Elysian Shadows

Here's the one for Dreamcast

Does anyone know what this thing is or what it does?

That's the Katana - Sega's official Dreamcast devkit. They usually retail for about $400-500 a pop. That's what was used to create AAA titles like Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Shenmue, and most every DC game.

The homebrew scene has an (illegal) rip of the software on the devkit, but it's unusable. We cannot compile/link to the libraries without the Katana devkit (for some reason). There is a chance that you could recompile them for distribution if you had a Katana, but unfortunately the hardcore DC developers don't own Katanas. It's the ignorant, rich video game collectors who do nothing more than play Sonic Adventure with them that have the devboxes. =/

Got it. It's ashame that only collectors are gathering up all the Katanas, but if they aren't needed then I guess it's ok. It seems like developing with the Katana is just a $700 option. Also, I've noticed that every system has a developer kit just as the DC's Katana and I'm assuming that the same goes for the rest of them; the dev kit isn't necessary and can be done by PC. But maybe the Dreamcast is easier to develop for?

DC's easier to develop for especially since it can read CD-R's. I imagine that running homebrew on most other consoles involves a mod chip.

NDS is easy to develop for, especially using R4 to run it right off the device and since its a microSD card, there's virtually no waiting time if I have to copy a new file to the card.

I've used HAM's IDE for making GBA games, though I haven't tried their code at all, just used it to run asm/c code.