Can You Copy Dreamcast Games on Your PC?
I’ve had a few people ask me lately if you can copy your original Dreamcast games onto your PC and then burn them onto backup CDs.
Techincally, the answer is “yes”, but it’s not what you think. (Let me explain in a bit)
Basicically, I just give the answer “no” because it’s more complicated, time consuming, and expensive than the make it worth it.
Let me explain…
First of all, all retail Dreamcast games use a special disc format called a GD-ROM (more info). To make a long story short, a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive cannot read information off of a GD-ROM.
In addition, a GD-ROM holds about twice as much as a CD-ROM. So even if you got the information off the GD-ROM, it, in most cases, would not fit on a CD. And you cannot put it on a DVD because the Dreamcast cannot read DVDs.
The only way to rip a Dreamcast game to a PC is to have the game in Dreamcast and connect the machine to your PC using expensive connection hardware and software.
THEN, once you have the data onto your PC, you have to, in most cases, compress, cut out and/or downsample (reduce the quality) of the audio and video so that everything fits on a CD.
Even after you have reached that point, you need to go through a significant amount of hacking just to get the game to boot on the Dreamcast.
So the moral of the story is that you are just better off leaving this process to the few groups that have experience with the subject. If you want a backup copy of your Dreamcast game, you should just obtain an existing rip from somebody else.
Even if you have some extremely rare game, all you have to do it announce it to the Dreamcast community, and some experienced ripper will do it for you 🙂
If you have any addtional question, corrections, or comments about ripping Dreamcast games, just use the comments option below.
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Hey does anyone know how get Skies of Arcadia on pc
How many people still have their Dreamcast?
A lot, actually. The Racketboy and the retro-gaming community is quite passionate about the Dreamcast