It played but when held up against a light you could see several holes that resemble pictures I've seen of disc rot.
I'd rather not risk keeping it if it's going to stop working so I've returned it and bought a copy from a different seller.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Sega Dreamcast |OT| Appreciation and Emulation Thread
- Thread starter Deleted member 3010
- Start date
It played but when held up against a light you could see several holes that resemble pictures I've seen of disc rot.
I'd rather not risk keeping it if it's going to stop working so I've returned it and bought a copy from a different seller.
Best thing that you could have done. Disk rot is a real issue.
Peace of mind is important, so you did the right thing. Personally, I'm on the side that questions the theory that all pinholes are rot. I'm not aware of any studies that conclusively prove this. Pinholes exist in many disks, and are at least a manufacturing defect for sure. Rot however implies an ongoing deterioration or loss of function and that doesn't seem to be the prevailing experience. I obscessed about this over a decade ago when it became a hot topic and I had a number of disks that had a couple of pinholes that allowed light through. 15 or so years later, those disks are still fine. They have the same pinholes, they haven't gotten worse, larger, showed any cloudiness or bronzing. In short, they didn't rot and are the same as they have always been.
I'm not saying disk rot doesn't exist, because there are plenty of clear examples of it occurring. I do think that we lump too many defects into the category though and that it is not a widespread problem. Good luck on the new copy! It's a great game.
Well, got my second copy of Power Stone in and this one is in good condition. Game is a bit tougher than I remember it being!
Also, the seller shipped the disc inside a case belonging to Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf for the PlayStation, which scared the shit out of me when I opened the package. lol
EDIT: Goddammit. The audio in the game is messed up. It starts out fine but the sound effects and voices eventually stop working and only the music plays.
EDIT 2: It appears to be working fine now. I hope my ol' DC isn't dying on me.
Also, the seller shipped the disc inside a case belonging to Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf for the PlayStation, which scared the shit out of me when I opened the package. lol
EDIT: Goddammit. The audio in the game is messed up. It starts out fine but the sound effects and voices eventually stop working and only the music plays.
EDIT 2: It appears to be working fine now. I hope my ol' DC isn't dying on me.
Last edited:
I mean...uh....
Its similar to the spawn game they released at same time, with more metal and one of the TMNT creators on board
Its similar to the spawn game they released at same time, with more metal and one of the TMNT creators on board
Oh boy...
Yeah, another game that doesn't seem good at all... Or is it ?
oh! missed your post, actually - yes, by all means man, ask away
ive read a bunch from different places, and will help where i can! sadly, long-gone resources like eidolon's inn/etc provided more info on earlier gens, but a window was painted between SOA & SOJ's relationship by that point, and the many, many mistakes that had been made to get there. what specifically would you like to know?
The main thing I'd like to know is why was the Dreamcast so unprofitable, while say the Gamecube was profitable. The Dreamcast actually had a higher attach rate than the Gamecube did, though it did sell a bit less (technically more in North America during it's. Yet despite this the Dreamcast was a HUGE money sink for Sega. Even worse than the Saturn.
The Dreamcast ended up selling anywhere between 4.6 million and 5.4 million units in the United States in the 18 month time frame. 1.7 million in Europe seems to be what the two links agree with as well.
In contrast, the Gamecube sold 3.5 million units in the United States and 1.5 million in Europe in 14 months (right at the end of the holiday season). The Xbox ended up selling 6.2 million units in North America and 2.2 million units in Europe in 18 months.
I could understand if Sega loss a little bit of money on the console but they were bleeding to death to the point that it seems that it was the Dreamcast that killed the company. But why? The system didn't seem expensive to manufacture and from what I understand R&D for the console was low.
The Dreamcast ended up selling anywhere between 4.6 million and 5.4 million units in the United States in the 18 month time frame. 1.7 million in Europe seems to be what the two links agree with as well.
In contrast, the Gamecube sold 3.5 million units in the United States and 1.5 million in Europe in 14 months (right at the end of the holiday season). The Xbox ended up selling 6.2 million units in North America and 2.2 million units in Europe in 18 months.
