🤖 Install Mech Arena for FREE here: clik.cc/JHdDd Here's the link to the console: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DFSI6Pz Check out my website to buy and sell video games! www.jrobgaming.com
This is one of the first ones I've seen for the Dreamcast that I would LOVE to get. It's not horribly priced either. Such a great console and it's cool that the SD card replaces the CD-drive.
I'm sure they did the responsible thing where they took the contents of the first aid out and put it into like some other conveniently available container. Probably like a small cardboard box or something. I like to think they just poured it out wherever it was and just left it in a pile where it had been. Or maybe it was just salvaged out of somewhere which would be my hope.
So 500 to 550 dollars US. That would be a controller, VMU, Dreamcast unit for about 100, and 70 to 100 for the GDMU. Screen, Batteries and charge and the mod work could be worth and case would be worth 200. And the shipping and profit would be in the last 150. That actually all seems fair for the price.
@@Based_wrldWay more memorable games on Dreamcast than PS5. Look at the summer game releases for 2024 on ps5 vs DC in 2000. Sega had way more desperate it being a failed console.
For when you inevitably have to pull this apart and repair it one day, when you lift the front cover off, twist 180 to the left and you'll find the cables now have slack, its actually pretty common in some devices.(The top of the front cover is soldered to the bottom of the lower case and vice versa for the lower portion of the front too)
At 12:12 if you open this up again, unplug the bottom left connector before you put strain on the wires. The wiring looks pretty good, and keeping these distances short is beneficial, but it's designed in a way that needs unplugging before you open it up like a book all the way. Otherwise you risk breaking the solder joints on the right hand side. There's a nickel strip floating at 12:06 _hoo boy_ lets hope that's not a hazard waiting to happen.
Phenomenal Game. Family had so much fun with that one. And it was challenging. No Cliche’ had a lot of fun developing that and the soundtrack was great too. “This is your mission....”
I purchased a dream cast complete open box back in twenty nineteen and a couple of games that many recommend and I had a great time with it. It is a fun console that I enjoyed. Much better titles on that system then when games have on current consoles on my opinion.
I dont think so, not even remotely close. Close off the indie scene completely and just focus on video games made for say the switch and ps4, it still completely curb stomps the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was like the N64, best played with friends, I don't understand why people have such a weird overpowered hard on for the Dreamcast.
@@yeahyeahwowman8099 Rose tinted glasses to some extent. But there were relatively few games for it, circa 250 in the US and Europe, so because of that there was a lower shovelware to decent game ratio. Also lots of people love that same screen multiplayer thing.
@@yeahyeahwowman8099 the Dreamcast is a God tier system. It was ahead of its time in every way. If you think games these days hold a candle to the DC, you're delusional. 90% of PS4/PS5 games are snooze-fests with pretty graphics. Dreamcast games are legendary and most importantly, FUN. Rose tinted glasses be damned, I still play and have more fun with the Dreamcast than the Switch or PS5.
@@zonicable the Dreamcast is not a God tier system, its a party machine basically. Machine is decent, thats about it. It is fun to play with friends over, the Dreamcast basically gets curb stomped in every other regard, even with its life cut short.
You can reset without having to use the power on and off. There is a soft reset by holding all the buttons and triggers down. Should take you back to the Dreamcast boot up and to the GDEMU main menu.
No need to hold triggers, just all 4 face buttons, same as the Saturn by holding ABC+start to soft reset. It first resets to the game's main menu, then if done again will return to the boot menu of the system.
Unfortunately both you and @dertbag are a little incorrect. It's ABXY+Start, although he was right about the stages; hit them once for game menu, twice for a system menu
@dertbag OP said buttons and triggers and you responded, no triggers just face buttons. I kind of read it as you were mentioning start when specifically referring to the Saturn. Let's call it a difference in how we read the comment I guess 🤷🏻♂️
Yes, Dreamcast! It was my first console. My favorite games on it have to be... Sonic Adventure, Space Channel 5, and Spiderman. I played the heck out of them!
The screen issue is due to availability, many of these handheld units use whatever screen is available and within price range of the builder. Most use just phone screens since those are the most widely available.
I would have issues about the insulation between the VMU/Controller/LCD boards and the main Dreamcast board.... as there is none. These could touch each other. And I could even see the nickel strip for the battery flapping in the breeze; dangerous to have this so exposed. Clearly a 8.4V (2P2S) setup.
@@icurnvs776 kapton tape is often used to provide some protection, but this is quite a large surface. Think the open space is to cope with the airflow. Insulation around the battery terminals with kapton or heat shrink would be a first thing to tackle. This is where a short circuit would be a big issue. For the boards it might help to add some plastic strips as dividers to lock them more in place, or standoffs to add clearance or prevent the boards to slam into each other.
The heat is from the GDEmu, if you don't have the proper voltage/PSU it'll get hot. DreamPSU and PicoPSU are replacement PSU's and they run at 12v. They help with the GDEmu's heat issues.
@@jrob0021 the heat is from the power supply caused by the gdemu not drawing as much power as the optical drive. You can change out the power supply or mod the factory one.
@@kurbeco weird. Everything I could find when I modded mine says without a constant load on the 12v line from the optical drive the voltage can go up to 14v
@@Justsevenwords I'm not disagreeing with that, just that this portable version won't have a AC to DC PSU in it, likely won't even generate a 12v line. You are 100% correct about a 'standard' Dreamcast and this is the reason I remove the 12v regulator in mine when fitting a GDEMU
1) 8.4V is one of standard voltages, 4.2V×2, 4.2V being a charging voltage for 3.7V cells that you see inside (I believe they are two or even four pairs of standard 18650s). I would not be surprised if the thing actually accepts everything between 5V and 16V because Chinese devices quite often have very unscrupulous power circuitry. In some cases it's openly written, like “6.8 to 19.2V, 1A”, and sometimes it's some specific voltage that isn't necessarily the only right one. It is not that common for 8.4V devices to be burned or even overheated by the voltage increased by 0.6V. 2) Teclast is actually quite prominent manufacturer of weird tablets and laptops, they are around since at least the early 2010s, when they (and Chuwi) made rather buggy but not completely pointless netbooks and tablets based on either Android, or Windows 8 (later 10), or both Windows and Android. They still do, actually, but the quality became much better. So it's actually a kind of a brand already. Chinese companies are often like that, they start by making cheap knock-offs under incomprehensibly random names, then some time
The air in that part of China is so bad that you can practically look at the sun without squinting. (I don't recommend that as there's no telling how much UV light is still making it through)
This is nice! Good find. I pre-ordered my Dreamcast from Software Etc. Still the only console I’ve ever pre-ordered. My favorite game was Resident Evil Code Veronica. It had other great titles like Sega Rally 2, SoulCaliber, and Shenmue, and multi-player games like Power Stone 2 and Virtua Tennis which are great fun too.
Awesome to see another review of this product. Thanks for the teardown it's great to see what they updated. Love your vids ... specially the ones with the weird stuff you buy from Ebay 😅 What do you do with those horrible modded console anyway ?
It's crazy that so much went into making this thing and the VMU and buttons are dirty. I thought about getting one of these a while back to make a video just like this but you beat me to it! Great video man!
The selection contains 2 games developped by Sega (Outtrigger by Yu Suzuki and JetSet Radio by Smilebit, the Panzer Dragoon team), two 2K sports titles that were published by Sega but made by a Californian studio the Japanese company had bought, and the rest of the games belong to Ubisoft, Activision, Capcom and other 3rd parties. They could have used Naomi to save space or compress the disc images.
I was really confused by the screen at first. First off, it looks great so I imagine it's using the Dreamcast's VGA signal. The aspect ratio of the Dreamcast using VGA is 640x480 but the output signal is DTV (720x480). To confuse matters more, displays interpret this DTV signal as 640x480 which ends up displaying an extra narrow (and incorrect) aspect ratio. At first glance, this didn't appear to be happening here. Even when the boot logo comes up, the entire screen is filled yet the logo does not appear stretched... Maybe ever so slightly... I guess if the screen on this device is 5:3 (I believe that's what you alluded to in the video), stretching it out to fill the screen would not appear as distorted as a 16:9 display. Because the Dreamcast's VGA signal is misinterpreted by all displays, this is why you get the black bars during game. Usually this would result in the aspect ratio looking too narrow within a 4:3 frame but, because it's stretched to fit the 5:3 display here, it ends up looking closer to the correct ratio. Having said all that, I think the developer of this device made the right call by selecting a screen less wide than 16:9 but wider than 4:3. There's no way it's pixel perfect but it looks better than it would have with a 4:3 or 16:9 display. One last thing is that, if it is using the VGA (which I'm 99.9% convinced it is), there are a small handful of 480i-only games that will not display on this device. Hydro Thunder and Last Blade 2 come to mind. In any event, thanks for sharing this oddity.
It Sucks that the VMU can't be charged so if you run out of blocks on the VMU you can't save game progress or stats in sports games without sacrificing other saves or stats.
Space Channel 5 and its sequel were my favorite Dreamcast games. I have a Saturn now, and I really feel the best Sega games were on the Saturn and the Dreamcast.
This looks really good. However, I don't understand, whoever went through all of this to make a DC portable and did not replace that horrendous Dpad. Screw original parts, functionality should take priority.
Damn, it’s real? I remember seeing some discussion in /r/Dreamcast about this a while ago and the general consensus was it was most likely a scam, I’m shocked it’s legit. I would never have thrown away $300 on something so suspicious.
