Dreamcast:Atomiswave Games
The Atomiswave arcade platform is seen by many as a spiritual successor to the Neo Geo MVS, being a collaboration between Sammy, SNK, and Sega. Interestingly, it was very similar to the Dreamcast hardware, even more so than the Sega Naomi. Unlike Naomi though, Atomiswave has been largely overlooked due to its rarity and relative failure to successfully break into arcades. The Dreamcast Junkyard has a great piece on the history of the Atomiswave with more technical details.
List of Atomiswave Games
Games ported to Dreamcast:
- Animal Basket
- Block Pong Pong
- Demolish Fist
- Dirty Pigskin Football
- Dolphin Blue
- Extreme Hunting
- Faster Than Speed
- Fist of the North Star
- Force Five (previously unreleased)
- Guilty Gear Isuka
- Guilty Gear X
- Kenju (previously unreleased)
- King Of Fighters XI
- Knights of Valour: The Seven Spirits
- Maximum Speed
- Metal Slug 6
- NeoGeo Battle Coliseum
- Neowave: The King of Fighters
- Ranger Mission
- Rumble Fish
- Rumble Fish 2
- Samurai Shodown VI (Samurai Spirits Tenkaichi Kenkakuden)
- Sega Clay Challenge
- Sports Shooting USA
- Sushi Bar
- Wai Wai Drive
Games not yet ported to Atomiswave:
Anything marked with a * is an Atomiswave exclusive.
- Extreme Hunting 2 Tournament Edition*
- Miracle Stadium
- Net Select Keiba Victory Furlong*
- Net Select Salary Man Kintarou
- Premier Eleven*
- Salaried Worker Golden Taro*
- Sega Bass Fishing Challenge*
Playing Conversions on Dreamcast
Thanks to megavolt85 (and later yzb), all dumped Atomiswave games are playable on stock Dreamcast hardware. The optimal versions of these conversions come in the form of TOSEC-style GDIs, but using ISO (2048 bytes/sector) format for their data tracks, rather than BIN (2352 bytes/sector). However, burnable CDIs also exist for those using optical media, albeit with notable performance/compatibility issues.
For more information, reference the below video.
GDEMU
If using Dreamcast:GDEMU to play Atomiswave conversions, ensure image_tests=0 is present in the GDEMU.ini configuration file in the root of your SD card.
MODE
Those using the MODE Optical Drive Emulator have seen success by disabling any artificial data-read limits imposed by default for purposes of compatibility (i.e., mimicking a GD-ROM drive as closely as possible). While these parameters can be changed globally via MODE's settings menu, a safer option is to add this configuration on a per-game basis for all Atomiswave conversions. To do so, create a mode.cfg file inside of the game folder itself containing the following lines:
BlockDelay=00
Flags=7
USB-GDROM
Dreamcast:USB-GDROM users report no custom configuration is required in order to successfully play Atomiswave conversions.
Optical Media
Atomiswave conversions will also work when burned to a disc, however some titles will experience slowdowns and other performance issues. In some cases, a game fails to boot successfully at all. If you don't have any other way to run backups, it's definitely worth giving a try though!
Atomiswave Games on Dreamcast
Unlike the Sega Naomi arcade platform, the Atomiswave uses pretty much the same hardware as the Sega Dreamcast. While the GDROM and discs are replaced with cartridges, the main processors and RAM are the same. The main difference between the Dreamcast and Atomiswave are how it processes it's I/O and that's what these conversions are centered around. For more info, please check out the video below: