Sega Dreamcast

The Dreamcast is a sixth-generation console released by Sega on November 27, 1998 in Japan and later on September 9, 1999 in NA. The system is available in most builds, except for rpi1/zero and 2. Here's a fun page about it.

Flycast is a fork of Reicast (which itself is a fork of nullDC). A highly compatible and accurate standalone emulator.

Flycast cannot be configured in EmulationStation; all configuration must be done via flycast-config in the Applications folder (F1 on the systems screen).

A fork of a fork of a fork… this is an identical version of standalone Flycast but inside of a libretro core. Makes use of RetroArch's features.

All other settings can be configured from RetroArch's Quick Menu > Options (Hotkey+).

Redream is a multi-platform standalone emulator. Has high compatibility with low system requirements. Lacks some options compared to Flycast.

Redream can only be configured by its menu (Hotkey while running a game).

Dreamcast discs are a special form of CD named GD, which are capable of holding up to 1GB of data, compared to the ~700MB capacity of regular CDs. GDs were traditionally dumped off of the original console as GD-ROMs (which contains a game.gdi sheet, info.txt and data.bin/.iso/.raw track(s)), but some more modern tools may use the more universal game.cue sheet and data.bin track format. Most emulators can load either sheet format fine. You should load the .gdi or .cue sheet and not the .bin/.iso/.raw tracks. From Batocera v31 onwards, EmulationStation should avoid making duplicate entries for these files.

If you're currently missing the .gdi or .cue files, check out the section on recovering them on this page.

The recommended format for compressing disc images is CHD.

If compressing the image into the CHD format ensure that you are using chdman version 0.230 or later, as earlier versions have issues with Dreamcast images. If your compressed ROMs are failing to launch in Batocera, users have reported having more success making chdman target a .gdi file instead of a .cue file. Most online .bat scripts only target .cue files. There is a custom version of chman that supports rolling to and from CUE/BIN files here.

To automatically load the next disc of a game, you can use a .m3u playlist file. To make one, simply create a text file with the same filename as your intended game name (it could be anything, really). Within that text file, write the names of the .gdi sheets or .chd files for your game discs. For instance, if your game's .gdi sheets were structured like

roms/
└─ dreamcast/
   ├─ Shenmue (Disc 1).gdi
   ├─ Shenmue (Disc 1).bin
   ├─ Shenmue (Disc 2).gdi
   ├─ Shenmue (Disc 2).bin
   ├─ Shenmue (Disc 3).gdi
   ├─ Shenmue (Disc 3).bin
   ├─ Shenmue (Passport disc).gdi
   └─ Shenmue (Passport disc).bin

you would put the following as text into the Shenmue.m3u text file:

Shenmue.m3u

Shenmue (Disc 1).gdi
Shenmue (Disc 2).gdi
Shenmue (Disc 3).gdi
Shenmue (Passport disc).gdi

Save the text file with the file extension .m3u and place it in the dreamcast folder along with the game's discs. When you get to the end of that disc, the next disc will be automatically loaded. In libretro cores, if this fails, you can utilize Retroarch's 'Disc Control' menu in the Quick Menu (Hotkey+) to manually eject a disc and insert another (Swap Disc is for legacy purposes and should not be used). Refer to multi-disc games for more info.

Each emulator handles the Hotkey, its chords and the Select button differently.

• libretro/flycast
  • Hotkey by itself does nothing.
  • Hotkey+Start closes the emulator.
  • Select does nothing.
• Flycast standalone
  • Hotkey by itself opens Flycast's quick menu.
  • Hotkey+Start closes the emulator.
  • Select does nothing.
• Redream
  • Hotkey by itself opens Redream's menu.
  • Hotkey+Start does nothing.
  • Select toggles fast-forward.

(The Select button and shoulder buttons are incorrect.) The default button mapping to the Dreamcast controller is as follows (ignore the Select button, L+R are assigned to L2+R2 on the Retropad):