I mean if it doesn’t show up, just file a claim with Aliexpress and you’ll get your money back. Worst case you file a claim with credit card and get your money back. I’ve had to do that with Wish before
it's good to remainder that the GDEMU runs it's OS though the Mil-CD lope hole so not all Dreamcast systems can use that mod. And since most Dreamcast roms had contact removed to get it to like under 700MB so you could use normal CD-Rs to boot them throw the Mil-CD lope.
It does run flawlessly. GDemu is emulating the GD-ROM drive inside the Dreamcast. Games not only run flawlessly, they load significantly faster. There is also an IGR (In game reset) combination you can enable.
Man, when I saw this.. I was praying it had a better price tag based on all the other ali express consoles I buy. Sadly no. But understandable a little bit why. For this money though I can get a new handheld pc..
at a glance my one big irk is that the SD card sticks out, if they had been able to make it flush with the press in spring release style it would have been perfect. Overall though the device in general reminds me of the old Ben Heck portable builds.
I kinda actually like this. I have a portable device to play emulated games, but having a device that actually looks like the system would be cool. Expensive though.
I used a dreamcast emulator on my phone, it saved me from loads of boredom during car rides and school. My favorite games were Marvel vs Capcom clash of superheroes, Guilty Gear X and ikaruga
Some dreamcast games were VGA compatible and had a sort of higher resolution option available that I believe also affected aspect ratio. Been a while since I plugged mine in but that might explain the differences in aspect ratio between games.
I have seen others make these handheld mods and think they are okay for personal projects, even if they are chopping up original parts, but it is a really scary thought that somebody out there is making a production line out of old Dreamcasts.
Toy Commander is my favorite for the dream cast its an odd puzzle shooter game with you environment being different rooms in a house you advance through and you can play with a wide variety of toy vehicles
We had a dream cast in a house I was living in a long time ago. We only had a few games, one of them was crazy taxi. It was a pretty fun game. Also had resident evil and some monster truck racing game, but it had a king of the mountain side game on it. That was really fun. We'd always have 4 people on that one, talking smack to each other lol good times 🤘
When I found myself idling in Davie,Fl. all the way from NYC(in the summer of 9/11 no less!), my newly gotten Dreamcast, and my bottles of Icehouse were all I really had. Finally a cop gave me such a hassle about "adjusting to my new surroundings" that I booked a flight back the next morning. Still have good memories of playing JetSetRadio though, that's 💯👌
Good god! 300-500 dollars for that?! I would expect it to maybe be 800+! For a portable DREAMCAST of all things, I would definitely expect it to be much more expensive, especially for something of this general quality. I suppose it is flawed, but for Aliexpress it's definitely a step above from the other garbage.
I did not know I wanted this until I started playing Skies of Arcadia on my home setup, been longing to play it on the go. Not bad compared to the cost of buying the entire physical library
the 😬emoji in the title made me think this would be a piece of junk, but it actually seems like a solid product. if it was closer to the 200 dollar price range i'd probably buy one.
Sega Dreamcast best console ever made ‼️ I'm liking my PlayStation 5 but if my PS5 still has some work to do for me to say it's better than the Dreamcast
I love dreamcast and this thing looks awesome, so long as the games actually run properly. Crazy Taxi, Tokyo Highway Challenge, Marvel vs Capcom... oh baby.
I have no doubt that the engineers was exceptionally intelligent in their design of this. However, how in the world could they have blundered so badly to make it widescreen and not 4:3? Perhaps they weren't Dreamcast fans and didn't realize that it wasn't a 16:9 machine. Or is it that 4:3 LCD's are harder to come by? I'd like to know the actual reason. In any way, I will pass on it unless they can come out with a 4:3 version.
Looks nice and seems to play good also. Is it made in China by any chance? (LOL). Every side of the console seems to have one of those stickers on there too; as well as the outer packaging. (Didn't see it mentioned on the inside though).
When I saw this pop up on Ali I was curious about it. I've seen it before, but then on Ali I thought it was going to be a really bad product. It actually looks pretty good, I would have loved this thing back in 1999/2000 but I don't play enough DC now to need something like this. But man does it look slick.
Not just that, but with one of those serial port to SD card adapters and dream shell, you can just copy your own games to a file that can be played via emulation on a different device. Given that gdroms are eventually going to be irreplaceable, it makes some sense to not waste use of them when you can just use them once per disc and then play on whatever device you like. Dreamcast emulation on PC seems to be pretty decent at this point.
The only thing o wish was changed is the ability to output to a TV. Maybe with a switch that allows you to turn off the built in display and use the original output plug? I dunno. Would have been nice.
Lots of questions: Battery life? How many mAh? Adjustable screen brightness? What’s the actual weight? How do the triggers feel compared to the originals?
This guy's console reviews are not good, he just shows the dirty chinese consoles he buys and that's it. Your questions are on point, but unfortunately he never mentions the important stuff.
