HT Games
What the Utopia Boot CD Does
The Sega Dreamcast is considered one of the most "ahead of its time" video-game consoles in the industry's history. The Utopia Boot CD is a software disk that gives the Dreamcast a usable feature. When the CD is inserted, the Dreamcast boots with the ability to play Dreamcast game backup CDs. When the Dreamcast menu appears, you can remove the Utopia CD and insert the Dreamcast backup disk.
What Games Work
Utopia is a universal boot disk so it works with every Dreamcast game as well as Japanese imported games. The important thing is not which game you are playing, but what format the game-disk image was in when it was burned. Utopia accepts three types of disk backups.These are CDI, BIN and ISO.
Difference Between CDI, BIN and ISO
If the game was in the CDI, BIN or ISO format prior to being burned, the Dreamcast game will work with Utopia. Although they all share the same data, the three disk-image formats differ from one another. While the BIN and ISO images are the most similar, the CDI format is the most useful. This is because a CDI version of the Dreamcast games can work with Utopia to play, or can boot up by itself. These games are called "selfbooting" and require no external boot disk. The BIN and ISO versions do require Utopia to play them on the Dreamcast.
Legality
Much has been said through the years about the legality of using your own software backups of software you legally purchased. Fortunately for these legal users, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act put an end to prosecution of video-game owners who backup their purchased games, do not share them, and abide by the rules of anti-piracy firms. Legally, you can make a single backup of a game you own for as long as you own it. If a day comes when you are no longer in possession of the original game disk, the backup copy must be destroyed. If at any time you possess the backup without the original, it is considered pirating.