How to have a dreamcast emulator in Ubuntu

The world of retro game consoles is generating a lot of interest and that together with the Internet and repositories such as Github has made old game consoles more and more interesting for veteran users. Today we are going to talk about the dreamcast, a game console that was born 20 years ago and that was the hope of the SEGA company to stay in the video game and video game market. Unfortunately, it did not have the success that it hoped for, but not for that reason its video games or the users who placed their trust in it deserve to be lost. Not much less.

For this exists a program called emulator that allows us to play video games from old consoles on our computer. Specifically, we will talk about a dreamcast emulator that can be installed on Ubuntu and that is compatible with any Dreamcast video game as well as its software.

History of the Reicast emulator

The dreamcast emulator par excellence is called Reicast and is currently the heir to several emulators that were born in order to enable Dreamcast game users to be able to play from the computer. A) Yes, The first of these emulators, the base of all, is called Icarus, an emulator that was born for Windows platforms. Later it evolved to Chankast and finally to NullDC. All of them have a forgotten development and although they can be found, they only work for Windows platforms. After NullDC will appear Recast, a dreamcast emulator that not only worked for Windows but also for other platforms such as Ubuntu or Android and other devices such as Ouya or OpenPandora.

The community of this emulator is quite small, at least if we compare it with other emulators like M o DesMuME but it is true that it works correctly where it works. This emulator is compatible with all the video games that exist for the Dreamcast and it is in its operation that its success lies. The operation of reicast and its predecessors are based on the use of an original console BIOS, which makes any video game recognize the emulator as if it were the original game console.

What do I need to make the dreamcast emulator work?

But, before installing and configuring the emulator, we must first know what do we need to make this emulator work properly.
The first thing we will need is an original console and original video games. It is necessary, although we must recognize that in the deep or dark Internet, there are files that can help us solve these devices.

Our computer will need a CD-Rom reader, important for playing Dreamcast video games on our computer, so this dreamcast emulator will not work on tablets or ultrabooks.

About the hardware of our Ubuntu and computer, at least we need to have 1 Gb of ram memory or more, a 64-bit processor with at least two cores, a GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon 8500 video card (equivalent or higher) and enough physical storage to store games and certain video game content (they were the first to offer extra content over the Internet)

How to install Reicast on Ubuntu

If we comply with all the above, something with which we will not have a problem if we have a recent computer, we can install reicast in our Ubuntu. For this we have to use a third-party repository to install. In this repository we will not only have an emulator for Dreamcast but also also for GameBoy, for SuperNintendo and also for Nintendo 64, the technological rival of the Sega Dreamcast. So we open the terminal and write the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:random-stuff/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install reicast

This will start the Reicast installation on Ubuntu. If we are using modern versions of Ubuntu, we can make use of a script created by developer Bmaupin, a script that automates the entire installation project.

How to set up the dreamcast emulator

We already have Reicast installed but we have to configure it so that it recognizes and makes video games work correctly. So in the Home of our Ubuntu we have to create a folder called "dc", in this folder we have to deposit a copy of the dc_boot.bin and dc_flash.bin files from our dreamcast console.

Once this is done, the emulator can run successfully. Now we have to do two more steps so that the emulator does not give us problems. One of these steps is related to the emulator time. So that you recognize this well, we have to launch the program and configure the BIOSOnce there, we select to change the time and enter the hour minus 5 minutes. We save, close the emulator and run the emulator again, now there should be no problems with the time.

The save game process too you have to configure it so that you can save the game and not have problems (It is very annoying to repeat the games). So we open the emulator and select where to save the games. When recording it on a sd card, it will ask us to format the space, otherwise we press no and the program will save the games in that space.

How do I play the dreamcast video games?

To be able to run and enjoy Dreamcast games on Ubuntu we have to connect a gamepad compatible with Ubuntu. Once we have this, we execute reicast and a window will appear with a top menu with four entries: File, VMU, Options and Help. Both in VMU and in Options we will find various parameters to configure the performance of the video game, such as the fps or activate / deactivate the sound effects.

And finally, In File we will find the options to save game and open game. After executing "Open game" a file explorer window will appear with which we have to specify where the game files are, or rather, video game roms. We can also indicate the directory where reicast will find the BIOS files of the original dreamcast, files necessary for the roms and the emulator to work.

Are there other alternatives to have a dreamcast emulator?

It may be that finally Reicast does not finish convincing you by its requirement of the Bios or by presenting some other problem. In this case there are two alternatives to Reicast although we recommend only one of them. The Alternatives to the reicast emulator are RetroArch and Redream.

But I personally recommend RetroArch before Redream because this option contains an optimized version of redream and reicast, that is, with one option we have all the emulators for Dreamcast and a few others for other retro game consoles. Since we must not forget that RetroArch is a suite of emulators that contain support for various game consoles and sometimes includes several options for the same game console. While Redream is an emulator that has the same origins as Reicast and is only compatible with Sega Dreamcast games.