@@dominicyelin Yeah, but that's incredibly vague. Are they servicable and usable or are they stiff and loosen with time? If so, how loose do they get and are they too loose to use? What does not perfect mean? Do they have a little wobble to them? What is the travel like?
I had a Dreamcast the year before it got discontinued; disbelief followed by depression all wrapped in denial concluded with why. My fav game was Soul Calibre - the game that sold me on the DC. First Aid for those experiencing DC withdrawal. Original DC controllers were not white; kind of light shades of gray. The screen (aspect ratio) is probably a best attempt to mediate output between 4:3 and widescreen with minimal to no distortion not to mention 4:3 was strictly american, so...
This looks nice but for the price you could literally buy a steam deck and emulate or a switch, phone, PC, ps vita etc. If it was cheaper I would have got one but at $500 its just not worth it. Nice video and review 👍
@@SomaCruz29 Of course it is. I played it several times on PC emulators. The character progression in this game is fantastic and the fun doesn't depend on other people.
🤖 Install Mech Arena for FREE here: clik.cc/JHdDd
Here's the link to the console: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DFSI6Pz
Check out my website to buy and sell video games! www.jrobgaming.com
Ok
how long it took u to get this?
@@kazukyo5980 the console? Like a month from when I ordered it I think
@@jrob0021 I oder from Phoenix RetroMods last year and nothing yet...
@@kazukyo5980 hmm it sounds like they took your money
This is one of the first ones I've seen for the Dreamcast that I would LOVE to get. It's not horribly priced either. Such a great console and it's cool that the SD card replaces the CD-drive.
Yeah I was pleasantly surprised. So far so good. It’s not as nice as a normal controller in the hands, but it’s solid
@@jrob0021 ive been scared to buy one since there wii portable wasnt safe.
@@stpworld wdym
@@stpworld not safe?
He ded
Imagine how many people died because of the Dreamcast case being a first aid kit.
three, but two only died bc crazy taxi gave them a heart attack
Well i mean if I'm in s life or death scenario i would love to play some sonic adventure 2 or tony hawk
I'm sure they did the responsible thing where they took the contents of the first aid out and put it into like some other conveniently available container.
Probably like a small cardboard box or something. I like to think they just poured it out wherever it was and just left it in a pile where it had been. Or maybe it was just salvaged out of somewhere which would be my hope.
Imagine how many people died before first aid kits were invented 😮
@@wolfnation100 finally someone mentioned crazy taxi
So 500 to 550 dollars US.
That would be a controller, VMU, Dreamcast unit for about 100, and 70 to 100 for the GDMU. Screen, Batteries and charge and the mod work could be worth and case would be worth 200. And the shipping and profit would be in the last 150. That actually all seems fair for the price.
Nah get a ps5
@@Based_wrldWay more memorable games on Dreamcast than PS5. Look at the summer game releases for 2024 on ps5 vs DC in 2000. Sega had way more desperate it being a failed console.
For when you inevitably have to pull this apart and repair it one day, when you lift the front cover off, twist 180 to the left and you'll find the cables now have slack, its actually pretty common in some devices.(The top of the front cover is soldered to the bottom of the lower case and vice versa for the lower portion of the front too)
At 12:12 if you open this up again, unplug the bottom left connector before you put strain on the wires. The wiring looks pretty good, and keeping these distances short is beneficial, but it's designed in a way that needs unplugging before you open it up like a book all the way. Otherwise you risk breaking the solder joints on the right hand side.
There's a nickel strip floating at 12:06 _hoo boy_ lets hope that's not a hazard waiting to happen.
One of the most underrated systems of all time! A sleeper hit that I personally liked is toy commander!!
Phenomenal Game. Family had so much fun with that one. And it was challenging. No Cliche’ had a lot of fun developing that and the soundtrack was great too. “This is your mission....”
Dreamcast was one of my favorite consoles of all time. I used to binge on sonic adventure 2 like crazy.
3:18 I'm so used to playing on a tv, I find this funny:
"Huge screen right here."
"...Probably a 5-inch screen."
I purchased a dream cast complete open box back in twenty nineteen and a couple of games that many recommend and I had a great time with it. It is a fun console that I enjoyed. Much better titles on that system then when games have on current consoles on my opinion.
I dont think so, not even remotely close. Close off the indie scene completely and just focus on video games made for say the switch and ps4, it still completely curb stomps the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was like the N64, best played with friends, I don't understand why people have such a weird overpowered hard on for the Dreamcast.
@@yeahyeahwowman8099 Rose tinted glasses to some extent. But there were relatively few games for it, circa 250 in the US and Europe, so because of that there was a lower shovelware to decent game ratio. Also lots of people love that same screen multiplayer thing.
