Sega Dreamcast/Homebrew

Homebrew

The indie & homebrew game list

As hackers figured how to boot the Dreamcast from regular CDs without any hardware modding, it became, by all practical means, the most open console ever. That is, until intentionally open consoles came out, such as the Linux-based Caanoo and many Android-based portables, but I digress. Retaining a devoted fanbase even after it was commercially discontinued, it was the platform of choice for many independent developers. Thus it received several original titles, as well as ports and emulators.

Title	Genre	Description	Where to obtain
Alice's Mom's Rescue	Platformer	Cute retro puzzle platformer, vaguely inspired by "Alice in Wonderland". A little girl has to traverse huge maze-ish levels and rescue her mommy from the giant raven. Magical mushrooms allow her to ~~trip balls~~ change size to reach different areas.	Commercial: Hucast Play-Asia
Beats of Rage	Beat 'em up	Clone-sorta-ish of the Streets of Rage series, done with KOF sprites. As the engine is open and very easy to mess, several modded versions exist. To save on CD-Rs, look for the "Beats of Rage Collection" packs. Also on several other platforms.	Free: Team Senile
Cave Story	Action-adventure	One of the most renowned metroidvanias ever. Get ready for the feels.	Free: DCEmulation
Fast Striker	Shooter	A manic shmup with CG backgrounds and an emphasis on scoring. Also on the Neo Geo (where it is the largest cart ever).	Commercial: Play-Asia
Ghost Blade	Shooter	A Kickstarter-funded manic shooter. Very stylish, if a bit on the easy side.	Commercial: Play-Asia
Giana's Return	Platformer	Unofficial sequel to the 80s classic The Great Giana Sisters. Very fun and challenging. Also on several other systems.	Free: Official site
GunLord	Platformer	YOUR ARE CUTE! DIE IN HELL! Clearly inspired by Turrican, but plot-wise a sequel to Last Hope. This is probably the most epic and ambitious indie game for the Dreamcast ever released. Also on Neo Geo and Switch.	Commercial: Play-Asia
Last Hope: Pink Bullets	Shooter	Even though Last Hope got some praise as a fine-looking and very challenging game in the same vein as Pulstar, it was also criticized as too brutally difficult and somewhat glitchy; this updated version corrects the original release's issues.	Commercial: Play-Asia
Mute Crimson DC	Platformer	Be a ninja, slice evil monsters. Gory and cartoony precision platformer. Commercial on other platforms but the Dreamcast version is free.	Link
Neo XYX	Shooter	Pronounced "neo zaikusu". A manic shooter from NG:DEV.TEAM, the creators of Last Hope, Fast Striker, and Gunlord. Also for the Neo Geo.	Commercial: NG:DEV.DIRECT Play-Asia
Redux: Dark Matters	shoot 'em up	A Kickstarter-funded heavily updated version of Dux. Also for iOS, Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows. gameplay vid	Commercial: Hucast Play-Asia
Rush Rush Rally Reloaded	Racing	Upgraded version of Rush Rush Rally Racing, a very fun and fine-looking arcade-ish top-down racer.	Commercial: Team Senile
Sturmwind	Shooter	A very impressive hori shmup, sixteen years in the making (it started as a Jaguar CD demo). Gorgeous pre-rendered everything.	Commercial: Play-Asia
Völgarr The Viking	Platformer	A Dreamcast port (because why the hell not?) of the old-school 2D platformer. Strongly reminiscent of arcade classic Rastan, but even more difficult. Commercial on other platforms but the Dreamcast version is free.	Free: Official site
Wind and Water Puzzle Battles	Puzzle	A puzzler where you match elemental squares into matching diamond shapes in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon / Puzzle League games (fuck me does that series have a lot of names). As those games are in their own right - Wind and Water Puzzle Battles is ridiculously addictive and graphically attractive considering it's a port from the GP32 of all things. Note: don't let the Chinese text in the cover throw you off, this game has full English text. In fact it was developed in Costa Rica.	Commercial: Yuan Works
Wipeout	Racing	Fan port of Psygnosis' futuristic racer, originally on the PS1.	Link

Pirate compilations

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As many Dreamcast games were much smaller than a CD's capacity, pirates have figured out how to make multi-game compilations. Handy if you still burn discs, irrelevant if you emulate or use an ODE.

Where to get them? Hint, hint: CD Romance, RetroZone.co, Segahub, CoolROM, DopeRoms, Rom Hustler.

