Dreamcast

The Dreamcast plays discs from roms/dreamcast/ on Flycast: .chd, .cdi, .gdi or .cue, or an .m3u for a multi-disc game. As of v0.9.0 it wears a modeled shell.

Its spawn card offers the console’s own accessories: the Visual Memory Unit, the Jump Pack, the Microphone, and Sega’s Stereo AV Cable, which is the only lead that fits the Dreamcast’s AV OUT.

The BIOS is optional

Flycast boots games without a Dreamcast BIOS. With one (dc/dc_boot.bin in the system folder), you get the console’s own startup swirl and its system menu. See BIOS files.

The VMU

The Dreamcast saved to a Visual Memory Unit: a memory card with a screen and buttons, plugged into the top of the controller. RetroXR has had it since v0.7.0, and it is a real object, the same as a PlayStation memory card.

1. Spawn a Visual Memory Unit from the Dreamcast’s spawn card.

2. Push it into one of the two expansion slots on a Dreamcast pad. Only the front slot has a window for the screen, as on the real pad.

3. Power the console on and play. The game saves to that VMU.

The VMU’s screen works. Whatever the game draws on it, whether Sonic Adventure’s Chao, Power Stone’s character portraits or the health bars some games put there, shows on the unit in your controller, and its beeps come from the unit too, rather than being burned into a corner of the television.

Plug it in before you switch on

The Dreamcast reads which VMUs are in which pads as the game starts. A VMU moved while the console is on is noticed at the next power-on, not straight away.

Each VMU is its own card, kept at:

libretro/save/memcards/vmu/<card name>.vmu

It is managed like any other card: rename it, see what is on it, delete saves, back it up to RomM. See game saves and backups.

Playing a VMU on its own

The VMU was also a tiny handheld: some Dreamcast games downloaded a minigame onto it to play away from the console. That works here. Take the VMU out of the controller, open its menu, and choose a game to play on the unit itself, then press its Play button to start it.

• Minigames a Dreamcast game put on the card are there to choose.
• Minigames you have as files (.vms, .dci or .bin) go in roms/vmu/ and show up in the same menu, with their own icons.

A standalone VMU runs on the VeMUlator core; install it from CORES if the menu says it is missing. Whatever progress you make is carried back onto the card when you stop.

As of v0.9.0 VeMUlator also takes a VMU BIOS, either en1005-19991026-315-6208-05.bin (US) or jp1004-19980930-315-6208-01.bin (Japan), and with one the unit shows its own icons along the bottom of the screen. It is optional. Standalone VMUs also support save states and rollback netplay. RetroXR’s VeMUlator build can link two VMUs, but there is no connector in the room to join them with yet.

The Jump Pack

Sega’s rumble pack goes into a pad’s expansion slot exactly as a VMU does, and competes for the same two slots. No Jump Pack, no rumble, because the console only sends vibration to a pad that has one. A VMU in slot 1 and the Jump Pack in slot 2 is what most players had.

The microphone

As of v0.8.0 the Dreamcast Microphone works, fed by your headset’s (or PC’s) microphone. It fits either expansion slot on the pad, and has no button of its own. Each game talks on a pad button, A in Seaman and Y in Alien Front Online.

Seaman is fussy

Seaman will not start unless the pad is in port A, with a VMU in slot 1 and the microphone in slot 2.

See controllers for how microphones work across the consoles that have one.

Naomi and Atomiswave

Sega’s arcade boards run on the same core, and as of v0.9.0 each has a tile of its own in the spawn menu (Naomi, Naomi 2 and Atomiswave) rather than being lumped in with the Dreamcast. Their BIOS files (dc/naomi.zip, dc/naomi2.zip, dc/awbios.zip and a few per-game ones) are listed on the BIOS page.