@@yeahyeahwowman8099 the Dreamcast is a God tier system. It was ahead of its time in every way. If you think games these days hold a candle to the DC, you're delusional. 90% of PS4/PS5 games are snooze-fests with pretty graphics. Dreamcast games are legendary and most importantly, FUN.
Rose tinted glasses be damned, I still play and have more fun with the Dreamcast than the Switch or PS5.
@@yeahyeahwowman8099 I don’t have any nostalgia for Dreamcast, but there are a bunch of racing games I love playing on there. I bought one in 2020
@@zonicable the Dreamcast is not a God tier system, its a party machine basically. Machine is decent, thats about it. It is fun to play with friends over, the Dreamcast basically gets curb stomped in every other regard, even with its life cut short.
You can reset without having to use the power on and off. There is a soft reset by holding all the buttons and triggers down. Should take you back to the Dreamcast boot up and to the GDEMU main menu.
I wonder if there might be a way to change the aspect and setting also via another shortcut?
No need to hold triggers, just all 4 face buttons, same as the Saturn by holding ABC+start to soft reset. It first resets to the game's main menu, then if done again will return to the boot menu of the system.
Unfortunately both you and @dertbag are a little incorrect. It's ABXY+Start, although he was right about the stages; hit them once for game menu, twice for a system menu
@@SiggsGBR I said "its the same as Saturn", which required abc+start, but instead its all 4 face buttons on DC. So I wasnt wrong.
@dertbag OP said buttons and triggers and you responded, no triggers just face buttons. I kind of read it as you were mentioning start when specifically referring to the Saturn. Let's call it a difference in how we read the comment I guess 🤷🏻♂️
Yes, Dreamcast! It was my first console. My favorite games on it have to be... Sonic Adventure, Space Channel 5, and Spiderman. I played the heck out of them!
Jet grind radio will forever be one of my favorite games
YES
The screen issue is due to availability, many of these handheld units use whatever screen is available and within price range of the builder. Most use just phone screens since those are the most widely available.
You can change screen ratio in settings
I would have issues about the insulation between the VMU/Controller/LCD boards and the main Dreamcast board.... as there is none. These could touch each other. And I could even see the nickel strip for the battery flapping in the breeze; dangerous to have this so exposed. Clearly a 8.4V (2P2S) setup.
What would be a good fix for those who have this?
@@icurnvs776 kapton tape is often used to provide some protection, but this is quite a large surface. Think the open space is to cope with the airflow. Insulation around the battery terminals with kapton or heat shrink would be a first thing to tackle. This is where a short circuit would be a big issue. For the boards it might help to add some plastic strips as dividers to lock them more in place, or standoffs to add clearance or prevent the boards to slam into each other.
@@gbraadnl is there even enough space in that case to do all of that?
The heat is from the GDEmu, if you don't have the proper voltage/PSU it'll get hot. DreamPSU and PicoPSU are replacement PSU's and they run at 12v. They help with the GDEmu's heat issues.
The heat was coming from the opposite end of the console from the gdemu
@@jrob0021 the heat is from the power supply caused by the gdemu not drawing as much power as the optical drive. You can change out the power supply or mod the factory one.
@@Justsevenwords No, it isn't. That's an issue in stock DCs with a mains input but this won't have an AC to DC conversion going on.
@@kurbeco weird. Everything I could find when I modded mine says without a constant load on the 12v line from the optical drive the voltage can go up to 14v
@@Justsevenwords I'm not disagreeing with that, just that this portable version won't have a AC to DC PSU in it, likely won't even generate a 12v line.
You are 100% correct about a 'standard' Dreamcast and this is the reason I remove the 12v regulator in mine when fitting a GDEMU
1) 8.4V is one of standard voltages, 4.2V×2, 4.2V being a charging voltage for 3.7V cells that you see inside (I believe they are two or even four pairs of standard 18650s). I would not be surprised if the thing actually accepts everything between 5V and 16V because Chinese devices quite often have very unscrupulous power circuitry. In some cases it's openly written, like “6.8 to 19.2V, 1A”, and sometimes it's some specific voltage that isn't necessarily the only right one. It is not that common for 8.4V devices to be burned or even overheated by the voltage increased by 0.6V.
2) Teclast is actually quite prominent manufacturer of weird tablets and laptops, they are around since at least the early 2010s, when they (and Chuwi) made rather buggy but not completely pointless netbooks and tablets based on either Android, or Windows 8 (later 10), or both Windows and Android. They still do, actually, but the quality became much better.
So it's actually a kind of a brand already. Chinese companies are often like that, they start by making cheap knock-offs under incomprehensibly random names, then some time
I love the integrated VMU!
I wouldn't mind having this!
I find these quirky hand made Shenzhen things fascinating, thanks for the post :) The factories must be GROSS though - they are always SUPER dirty.
