Depends if you already own a CRT or a CRT Monitor. No reason to own one unless you have those or want to use official accessories. Same with the PSX, kind of redundant with Duckstation looks far better and can be played with CRT Shaders without any error.
I think its a good investment if you're interested in the library. It emulates pretty well, but there's no emulating that controller/VMU experience.
Games for the system, especially the ones you'd want the most, are quite expensive though. They good thing about that is piracy is EXTREMELY easy on Dreamcast, all you have to do is burn a game to a CD-R and you're good to go. Just make sure the model you get is one of the ones that can handle burned discs, but thats not much of a challenge to find. Most units in circulation are able to do so as far as I'm aware.
I'd reccomend it highly, especially if you have a CRT TV like @Nebulon_Galaxy said. Even more so if you have an old 480p LCD or CRT monitor, since the console can output VGA to get that full 480p image quality.
I still have my father's old black SEGA Sports Edition SEGA Dreamcast from back in the day (sadly not the matching controller it came with though as it was not working and my mother and I sold it off)
had to get its internal clock battery replaced by professionals at eStarland but it still works like a charm
I feel like owning an actual Dreamcast is neat if you have a CRT of any kind to plug it in as the Wii can't emulate Dreamcast games well plus most models have laughable copy protection so you can burn games onto CD-Rs to play on the console relatively easily
and there's also SD adapters that plug into its serial port that play games being sold on numerous online market places as well
as for online though: https://dreamcastlive.net/
If you found a good lot locally with some good games at a decent price, I'd probably say yes.
But then I'm reminded that you probably want a couple of stuff minimum like the VGA Cable (& that TV/Monitor/Upscaler to hook it up to), a few VMUs & a whole lot of CDs to burn games with.
The authenticity of playing the games on the actual console is nice though!
I think its a worthy investment, depends on price and what extras you get too. but i'd say around 100 is fair just for the console & controller and like a game thrown in.
also I use a KAICO HD adapter which makes the image quality look very nice on modern TV's.
Honestly It would be a great purchase.
The dreamcast has a bunch of great games and it feels good playing them on the real console with the real controller.
Not knocking emulation because I love emulating everything.
I bought one a couple of months ago, I would say if you're interested in playing its library, want the intented experience and don't want to go the emulation route that on my end caused a lot of problems then go for it but pay very attention to not get scammed. Dreamcasts are one of the most inflated? console that I've seen, a lot of people sell them online for double or triple their real value because they know that the Dreamcast has some sort of cult following behind it.
There's some info that i would have loved to know before buying one, these are not really talked online from what i've seen:
-Its memory cards storage are laughably small, you have 200 blocks for one VMU (the standard memory card of the Dreamcast) and while most games only uses 2-3 blocks a lot of them uses more than 60 so yeah enjoy having only 6-7 saves for one VMU, it is manageable but it's really the only console where I have this storage problem. If by any chance someone knows if you can emulate VMU storage with a GDemu then let me know lol thanks.
Speaking of the VMU, its battery will drain very fast, the two CR2032 (if i remember correctly) that it needs won't last you more than 2 months and that's it only if you don't use it at all.
-For playing games on it, I would recommand to install a GDemu or something similar, you have a high chance that the optical drive of a Dreamcast being sold is barely functionning and will crash your game half of the time when it needs to load something, this is something that happened on my dreamcast and others from friends and in local videogame convention, I've heard mixed result from people regreasing and cleaning their disc drive hoping to resolve the problem. This problem is mostly seen when you're using burned CD-R games which you'll want to use because of the insane price of dreamcast games these days. I wouldn't recommand the SD card adapter that plugs in the back of the console I've seen a lot of people online saying that the loading time are greatly increased and the compatiblity of it is hit or miss but I might be wrong.
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I sounds harsh in my post but I still love my Dreamcast lol
Not bad at all. There's plenty of good affordable HDMI options for the Dreamcast, ODE replacements for the disc drive, modernized controllers and VMUs, and more.
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