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The future looks bright for Saturn and Dreamcast

Luiz Nai August 2, 2016

2 4,616 1 minute read

Saturn and Dreamcast were both released in the 90s and even with all the obstacles these consoles had in the past, they are still active. It’s not difficult to understand why Dreamcast has been receiving support by the community since it was discontinued. Dreamcast was made to be easy to program; However, when we think we have seen everything on Dreamcast, it always appears to surprise us. It also seems that Saturn, although hard to program, also has a bright future ahead.

Last month, Dr Abrasive surprised the world and showed his project where he could run games from the video CD port on Saturn. It will not just save a lot of consoles with dead optical drives, but it will also provide a lot of facilities for the homebrew community to develop their games. We are about to see the biggest revolution in the homebrew scene for Saturn when this device gets released.

Also, there is one open source engine(Jo-Engine) under MIT license that is getting attention of the developers around the world. It was developed by Johannes Fetz who is also creating an impressive new Sonic game for Saturn, which you can see below:

Now talking about Dreamcast, Elysian Shadows, which was funded last year on Kickstarter, is promising to take pixel art to another level with their new engine. They spent two years developing the new cross platform engine, which is able to have Dynamic Lights, 3D environments, 2D/3D camera perspective, rigid body physics and a lot of features which will not only appear in Elysian Shadows, but new titles as well

It’s not only Elysian Shadows’ engine that is giving a new life to Dreamcast. There is also the Dreamer Engine, which will make Saber Rider work on Dreamcast and modern platforms. This engine is a big promise for new games, which was made by the legendary Chui who created the emulator NEO4ALL and others for Dreamcast.

It’s impressive how much good stuff is ahead, and for two consoles that came out in the 90’s, Saturn and Dreamcast still have a lot to give to the video game history.