Go DreamCast!
 

I agree with Nataku. I love my DreamCast...its really the only thing I use anymore (aside from my computer). I refuse to touch the PS2...XBOX is ok, and so is the GameCube...but the problem with those is that in my book, I'm not going to buy a new system for only 3-5 games. The DreamCast was (and still is IMHO) the best system availble - not in terms of graphics (though you have to love high res everything...and the colors just seem so much brighter compared to everything else), but in terms of quality. There were so many great games for it (and some really bad ones too...hehe) and you didn't have to do anything to play imports (SNKvsCAPCOM is so awesome...just wish I knew what they were saying). I didn't even mind the VMU and its tomagotchi type Sonic add-ons.

Kev


BTW, this is being said by a loyal Nintendo fan from day 1 - someone who dispised everything SEGA did...until he played Crazy Taxi!

You actually don't need a mod chip for sega dreamcast to play imported or copied games. Take a game you have and copy it onto a cd and then play it and you'll see what I mean. As for the good ol' PS1 you do need a mod chip, Trust me!!

I didn't say SEGA was bad, I just don't like Dreamcast. Many of them are just poorly made, parts will break in them within a year of purchase. SEGA makes great games, just not great systems, but I like the idea of them making games for other consoles. That sonic game for gamecube isn't very good though, they try to jam it up with all this "cool" music and stuff, I don't like it.
I'm now a huge resident evil fan, the remake for GC is just awesome, and Resident Evil O is gonna be the coolest thing ever (that is, until RE 4 comes out).

Unless I am a total retard, you can't copy Dreamcast games with a regular cd drive. Somehow, you need to mad hack a special cable to dump the contents of the GD-ROM into a burnable ISO, and do it all via serial, which is slow as hell, for what you're sending through it, I believe, but that's only if you want to rip games yourself. I think the DC Gamez scene has died down a lot over the past few months, but you can get self-booting ISOs of games (as opposed to the mad old-school gamez that you had to use the Utopia BootCD to start up [I think I still have a few copies of it around, in some odd corners of the house :p ]) which you can burn to a standard cd-r (some cd-rws work, I believe, but I'm not going to say they definetly will/would), and play.

As for non-piracy related things for the Dreamcast, a while back, there was a lot of buzz about DC user-development.

I believe the GypPlayer was the original VCD/MPEG1 player that was written for the Dreamcast. You burn the given files onto a cd, along with whatever mpeg1 movies you want to watch, and voila, you have yourself a VCD player from your DC. Originally, I burned the promotional video from Bungie about the GeForce 2 GTS and showed my family what I could do with the DC, back when Halo wasn't Xbox only (I still hate Microsoft). It was officially hilarious, I'll see if I can find a link to it a bit later.

As for websites: www.boob.co.uk has a lot of stuff, including the GypPlayer, DCDivx (beta), DCLinux, MP3 players, Ogg Vorbis players, and JPEG slideshow programs. A vast majority of these programs have been released under the GPL, so you can really do anything you want with the system. The website also has emulators for the SNES (yes, turn your DC into an SNES!), homemade games, homemade demos, development tools and documents, and even a forum, if you want some more information. Keep in mind that this is all just one website, and there're probably a lot more at your disposal, if you look for them... As I mentioned to Ogre, google is your friend...

Have fun.