Gaming Hacks

Unblur Your Dreamcast Video

Make everything all sharp for boomstick raids.

If you’re playing your DC a lot, you may notice that playing through a normal TV is a little blurry. Fortunately, if you want to sharpen the images, you can duplicate a PC setup for playing Quake (keyboard, mouse, VGA monitor) with the relatively unknown Dreamcast VGA Adapter. There are official Sega adapters and a multitude of third-party clones, which tend to do the job just as well. Pick yours up on eBay or other auction sites for about $10.

This peripheral was fairly revolutionary at the time, because it allows you to connect your Dreamcast to a VGA computer monitor for a clearer, sharper picture, something no other console could officially do. Dreamcast games tend to run in a resolution of 640 480, so it makes perfect sense.

The VGA Adaptor is nothing like the VGA converters for other consoles that require much more complex electronics, because the DC naturally outputs VGA. However, bear in mind that a small number of games don’t work with the VGA adapter, and some naturally low-resolution games (such as Capcom’s fighting titles) may look a little blocky in ultra-sharp resolution.

Here are some notable titles to put through the VGA adapter:

Quake III by Activision/id

It’s special to have a $10 piece of hardware running VGA-quality output on your computer monitor. More to the point, in a game where seeing pixels in the distance makes a major difference in gameplay, it’ll improve your playing. This works well ...