The air in that part of China is so bad that you can practically look at the sun without squinting. (I don't recommend that as there's no telling how much UV light is still making it through)
That’s really awesome but holy crap, 500$ to play a handful of Dreamcast games. Just well out of my budget.
That's why I have an Odin Pro.
You could easily load the whole library onto it with a bigger memory card
This is nice! Good find.
I pre-ordered my Dreamcast from Software Etc. Still the only console I’ve ever pre-ordered.
My favorite game was Resident Evil Code Veronica. It had other great titles like Sega Rally 2, SoulCaliber, and Shenmue, and multi-player games like Power Stone 2 and Virtua Tennis which are great fun too.
I got mine on 9.9.99
Best gaming day of my life
@@themollymachine Hell yeah! I forgot that it came out on 9/9/99. Those were good times!
Kudos. Your ad made it passed Vanced auto skipping of embedded ads.
First video I've ever watched that was able to do that.
Awesome to see another review of this product.
Thanks for the teardown it's great to see what they updated.
Love your vids ... specially the ones with the weird stuff you buy from Ebay 😅
What do you do with those horrible modded console anyway ?
There are many GameShark codes (and hex edits) that convert Dreamcast games in 16:9 widescreen. It’s worth checking out.
also some games like rayman 2 have native widescreen
Can you get the Gameshark working with the GD EMU?
It's crazy that so much went into making this thing and the VMU and buttons are dirty. I thought about getting one of these a while back to make a video just like this but you beat me to it! Great video man!
The selection contains 2 games developped by Sega (Outtrigger by Yu Suzuki and JetSet Radio by Smilebit, the Panzer Dragoon team), two 2K sports titles that were published by Sega but made by a Californian studio the Japanese company had bought, and the rest of the games belong to Ubisoft, Activision, Capcom and other 3rd parties. They could have used Naomi to save space or compress the disc images.
I was really confused by the screen at first. First off, it looks great so I imagine it's using the Dreamcast's VGA signal.
The aspect ratio of the Dreamcast using VGA is 640x480 but the output signal is DTV (720x480). To confuse matters more, displays interpret this DTV signal as 640x480 which ends up displaying an extra narrow (and incorrect) aspect ratio.
At first glance, this didn't appear to be happening here. Even when the boot logo comes up, the entire screen is filled yet the logo does not appear stretched... Maybe ever so slightly...
I guess if the screen on this device is 5:3 (I believe that's what you alluded to in the video), stretching it out to fill the screen would not appear as distorted as a 16:9 display. Because the Dreamcast's VGA signal is misinterpreted by all displays, this is why you get the black bars during game. Usually this would result in the aspect ratio looking too narrow within a 4:3 frame but, because it's stretched to fit the 5:3 display here, it ends up looking closer to the correct ratio.
Having said all that, I think the developer of this device made the right call by selecting a screen less wide than 16:9 but wider than 4:3. There's no way it's pixel perfect but it looks better than it would have with a 4:3 or 16:9 display.
One last thing is that, if it is using the VGA (which I'm 99.9% convinced it is), there are a small handful of 480i-only games that will not display on this device. Hydro Thunder and Last Blade 2 come to mind.
In any event, thanks for sharing this oddity.
That things really cool. Like the explanation about the GDMenu, cause I thought "Oh, just an emulator" at first
I had a Dreamcast in the 90s as a kid, STAR WARS pod racer was my favourite game
It Sucks that the VMU can't be charged so if you run out of blocks on the VMU you can't save game progress or stats in sports games without sacrificing other saves or stats.
1:17 "So this right here is Macarena" takes me back to Los del Rio's smash hit of 1996.
Space Channel 5 and its sequel were my favorite Dreamcast games. I have a Saturn now, and I really feel the best Sega games were on the Saturn and the Dreamcast.
First thing I thought when you said there was yellow bubble wrap I thought was is there a dog around here LOL
I love “House Of The Dead 2” it’s a great game!! Also crazy taxi was fun too.
The screaming face side speakers got me laughing!
This looks really good. However, I don't understand, whoever went through all of this to make a DC portable and did not replace that horrendous Dpad. Screw original parts, functionality should take priority.
don't mean to be rude but you NEED to cut down on the ads, it feels greedy to have so many ads every minute
Use a ad blocker
Same i miss 2005 😢
He had one ad. scroll through it.
Damn, it’s real? I remember seeing some discussion in /r/Dreamcast about this a while ago and the general consensus was it was most likely a scam, I’m shocked it’s legit. I would never have thrown away $300 on something so suspicious.
I mean if it doesn’t show up, just file a claim with Aliexpress and you’ll get your money back. Worst case you file a claim with credit card and get your money back. I’ve had to do that with Wish before
@@jrob0021 great video
When the editor knows more than the guy making the video! 😂. That’s a nice touch. We need to hear more from “The Editor”
7:07 "I wonder if they put everything on here."