I could understand if Sega loss a little bit of money on the console but they were bleeding to death to the point that it seems that it was the Dreamcast that killed the company. But why? The system didn't seem expensive to manufacture and from what I understand R&D for the console was low.
okay so im 3 sheets to the wind, but here goes
1) sega had then recently lost one of its biggest financial benefactors - this can't be overstated; they constantly took risks & put out tech way head of its time, eating losses. the genesis was literally about the only hardware (console wise) that turned a profit
2) preemptively killing the saturn did not help 3rd party relations. they needed some of those big names (konami, EA, the outside hope for square etc) to bring the heat on the DC, facing the unstoppable industry hype of the then-incoming PS2.
3) (forget if it was peter moore at this point?) the US DC release came a good while later, and there was a push from SOA to sell it at a loss at a competitive $200. it was brilliant, 9/9/99 was by all accounts a huge success! but that up front loss meant they were heavily relying on recouping costs/turning a profit via software. not too long down the road, the aforementioned gargantuan PS2 was gonna drop, and they needed to stay far away from that price point....but their custom GD-ROM was also cracked, and while not a death knell, piracy didn't help.
they had a huge weekend after their final price drop, but they just weren't turning a profit. eating $$ up front with sales and having sadly lower attach rates (especially for one of the finest libraries to date) meant that badly needed capital - necessary to pay back debts/bad decisions made on genesis peripherals, saturn costs/losses, the deal with 3DFX going through ,etc etc - wasn't coming. couple all that with the boneheaded move the gen prior to kill all remaining (however small) revenue streams: game gear, genesis, add-ons etc. the company literally had about a year with next to nothing on shelves to sell, just accruing more operating costs.
i don't think it's fair at all to say the DC killed them. it was their longshot bet & all their poor decisions killed them, the DC just stayed alive as long as it feasibly could - but looking back, without a really big hit (say, GTA III) it just wasn't gonna make it. sony had ease of development kits (well, the gen prior anyway) and literally everyone on board. sega couldn't even rope in mediocre-ass EA by then, and just a few gens prior, they had one of the strongest relationships a 3rd party had seen.
1) sega had then recently lost one of its biggest financial benefactors - this can't be overstated; they constantly took risks & put out tech way head of its time, eating losses. the genesis was literally about the only hardware (console wise) that turned a profit
2) preemptively killing the saturn did not help 3rd party relations. they needed some of those big names (konami, EA, the outside hope for square etc) to bring the heat on the DC, facing the unstoppable industry hype of the then-incoming PS2.
3) (forget if it was peter moore at this point?) the US DC release came a good while later, and there was a push from SOA to sell it at a loss at a competitive $200. it was brilliant, 9/9/99 was by all accounts a huge success! but that up front loss meant they were heavily relying on recouping costs/turning a profit via software. not too long down the road, the aforementioned gargantuan PS2 was gonna drop, and they needed to stay far away from that price point....but their custom GD-ROM was also cracked, and while not a death knell, piracy didn't help.
they had a huge weekend after their final price drop, but they just weren't turning a profit. eating $$ up front with sales and having sadly lower attach rates (especially for one of the finest libraries to date) meant that badly needed capital - necessary to pay back debts/bad decisions made on genesis peripherals, saturn costs/losses, the deal with 3DFX going through ,etc etc - wasn't coming. couple all that with the boneheaded move the gen prior to kill all remaining (however small) revenue streams: game gear, genesis, add-ons etc. the company literally had about a year with next to nothing on shelves to sell, just accruing more operating costs.
i don't think it's fair at all to say the DC killed them. it was their longshot bet & all their poor decisions killed them, the DC just stayed alive as long as it feasibly could - but looking back, without a really big hit (say, GTA III) it just wasn't gonna make it. sony had ease of development kits (well, the gen prior anyway) and literally everyone on board. sega couldn't even rope in mediocre-ass EA by then, and just a few gens prior, they had one of the strongest relationships a 3rd party had seen.
While the Dreamcast had a lot of sell through, a lot of that was probably after it had been discontinued and heavily discounted. Also, people started buying the Dreamcast because it was easy to pirate. If Sega was selling the Dreamcast at cost or at a loss, people buying it and then not buying software would cause a huge hit in the company. Look at that graph, there was a spike in revenue in 1999, then, once the PS2 came out and people started pirating the software, plummeted. Sega probably needed the Dreamcast to sell much greater than Nintendo needed the Gamecube to sell and they needed game sales to be comparatively good.
