Homebrew RELEASE reicast [Dreamcast emulator] for Switch/Horizon [Alpha]

[davidgf]

Hey there folks,

I'm glad to introduce you reicast for switch. This is a very rushed release, expect bugs and many issues, but in the next days a more polished version should be in order. Also a more proper release, since we don't have yet automated builds for switch.
The current version has some caveats: although it uses JIT (so fullspeed! in fact can go at x2 the speed easily) there's no exception handling yet, therefor things like texture invalidation don't' work well. This can be very limiting for some games, whereas others won't show many quirks. In fact just the BIOS shows this behaviour, textures in dialogs won't get updated

Well that's it, this is a very alpha version, so expect most bugs to get fixed soon. You might also wanna check out reicast on Android or PC (at reicast.com)
I'd like to thanks flyinghead for this tremendous contributions (he's the one to thank for the armv8 JIT backend), and of course skmp and all the crew that keep reicast great (although unreadable!)

Edit: How to use it.
Yeah forgot to add that. You'll need the BIOS files at /reicast/data/dc_boot.bin /reicast/data/dc_flash.bin. The settings can be tweaked at /reicast/emu.cfg. I'd also place ROMs at /reicast on your sd card.
Notice that games using MMU won't work, that's WinCE games (I guess this list is reasonable: https://segaretro.org/Windows_CE).

Important: reicast needs some memory (like 512MB+), so launching the app via nb loader won't work if you use the Album thingy to launch it. This bit me during porting too. You need to launch a game (any game) and press the R trigger to enter the HB loader in "game mode". That should do.

Love, davidgf

Finally some mandatory screenshots:

 

[TenkoIntoOrochi]

Amazing, going to try this out right away!

 

[limpbiz411]

tell me i can play phantasy star? please lol, this is awesome thank you so much

 

[Billy Acuña]

Didn't expect a beta that soon. Thanks @davidgf

 

[chrisrlink]

how fast is it (I assume only playable in docked mode)

 

[shabbypenguin]

Put bios into /reicast/data for anyone having issues getting it to load anything

thank you so much @davidgf wife is so happy to play some knock off crash bandicoot magnetic game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[iriez]

Do you have a github davidgf?

 

[Billy Acuña]

Do you have a github davidgf?

https://github.com/davidgfnet/reicast-emulator/tree/switchport

 

[hippy dave]

Great to see, keep up the amazing work!

 

[TamarindoJuice]

AWESOME! Thank you a lot for this.

 

[Justinde75]

Any games tested already? I'd love to see both Sonic Adventure games, and especially Shenmue (Which is probably not happening yet since the game is usually hard to run for emulators)

 

[cucholix]

It will be a core for RetroArch?

 

[onofrix]

thanks a lot!

 

[TenkoIntoOrochi]

I just tried out Crazy Taxi and Jet Grind Radio both in handheld mode and both games played pretty well so far and were very much playable. Can't wait to try some sprite based games when the battery recharges.

Thank you so much for your great work and I really look forward to future releases.

 

[hippy dave]

Is one small .gdi file and a bunch of track .bin files the right game format for this bad boy?
e: copying the game over nxmtp didn't take as long as I thought, so answering my own question - yes.

Chu Chu Rocket plays great, settings menu seems a bit sketchy but gameplay perfect so far.

 

[TamarindoJuice]

Trying to run Sega Rally 2 but it stuck at the first screen, any thoughts?
Metropolis Street Racer runs at stable fps and plays great!

 

[SkittleDash]

Very nice! Still needs some work as you said. I was getting full speed with Crazy Taxi! Though I do get sudden system crashes after a few minutes.

 

[theguyver]

what directory do you place the roms in ?

 

[stitchxd]

!Remind me later please

 

[SkittleDash]

what directory do you place the roms in ?

Create a folder on the root of your SD and call it reicast. Place them there. Also make sure you create a data folder inside the reicast folder and put the bios in there. Once you launch the emulator, go to settings and set the path to reicast.