[The Captain]

I'm going to be buying a dreamcast soon for an arcade cabinet I'll be making, and I need it to be able to play import games from Japan. I'm not asking about mod chips, boot discs, etc, because I know such talk is usually avoided in these forums.

Anyway, I seem to remember something about the early dreamcasts being able to play imports without the need of a modchip/boot disc. Does anyone have information on this early model (perhaps the model number)? It would save me a lot of trouble if I didn't have to deal with anything that is in the gray area legal-wise.

Thanks.

 

[D.D.]

what does the model number look like? if its not something like hkt-3020 then point me in the right direction and i can tell u what mine says.

 

[The Captain]

what does the model number look like? if its not something like hkt-3020 then point me in the right direction and i can tell u what mine says.

From what I read on wikipedia, maybe I should be looking for the version number. Wikipedia: "Units manufactured with the version number of 2 would not read CD-R media and therefore could not be used to play pirated games, and also had the unfortunate side effect of not being able to play independent games such as the three bleemcast! discs, Feet of Fury, Inhabitants, or Maqiupai."

*EDIT*

I did some research and found out that no NTSC dreamcasts are region-free, which means I will need a boot-disc. However, it does look like some of the last dreamcasts made could not even read cdrs. I'll try to stay away from Dreamcasts with this label:

 

[didamangi]

Well there is a boot disc that its perfectly legal. It's DC-X, you can buy it here among other places

It has the best compatibility too AFAIK.

 

[hushypushy]

i dont really know the legality of a boot disc..but for playing imports you should be in the clear. there is a free boot disc i used to use back in the day to play homebrews and emulators, i forget what its called though, you cna check www.dcemulation.com and just download it.

and yeah, there are no region free dreamcasts. only Nintendo does that with their handheld systems, btw. the old DCs play CDRs, i know because i have one. mine was manufactured in august 1999

 

[didamangi]

DC-Hacker?

Cheat and codes vol.1 or gameshark for dreamcast lets you play import too IIRC.

 

[Cid Highwind]

You can always try Utopia boot disc, it's still somewhere on NGEmu

It worked perfectly for my japanese Sonic Adventure 2, but for Baldr Force it gave me some problems. So my advice is to use this one:
http://www.boob.co.uk/files/cdx.zip

It's a free demo of Gameshark CD-X (Xploder?) and I use it to boot all my imports, works perfectly :thumb:

 

[hushypushy]

You can always try Utopia boot disc, it's still somewhere on NGEmu

that's the one! it was great....mad emulation style

 

[The Captain]

Thanks for the info guys. I just bought a used dreamcast off ebay, along with The Last Blade 2. Once I buy an import game (most probably Guilty Gear X), I'll give those boot discs a try. Until then, I'm going to try some snes games on my dc.

 

[Cid Highwind]

that's the one! it was great....mad emulation style

Emulation style? More like AARGH style (pirates)

For emulation I prefer DCHakker as it boots all the binaries I put together on one disc. For all the imports the DC-X Demo works the best, way better than Utopia

 

[hushypushy]

why would i pirate a DC game? i bought all the games i wanted to play

 

[Cid Highwind]

Utopia wasn't meant for homebrew and emulation in the first place, they were the first DC Warez group

Makes me wonder why NGEmu still provides it when there are better bootdiscs available lol.

 

[hushypushy]

doesnt matter, it still worked for homebrew and emulation

i dont see what's so bad about it, i used to use it all the time and it worked fine, never failed (of course, this was like 4 years ago or something). besides, warez'd DC games are their own bootable disc. which brings me back to my point, boot discs are for emulation and homebrew

 

[didamangi]

At first DC pirate games are not bootable, but later some group found a way to make them bootable.

The Utopia guys developed the boot disk with the Katana development kit not the Dreamcast development kit (that's why it is illegal, they didn't have the rights to use this kit).

http://www.emutalk.net/chankast/20638-play-your-original-cd-backups-solution.html

And they got arrested fot it too

NGemu still host the utopia boot disc? Where?

 

[Cid Highwind]

http://www.ngemu.com/dc/dreamsms.php?action=tools

There it is

And Hushy, I can see where you're coming from, and personally I don't really care if NGEmu wants to host it or not, as long as they don't get into trouble
It's just that Utopia got itself a name as a warez group, and atm there are alternatives which are better.

 

[hushypushy]

yeah, i wasnt arguing that they werent warez or anything but AFAIK the disc itself is legal. kind of like any emulator. it's legal but it can be used for devious things.

btw, what do you mean by "alternatives which are better"? why are they better? im not challenging you, i actually want to know.

 

[The Captain]

yeah, i wasnt arguing that they werent warez or anything but AFAIK the disc itself is legal. kind of like any emulator. it's legal but it can be used for devious things.

btw, what do you mean by "alternatives which are better"? why are they better? im not challenging you, i actually want to know.

I found some info which may help you: http://www.consolevision.com/members/fackue/playing_imports.shtml

 

[Cid Highwind]

yeah, i wasnt arguing that they werent warez or anything but AFAIK the disc itself is legal. kind of like any emulator. it's legal but it can be used for devious things.

btw, what do you mean by "alternatives which are better"? why are they better? im not challenging you, i actually want to know.

For imports I prefer the Gameshark Demo because with Baldr Force the screen will not be messed up. With Utopia I will miss the top and bottom lines so I can not see any of the health and heat bars of my own. For homebrew DCHakker is better than Utopia because you can put all binaries on one disc, load DCHakker, put in the homebrew disc, and use the menu to boot any emulator you want. This way you don't have to use a new disc for every single homebrew game or emulator.

 

[Samor]

You can always try Utopia boot disc, it's still somewhere on NGEmu

It worked perfectly for my japanese Sonic Adventure 2, but for Baldr Force it gave me some problems. So my advice is to use this one:
http://www.boob.co.uk/files/cdx.zip

It's a free demo of Gameshark CD-X (Xploder?) and I use it to boot all my imports, works perfectly :thumb:

never had a problem with the Utopia bootdisc, but if you say so - I'll try that CD-X one. I just never bothered to look for a different one so far because the Utopia one always worked for me....

 

[Cid Highwind]

Well I guess it depends on the game, Utopia runs my Japanese Sonic Adventure 2 perfectly as well, but it wasn't able to run Baldr Force properly. So if you only want to use one disc for a bootdisc, use the Gameshark demo