How do you play old arcade games today? You can buy older consoles, but they are difficult to find. And even if you find them, they have become quite expensive. You are better off using an emulator like Flycast on your computer.
What is Flycast?
Flycast is a fork of reicast. It was made by flyinghead. Designed with NAOMI, SEGA Dreamcast, and AtomisWave games in mind, Flycast emulates the controllers, twin sticks, light-gun, and ASCII Mission sticks of these consoles.
Like the emulator from which it was derived, Flycast offers support for CHD, CUE, CDI, and GDI. It also supports Naomi and Atomiswave archive formats.
Some laypeople may avoid Flycast because it uses a command line. But experienced gamers can navigate and manipulate the program with relative ease. It resembles other emulators of this ilk in many ways.
Features
- Compatible with Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS
- Supports OpenGL3.0
- Emulates Dreamcast controllers, light gun, twin sticks, keyboard, and mouse
- Widescreen
- High Compatibility
- High performance
- Frame Skipping
- Supports local multiplayer netplay
- Supports Fogging
- Supports SEGA Dreamcast, NAOMI, and Atomiswave games
- You can connect to the Dreamcast Live fan servers
- No support for SEGA System SP, SEGA NAOMI 2, or Hikaru
Download Flycast
| File Size | 14.5MB. 3.59MB. 7.57MB Android. Windows. macOS |
| License | Freeware |
| Date | 17 Dec 2021 |
| Platform | Windows |
| Category | Dreamcast Emulator, Gaming |
- Android: Flycast-1.2.apk (14.5 MB)
- iPhone: Flycast-1.2.ipa (13.9 MB)
- Apple macOS: Flycast-macOS-1.2.zip (7.57 MB)
- Windows: Flycast-win64-1.2.zip (3.59 MB)
- Flycast.nro (25.6 MB)
How To Install Flycast?
It depends on the system. If you have Linux, you have to start by setting up Flatpak. You can install the emulator from Flathub. With macOS, you have to set up Homebrew. Then you can install the emulator through Homebrew.
How To Use Flycast?
- The Dreamcast BIOS file (dc_boot.bin) is important. You should place it in a folder called ‘Data’ within the Flycast folder.
- You need the NAOMI and Atomiswave BIOS files before running those systems. You can also place them in the ‘Data’ folder.
- You can load games by dragging them to the emulator’s executable file
- You can also load games with the batch files and command line
- Once you launch the emulator, you can use the ‘Settings’ option to configure the program. ‘Settings’ will take you to a page where you can change the Language, Region, and Content Location, to mention but a few.
- Click the ‘Video’ tab to access the relevant graphics settings. You can play with the internal resolution, frame skipping, graphics API, VSync, fog, shadows, etc.
- You can change the controls to fit your gaming preferences.
Conclusion
Flycast is only complicated if you’re new to emulators. Otherwise, it is fairly straightforward. Once you add the BIOS files, you can start playing your favorite Dreamcast, NAOMI, and Atomiswave games.
The emulator has a friendly user interface. If you prefer the command line, it is available. Though, ordinary gamers will probably avoid it. The advantage of Flycast is that, unlike many other emulators, people are still working on it.
The developers have continued to finetune Flycast in the hopes of delivering a smoother, more satisfying gaming experience. You can expect new versions of the emulator every so often, boasting updates designed to fix all the glitches and bugs that Flycast occasionally develops.
This makes the software more attractive because so many emulators have been abandoned over the years.
