based on SMSplusDC v0.1


SMSplusDC is a very well done new port of SMSplus to the Dreamcast by Pascal Bosquet. Initial release based on the original SMSplus v0.9.3 by Charles Mac Donald was in July 2003. It currently is the best Master System and Game Gear emulator available for the Dreamcast and offers great compatibility, extended saving functions and a really lovely graphical user interface (GUI) with the option to include a screenshot preview for each game.

For the most complete snapshot archive for SMSplusDC available visit the Dreamcast Knowledge Base (Link)

Performance:
This emulator is a pretty much perfect release. It offers perfect graphics, perfect sound and very accurate speed (without ANY frameskip!).

Saving:
SMSplusDC allows you to save at any point in a game. Just push (L) + (Start) or (R) + (Start) while playing a game to display the in-game menu for loading/saving a game state or going back to SMSplusDC main menu.

Select options at the main menu to change between 10 different SRAM and state slots for each game.

Compatibility:
Most games ever created/released for Master System and Game Gear will run perfectly! Even games like Gunstar Heroes GG and Godzilla GG that won't run with SMEG will run without any problems. Because the current release of SMSplusDC lacks support for Light Gun and analog controls and has no special 3D emulation mode (for the Master System 3D glasses) a very few games like Zaxxon 3D, Alex Kidd - BMX Trial or Megumi Rescue aren't really playable.

There is also no support for the FM Sound Generator Yamaha 2413 that existed back in 1985 as an external add-on for the Japanese Sega Mark III (an early version of the Japanese Master System, the Japanese SMS itself came out one year later and had the FM2413 built-in) but all of the 60 known games that supported this device will also support the more common SN-76496
PSG by Texas Instruments, so this should absolutly not be a point not to check this great emulator out!

Features:
* Full VMU support - Save at any position you want!
* Saves configurations to VMU (requires 3 blocks)
* Plays Master System AND Game Gear games!
* Very nice GUI with optional screenshot preview for every game
* Bilinear filtering (improved graphics)
* NO FRAMESKIP
* Seperated screen adjustment for SMS & GG
* 2 player support (Master Systen only)
* Proper PAL support (TV output and emulation)
* Backdrop color painting
* Disc swap

Pascal Bosquet worked on SMSplusDC v0.2 and recently released the source code for SMSplusDC.
Some people like Heliophobe, the author of SMEG offered a helping hand so this great emulator will hopefully get a new release soon. For further information visit www.pascalorama.com


Christuserloeser 2004

[Christuserloeser]

@Captain Skyhawk:
You can use my DreamSNES review as a basic to start the DreamSNES section of your Dreamcast Knowledge Base if you like.

Feel free to use my (In)compatibility list(s) over at DCEmulation message boards too.

I've also updated the NesterDC one here at DCEmulation Forums

[wraggster]

im at home this weekend and i will get back up to speed on all reviews

real life sometimes even takes me over.

not to mention an insane bout of tiredness

Thanks again for the great reviews