Are My Dreamcast's Days Numbered?? Raspberry Pi 4 vs Dreamcast Gameplay

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

Wouldn't ya know?... A new 8GB Pi 4 was announced just this morning and is now available to buy. If you're interested in playing Dreamcast games on a Pi 4, this one should do it: thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b

[@InglebardGaming]

An 8 gb Pi 4 is complete overkill for emulation at this point. You can run everything the Pi can handle with the 2GB model. 8GB might be useful for a NAS, servers or clusters, but is totally unnecessary for retrogaming.

[@ninline2000]

@@InglebardGaming Exactly right. I've been running my Pi 4 with 64bit raspbian as a desktop for months now and it's very rare I push it all the way to the 4GB limit. The 2GB board is only $35 and works great for Kodi or Retropie.

[@DantoG]

you dont need more than 2gb of ram, performance will not increase at all

[@elevate32767]

the bottleneck is cpu/gpu. additional 4GB of RAM doesn't make sense

[@PerfectChaos]

This is the first honest video of pi4 emulating Dreamcast I've ever seen. Thank you very much.

[@AndreVandal]

Overclocking is part of the game, it has always been so, even on PC, so overclocking your pi is what is expected and the norm, but then again I have very little nostalgia for these consoles, being near my 60s I grew up with Arcades, and Pong, Tank, and Atari 2600 at home, and I can assure you I have no nostalgia for them old consoles, they simply did not age well enough for that. So I am enjoying all the consoles I never had and all the arcades I enjoyed as a kid through my Pi.

[@playingwithtrainerspcmt6407]

KZbin suggested you and I watched your video good quality videos so I subbed thank you for the video

[@Mainman0011]

wow not very often you find a raspberry pi emulation test without overclocking! Instant subscribe right there man ;) Really enjoyed seeing the games running on the original console as well

[@Allanbuzzy]

I'm sorta thinking about getting a RPi4 at some point once my money goes in. Obviously investing in a kit with heatsinks and case (since well, these things DO get warm) and I'm amazed at how far the RPi has gotten. Great video, subscribed! 👍

[@eldoctoremad]

excellent video and very informing, thanks!

[@crit_cannon1090]

powerstone 1 and 2 (especially 2) are my favorite games ever. but my discs rot...

[@markt1547]

Im new to this, but is it the Pi4 I would need to to be able to use my Internet broadband to play Phantasy star online.

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

You're thinking of the DreamPi project. That also works with a Pi3.

[@cedsanzo21]

Great job. Did you Test with sega rally 2 and project justice?

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

I don't have Project Justice, and I hadn't tried with Sega Rally 2. That was mainly because it already has a bit of an unstable framerate so I figured it would be a little difficult comparing them.

[@theweathermangler5619]

Cool channel! Great video. Nice to see the R4 will emulate nicely without overclocking. I'm starting a project to build a Sega Bass Fishing/Sega Marine Fishing Combo Bartop (BEST fishing games EVER!) and I was wondering if you tried SBF or SMF on the Raspberry Pi 4 Dreamcast emulator? If they don't run well, I'm not going to bother building a box themed to them. Haruman's Customs is going to help me with the box...built a badass Ms. Pac Man and also a Galaga Bartop with 60 in 1's and it's inspired me to take a creative dive into a bigger/better box. :)

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

That sounds like an awesome project! Alas I've not tried any fishing games on my Pi 4 but I could always look into it. Will you be incorporating a fishing rod control style on the bartop too?

[@theweathermangler5619]

Yeah I was thinking of incorporating a Sega Dreamcast Fishing Rod Controller into the control panel but I'm clueless as to how I'd jury rig it to plug into the Pi. My Ms. Pac Man and Galaga boxes have both a 4/8 way switching joystick for most games and a small track ball for games like Centipede, etc. Not sure how to get all those working seamlessly with a Pi 4. It's super easy on the 60 in 1 with the Jamma Harness but since the Pi emulates everything I'm not sure. Delusional's Arcade build of a bartop Ms. Pac Man got me started and his UNREAL build of a Star Wars themed Pi/LCD bartop gave me the idea for the SBF box. Haruman's Customs builds the box kits. :)

[@TheSlackassCrew]

I have my pi overclocked to the max and im having trouble playing Ready 2 Roumble Round 2, When the fighting starts it lags so hard

[@petergaming3748]

Hey mate! Loved the video - Just to confirm this is a Rapsberry PI 4B with 4GB of ram? Thanks!

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

Aye, the 4B 4GB model.

[@confusername]

I love booting Dreamcast games on my Pi 4, but there's just something about original hardware that makes me want to keep hold of it. Might be the VMU.

[@S.Grenier]

Sticking to OG hardware for the time being, I too often run into bugs and glitches that will detract from the experience with DC emulation. It has however gone a long way, and it's quite impressive now. Hopefully in the not so distant future I can be convinced to change my stance on this :)

[@inkysteve]

I've got this overwhelming desire to go to CEX, I can't imagine why.

[@joseamezola6280]

I grew up in the US and I always thought the PAL and JP Dreamcast cases looked way more elegant.

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

The ones here in PAL are extremely fragile though. You're pretty lucky to find a second hand Dreamcast game without the case being broken in one form or another (missing disc teeth, cracked front, etc).

[@_sabot]

@@TheMultiGenGamer Did the US Dreamcasts had more sturdy cases?

[@jim0_o]

Hmm, now I want to make some hardware monstrosity so I can connect the Dreamcast controller to my Pi4... I don't have any HDMI modded console and I'm not interested in buying a display I can't use with newer hardware. this answers the what hardware I would choose, but I think it also gives a good reason why. (I don't play much these days so justifying old hardware for a nostalgia kick isn't really possible.)