Title	Genre	Description
5 In 1 Racing Games	Racing	Contains: Crazy Taxi 1 & 2, Tokyo Xtreme Racer 1 & 2, and Suzuki Alstare Racing.
Capcom Fighting Collection	Fighting	One of THE best compilations for the little system that could. Includes: Capcom vs. SNK 2 (JP), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (US/JP), Street Fighter III 3rd Strike (US/JP), Puzzle Fighter II X (Translated US/JP), Super Street Fighter II X (Translated US/JP), and the Capcom Taisen Fan Disk (JP, With some ENG text). And as there was still some room to spare, they included Ikaruga, Action Replay, and Game Shark.
Capcom vs. SNK - Millennium Collection	Fighting	Another good fighting compilation, the Millennium Collection compiles the Capcom vs. SNK games. Includes: Capcom vs. SNK (US), Capcom vs. SNK Pro (JP), Capcom vs. SNK 2 (JP), and an overhauled English translation of the Capcom Taisen Fan Disc (JP).
Dreamcast Crazy Collection	Various	Eight cool games: Crazy Taxi 1 & 2, Alien Front Online, Charge 'N Blast, Cosmic Smash, Sega Tetris, Neo Golden Logres, and Yukawa Motosenmu no Otakara Sagashi. (Well, more like seven cool games and one piece of Japanese promotional weirdness.)
Power Stone Collection	Fighting	Power Stone 1 and 2 packed into one disc. You need this, and you know it.
Shoot-em-up Collection	Shooter	Includes: Ikaruga, Psyvariar 2, Zero Gunner 2, and Border Down. Has some secret stuff like movies and music as well as save files of the best game data.
Shoot-em-up Collection 2	Shooter	Includes: Shikigami No Shiro II, Trizeal, Chaos Field, and (as a hidden bonus) Ikaruga.
The King Of Fighters Collection	Fighting	Includes: KOF 99, KOF 2000, and KOF 2002. Not all of the Dreamcast's KOFs, but still worth a look into. All games are JP, but the only reading needed is for victory texts, so it's all good. Also includes music and best save data files built in.

Atomiswave conversions

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After discontinuing the Dreamcast, Sega still had bucketloads of parts. Rather than throw it all away, they quickly concocted this arcade system that was basically identical except with cartridges instead of optical discs. Years later, some hax0rs figured out how to convert Atomiswave games to the Dreamcast. You can find them here.

Important note: .gdi files cannot be burned to CD. You will need an ODE to run those on an actual Dreamcast. Only a few were converted to .cdi files.

Title	Genre	Description
Dolphin Blue	Platformer	In a Waterworld-like world, an evil empire decides to take over and it's up to you to gun them down. A very pretty but super difficult run-and-gun clearly inspired by Metal Slug.
Guilty Gear X ver. 1.5	Fighting	The same game that was already on the Dreamcast, but with some character balancing and new moves more in line with the sequel Guilty Gear XX. This version was never ported to any home system.
Metal Slug 6	Platformer	It's Metal Slug, as good as usual, now with hi-res backgrounds.
Force Five	Fighting	A nice 3D fightan that was actually cancelled before launch.
The King of Fighters XI	Fighting	The first official main-series King of Fighters game not to be named by the year it came out. As the eleventh game in the series, KoF XI starts the series with a fresh new faces and story, gameplay adjustments like full tag-team gameplay and Dream Cancels, and nice new 2D sprites. Not the height of the series exactly (you'll have to determine that yourself, though!), but definitely a great game and a must for any fighting fan. Lacks some extra stuff that was added to the PS2 version.

Emulators

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Title	Sytem	Description
Bleemcast!	PlayStation	Bleem!, the famed commercial PlayStation emulator for PC, came to the Dreamcast in three game-specific releases: Gran Turismo 2, Metal Gear Solid, and Tekken 3. It provided that serious visual upgrade (640x480, anti-aliasing, bilinear filtering) that the PS2 should but did not. There is also a non-title-specific leaked beta, but it was an early version, very buggy and incomplete, with spotty compatibility.[1]
Dream SNES	SNES	Has a fucton of SNES games now. 2-player capabilities as well, along with various genre's of games. There are stand alone genre's of this comp such as Dreamsnes RPG'S, but this one has all types of gaming genre's from the SNES era, so fuck year!
Neo4All	Neo Geo CD	An impressive feat of coding: a Neo Geo CD emulator, running pretty much perfect at full speed on the Dreamcast. And it is possible to create standalone game+emulator discs. (Hint, there's a lot of those out there.)
Nester DC	NES	A fuck-ton of old NES games with 2-player capability! Sadly battletoads, and battletoads double dragon aren't working as of now, so FUCK! Other games don't work like the Batman NES games as well as the compilation missing some games, even if some of those missing suck ass, but AVGN makes us want to play those sucky ass games, y'know?

Utilities

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Title	Description	Where to obtain
VMU Backup CD	Remember all the times you got online with your DC and went to GameFAQs or Planetweb, just to get some useful VMU save file? Ever wonder how to do that now, as no one uses dial-up anymore? Here's a more elegant solution: a disc with a fuckton of save files! Just boot to it, copy the files you want to the VMU, and you're done.	Free: El Bucanero
Dream Explorer a.k.a. VMU Tool	Another "fuckton of save files" disc with a more elaborate file manager and VMU manipulation options like unlocking extra blocks. Can also view images and play music, and export images as BIOS backgrounds. Don't use the defragment option, it has a high chance of corrupting data.	Free: BlueSwirl
Utopia Boot Disc	Early pirate releases lacked self-booting, you needed to run this disc first and then swap.	Free: GBAtemp
Sylverant PSO Patcher	A boot disc for legitimate copies of PSO (or disc images on an ODE, cough) that patches the game in memory to connect to private servers, sparing you changing your DNS and using cheat codes. Also works as a boot disc for other non-WinCE games, and displays on VGA unlike Utopia.	Free: Google Code
XDP Browser	Not actually homebrew, but a riced and translated version of Dream Passport 3, particularly a later version that supports the BBA as well as the modem. Also includes some versions of the crappier browser PlanetWeb that can be useful for configuring the modem. It's the best web browser currently available in English. Includes some junk on the disc you can browse without internet, like a collection of MIDI music, and guides for Dreamcast games.	Free: Dreamcast Live