Destructoid MySpacer
Louis writes:
I just bought a Dreamcast and was wondering if there was any way i could make an all around kick-ass machine. I would like to be able to play Japanese, American, UK DC games. Simply put, I want to juice this puppy up, BIG TIME!!!! Any advice or sites would help! Thanks in advance!
Ah, the Dreamcast - one of my favorite consoles. Mission accepted! We did some asking around and poked around a few shady places on the web and came up with a few good leads for you on emulation, import hacking, and hardware modifiying. Check it out!

If what your primary interest is modifying your Dreamcast's hardware to play imports, homebrews, and even play emulated older consoles - you don't even need to get a mod chip! The Dreamcast runs Windows CE, which hackers cracked over tea and biscuits without breaking a sweat. There are a ton of places on the web that offer boot disks that you can rip and burn from your PC to get games going. This works really well - these days I only use my DC to play Nes games and Ikaruga :)

Want to play import games? The easiest way is to get an upconverter cable, pictured above. Lik-Sang.com has em. To get around region restriction with software (instead of the cable), you'll need to rip and patch the imports. Patching info
can be found on MegaGames.com and for emulators, check out
Zophar.net. Mum's the word on where to find pre-patched games, you're on your own there! (pssst. p2p, irc). I've heard of a mod chip out there for the DC, but it's not really worth it. You can do plenty without that junk!

Now the hardware - the best site I've found is
DevCast. They have how-to's on everything from overclocking your dreamcast to how to do visual changes like changing the light color and creating a new visual look for the system. They also have a seven page gallery of oddball looking mods to give you some creative inspiration.

One guy was even able to migrate his dreamcast into the sega saturn shell. Whatever floats your boat! For 200% completion, you also want to read
this site.

Any readers have additional tips for Louis? Sound off!