Videos: nullDC Dreamcast Emulator for PSP

Posted Jul 28, 2008 at 5:47PM by QJ Staff Listed in: Homebrew Emulators, Videos Tags: Dreamcast, emulation, N64, Sega, SNES, Sony

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QJ.NET user Silenus has tipped us off on a hot new project which might end up on your PSP one of these days. It's called the nullDC emulator, and as some of you may guess, it enables Sony's handheld to run games from the old Sega Dreamcast platform. We're getting this soon thanks to author drkIIRaziel.

Now there's no download yet, but we've got a quartet of videos that prove its existence. Have a look below and see for yourself:

We know you have a lot of questions in mind right now, so we're quoting beta tester Psyman who had a lot of notes which may answer them. He wrote:

Before this whole story about possibilities goes on again let me point some things out:

1. DC is not SNES, nor N64, nor PSX.

2. Even without a single optimization nullDC runs at 10% of full speed on interpreter mode.

3. The goal of the project is not to just port the emu to PSP but to make a rewrite targeting various embedded environments apart from PSP.

4. There is a debate on whether it is possible to reach fullspeed DC emulation on PSP. Most people say that it can't happen (ranging from knowledgeable developers to average Joes) but raz thinks that under specific circumstances it might be possible. If it's not, then there is no big deal since this is not the primary goal anyway.

There you have it. You can bet we'll be keeping tabs on this project every step of the way. Watch out for more updates.

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Comments

# .... — trapdogg 2008-07-28 13:06

sweet

# oh ffs — m3rox 2008-07-28 13:19

It's an obvious fake. The PSP isn't even powerful enough to run a Saturn emulator, and you think it's capable of running a DC emulator?

# It isn't fake — Exophase 2008-07-28 13:30

Yes, the videos are real. What drkIIRaziel doesn't say is that he's emulating a DC underclocked to less than 33% the instruction throughput a real one would run at, so that means that this kind of build would probably not have very good compatibility. But this is also with a simple port of the interpreter he wrote for the PC version.

I've talked to him and I think he has some good ideas, but overall I believe he's being too optimistic and that it probably won't turn out as nicely as he'd like it to. I'd be glad to be proven wrong, of course.

# As far as I understand — Fiska 2008-07-28 13:34

The Saturn is hard to emulate in general due to many proprietary hardware issues (I can't remember exactly why, the thing was designed by a monkey or something) that make it so you have to emulate EVERYTHING as it was on the Saturn in a proprietary way. It's kind of the same issue that the PS3 has, for a rough analogy.

Doubt this will work that well, but the Dreamcast is my favorite system, hope they can make at least the good games playable.

# to m3rox — frostbitehunter 2008-07-28 13:49

i actually believe it to be very real.keep in mind when the psp first came out people thought alot was not possible

including a n64 emulator

but daedulus proves that wrong.sure daedulus still is a lil laggy but only with audio on and some games still dont work

but its not impossible just will take alot of work to get it at full capacity

the psp is actually more powerful than people can comprehend for a handheld.every day someone says somethings not possible they are proven wrong each time.words of thought.i totally support this and i hope he pulls thru.i personally didnt care for the dreamcast and it didnt last long enough to have many games but meh.its definitely something worthwhile to see get done

# hmm — fungusinmymilk 2008-07-28 14:04

the dreamcast had over 300 games for the system, which is more than enough for me i reckon!

man when i saw this article i got so excited. i understand how hard it would be to get it working, but im hoping so much it'l get there

maad

# well — Surftycoon 2008-07-28 14:31

Sega Saturn, if I remember correctly, had three processors. This would probably make it a little harder than the dreamcast to emulate especially since DC runs a form of Windows CE.

# --- — C_firoth 2008-07-28 14:44

If they make Sonic Adventure run fine,nothing else matters.

# one of the few. — gnizzlespot 2008-07-28 15:13

haha im one the few proud dreamcast owners. sold my n64 for one haha (dont worry i had another). the dreamcast was the $hit though. i had backups of all my games and homebrew was ridiculously easy. i got SUPER excited when i read this. hope it turns out well and doesnt take as long as deadalus.

