Thanks to the likes of PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's "Project Dolphin" breathing down the Dreamcast's newborn neck, Sega has an interesting road ahead of itself in coming months. But, unlike past hardware efforts, Sega has no plans of taking this threat lying down. An army of the standard first and third-party software is headed to the DC, but thanks to the nature of the hardware, Sega's ranks will be boosted by a new legion of allies: PC developers. But how will this affect the Dreamcast library? Will the Dreamcast become a dumping ground for marginally successful PC titles, or can we expect more? We're going to take a look at the highs and lows of the PC port on Dreamcast, and check out our top candidates for the Dreamcast treatment, as well as hear from you on your most wanted.

For those of you who aren't in to the gaming scene, a "port" is a game that was originally on another system, but has been re-done for a new platform. You see this sort of thing all the time on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, as well as the PC, and titles like Quake, Vigilante 8, and most recently Resident Evil 2 have been making the jump to other systems. But thanks to the Dreamcast's powerful hardware, we're looking at a new horizon for conversions, as the possibility for titles that are completely accurate, or even enhanced versions of the original are now a reality.

Several PC developers have already jumped on the bandwagon, and had some interesting insights into both support from Sega and the hardware itself. Bioware's Greg Zeschuk, Executive Producer on MDK2, is currently hard at work on both the PC and Dreamcast versions of the game, but was kind enough to share his thoughts on the hardware and some of the advantages of bringing a title to Dreamcast.

Not only has Bioware found the system to be quite powerful, but more importantly, the Dreamcast is the one thing the personal computer has never been for developers: predictable. This should prove to be invaluable for PC developers who have been dealing with the current nightmare that is configuration exceptions. Said Zeschcuk on the benfits, "First and foremost, we're working with a single system - we don't have the problem of multiple system configurations, different video cards and processors as seen in the PC market. Also, the Dreamcast hardware is quite comparable to state of the art PC hardware. Currently, the Dreamcast version of MDK2 is equivalent to a PIII 500 with a TNT2. Also, the video subsystem also has excellent visual quality, I'd say the image quality is probably better than anything on PC at this time."

As you can see, the Dreamcast is no slouch. This sort of commentary goes a long way towards backing up Sega's claims that PC experiences on the Dreamcast will be both powerful and unique. Matt Powers, Producer on Accolade's upcoming mech action title, Slave Zero, has also been quite impressed with the ease that programmers have encountered in bringing the game to the DC:

"The Ecstasy Engine was developed with reusability and portability in mind. When we started our Dreamcast development we really didn't know how easy or difficult it would be.

As it turns out we have been able to get Slave Zero running on the Dreamcast very quickly. Slave Zero's gameplay and technology moved over to the new system fairly painlessly."

The same goes for former PC developer Treyarch, who made their mark on the gaming world with Interplay's Die by the Sword. They are now working on Crave's upcoming Swords of Vengeance, an action title with a medieval flair, and Programmer Wade Brainerd was also quite up on the Dreamcast:

"Speaking as an experienced PC programmer who is just getting into consoles, the Dreamcast has been remarkably easy to code for. "

Brainerd could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the somewhat lesser-known PowerVR chipset, the chipset behind the Dreamcast's impressive visuals: " I must say that the chip really kicks ass. We haven't even come close to transforming and sending enough polys to slow it down, plus the automatic translucent polygon sorting makes life a lot easier."

" In fact, right now the Dreamcast version of our engine is quite a bit faster than the PC version, which is interesting given that we're talking about a 200mhz Hitachi SH4 w/PVR2 beating a 400mhz Intel PII w/TNT."

The reason behind this? The aforementioned predictability, and the Dreamcast's lack of intrusive layers between the programmer's code and the actual hardware. With a PC, you've got the likes of drivers, OS, and APIs that affect the game's performance, and the DC interacts with the code at a much more simplistic level. In one sense, reactions such as these are good signs. It looks as if all of Sega's promises about both the hardware and ease of development are true and then some, but do we really want the Dreamcast to become little more than a gaming PC in a console shell? Sega claims that they certainly do not, but with all the PC games headed to the DC, what exactly is their stance?

Part 2 - Sega speaks on PC to Dreamcast development