HelP!! Why won't my Dreamcast play a lot of games?
 

I just bought my Dreamcast used and tried playing a bunch of backups I bought from a guy. This guy has alot of stuff - Playstation, Playstation 2, and DC so I know that his stuff is good. My problem is that 4 or so of the games don't play at all on my system. I tried the bootcd but nothing seems to work. I've brought the games back thinking they were bad copies and tried replacements but they didn't work either. Could my bootdisc be outdated? I noticed the bootdisc has a version number, do I need a newer one? Is there something wrong with my Dreamcast that others have also encountered? I have a legitimate game also called Ripping Riders, I think, a snowboarding game and it too seizes up in the middle of the game.HELP!!!

I can see 2 possible reasons :
1) your DC is "too" new, and can't play Audio/Data copies. In that case, you'll have to make them selfboot using Bin2Boot
2) your DC or your TV is PAL and doesn't support your NTSC games. Try to find some patches (on DC Copy World), or try PAL Patcher.

bin2boot? does this mean I can't already play the games that I just bought from this guy?
My DC can't be PAL because I'm located in Canada, is that right?
Anyone know of a site with FAQ's/forums re: the Dreamcast backups that may also help?

Read this :
http://www.megagames.com/dc/dc_backup_faq.shtml

thanks, that site really helps! Very informative.
now to figure out what to do with my crap games that I have. sigh. Could it be something wrong with my DC console that is not allowing me to play these games? Can I download a patch/fix off the net for it maybe? cleaning the lense?

try to make an image of these cd´s with your pc.
if you got read errors, throw them into your
rubbish bin.

if you don´t get errors maybe that cd are from a
low quality brand.

reburn them with brands you know they work.

and there are still some other reasons,
games will not work.

thanks for the info. Should I use image in Nero or ?? Would that work to check for errors?

I burned my first dreamcast games last week and I was using white memorex cd's one did not work and the other worked just fine ONLY if I turned the DC upside down I re-burned both of them onto different media (gold Top maxell cd's) and they all worked fine.