Are My Dreamcast's Days Numbered?? Raspberry Pi 4 vs Dreamcast Gameplay

recently retropie der of the UK announced that it was starting to support the raspberry pi 4 it did this when it released a beta version of retro pipe just a few weeks ago now this is big news because the raspberry pi 4 is a much more powerful beast compared to the PI 3 this has led people all over the internet to start showing off what is capable of by emulating the Dreamcast something that although raspberry PI's struggled to do now there were two problems with these Dreamcast emulation videos that I've seen so far firstly they don't always mention whether they've actually overclock their raspberry pi 4 or not and they're often stating that it's non perfect emulation without even comparing it with an actual Dreamcast so I did a thing I've got myself a raspberry pi 4 and I've set it up to play Dreamcast games and that's it no overclocking or anything I'm going to be comparing it with footage that I've recorded on my own Dreamcast and see what we can realistically expect from a PI 4 hello fellow gamers and have we got a Dreamcast replacement on our hands [Music] so here we go now for the purposes of this comparison I'm going to be using the following a completely stock model one pal Dreamcast no hardware modifications whatsoever and I'm going to be outputting the video using VGA at 480p now that is going to be converted into HDMI with an adapter in order for me to capture this footage now in the other corner we've got the Raspberry Pi four this is the four gig model running retropie 4.6 beta it's going to emulate using fly cast version one point eight point five and it will be outputting everything at 1080p this hasn't been overclocked at all but I have put it in this swanky little nez style case which it comes with heat sinks for various chips and a small case fan which together should help with cooling this Raspberry Pi now just for the fun of it in the other other corner I'm throwing in a Raspberry Pi 3b this isn't the Plus model but will be running the same version of retro PI and fly cast as the PI 4 this will be outputting at the Dreamcast's native VGA resolution of 480p and again this hasn't been overclocked at all but it is in a flirt case that's designed to act as a giant heat sink for the CPU now before we continue with this I've got to say that all the games I'm using this comparison are all games that I own there'll be no piracy here no sir [Music] okay so I think the best scheme that we could start off with is Sonic Adventure and in fact we'll be able to see the the difference between the three systems straight away with this so starting off with the title screen as you can see you've got your Sonic Adventure logo and that rippling water effect in the background this is the Dreamcast raw footage and it's perfect as always but if we stick on the PI 4 you'll notice that though the logo and the text is all quite a bit sharper of course it's in 1080p and that ripple is working just fine if we stick on the PI 3 then oh yeah you can definitely tell the difference I mean the logo looks fine but that ripple effects the framerate on it is just dreadful and that's kind of really setting the tone for the rest of the pi3 footage I'm not gonna lie a bit of a spoiler actually it's simply not powerful enough to get the game running properly so you'll see on any of these comparisons that the frame rate of the PI 3 even though it's on the Dreamcast's native resolution it's still a lot slower than the other two this is easily noticeable on this half speed run of the runway but actual gameplay footage let's have a look at that so you can see that on the Dreamcast everything is lovely and sharp and smooth but on the PI 3 I mean yeah the details there but look how slow it goes especially when you can see the rest of the city there but switch it off to the PI far we've got the best of both worlds it's everything's sharper it's clearer everything's running much faster but we're here to compare the PI 4 with the Dreamcast as you can see here side by side the PI 4 it's definitely up there with it it's almost as smooth as the odd dropped frame but it is definitely sharper bomb is running emulation does include a few other graphical glitches such as this one I mean oh that's enough to give anyone nightmares but actual gameplay when you're when you're controlling the characters you know here's the Dreamcast for each of the first level and yet we know how this goes very smooth unlike the pi3 it's really struggling to run this level smoothly at all and it's just a judge Remus I think we're getting frame rates in the high single figures to lower double figures but switch off to the pi/4 again everything's really sharp could actually do with a little bit of anti-aliasing but having seen what we've seen so far I'm thinking that the Raspberry Pi 4 is really gearing up to be a really nice alternative for playing Dreamcast games so the next game we've got up on a list is Hydra thunder now this is a game that doesn't support VGA on the native Dreamcast so I had to force it a bit [Music] so yeah I had to force the Dreamcast to play this game in VGA cuz it doesn't normally support it that results in a few graphical glitches that you probably just saw one there but overall the game runs fine it's just got a couple of hiccups those glitches don't present themselves in normal gameplay but when we compare that to the pi3 I mean that is incredibly choppy we're probably talking about maybe 10 12 frames per second there's a number of graphical glitches there as well you can see all of those black squares where the spray should be we don't get any of that on the pi Father you know it's still 1080p and it's running incredibly crisp and very smooth actually that's a few dropped frames here oh that but it's still performing incredibly well so again we're going to compare it against the original Dreamcast and everything's definitely sharper and it runs almost as smooth though I think with the low texture is a bit of softness actually does some good and now for our Dreamcast game that a lot of youtubers just don't shut up about it's Power Stone the Dreamcast answer to Super Smash Brothers so again we're starting off with the Dreamcast footage and you can see everything is