Posted by exodus on November 23, 2020 at 13:46:00 EST in reply to Wait, is this going around to turn my functionally perfect all original DC into some hacker piece of shit? Does it physically replace the GDROM drive? I want to play real games on it still. I guess I can buy a broken DC if I have to... (n/t) from SignOfZeta.
it does replace the gdrom drive - and if you wait the price will likely go down. Also, rumble fish 2 (as an example) is a game you can buy, atomiswave cart only, broken for $350, or working for $550, if that's the way you're looking at it. The bigger picture is a gdemu or MODE type thing won't break, the roms won't get disc rot, and a dreamcast laser/disc eventually will.
n/t
Follow Ups:
(note: I'm going to install a MODE or GDEMU in an old spare dreamcast with a bunch of mods and use my hello kitty dreamcast for discs. I kind of wish I still saw sports dreamcasts in the thrift store all the time, that'd be a good candidate for this. black one for roms, pink one for discs) (n/t) (exodus) (23:52:50 11/23/20 EST)
I see your point. And aggregately, you are correct. There will be ISOs and ODEs long past the death of my specific DC and it’s drive, but I would for sure bet money that the ODE system in your DC will be dead before any of my discs rot. Those flashy game doctor things are almost always built like total crap, dead in a few years, and my DC games are unlikely to rot until my LDs do which hasn’t happened yet, despite hearing about rot nearly every time LD is mentioned. Is there some known-real wave of DC disc rot I don’t know about? If not, I’d say those game probably are safer on pressed discs than any other mechanism. (n/t) (SignOfZeta) (15:41:58 11/24/20 EST)
there's been disc rot, yeah - I've got a copy of wipeout XL here for PS1 with disc rot, sadly! I mean, luckily it's just wipeout XL, but it's put the fear into me for sure. And it's kind of a different industry than the game doctor type things - these are all purposebuilt by individual people (thus the high price), which could really go either way in terms of longevity. But yeah, my goal is to have both, as I mentioned above. I'm just super excited about playing "brand new" dreamcast games in 2020 however it happens, it rules. Also for the time being you can get CD images of most of these games, they'll just have weird loading patterns, but once it's all loaded in it should be fine. So you can still enjoy the cool weirdness! (n/t) (exodus) (23:04:00 11/24/20 EST)