This is a couple of weeks old at this point but Reicast 7.0 is now out.
https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/releases/tag/r7
https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/releases/tag/r7
Last edited:
The piracy argument is so overblown. The Dreamcast had a GOOD attach rate for its time of 8 at the time of the systems discontinuation.
Seems pretty good. Handles 480i better than the standard Dreamcast RGB. Airforce Delta has issues.
I found this graph of consoles sales in the 90s and early 2000s.
It seems that Sega was starting to turn things around with the Dreamcast in September, a month before the price cut and the PS2 launch. They managed to have a holiday season with notable signs of life, and held on in January. Unfortunately, on January 31st Sega announced that the system would be discontinued. So it seems that the Dreamcast had a good holiday launch, then died for 8 months, then began coming back to life, but then Sega ran out of money so they had to kill it.
I wonder what happened in September to change things? Skimming through things, it seems that Sega did an aggressive campaign for SegaNet starting in September. Maybe it was something else?
It seems that Sega was starting to turn things around with the Dreamcast in September, a month before the price cut and the PS2 launch. They managed to have a holiday season with notable signs of life, and held on in January. Unfortunately, on January 31st Sega announced that the system would be discontinued. So it seems that the Dreamcast had a good holiday launch, then died for 8 months, then began coming back to life, but then Sega ran out of money so they had to kill it.
I wonder what happened in September to change things? Skimming through things, it seems that Sega did an aggressive campaign for SegaNet starting in September. Maybe it was something else?
hey guys, can someone help out here?
my copy of Shenmue 2 is giving me the shits. the discs are immaculate, but i'm still getting disc read errors (disc 1). i can reset and move past them, but now I'm getting audio issues; randomly, the audio will start cutting in and out.
this starts from the moment i boot the DC (BIOS audio even skips!); leads into the AM2 screen, then the menu, then loading screens etc. the audio issues can happen anywhere. so i thought it was my DC, booted Virtua Tennis - no issues, played for 10 min.
things:
im using an AKURA (HDMI box)
it's an Australian DC
i haven't cleaned the lens yet, planning to that tonight using isopropyl 99%.
any other thoughts? is it the DC or my shenmue 2 disc 1?
my copy of Shenmue 2 is giving me the shits. the discs are immaculate, but i'm still getting disc read errors (disc 1). i can reset and move past them, but now I'm getting audio issues; randomly, the audio will start cutting in and out.
this starts from the moment i boot the DC (BIOS audio even skips!); leads into the AM2 screen, then the menu, then loading screens etc. the audio issues can happen anywhere. so i thought it was my DC, booted Virtua Tennis - no issues, played for 10 min.
things:
im using an AKURA (HDMI box)
it's an Australian DC
i haven't cleaned the lens yet, planning to that tonight using isopropyl 99%.
any other thoughts? is it the DC or my shenmue 2 disc 1?
Is this the only game giving you issues? I'd think it's the drive though. I had some games that wouldn't play right on one of my systems until I swapped out the drive.
Hit me earlier today. Can't believe it's been almost 2 decades. One of my most beloved systems.
what a time to be alive! happy bday Dreamcast :)
i believe in the end, it was just an issue with my Disc 1 of Shenmue 2. And my Disc 4 lol. Disc 2 and 3 had no issues and didn't crash once, not even in Yellow Head!
i believe in the end, it was just an issue with my Disc 1 of Shenmue 2. And my Disc 4 lol. Disc 2 and 3 had no issues and didn't crash once, not even in Yellow Head!
I'm very sure the latter two did. Not sure about the first.
They also published both Otogi titles, and the first one must have done decently considering it got a sequel
I think I heard of some new product that might have been slightly cheaper(?) but I'd go with Gekko. While I haven't tried Gekko myself I'm using Akura by the same manufacturer and I trust Gekko would be good, too.
https://www.beharbros.com/gekko
Thank you. I actually looked at the Akura and it looks like it would be worth considering. The Gekko is a lot cheaper, why? Is it just missing the scanlines option and some audio functionality?