How is your Dreamcast gaming going on?

[Tanooki]

Well it's not DC exclusive, I got it with the N64 as well and saw it via PS1 too when I had that on my previous screen (yet its own PSOne+LCD didn't do it but was tuned for it.

I think some games were just designed to tease the CRT guns to light up various ways or at least help emphasize it in the case of Rayman as upping the notch to max helped a good bit so far but I only did the first level and unlocked Ly.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Yeah, I can't either, although I never did go very far into Rayman 2. I don't know why I always lost steam in that game.

It's a 3D platformer. You might be out of your element.

(Rayman 2 is a fine game. I beat it, and for a brief period, I would have considered it one of the best 3D platformers. I spent some with it again recently, however, and it has not aged as well as some other games in the genre.)

[stickem]

Never had a problem on rayman 2 on non crt either.sometime soon I'd like to revisit the og rayman. Got close but never beat it, just a few cages short to advance to the end level if I remember the game right.

[Tanooki]

I intended to play with the DC today but kind of let it ride elsewhere. I got fed up with the system clock not working. I read up that the battery was either discharged from disuse or dead. Dead would suck, lots of layers to peel into, then having to solder in a new rechargeable cr2032 or something of the sort. The worst layers being some pins you can jack up from the power pcb on the left, or ripping the thin cable near the battery itself in front. I read you leave the system on for 2hours and just idle to let it juice up, then flip it off, count to 10 and see if it has a fit again. I did this and it didn't. I'm hoping it's good and just didn't need an hour to rot once more. I could tell when I got the DC by dates it hadn't been touched in a good 12 years I believe.

Anyway that N64 find the other day I ended up keeping the Banjo Kazooie and one of the gray controllers from it as well. I decided to mess with the TV settings with this thread and tinkered a bit, one of them was ramping the A/V output sharpness up to 100/100 which was nice. But as I was using Banjo, suddenly I found myself clearing all of Mumbo's Jungle except for one of two honeycomb bits and some intro junk over an hours time. I hate collecting stuff, but that game is just fun. It's barely older than Rayman 2 and both have aged just fine after putting similar (hour) time on both. I'm overly picky and usually loathe these games due to garbage cameras or other annoyances and so far neither bug me.

[alienjesus]

I love me some early 3D platformers, and Banjo Kazooie might just be the best one. I really enjoy it's sequel too, although it feels a little overambitious in comparison.

One day I'll play Conker's Bad Fur Day and finish off my Rare N64 collection, but the prices for that game are just silly and I don't feel like forking out for it right now.

Rayman 2 is pretty good, I played it last year on Dreamcast. If the camera in 3D platformers annoys you though, expect at least some frustration - it was definitely a lot weaker in Rayman 2 than the likes of Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie.

On topic, I'm about to order me some Dreamcast games ahead of Together Retro this year - Sega Rally 2 and Virtua Tennis. Not my usual tastes, but I'm sure they'll be good.

Dreamcast is a console I wish I wanted to play more. For my personal tastes though, I feel like it has the weakest library of the major Sega consoles. There's certainly stuff that interests me, but it tends to be the pricy stuff and theres pricy games I want more on other consoles first!

[Tanooki]

Capcom aside it's hardly spendy really if you look into it.

I'll never bother with Tennis, those over glorified pong games bore me, but Sega Rally 2 is a real treasure. I'm not huge on racing games anymore, but a solid rally car racer I can still dig into and it's on a very short list deserving that space. It's not one to disappoint at all.

I know Rayman2 can get infuriating on the camera, so can Banjo too (like the anthill in the first world.) Those games have their moments, they're not constant annoyances of spending a good part of the game fighting a camera that will spin to blind you (many old PS1/Saturn 3rd person platformers), spin to kill you (hit or thrown off a cliff like Castlevania64), just never finds a good angle, or ends up locked then pivots by screen throwing all the controls off in the wrong way (like Devil May Cry does.) Games like that I refuse to get as they are not fun entirely because of the camera.

[stickem]

So I finally get the vga box from ebay and I plug it in. Tv says either no signal, please change source resolution or shows up but the bouncing vmu on the menu is in slow motion. I unplug the box and the dam dreamcast plug casing falls apart in my hand eith a wire off the soldering point. Don't know if it was fucked when I got it or not. Just my luck.

[Tanooki]

I don't know if I'll ever go that route but it is tempting with the VGA. It just seems like a lot of money for some added clarity, but then the pain in the ass of some of them (games) not liking it at all and failing to fire up. I know you can get the retrobit or the orange(naki?) one with a switch on the side for TV(RCA cable) or VGA so there is that.

Today in the mail I got a nice pile of yummy stuff for the DC from Skyknight. I was confused what the big bag was at my door at first, then paranoid when I realized what it was. But wow did he do an insanely well and individualized packing job on 4 DC games and a Japanese guide. Paid $80 priority shipped for this and got Skies of Arcadia, Toy Commander(new to me), Gundam, and SoulCalibur (w/the Dreamcast Namco official guide book.) Each game was individually wrapped in paper, taped up, some paper inside the cases to force the disc to stay locked in place, then all that was wrapped in bubble wrap and inside a bubblewrap bag. Not a fault anywhere, impressive. I'm not that daring except on cheap cases as they crack, I go for light boxes.

Skies I had on DC, then GC...then years later GC again, and now back again on the DC to stay. Gundam (personal favorite love the anime/manga) and SoulCalibur I had before as well, but Toy Commander is new. These will be fun and take awhile (Skies) to go through no doubt. I wish I still had my Skies (Legends/DC+GC) guide because it's damn expensive these days now.

[stickem]

Not so much for the clarity but for using on modern tv's. I read that although they except vga the tv might like like the voltage or the particular vga resolution the Dreamcast outputs. I don't know. I got pissed and quit messing with it for now and started watching football before I throw this motherfucker in the road.

[Tanooki]

Humm I hadn't read anything about that before. I'm considering throwing an offer on one I know someone has (that naki one and he's got all the cables with it too.)

Got sucked into nearly an hour of tooling with Skies of Arcadia. I forgot how tough that first boss can be (war beast) if you just go to it and not level up one level on the ship first as it can just double team one of your characters per turn.

Not sure I like Toy Commander though...can't even get within 90sec of matching the best time on any course under that robot guy in the opening space at all. Some stuff is just tricky to find, and a stage with bombers I couldn't see them half the time which is of no help. If I end up having to beat the best time to clear the area I'm quitting as I can't even get close and I hate being rushed.

SoulCalibur looks fantastic still after all these years. It kind of showed the potential of the system many games failed to really try and tap into. I saw some specs recently and the DC wasn't that far off from the PS2, far closer to it than the last generation, but they got smoked out by Sony behind the scenes and in plain side.