List of top 10, Best Dreamcast Emulators to Play SEGA Games [Windows | Android | MacOS]

Dreamcast, a home video game console was released by Sega on November 27, 1998. It was made available in other countries a year later in 1999. It was the Dreamcast was the very first gaming console in the 6th generation It was then followed by Sony’s PlayStation 2, Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox. Dreamcast used a great deal of new innovations which were new in the gaming business back around then. These advancements included internet connectivity and an internal hard drive. Dreamcast was Sega’s final home console, marking the end of the company’s 18 years in the console market.

In this article we will be discussing the most popular Dreamcast emulators available for Android, Windows and MacOS. So, without wasting any further time let’s get straight into discussion.

Best Dreamcast Emulators For Windows, Android, MacOS:

Get ready to go on a tour of Nostalgia. Here I bring you a list of best Dreamcast Emulators to play SEGA Games that you can download for free.

1. DEmul:

DEmul is considered as one of the best emulators for SEGA Dreamcast predominantly due to its compatibility. Another key factor of this emulator is the exactness of the details it provides. It offers almost a similar experience as using the Dreamcast console itself. So it very well may be really nostalgic for a great deal of us who have experience playing Dreamcast computer games.

The game emulation is very accurate and with the availability of a number of ROM you can turn your PC into classic Sega Dreamcast. Since, it is in active development so any bugs or issues occur are fixed on a regular basis.

System Requirements:

Although there aren’t any official system requirements for this emulator, these are the minimum requirements that are known to run the DEmul pretty decently.

1. Dual core processor @ 3.0 GHz or above
2. 512 MB RAM or more
3. DirectX11

Platforms Supported:

• Windows

To download Demul emulator click here

2. NullDC (Reicast):

NullDC is another of the popular Dreamcast emulators in the market. It is an open-source emulator for Windows. This emulator is capable of running any Dreamcast game, even the commercial ones. It is released under the MIT license and requires a PC with DirectX 9 and Visual C++ runtime libraries installed.

NullDC provides a great gaming experience. Graphics and sound are on the exceptional level. NullDC uses a plug-in architecture for  graphics, sound, memory cards and reading games burned to CD-ROMs.

However, NullDC was discontinued in 2011 and Reicast, a newer and better version of NullDC was born. Reicast is widely termed as the best Dreamcast emulator for Android.

System Requirements:

These are the minimum system requirements for Reicast Dreamcast Emulator on Windows

1. CPU: AMD Athlon XP/64/Turion at 2 GHz or Intel Pentium D at 2.1 GHz or equivalent
2. Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti or ATi Radeon 8500
3. RAM: 1GB
4. DirectX 9.0 or greater

These are the requirements for Android

1. Cpu: Cortex-A9, Dualcore, 1.2ghz
2. Gpu: Adreno, Tegra K1 or Mali400 gpus
3. At least 512mb ram

Platforms Supported:

• Windows,
• Android 2.2 and above
• iOS 5.x – 7.x

To download Reicast click here

3. Redream:

Redream is a modern-day emulator for the Dreamcast gaming console. It claims to give the experience of Dreamcast, but in HD. You can play your favorite Dreamcast games in 1080p or 4k quality. The gaming experience is just on the next level.

The Lite version of this emulator is available free of cost and the Premium version is priced at $5, the difference between the two versions being the Premium version supports high-definition rendering, while the Lite version doesn’t.

You can play about 70% of the Dreamcast library of games on Redream. The UI is very easy to use and it has features such as multiple controller profiles, external controller, and shading support.

System Requirements:

Since Redream is new and still in the initial stage of development, there aren’t any specific system requirements released yet.

Platforms Supported:

• Windows,
• MacOS and
• Android

To download Redream click here

4. Chankast:

Chankast was among the first Dreamcast emulators to run commercial games. Chankast is better suited for users with older machines. The graphics are of a decent level. It also supports game controller for playing various games.

System Requirements:

1. Pentium 4 with at least 1.6 Ghz
2. 256 MB Ram
3. Windows XP or 2003 (It won’t work under any other Windows)
4. Latest DirectX
5. Powerful Graphic Card such as Nvidia or Ati
6. DC Bios (use search engines to find it)

Platforms Supported:

• Mainly designed for Windows XP or 2003 but works fine with other verions too.
  

To download Chankast click here

5. RetroArch:

RetroArch is a versatile frontend emulator. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface. Settings are also unified so configuration is done once and for all.

RetroArch has advanced features like shaders, netplay, rewinding, next-frame response times, runahead, and more.

Platforms Supported:

• Windows,
• Mac OS X and
• Android
  

To download RetroArch click here

6. Makaron:

Makaron is a Sega emulator for Windows. It supports a wide range of most commercial and classic Dreamcast games, including Naomi arcade games and Windows CE games. However, it hasn’t received any new patches in a while.

System Requirements:

1. Pentium 2 or compatible
2. Graphics card with full SM 1.0 support (VS 1.1 & PS 1.4)
3. Windows XP SP2 / 32-bit
4. DirectX 9.0c
5. 256MB of free RAM
6. 25MB of free hard disk space

Platforms Supported:

• Windows

To download Makaron click here.

7. DreamEMU:

DeamEMU was one of the earliest emulators for Sega video game consoles, launched back in the early 2000s. It is still in early stages of its development. Since, it requires BIOS, The DreamEmu community seems to have moved on to other Dreamcast emulators that don’t require BIOS files to function.

System Requirements:

Since DreamEMU is still undergoing a vast development, we look forward to when the commercial games will be supported by this emulator.

Platforms Supported:

Windows

To download DreamEMU click here

8. NesterDC:

NesterDC is Nintendo’s stunning and completely featured Dreamcast emulator. Its radiant compatibility was sufficient to include it in our list of Most widely recommended DreamCast Emulators. This emulator offers up to 10 save estates.

It has been popular as NES emulator on PC for several years. Nester DC supports 4 people playing simultaneously games like Gauntlet. It also supports a variety of NES peripherals and Dreamcast devices.

System Requirements:

1. Sega Dreamcast console capable of booting CDRs.
2. Windows XP (Linux and OSX support for CD builder coming soon)
3. Blank CDR
4. A collection of NES ROMs (do not ask me how to get these)
5. An internet connection
6. Plenty of hard drive space for temporary files, CD images, etc.. A couple of gigbytes should be enough.

Platforms Supported:

• Windows

To download NesterDC click here

Conclusion:

I hope you all enjoyed a dive of Nostalgia, cherishing the good old memories we had as kids while playing our favorite SEGA games. Well after reading this article I am quite sure you would want to try out at least one of the emulators and relive the memories.