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

I like the way you're thinking! DC controller USB adapters exist but stock is few and far between. This link can give a bit more info on one: www.raphnet-tech.com/products/dreamcast_usb_adapter/index.php Not sure it would work out of the box with a Pi4 but, if you have the know-how, you could write the drivers if needs be.

[@jim0_o]

@@TheMultiGenGamer yeah I actually looked on ebay and couldn't find anything, I was thinking of making something with an Arduino (or at least looking up someone doing something similar on youtube) I don't have those skills I would just have to acquire them.

[@christopherdoyle8081]

Have you done a comparison of Flycast running on Raspberry Pi 4 at 480p to see if the frame drops cease or at least lessen?

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

I haven't but it'll be worth checking out considering how good the performance is at 1080p.

[@JoolsWills]

Did you experiment with the core options for flycast? The Alpha Sorting option speeds up some games (at the expense of accuracy). Makes a big difference on some games..eg. Daytona USA. Also make sure you update lr-flycast as there was a change that may improve performance on the rpi4 since the 4.6 release.

[@JoolsWills]

Thanks for the video. Interesting comparison.

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

I hadn't for the purposes of this video. The only changes I made were to install Flycast as an optional/experimental package and configure a controller. Everything else was left at the default settings. It was an almost out-of-the-box, worst case scenario, and the Pi 4 still performed very well. I'll certainly be taking a closer look at all the settings now I know it's base performance.

[@healthbeauty7853]

I get the best performance running my the null dc dreamcast emulator on a pc with a dedicated graphic card. It's obvious the the arm cores are in the pi 3 and 4 are too weak.

[@GreenHawk84]

Lately I am noticing really bad screen tearing and hiccups with Pi4 and Flycast. This seems to contradict your review. Can you try a fully updated Pi4 (stock) and play Soul Calibur or some other games again? Just wondering if there was a regression of quality in updates.

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

It would be worth revisiting. This was recorded when RetroPie on Pi4 was in beta (not sure if it still is) and I've heard plenty suggesting a different emulator to Flycast.

[@kitsunedotexe3587]

how do u get dreamcast actually working on retropie, im having some struggles lol

[@ChrisDoesTV]

PIease take your price stickers off your covers - I never can understand how peopIe can Ieave that stuff on there Good video though and thanks for taking the time to make it - this was reaIIy heIpfuI

[@Waltnice23]

Thanks for keeping it real. #salute

[@chrishowell8124]

Hi where did you get your amiga cd 32 from

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

I bought it from a mate of mine last year.

[@matthewcb1970]

Good video ☺

[@metalslayer777]

Raspberry Pi 5 should be just fine. And maybe with upsacle.

[@turtlehead2]

Soul Calibur

[@jihlnabaat6329]

love the video great job but don't ever say Dreamcast replacement you can't replace perfection

[@ninline2000]

The one thing I loved about the dreamcast is the video screen on the controller. I'd love to have that available to use with retropie.

[@BlakeSandenMedia]

Agreed

[@mutechannel13]

A hacked dreamcast fully loaded still beats anything the Pi can handle or will ever handle until the Pi 5 comes out 😁

[@LevelSmackcom]

Overclock the pi4 even more and it will run much better. It's easy to overclock pi 4.

[@emanuelstude4912]

How i overclock it? Do i need raspbian because i dont have that installed currently, my sd card was in some way destroyed and havent bought a new one yet.

[@dmn1n]

use redream which is a much better emulator

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried redream as well before putting all this together. Unfortunately the framerate was inconsistent and sound was choppy. May be ok if the settings were tweaked or the Pi 4 was overclocked, but out of the box it didn't perform well.

[@Neffbomber]

I run redream on my 4gb pi 4 and it runs great, I get a consistent 60FPS and never really drops below. Looks like flycast doesn’t run very well.

[@TheMultiGenGamer]

Can you share the configuration you use for redream? I'm always open to trying out other emulators.

[@InglebardGaming]

@@TheMultiGenGamer Redream is not full speed on all games even on an overclocked Pi 4 at 1x resolution. It's more accurate than Flycast in most cases and several games are full speed, but I recently did a Pi 4 review on my channel with the frame rate counter up with my Pi 4 overclocked to 2ghz/750mhz. Didn't know if it was cool to post a link so decided not to do that. It runs well for the most part and better than on previous Pis for sure, but still has a ways to go before it's close to consistent full performance across the board.

[@nunyabisness1979]

@@TheMultiGenGamer for redream you need to hook up a keyboard and hit the escape key and set the resolution in redream to about 800x600 this gives consistent speed on most games while giving a slight boost in quality while keeping the games native resolution. i would recommend using chd files as they have given me the least amount of problems while taking up minimal space of my sd card. unfortunately unlike ppsspp, redream does not currently provided a system for setting up individual settings on a game by game bases otherwise I would recommend setting the resolution higher on some games such as marvel vs capcom which seems to be able to handle up to 720 with little issue. Just too inform you I am running redream through retropie and if you plan to use retropie I would recommend you update they system in the retropie menu before installing redream. Their seems to be a glitch where redream's settings reset every time you close it out on the stalk 4.6 and this glitch carries over when you update to 4.6.1 and doesn't go away until you uninstall and reinstall redream. It is much easier to just update retropie before installing redream. you can find redream under experimental packages in the manage package menu. I would like to recommend you use a 360 controller for redream due too it having a near identical button layout too the dreamcast controller along with having pressure sensitive trigger buttons which the dreamcast also had. after testing several games the only game in my collection that seems too not work is fur fighters as the moment i get to the gameplay section all i get is a black screen that i can here my characters actions through.

[@grumpyoldgeezr]

Close but no cigar

[@dauntae24]

My pie 3 runs all of this well. You must not be running it effectively. Sorry.

[@rosevillereaper9230]

everone uses redream