dreamcast emulation and importing

[FreelancePolice]

How exactly does dreamcast emulation and playing import games work?
what will i need and is it easy?

edit: and one other thing, do fully chipped consoles play backup games or homebrew software without a bootdisc?

[yosai]

Any dreamcast will play selfbooting backup/homebrew games without a boot disk or modifications.

You will only need a boot disk for the early backup games that were released before they knew how to make them self boot.

A boot disk will also allow PAL games to run on an NTSC machine and vice versa.

The mod chip chip only disables the region checking.

[FreelancePolice]

ah brilliant thanks, so is it worth getting a chipped one, i want it for fighting games and pop n music but don't want all the hassle of a boot disk

[Kizzycrew]

Not all dreamcasts run CDR's out of the box! I've seen it myself, games that run on mine, and don't on another.

Be careful there sir! test one first before burning a bunch off

[FreelancePolice]

will do, i think im getting it for legit games anyway, Just some fighting ones with some arcade sticks and other niche games

[Sabreman]

Listen to that laser grind under the strain of running from a CD.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Scared me enough to stop bothering.

[Casual_Gamer]

Yeah, a word of warning about the DC laser and CD-Rs...

I killed my laser running CD-Rs on the DC. Well, not 'killed' as such - it actually still reads my CD-Rs, but...It doesn't read my originals anymore! So I can't play Soul Calibur on it now, without resorting to a dodgy rip. I should really get around to getting a replacement one, but it seems like they're becoming harder to find.