running you know as smooth and as fluid as ever but keep an eye on that little grid in the bottom of the screen notice that when we switch over to the pi3 it's almost a solid green block so there's a bit of a graphical issue that emulation hasn't sorted out yet but on the pi3 you know it works if you don't mind playing in slow motion [Music] but switch it over to the pi/4 again you've got that same graphical glitch with the with the map at the bottom but everything's wood sharper much more details and it's running incredibly smoothly it's working very well so if we try and compare these two side-by-side I know that there are two different levels and a couple of different characters but you know the performance that you can see between the two you should be able to tell it's working very well on the pi/4 so I don't know if you want to get a few May around and play a four player power stone they said about choice if you haven't got Dreamcast controllers [Music] now who doesn't like a good puzzle game we're gonna be trying out to to rocket next but we're only gonna be quick here [Music] now since this is one of the few games where the pi3 actually performs really well I'm showing all three at once with this kind of cross section view but everything is they're playing as day it's working really well on the pi3 and running just perfectly on the Dreamcast and pipe off although on the pi3 the framerate is a little bit slower if you have a look at this half speed comparison and zoom in a little bit between the PI 3 and PI 4 you can tell there's a a bit of more of a jaggedness left but the game works just fine on the PI 3 as well so kudos to it so now for the last game in our comparison so it's not everyone's very but it's Virtua Fighter 3 TB and oh boy you are going to laugh when you see the PI 3 handle this so let's just quickly remind ourselves that the performance on the original Dreamcast here's part of the intro and it's running just as smooth and fluid as ever with all of that detail on the brickwork but on the PI 3 oh dear it's running much more slowly much more jagged but I'm surprised it's working at all I'm now switching over to the PI 4 and we're back to fluid again everything's working just fine everything's a lot sharper as well thanks to that 1080p resolution but this isn't about in this is about gameplay so let's pop on the Dreamcast gameplay footage just to remind ourselves how the original hardware performed for him playing this game should give us a nice little benchmark for the pi4 to reach the here's the pi3 running that same game on the same level same characters I'm very surprised at the detail that we can see here and it is lovely and sharp but its host's hope but switch over to the pi/4 we've got our 1080p resolution signal and just fine there's probably the odd dropped frame here and there but it's working just fine I didn't notice anything until I was comparing it with the original Dreamcast footage naturally I suppose there are a couple of dips when you compare the two together but if you're playing it maybe the odd frame drop but you're not really gonna know it's a normal gameplay fill we've seen all three performances and well frankly the pi3 is out so we've seen the performances of these two devices so I'm a thirst now despite a couple of graphical and audible hiccups I've been thoroughly impressed with how the PI 4 has been able to emulate Dreamcast games they all run extremely well all super sharp and almost as smooth as the actual Dreamcast so maybe just a little bit of overclocking should be enough loading times are much faster as well in fact when I was editing this video I found it quite difficult to get the videos in sync so I could do a side-by-side comparison because of the loading times on this but I think ended up there this is running off optical media what you expect there's also the argument of VGA in compatible games a number of Dreamcast games don't support VGA and that's the way for you to be able to get the best picture out in your Dreamcast so with those ones you just stuck with using a crummy composite cable or using a third-party boot disc which I had to use in order to record Hydro Thunder that begs the question you go through the hassle of using a boot disk on VGA and compatible games on the original hardware I'll go through the house of configuring and fine-tuning a Raspberry Pi 4 so if you want to go down the retro Piru go for it you're gonna get some amazing results however for me and it's probably the nostalgia talking I still prefer playing original games on original Hardware where it's humanly possible and at the end of the day if you are going to be emulating Dreamcast games you're going to need that on the physical games on original hardware in order to skirt around any legal issues and if you've got those original games unless they're scratched up to all help I feel you may as well play those on an original Dreamcast get yourself a VGA cable and a boot disc for any VGA incompatible games and play it that way instead but you know that doesn't take away from the fact that the Pythons Dreamcast emulation was very impressive I'd say if you're going down that route just make sure you own the game say well that's all for this time but thanks so much for watching please let me know with a like or dislike down below what have you thought of the video and also leave some comments are you going for the old G hardware solution or are you gonna be tinkering with a Raspberry Pi far as well and you know there's always that little subscribe button just in case you want to hear more from me anyway thanks again and I'll catch y'all next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: The MultiGen Gamer

Views: 15,243

Keywords: dreamcast raspberry pi, comparison, best dreamcast emulator, raspberry pi 4, pi 4 dreamcast, raspberry pi, raspberry pi 4 dreamcast, flycast emulator raspberry pi, retropie raspberry pi 4, dreamcast, dreamcast emulation, dreamcast raspberry pi 4, hd, pi 4, pi4 flycast, raspberry pi 4 4gb dreamcast, raspberry pi 4 dreamcast emulation, raspberry pi 4 retropie, flycast dreamcast, flycast dreamcast emulator, retropie 4.6, retropie raspberry pi 4 vs 3, retropie flycast, 480p

Id: N1n-R6iR8W8

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020