32GB card, lol
it's good to remainder that the GDEMU runs it's OS though the Mil-CD lope hole so not all Dreamcast systems can use that mod. And since most Dreamcast roms had contact removed to get it to like under 700MB so you could use normal CD-Rs to boot them throw the Mil-CD lope.
The inside was very well constructed and managed, that was a surprise.
For the price I hope!
It does run flawlessly.
GDemu is emulating the GD-ROM drive inside the Dreamcast.
Games not only run flawlessly, they load significantly faster.
There is also an IGR (In game reset) combination you can enable.
Obviously because everything is run through an SD Card. You don't have to worried about disc not read properly.
Man, when I saw this.. I was praying it had a better price tag based on all the other ali express consoles I buy. Sadly no. But understandable a little bit why. For this money though I can get a new handheld pc..
at a glance my one big irk is that the SD card sticks out, if they had been able to make it flush with the press in spring release style it would have been perfect.
Overall though the device in general reminds me of the old Ben Heck portable builds.
ABXY+Start will reset to the game menu. Doing it again will take you to the Dreamcast system menu
I really like the Sonic games on Dreamcast but I love Crazy Taxi Driver!
ya i remember getting the dreamcast the first game was the sonic adventures i think it was called. ..super fun to play all the different characters
Easily one of the best portable consoles you’ve gotten!!
I kinda actually like this. I have a portable device to play emulated games, but having a device that actually looks like the system would be cool. Expensive though.
portables made out of real consoles are always pretty expensive tbh
Dreamcast (9.9.99) who can ever forget that?
"WELCOME TO THE POWERSTONE WORLD!!!" living rent free in my head for like 20 years
I used a dreamcast emulator on my phone, it saved me from loads of boredom during car rides and school. My favorite games were Marvel vs Capcom clash of superheroes, Guilty Gear X and ikaruga
I played a handful of Dreamcast games on my phone with an emulator, though I have a real console now and I wanna get a gdemu for it
"Portable" isn't quite "handheld."
The VMU screen is really cool.
This is the best handheld you have bought so far and the price is very fair. What's the battery life on a single charge?
I’ve used it for like 2 hours on a charge without an issue so far. My guess is that it’ll maybe last 3 hours? I guess I’ll find out soon lol
@@jrob0021 Nice!
Thanks for the review! I was blown away that someone made these!! My only issue is that you don't get a bigger collective of games for the price!!
Some dreamcast games were VGA compatible and had a sort of higher resolution option available that I believe also affected aspect ratio. Been a while since I plugged mine in but that might explain the differences in aspect ratio between games.
To change aspect ratio etc just press the side button in game to change this.
wished they greyed up those triggers to match the rest.
Lol circus peanut grease on the buttons 😂
2 controller ports and a TV out would make this even better
It sure would be nice if they had more information about what country it was made in.
I have seen others make these handheld mods and think they are okay for personal projects, even if they are chopping up original parts, but it is a really scary thought that somebody out there is making a production line out of old Dreamcasts.
Why is it scary?
@@hectorg5809 eventually, there will be no more original Dreamcasts, only modded ones.
@@hectorg5809 because someone is buying up and wrecking original Dreamcasts
Toy Commander is my favorite for the dream cast its an odd puzzle shooter game with you environment being different rooms in a house you advance through and you can play with a wide variety of toy vehicles
“This is your mission....”
I didn’t get a dreamcast until this year but my favorite game for it is super magnetic neo! Also mr driller runs so nice on it!
This was interesting... It would've still been cool to load up a disc into it
Would’ve also made the console absolutely massive if the disc drive was attached lol
Things nice ain't gonna lie... But it's expensive 🤣
We had a dream cast in a house I was living in a long time ago. We only had a few games, one of them was crazy taxi. It was a pretty fun game. Also had resident evil and some monster truck racing game, but it had a king of the mountain side game on it. That was really fun. We'd always have 4 people on that one, talking smack to each other lol good times 🤘
When I found myself idling in Davie,Fl. all the way from NYC(in the summer of 9/11 no less!), my newly gotten Dreamcast, and my bottles of Icehouse were all I really had. Finally a cop gave me such a hassle about "adjusting to my new surroundings" that I booked a flight back the next morning. Still have good memories of playing JetSetRadio though, that's 💯👌
6:34 welcome
Yeah definitely too much waffle!
Good god! 300-500 dollars for that?! I would expect it to maybe be 800+! For a portable DREAMCAST of all things, I would definitely expect it to be much more expensive, especially for something of this general quality. I suppose it is flawed, but for Aliexpress it's definitely a step above from the other garbage.
Yeah I agree a surprisingly affordable device
Doesnt ali full stocked on dc motherboards?
I did not know I wanted this until I started playing Skies of Arcadia on my home setup, been longing to play it on the go. Not bad compared to the cost of buying the entire physical library
You can adjust screen ratio on these, seen it on another review
I love the SEGA Dreamcast, my favourite games are Sonic Adventure 2 and Shenmue.