# Holy Crap — anhero 2008-07-28 15:58

If this runs Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star I will clean my psp from the dust it took from my old drawer and play it like if it was a new bought console. OMG Skies of Arcadia was such an awesome game!!!

# *What*? — FreePlay 2008-07-28 16:02

You mean the first step Sega took down the road of destroying the Sonic franchise?

No thanks.

# well — Strongbadunit2 2008-07-28 16:12

well I believe what exophase says :] can't wait for this

I wish you would continue on gpsp or start a new project exophase if I had your coding ability I would have made an N64 mod or something else, but obviously it is up to you +]

# Hehehecopter — XEnigmaX 2008-07-28 16:37

I really want this so I can run Dreamcast homebrew on the PSP.

There's nothing as singly mind blowing and epically amazing as running homebrew THROUGH homebrew.

# ... — TheLastGuitarHero 2008-07-28 17:21

House of the Dead 2. Revolt. Speed Devils.

# FPS — phiyuku 2008-07-28 18:15

looking at the fps it only runs at around 2.5fps which is no where near playable for most people.

but as with most people i hope it gets improved significantly to reach full speed cause the dreamcast was one of my favorite systems even though support for it just died out.

# . — KirbySS 2008-07-28 19:18

Even better, run a PSX NES emulator on DC Bleem through this! I'm sure you'll get great speeds!

# a rap about this emulator — userw12w 2008-07-28 19:25

someone wrote a rap about this article:

http://journalrhythm.blogspot.com/2008/07/dreamcast-emulator-for-psp.html

# . — _MK2k_ 2008-07-28 19:35

haha n1

# yeah! — Apeaggedon 2008-07-28 19:58

DREAMCAST FTW LOL

# Sweet! — xxjunior01xx 2008-07-28 21:42

Hope it turns out good & running smoothly altho it will be a challenge for them.

# Hahaha — kimdrummel 2008-07-28 22:00

Ryo had no head in the second video.

But as long as they make the shenmue games work then it's enough for me. :)

# WHY! (not what you think) — GW2 2008-07-29 00:10

why would he play that game over sonic adventure 2. he must be high on crack or something!

# S*** — xLinkinwormx 2008-07-29 01:24

im gona have to buy a slim with a 8gb memstick if this is released with playable speeds, because my phat psp randomly turns it self off, the d-pad is a bit bust and my 2gb memstick is broken, games i really want to play on the go would be SoA house of the dead, sonic adventure1/2 shenmue silver ummmm cannon strike soul caliber sega swirl

god the list could go on, maybe ill buy a dreamcast again.

# yup — stoney05 2008-07-29 02:11

PSO v2

Jet Grind Radio

Skies Of Arcadia

Shenmue

Grandia 2

Sonic Adventure

ive been waitin to play PSO on psp... none of that phantasy star universe

# cool — frank_the_bunny 2008-07-29 02:15

It's a nice idea and it's cool to see they can at least get games to start, but there's almost no point developing it any further as it's obviously not going to reach full speed, seeing as the N64 one is still a long way off.

# ... — Xastabus 2008-07-29 06:50

*head explodes*

# Impressive... — Acteon 2008-07-29 07:33

But I'd far rather have Sega release the games for PSP properly to be honest. Berserk on PSP? Oooh yes...

# MVC2 — two_dent5 2008-07-29 08:42

wow, no ones talking about marvel vs capcom 2? one of the best fightings out there

# dc — Twenty-Se7en 2008-07-29 12:31

I think that they may see up to 60% if they keep at it... but you never know. I'm just one of the regular joes.

Playing Seaman with the psp would be sweet... yeah, I am the only guy in the world that thought that game rocked. He's as crabby (no pun intended) as I am - and it's cool

# :D — r3quiem 2008-07-29 12:56

AWESOME

# I agree m3rox — Nathanias 2008-07-29 13:23

Besides, NOT ENOUGH BUTTONS!

# not necessiraly — majorbb100 2008-07-29 13:45

the only reason the n64 emu isnt very good is because its being coded by strmnrm or whatever. i bet you sony could get a fully compatible, full speed n64 emu on the psp in a no more than a month. maybe this guy has some serious coding talent. he might be able to pull it off.

# @Nathanias — Omega-Weapon 2008-07-29 23:37

Seriously... Have you EVER even played or seen a Dreamcast?

You PSP technically has one MORE button that the DC controllers had. The DC contoller had ABXY, L trigger, R trigger, Analogue stick, D-Pad and Start.

The PSP has all of them, and the Select button, which could be the emulators home screen/menu button.

Get your facts straight first.

# I think the Sega Saturn had two not three CPUs, I may be wrong. — mr.x256 2008-07-29 23:42

This would be great if it works.

What's next, Game Cube?

# - — mr.x256 2008-07-29 23:50

Sony got PSX games running at full speed on PSP, infact you can run them a little quicker.

If only there was a PS2 emulator.

# hahah — irwintorres727 2008-07-30 00:46

lol DEADalus

# four words — irwintorres727 2008-07-30 00:58

four words......... MAVEL VERSUS CAPCOM TWO!!

# Dear Omega — Nathanias 2008-07-30 02:56

sorry I seemed to have have a brain fart... :(

Anyway fullspeed probably won't be possible, but in this case I wouldn't mind being wrong

# MVC2 — two_dent5 2008-07-30 10:03

nice

# LOL... why is everybody so negative — moviefan 2008-07-30 15:13

Most of you thought it was impossible to get even this far, and look they have it running at around 10% normal speed and there is no optimization they just got it running nothing more. With some optimization or a complete build from the ground up it may be possible to get it running playable whant to know why.

A: It has a bios unlike the n64 which they got running pretty well until production stopped, and it was a small step under this. Meaning it will make emulation much easier as it did for the gameboy advance.

Specs comparison: Psp:333mhz max processor

Dreamcast: 222mhz max

Psp: 36 mb of system RAM

dreamcast: 36mb altogether as well

The fact that they both had the same amount of random access memory is the only problem in my mind but im sure if some work was done to shrink some things down in size in the ram and the removal of some things like anti aliasing it would work.

And the dreamcast had built in effect features such as fog which would be in the bios solving the problem that would of become. I'm sure that could be shut off if it causes problems. So people stop being so negative when its as likely or more so then a N64 emu which never happened.

# yh i agree — hammered 2008-07-30 22:25

yeah he does make sense, but still problems with ram are going to be big, since it has to run emulator plus wat DC will be running, however to get it to boot will be an easy task since like he said a bios can solve many problems.

The developer/s have a lot of work to do, especially since its hardware is pretty big for a psp to emulate...o well i hope for the best and wish i could do half the stuff thats done in this

GOOD LUCK to all the developers, this will be big if u can make it work :)

# dream come true — jmak0 2008-08-04 09:46

it would be a dream come true if they could make a full-speed dreamcast emulator on the psp.

moviefan - the psp slim has 64mb memory, so it would be more likely to be able to handle the emu. I assume the psp has some similar chips to the dreamcast, which is maybe why drkllRaziel is feeling confident about pulling it off.

Having all those awesome fighting games plus sonic adventure and the arcade classics would be awesome. I still think a ps2 emulator should be attempted, because the psp is supposed to be based on a ps2, but with nurbs graphics capability... i think it could be done, but maybe only for some games.

# Look at Dolphin EMU — jmaster_x 2008-08-05 12:10

If you look at Dolphin EMU (the gamecube emulator) In interpreter mode, games run at about 3fps and with dynarec and dual core, games run at about 30-50 fps! Interpreter is REALLY slow... optimzing an emulator is really important! As far as the ram issue, if nothing can be done, then just make it a slim-only app since the slim has 64MB of ram... problem solved, (although i'm sure not all games require that much memory the psp's kernel does take a few megs)

anyhow I look forward to seeing the emu's progress!

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