Real Dreamcast games are better than pirate ones

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.