Review Reicast For Android Review

RevPokemon

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Reicast for Android Review

The Dreamcast was Sega's last console and was home to many notable games which went from Sonic Adventure to Shenmue to Ecco the Dolphin. There were rumors a while back of a nulldc port to android os that ultimately never happen but now you can finally play Dreamcast on android thanks to an app called Reicast.

(My specs are

System chip - Motorola X8

Processor: Dual core, 1700 MHz

Graphics processor: 400 MHz, quad-core

System memory: 2048 MB RAM)

Set up

Set up is relatively easy as the process is to first download the app off the play store and then download the BIOS (don't ask how or where to get it).

For Reicast to work, the BIOS need to be titled "dc_boot.bin". Many of the ones available online, however, are named "dc_bios.bin".

The flash file is usually found wherever BIOS files are available. You'll know it by the name "dc_flash.bin".

After that you will need to make a folder called " DC" and then create another folder within DC called "Data" which is where you will have your flash files and BIOS.

Finally you need to clear the "virtual" VMU, select the 'Boot BIOS' option from the main Reicast menu.

Quick note if game files are in .ZIP format they need to be extract and will end in .cdi

Game play

I decided to put reicast to 3 game tests using Sonic Adventure 1, tony hawk pro skater 2 and Shenmue.

In SA1as far as I have played it works really well on my phone although I do believe there are some graphic issues although they are very minor and don't affect the gameplay.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 loaded perfectly and the menus also worked but I when I went to play the game it crashed while loading making the game unplayable.

Shenmue worked OK but there were a good amount of graphic issues but it played pretty well so far although it may make the latter parts of the game harder or unplayable.

Drawbacks

Reicast is a great emulator but has some issues. For one it only works on ARM processors and will not work on Intel x86 processors.

Second is that when I tried to use the emulator on a different phone I could not get Reicast to play games from my microsd card although it may just me not setting it up correctly.

Finally the emulator does not have instant save states which can be an issue considering that normally when I left the app it closed before I got to save my game.


Conclusion

8.5/10
Ultimately this is a great emulator that really works great on the ever growing list of games and it is sure to add many great games to play to your android library.
 

Psionic Roshambo

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I enjoyed tinkering with Reicast on my JXD S7800B, I found game compatibility to be very hit and miss. The program is still pretty much an early beta so for what they do have working it is a fantastic emulator. How they got so much working and so well I have no clue but they deserve all the praise and acclaim they get.

Other side thought's: You can never tell what games will work or work nearly perfectly so you just have to try them out and don't get disappointed if a personal favorite doesn't work yet. The emulator is still young and I have no doubts that eventually it will be as good as eSPXe. (Given the same amount of time to work with it, so I am thinking that todays ePSXe has a 5 year head start with regards to emulation.)

Great review and a great emulator.
 
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RevPokemon

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I enjoyed tinkering with Reicast on my JXD S7800B, I found game compatibility to be very hit and miss. The program is still pretty much an early beta so for what they do have working it is a fantastic emulator. How they got so much working and so well I have no clue but they deserve all the praise and acclaim they get.

Other side thought's: You can never tell what games will work or work nearly perfectly so you just have to try them out and don't get disappointed if a personal favorite doesn't work yet. The emulator is still young and I have no doubts that eventually it will be as good as eSPXe. (Given the same amount of time to work with it, so I am thinking that todays ePSXe has a 5 year head start with regards to emulation.)

Great review and a great emulator.
Thanks for the feedback. One thing to note is for all who might see this is that if you have problems you may need to join on the reicast forum as the reicast staff will help. Also I forgot to note that they are planning a PC release soon but I really don't know the full details.
 

Eity

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I used it on clone of JXD S5110b. It looks promising, but for now it has many problems.
1. Emulator freezes randomly on any game from time to time
2. It is not recognizes hardware buttons (I can use them, but only by setting them on screen buttons)
3. There is some problems with compatibility.
For now I mostly waiting for fututre versions.
 

RevPokemon

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I used it on clone of JXD S5110b. It looks promising, but for now it has many problems.
1. Emulator freezes randomly on any game from time to time
2. It is not recognizes hardware buttons (I can use them, but only by setting them on screen buttons)
3. There is some problems with compatibility.
For now I mostly waiting for fututre versions.
Hmm I ran reicast on a RAZR m with specs that were about the same. It may freeze for a variety of reasons although try playing with a task killer to stop other running apps. For buttons I ran it with a ps3 controller and it worked good. Also what games are you playing?
 

RevPokemon

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Erm... How did you turn Skies of Arcadia into Tony Hawk's Pro Skater?... I smell some alchemy going on.

I was originally at going to review skies of Arcadia and ecco the dolphin on reicast but I didn't have the ecco file and skies of arkadia was going to review but I felt testing 3 games is better than 4
 

Eity

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Hmm I ran reicast on a RAZR m with specs that were about the same. It may freeze for a variety of reasons although try playing with a task killer to stop other running apps. For buttons I ran it with a ps3 controller and it worked good. Also what games are you playing?
I played\tried to play in:
Ikaruga - works fine
Sonic Adventute 1-2 - works fine
Mortal Kombat 4 - works fine
Virtua Figher 3 - works fine
Puyo Puyo~n - works fine
Puyo Puyo Da - works fine
Puyo Puyo Fever - works a little slow in battle
Dead or Alive 2 - works slow (one version don't work, other work, but first one do works nullDC)
Under Defeat - works slow
SuolCalibur - works with graphic glitches
Sonic Shuffle - big graphic glitches (unplayable)
Zero Gunner 2 - big graphic glitches (unplayable)
Gunlord - don't run
House of The Dead 2 - don't run
Freeze happens in all of them randomly.
 

RevPokemon

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I played\tried to play in:
Ikaruga - works fine
Sonic Adventute 1-2 - works fine
Mortal Kombat 4 - works fine
Virtua Figher 3 - works fine
Puyo Puyo~n - works fine
Puyo Puyo Da - works fine
Puyo Puyo Fever - works a little slow in battle
Dead or Alive 2 - works slow (one version don't work, other work, but first one do works nullDC)
Under Defeat - works slow
SuolCalibur - works with graphic glitches
Sonic Shuffle - big graphic glitches (unplayable)
Zero Gunner 2 - big graphic glitches (unplayable)
Gunlord - don't run
House of The Dead 2 - don't run
Freeze happens in all of them randomly.
Checked it out and its probably a kernel issues which is being fixed in a future update of reicast. Also try using apk from reicast website
 

cracker

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Have you tried formatting and switching cards? I read about people having issues with saves that were sometimes solved with that.
 

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