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Many games have been independently developed for the Dreamcast by independent developers. Most of these games were commercially released long after the end of the console's official life span in North America where production was ceased by end of 2001, although Sega of America still offered support and had some games scheduled for release (but was the division at Sega who released the fewest titles after 2002, pretty much limited to NFL 2K2 and other games in the 2K genre) and so games kept being released for quite some time still after first announcing the move to 3rd party development, unlike 1st party titles of other regions like Puyo Puyo Fever being released in 2004 in Japan and a select few more in Europe, seeing as the Dreamcast was launched approximately 1.5 years later in Europe compared to Japan and 13 months later than North America, thus the last region the console was released on 20 October 2000. Meanwhile, in Japan, the console was released in November 1998, lasting with official support and console sales as well as hardware peripherals and games both developed and published by studios at Sega of Japan, from 1998 through 2007, almost giving the 6th generation console 10 years of official support in the region.
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In comparison, the Xbox 360 had already been launched when Sega still was publishing games for the Dreamcast (and other platforms) in Japan.
However, most of the time, the online Sega Direct store was the only place to find new consoles which had been produced recently, often with special color variations, such as black and other limited edition collector items; after the last official released title published by Sega of Japan, Karous (2007), hit store shelves, indie developers published games on the console from all over the world, often with very tight time frames between each release — and making the console, in some ways, relevant again well into the seventh generation of consoles.
Consequently, these games are unlicensed by Sega, although completely legal if created with a development environment which is not licensed by Sega. The Dreamcast had nine new entirely independent games released by 2020, thus making it more prolific than most release schedules since 2001, at least in North America.[ clarification needed ] [1] [2]
IGN reopened their Dreamcast section in 2006, [3] [ circular reference ] as Sega was publishing games like Under Defeat in 2005.
The Dreamcast's unlicensed games are produced and printed on regular compact discs (CD) using the Mil-CD format created in-house by Sega, which is just a normal CD unlike its native games format, the GD-ROM, aimed at karaoke and interactive content on regular CDs in general. Unlike the GD-ROMs, though, which can hold up to 1.2GB of data, a CD-ROM can hold around 50% of that.
Josh Prod is among a few of the most serious and active studios that is publishing many high-quality titles, which will boot on any Dreamcast, although only some consoles manufactured between up until 2007, where Sega removed the MIL-CD support from the BIOS. Console manufacturing in Japan was restarted to meet demand up through 2007, although no official numbers exist. However, Sega removed the MIL-CD compatible code in the BIOS; this prevents owners of these consoles from playing games released on CD-ROMs.
While the last officially Sega published game, titled Karous , a lot more titles were consistently released in Japan up until that point. Trigger Heart Exelica was one of them, along with Under Defeat (2005) and Puyo Puyo Fever (2004), to name a few. However, those owning a console with the latest BIOS version have to replace their GD-ROM drive with an optical drive emulator, or solder in a new or additional BIOS ROM chip to have the ability to boot up a game released on CD-ROM, like the Arcade Racing Legend [4] by Josh Prod, which was released in 2020 after a Kickstarter campaign.
Releasing games on half the size of the native format, however, can be a problem, depending on the game. Copying games from GDs through Dreamshell to an SD-card, or through the official broadband adapter and being subsequently burnt to a blank CD, can result in having to remove content to make them fit on standard CDs; depending on the region, this can be a felony. This makes the independently released titles for Dreamcast different from other homebrew titles, in that a completely stock console will most likely boot the game, such as with Gameshark, Action Replay, CodeBreaker and Bleemcast, to name a few. The Japanese consoles not supporting MIL-CD will often tell you (in Japanese) on one side of the outer box.
The reason for releasing games on CDs instead of the native format is mostly because the GD-ROM format is no longer marketed by Sega, and is thus difficult to get a hold of, nor did it ever have a commercially available blank counterpart. Another reason is that there is actual copy protection in place, which has yet to be defeated without using the rare 'System Disc 2' – a disc by Sega for use by developers that unlocks the protection, making it possible to boot games burnt on GD-R discs, the blank GD-ROM equivalent to blank CD-R discs.
Games are mostly released in standard CD or DVD jewel cases, or more recently, styled as a retail Dreamcast case, depending on region (where Japan had what may look like a DVD case). The regional style of the cases is a purely cosmetic option, because all independent titles released on CD-ROM are region-free, as Mil-CDs in general cannot be region locked, while GD-Rom-based games indeed are, requiring one of many commercially released boot discs like the GameShark, CodeBreaker and others, which enable all regions to boot.
Most of the games released, as well as those currently in development, have all been developed using the open source and free SDK known as KallistiOS, or an equally legal alternative, providing about the same functionality as Sega's own SDK; developers have stated that the Dreamcast is very developer friendly [5] — although some claim good performance is easier to achieve in 3D with the officially SEGA SDK, although it illegal to use without a license.
The Dreamcast saw the majority of its biggest homebrew releases after 2017, the same year most of the online functions of the console was bought back, thanks to projects like DCSERV. This also extended the availability of the massively popular online game on a console, Sonic Team's Phantasy Star Online , as the original servers were closed down in 2004. During this period, the complete library of Atomiswave arcade games were unofficially ported to Dreamcast, thanks to their similar system architectures. [6]
The indie games are of great variety: some have Genesis-style 16-bit graphics, whereas others look more like Dreamcast-era games. However, the SDKs developers are allowed to use are not as optimized for the hardware as their Sega licensed counterparts. The 16-bit games usually have also been released as homebrew for the Neo Geo AES console, and others may also have had releases for PC, mobile, or as downloadable indie titles for newer consoles — such as Flashback, which was released for the Nintendo Switch as well as the Dreamcast.
