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Does anyone know which games support widescreen mode with vga box? Also does DC use anamorphic widescreen, or does it render higher resolution ie 720x480 or 853x480?

These support a widescreen 16x9 aspect ratio you can select in game, though Trickstyle US doesn't boot into VGA unless you use a boot disc or have a patched backup.
F355
Metropolis Street Racer
Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2
Trickstyle

According to a short list I found on google, these also support widescreen:
Aerowings
Rayman 2
Toy Commander
Star Lancer
Test Drive V Rally
Wacky Races

I think for most of these games, it increases the viewing area slightly, and shows you a little bit more on each side than the 4:3 640x480 would. There are several games where you can stretch the image in the options menu, such as Mars Matrix, but you could probably just do that with a function on your TV as well.

Only game I can think of off the top of my head is Rayman 2 as mentioned above. However all dreamcast games that support this use anamorphic widescreen, where they squash more image into the 640x480 display, so no, 640x480 is highest resolution the DC can output as far as i'm aware.

For some reason, I never realised you could select widescreen whilst using the VGA box. I'm gonna have to try that out.

Neohound wrote:For some reason, I never realised you could select widescreen whilst using the VGA box. I'm gonna have to try that out.

As long as you can stretch the image to 16:9 you should be fine. Don't know if all monitors and TVs can stretch a VGA signal though...

Well, I tried setting up Rayman 2, through a VGA box, in 16:9 widescreen mode. My projector was still showing VGA 640 x 480 after switching from the 4:3 ratio. I pressed the 16:9 button on my projector's remote and, yes, the image was widescreen and without looking 'stretched' as would be on a game without a widescreen mode. I'm guessing, as Family Dog said, this is 'anamorphic widescreen' ? Anyway, it seems to work fine so I'll be utilising the feature on all games that support it from now on.

To prove it, here's a couple of pics I took using the 16:9 setting on the camera:

Neohound wrote:I pressed the 16:9 button on my projector's remote and, yes, the image was widescreen and without looking 'stretched' as would be on a game without a widescreen mode. I'm guessing, as Family Dog said, this is 'anamorphic widescreen' ?

Yes, that's how anamorphic widescreen works. It's how (properly mastered) widescreen DVDs work, except that unlike the Dreamcast, most DVD players will automatically adjust the image to restore the original aspect ratio on your TV. Most widescreen DVDs will say on the back whether they are anamorphic or letterboxed.

Ah, right. Thanks for explaining it. That's why I've never used the 16:9 button on my remote before, even when playing Dvd movies !

It's such a great option to have in Dreamcast games, just a shame there weren't more games available with the feature. Anyway, still plenty to get my teeth into.

that's true, but sadly the anamorphic 16/9 option on F355 is disabled when using the DC in VGA
maybe because at that time all PC monitors were 4/3...
(someone should go into the game code -with a Hex editor- an try to find and force that flag)

Shit, I didn't know about that (F355). That's really disappointing I have an old parabolic screen, from the days of cine film movies, that I was hoping to use, in conjunction with the 16:9 mode, to try and recreate the F355 multiscreen arcade experience. Suppose I could still do it outputting S-Video, but it's not what I had in mind.