Real Dreamcast games are better than pirate ones

By Spencer . June 6, 2006 . 8:05am

Sega’s Dreamcast was famous (infamous to developers) for game piracy. People were able to play copied games without using a modchip, but were the pirated versions of the games the same quality as a copy you bought in store? The short answer is no. The Dreamcast used a GD-ROM disc, not standard CDs so there was more space available on the GD-ROM. While some games like Ikaruga only used a fraction of the space other games with movies and music packed on the megabytes. To compact games on a single CD, music was downsampled and movies were taken out. Racketboy points out that some games like Skies of Arcadia suffer in their performance. The official game has smooth panning of the battlefield while the pirated copy slugs through with choppy animation and music. That’s the terse version, but Racketboy goes into further detail over at Retrogaming.

TAGS: Sega

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the_importer

Not only that, but forcing your DC to read CDs while it was trying to read a GD-ROM damaged the motor. A friend of mine went trough 3 Dreamcasts because he kept playing CD-R games.

the_importer

alomst all of my 150+ dc games were copied cds now my dc can only read gd it cant even read cds to play music o well it was good while it lasted

Wow, the irony

FRX

Uhhh, yeah... why not just BUY the fricken games people. Yeah, I know, it's a radical concept, but it just might be worth it.

Not trying to be on a high horse here, but every single DC game I own is an original. Vampire Chronicles, Space Channel 5 Part 2, Ikaruga and all the shooters that have come out after the DC's death. Not a single burned game in the bunch. If I loved the game, I bought it. It's that simple. If I didn't buy it, obviously I felt it wasn't that important to own. The DC is my favorite system of all time, and every game I own is a piece of that dedication.

If all you did was burn games for the DC, you didn't really care for the system, you just saw it as a place to play free warez.

the_importer

Uhhh, yeah… why not just BUY the fricken games people. Yeah, I know, it’s a radical concept, but it just might be worth it.

Not trying to be on a high horse here, but every single DC game I own is an original. Vampire Chronicles, Space Channel 5 Part 2, Ikaruga and all the shooters that have come out after the DC’s death. Not a single burned game in the bunch. If I loved the game, I bought it. It’s that simple. If I didn’t buy it, obviously I felt it wasn’t that important to own. The DC is my favorite system of all time, and every game I own is a piece of that dedication.

If all you did was burn games for the DC, you didn’t really care for the system, you just saw it as a place to play free warez.

Who are you talking to? So far, there's just one person who admited using DC CD-R games, so why use the term People?

FRX

By "people" I'm refering to all people who burn DC games, or games for any system for that matter. I wasn't speaking specifically about the one person who posted here.

And it was also said in jest, since it's not like I'm preaching to the world. Quantifying "people" here at Siliconera would probably amount to a good 30 or so regular readers/posters to these topics. :)

BigRed667

Uh... no DC games are sold at retail anymore. It makes no difference for the developers if you buy a used copy on eBay, or burn your own.

Of course, the originals have a collectible value, something that can't be said about cd-rs.