So are the game discs readable now? Best I remember when I was active in the emulation community the DC had a slightly proprietary format and we were dumping the disc images through the console.
You still have to dump through the console, either via the BBA or an SD card. As I mentioned in the article, the route most people will have to take is downloading them from websites that offer them.
Technically, it is an area of software development I find absolutely fascinating. If I could, I'd emulate the world just because of the fun of it. It's fun the write emulators, it's fun to learn the specifics of the machine we are emulating. Even when reading about a system, like the Dreamcast, for which I have no affinity, I nod approvingly at any emulation attempt. To me, there's nothing that shouldn't be emulated. And I didn't even touch the number one reason why they should; because it's the only way to guarantee these systems will never die and their history can be revisited by future generations. Each emulator is a veritable museum in its own right.
I couldn't agree more. It still blows my mind that this sort of thing is even
possible, because we're talking about complex processes here. You need to do a
lot of research and be one hell of a coder to undertake a project like an emulator - especially an "accurate" emulator.
nullDC is one in a very long list of great programs that will help keep alive long lost systems. However, I do differ slightly on how I like to enjoy emulated games. I want them as close to the original as possible. Any deviations from that and I'm not in emulation world anymore. I feel I'm on imitation world.
I aim to run games, if possible, as close to the original as possible, but it doesn't affect me too much if it's not perfect. I am trying to play the games that I came to love so much, not try to relive memories.
I'm speaking of options like the Extra Geometry. I'd rather play a game with black borders but that is a facsimile of the game I enjoyed years ago on a 4:3 screen, then just make a caricature of the whole experience by insisting on filling my widescreen. And this is particularly true of situations where the game graphics themselves become distorted -- And many, many, games used graphics for typefaces. Fonts in graphical games are a relatively recent addition.
The Extra Geom setting has nothing to do with distortected text or icons, as I mentioned in the article. That happens because the resolution in which I'm running the games at is much higher than the original console. There's no simple fix for this aside from perhaps running the display resolution to match the original console (but then it'll look uglier than the original console due to the fact that few monitors scale well).
As for the fact that the games were 4:3 to begin with, I understand exactly where you are coming from. Again, I guess I am just not that peculiar about it. If I can play one of my favorite games suddenly in widescreen mode and it look good, I'm all for it.
I'm known for instance to sometimes actually wait a whole ~10 minutes for game to load on Spectaculator, simply because it can emulate to perfection the time these audio cassette games used to take to load a game to the ZX Spectrum.
For whatever reason, I'm not remotely like this. As much as I
love old platforms, I don't actually care about the hardware it was run on, or what it looks like on the screen. It was the games I enjoyed, not the fact that they looked super pixelated with dull coloring on my old beater TV.
For most purposes I do advise anyone to get a good 4:3 monitor and use that for their emulation.
If I ever build a MAME cabinet, I'd consider going this route. The problem is, I hate CRTs, it it seems that's all people use for those things (no doubt for the fact that LCD doesn't "emulate" the look of old platforms well at all).
