If you’re ordering pizza these days, you’re probably using a smartphone app or perhaps still making a regular old phone call. If you’re creative and a little bit tricky, though, you can order pizza right from your Sega Dreamcast. You just need to jump through a few hoops, as demonstrated by [Delux] and [The Dreamcast Junkyard] in the recent past.
You used to be able to order pizza on the Dreamcast natively, all the way back in 1999. However, the modern Domino’s website doesn’t really work on the ancient Dreamcast browser anymore. The simple fact is that web technology has advanced a long way in the last couple of decades, and Sega didn’t exactly spend a lot of time maintaining a browser on a console that died mere months after its rivals hit the market.
Thus, to place a pizza order on the Dreamcast these days, you need to work within its limitations. [Delux] uses the Dreamcast with the Broadband Adapter to access a PC on the local network via the XDP web browser. That PC is hosting Web Rendering Proxy, a tool which converts complicated modern websites into something a simpler machine can parse. From there, it’s a matter of connecting to the Domino’s website, and slowly clicking through the online ordering pages. Between the proxy delay, the Dreamcast’s glacial processing speed, and the clunky Domino’s ordering interface, it takes ages. Never before has adding coupons felt like such a hassle. Still, after 15 minutes of fuss, the order is completed… and a short time later, a hot fresh pizza arrives.
It’s a fun hack, but really it’s the PC running the proxy that’s doing the heavy lifting. In 2026, it’s far more elegant to order a pizza from your Nintendo Wii.
I think the technique here is more interesting than the achievement. Browsing the web on a 200 mhz CPU (plus GPU) isn’t very notable. But the Web Rendering Proxy is an interesting piece of tech that could be useful for people with all kinds of legacy hardware. Even e-ink Kindles have a crappy browser that might benefit from it.
No, we don’t use an ‘app’ to order pizza. Don’t use an app for ordering anything for that matter! We may call and order and then pick up when they say it will probably be ready. Come to think of it, it has been years since we ordered pizza (or any food) this way. We simply go to the establishment and order. Simple. Easy. Gets you out of the house… Speaking of Pizza, today we just went and sat down at the local Pizza place for lunch. Visit over Pizza and salad. :) Back to work.
I assume a Sega Dreamcast is a gaming device of some sort from above picture. That probably explains the ‘ordering in’ mentality :) . No timeouts when gaming :D .
That said, it appears to work, but not very well for the ‘now’ generation! Patience grasshopper. Patience. Almost there… one more step ….