Hold ABX and Y, then press start to return to the title screen, then hold ABX and Y then press start again from the title screen to return to GD menu
actually the dreamcast and controller when they came out gen 1 where eggshell white so allmost white ,i have this one in my display case ^^
the 😬emoji in the title made me think this would be a piece of junk, but it actually seems like a solid product. if it was closer to the 200 dollar price range i'd probably buy one.
SEGA: Dreamcast Mini would be too expensive.
Me: Yeah, bullshit.
cool!
Now you can save all the CHU-CHUS! from the CAPU-CAPUS!
I’ve never played Dreamcast nor played Dreamcast games, but I
Sonic adventure 1 & 2 seem interesting. Also hi to jacobs editor!
Sega Dreamcast best console ever made ‼️
I'm liking my PlayStation 5 but if my PS5 still has some work to do for me to say it's better than the Dreamcast
I love dreamcast and this thing looks awesome, so long as the games actually run properly. Crazy Taxi, Tokyo Highway Challenge, Marvel vs Capcom... oh baby.
This looks awesome. Mars Matrix is my favorite DC game.
If you could put actual Dreamcast CD's in there it would be incredible
That would be awesome, but also a very large "portable" console lol
@@jrob0021
That is fine..lol
I have no doubt that the engineers was exceptionally intelligent in their design of this. However, how in the world could they have blundered so badly to make it widescreen and not 4:3? Perhaps they weren't Dreamcast fans and didn't realize that it wasn't a 16:9 machine. Or is it that 4:3 LCD's are harder to come by? I'd like to know the actual reason. In any way, I will pass on it unless they can come out with a 4:3 version.
I got the Dreamcast on launch day when I was 20 years old. 9/9/99. It was awesome.
Is the berserk game on there? Gut’s rage was on the og dreamcast…..
Just curious:
1) How is it performing today?
2) What is the list of 17 games it comes preloaded with?
id want a black one but sick..
Looks nice and seems to play good also. Is it made in China by any chance? (LOL). Every side of the console seems to have one of those stickers on there too; as well as the outer packaging. (Didn't see it mentioned on the inside though).
When I saw this pop up on Ali I was curious about it. I've seen it before, but then on Ali I thought it was going to be a really bad product. It actually looks pretty good, I would have loved this thing back in 1999/2000 but I don't play enough DC now to need something like this. But man does it look slick.
Not just that, but with one of those serial port to SD card adapters and dream shell, you can just copy your own games to a file that can be played via emulation on a different device. Given that gdroms are eventually going to be irreplaceable, it makes some sense to not waste use of them when you can just use them once per disc and then play on whatever device you like. Dreamcast emulation on PC seems to be pretty decent at this point.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade truth,
I seen a portable Dreamcast today on UA-cam my mind literally blown and I want one
Some guys are poaching legit consoles to sell their organs in order to make those weird chimera monsters.
The only thing o wish was changed is the ability to output to a TV. Maybe with a switch that allows you to turn off the built in display and use the original output plug? I dunno. Would have been nice.
Yeah. That would be nice
Lots of questions:
Battery life?
How many mAh?
Adjustable screen brightness?
What’s the actual weight?
How do the triggers feel compared to the originals?
This guy's console reviews are not good, he just shows the dirty chinese consoles he buys and that's it. Your questions are on point, but unfortunately he never mentions the important stuff.
He said about the triggers. Said they weren't perfect or something like that.
@@dominicyelin Yeah, but that's incredibly vague. Are they servicable and usable or are they stiff and loosen with time? If so, how loose do they get and are they too loose to use? What does not perfect mean? Do they have a little wobble to them? What is the travel like?
@@VIRACYTV agreed.
Just needed and hdmi out and it would be both great to play at home and at the go.
glad you bought this i thought you would like it and knew it was right up your alley
I had a Dreamcast the year before it got discontinued; disbelief followed by depression all wrapped in denial concluded with why.
My fav game was Soul Calibre - the game that sold me on the DC.
First Aid for those experiencing DC withdrawal.
Original DC controllers were not white; kind of light shades of gray.
The screen (aspect ratio) is probably a best attempt to mediate output between 4:3 and widescreen with minimal to no distortion not to mention 4:3 was strictly american, so...
This looks nice but for the price you could literally buy a steam deck and emulate or a switch, phone, PC, ps vita etc. If it was cheaper I would have got one but at $500 its just not worth it. Nice video and review 👍
I would love to play Phantasy Star on this portable!
Is PS any good offline though?
@@SomaCruz29 Of course it is. I played it several times on PC emulators. The character progression in this game is fantastic and the fun doesn't depend on other people.
I had a Dreamcast and I loved playing nba2k on it