The fucking Dreamcast

[NoSleep]

Bump. I see no-one has noticed that a new game is due out on the Dreamcast, come end of 2015, as well as its game engine being given away with the game, too, for homebrew developers.

Part of a Kickstarter campaign, which also embraced the Ouya, but the majority of the money came from the DC community.

It's called Elysian Shadows and it's an RPG, so I'm definitely up for this.

http://elysianshadows.com/

[Consignia]

I'm disappointed the bump wasn't about Shenmue III. Keep the faith, it'll come someday.

[NoSleep]

I was just watching a 2013 interview with Yu Suzuki and there seems to still be the will to get the series back into action.

[NoSleep]

Although a bump to a Dreamcast thread would hardly be carrying news about Shenmue III.

[Consignia]

I know, sorry, I was joking, just tying in the eternal optimism that all Shenmue fans have.

[Big Jack McBastard]

All I'm seeing is Fish Sex toy.

[Benevolent Despot]

My Dreamcast is now a carefully preserved museum exhibit, lovingly protected from the elements by bubble wrap and cardboard. I dare not play games on it as the disk drive is failing. It always gets stuck and doesn't load disks. Is there a reliable place I can send it to get its lasers all reworked?

[NoSleep]

The lasers are something that wears out on the DC. Get another DC is the best bet, they're not expensive.

There has been an ongoing project to bypass the DC's optical drive know as Dreamshell, which originally focussed on using SD cards as an alternative, via the serial port. It seems that has moved on to looking at connecting a hard drive to the DC in recent builds (just as I've worked out how to launch games from an SD).

However, somebody else has been busy completely replacing the optical drive:

http://renovation-3do.narod.ru/USB-GDROM_Controller.htm

[NoSleep]

Here's another project to replace the DC's optical drive (GD-ROM):

http://gdemu.wordpress.com/

[Benevolent Despot]

Thanks for the tips. I don't think I could replace my Dreamcast with another, it just wouldn't be the same, you know? 15 years of companionship is not to be sniffed at. I might look into the other options at some point.

[NoSleep]

It's always good to have spares around, though. One of my DC's doesn't always work properly with the official fishing controller whilst the other's fan whines a bit, so I swapped the fans for a bit of peaceful, quiet fishing. It's very easy to remove and replace stuff inside the DC, it's almost modular in design; so you could probably just replace the optical drive without even having to solder. And there's YouTube videos to show you how: actually there's one to get a little bit more life out of your current laser (although it guarantees it will burn out just that little bit faster):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cKsWwi7qIE

That guy's done loads of DC videos, so there's probably one to suit your every need.

Actually the preceding one might be all you need (as it shows how to clean the lens - carefully).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKvaSmwRm0