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lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Mon Jul 15, 2013 9:00 pm
quote : #1
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I have been trying to revive some old computers of mine. Specifically my very first one. It has been a journey that I won't get into here, but playing games on older PC hardware of the day (circa 1997), really shows me how powerful the Dreamcast was back then. First person shooters like UT and Quake really do run fantastic when compared to many of the PC's at that time. I got UT99 to run "okay" on this old PC (200mhz with 16mb of VRAM), but it still wasn't as good as the Dreamcast.

The Dreamcast really was a fanastic alternative to play PC game ports, if you didn't have a top of the line gaming computer.
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SEGA RPG FAN
rank 20
Posted:
Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:24 pm
quote : #2
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lordnikon wrote:
if you didn't have a top of the line gaming computer


That's the important caveat Very Happy

I for one certainly didn't have a top-of-the line gaming computer in 1999, and, probably for that reason, the Dreamcast blew me away.
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WildCard
rank 5
Posted:
Thu Jul 25, 2013 1:29 pm
quote : #3
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+1 that's what drew me to the dreamcast as opposed to sinking a ton of money into a new pc gaming rig at the time.
 
Kbuzz
rank 23
Posted:
Tue Jul 30, 2013 11:01 pm
quote : #4
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having a 'ballin' rig was a bit more uncommon back then as I remember. And even the best of them were probably in cream white cases (ew!). Back in 99, the Dreamcast was a great way to experience cutting edge graphics with great framerates. The days where the console experience made pc gamers jealous all but died with that generation but I wont get into that.

Even though some of us might cringe at the Windows CE titles on DC, I clearly remember many friends investing long hours into these games simply because their pc wouldn't run it, or it was unplayable with the hardware available.
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lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Thu Aug 01, 2013 10:44 am
quote : #5
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The Windows CE part doesn't bother me too much, since I know what it stands for. The part that bothers me is when other members of the community have no idea what it means.

People jump to the conclusion that the Dreamcast runs on "Windows", and then some jump even further down the rabbit hole, thinking that Sega and the Dreamcast are intrinsically tied to Microsoft, which fuels some sort of morbid fanboy circus in their minds about MS systems. Then to them, MS = The New Sega.

WindowsCE on the DC was an alternative development kit, that allowed windows binaries to run on Dreamcast hardware. The Dreamcast is still Japanese arcade hardware, with the Katana dev kit being the primary and best option for developing games on the system. However the architecture was flexible enough to allow for alternative dev kits like Windows CE, which made it easier for Western Developers to port PC games to the Dreamcast.

I think some games could have obviously performed better under Katana, because WindowsCE was almost like shoe horning a PC game to run on the DC. Though games like Worms run like butter on the DC without any sacrifice in performance or quality. So for a lot of titles, it was great.
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