The Sega Dreamcast‘s Visual Memory Unit (VMU) was ahead of its time, a memory card with a screen that played mini-games and showed in-game data. Thanks to the efforts of 8BitMods, the VMU is being resurrected as the VMUPro, aiming not only to be the perfect accessory to your Dreamcast, but also its own retro gaming machine.
Most of the features won’t be a surprise if you are familiar with the company’s MemCard PRO, which notably featured GameID, a tool that detects your game automatically. The VMU Pro has an on-device virtual card manager allowing you to manage cuts, copies and pastes between virtual cards, as well as quickly switching active save files. You can even transfer between original VMUs and a VMUPro through a wired connection, or wirelessly between two VMUPro devices.
The device features a 1.5-inch backlit IPS TFT color display with 16-bit color and a native resolution of 240×240 pixels and can play original VMU mini-games on it with up to 5x scaling and custom color themes. As mentioned before, in addition to being a VMU, the VMUPro can be used as a standalone handheld to play 8-bit console games, shipping with emulators for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES, Game Gear, and Master System (supports SRAM saved games and 8 save state slots per game), which run at 60 frames per second and allow playing at the game’s original resolutions or at 1.5x scaling.
Internally, the VMU Pro is powered by a dual-core, 240 MHz CPU with Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth LE. Via Wi-Fi users can access a unified WebUI for save management, playtime statistics, and device settings management, as well as automatic cloud save backups to Google Drive. There is also a 0.7-watt mono speaker, a 720mAh battery (estimated to provide six hours of battery during active use, and up to a month of standby), and a USB-C port for charging and data transfer.
The team behind the VMUPro has a roadmap of future updates and features. Planned additions include an SDK for developing your own apps, an online app store, additional emulators, a companion PC/Mac application, and even a Dreamcast docking station.
The VMUPro will be available in seven colors and comes with a matching wrist strap and Maple Port cap. This ambitious project is poised to be an essential accessory for any Dreamcast fan and a fantastic mini-handheld for retro gaming enthusiasts.
Pre-order the VMUPro device from 8BitMods and let us know if you’re picking one up in the comments below, and chat with us in our Discord!
Source: 8BitMods
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