I want to compile a roundup of all the different portable platforms and then a collection of links/resources for different emulators for each platform.
Here's the platforms I can think of right now:
DS
PSP
GP2X
GBA
Palm OS
Windows Mobile
iPhone
Here's the information I would like:
What systems can be emulated on each?
Which emulators actually run well?
ROM Compatibility Lists for each emu
Emulator front-ends?
What other platforms should I include?
What information would also be beneficial?
Need Useful Links for Portable Emulation
DS:
No Idea.
PSP:
Well everything till 128 Bit Era.(which it does not emulate// and of course the Saturn is impossible too)
Good Link:
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/
Should be able to find many links to many Emulators for the PSP there.
On my PSP I only played N64 and Snes.
Compatiblity is mostly like the Pc Counterparts( Deadalus and snes9x)
Speed is good.
GP2X:
Well.
Not very powerful that thing...
Nes
Atari(s)
Colecovision
PSX(not playable)
BBC
...
But nothing playable after SNES(and im not shure how playable they are)
http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi
For more information.
GBA:
No Idea
Palm:
I know of a Gamboy (Advanve) Emu.
But that was it.
Windows Mobile:
Nes
Snes
Mega Drive
Game Boy (till Advance)
That are the ones I know of.
When I find links to Emus, I will edit my Post.
iPhone:
no idea.
More Systems?
dont know of any good ones.
No Idea.
PSP:
Well everything till 128 Bit Era.(which it does not emulate// and of course the Saturn is impossible too)
Good Link:
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/
Should be able to find many links to many Emulators for the PSP there.
On my PSP I only played N64 and Snes.
Compatiblity is mostly like the Pc Counterparts( Deadalus and snes9x)
Speed is good.
GP2X:
Well.
Not very powerful that thing...
Nes
Atari(s)
Colecovision
PSX(not playable)
BBC
...
But nothing playable after SNES(and im not shure how playable they are)
http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi
For more information.
GBA:
No Idea
Palm:
I know of a Gamboy (Advanve) Emu.
But that was it.
Windows Mobile:
Nes
Snes
Mega Drive
Game Boy (till Advance)
That are the ones I know of.
When I find links to Emus, I will edit my Post.
iPhone:
no idea.
More Systems?
dont know of any good ones.
Palm:
Scummvm
snes
megadrive
nes
The last three are shareware though unfortunately. Thats the only problem for palm, most of the decent software isn't free.
S60 (symbian operating system)
emulates doom/dukenukem3d (with hacks) quake etc, basically any fps that uses wads thats older than 10 years old
theres a megadrive emulator and a snes emulator too. obviously performance varies depending on handset, i have no problem with my n95 though.
DS
http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk/ big list down the side, lots of system emulated
http://forums.qj.net/f-nds-homebrew-software-and-releases-65/t-inprogress-ds-homebrew-list-games-117061.html bit more indepth with download locations for each homebrew game/emu on ds
I've had specific success with snemulds, metroid 3 runs fairly well but you have to switch layers all the time to see the map, but it runs 95% speed, definately playable. Scummvm works practically flawlessly now.
One thing you've got to worry about with DS is the varied flash/passkey/supercards etc that are out there. each one uses a different filesystem. so sometimes when a new card comes out you might have to wait a while until somebody brings out the revelent patch to make the homebrew work correctly.
PSP
http://forums.qj.net/f-psp-homebrew-discussion-12/t-guide-popular-emulator-installation-and-configuration-106161.html
Theres a lot of info regarding the best known emus for psp and how to configure to get the best performance.
PSP is by far the easiest console to mod and get homebrew running on. (well at least it was until the new slim ones came out, but that said it's still relatively easy to mod em) Once the system is modded it's just a matter of dragging homebrew onto your memory stick and running it from the game menu.
The Neo geo CD emulator is fantastic. it even plays games from zips (with very slight hit to performance). It plays metal slug at full speed and only slows down when theres a ton of stuff flying around the screen.
snestylme will play most games at full speed apart from the super fx games. battletoads plays nearly at full speed but only if you turn the audio off and have quite an aggressive frameskip. metroid 3 plays full speed until you get to the laser eye thing in the first section of the game. where it stutters to a halt.
I've yet to find a game the megadrive emulator can't play. in fact the games run faster than my pal versions hehe.
Scummvm
snes
megadrive
nes
The last three are shareware though unfortunately. Thats the only problem for palm, most of the decent software isn't free.
S60 (symbian operating system)
emulates doom/dukenukem3d (with hacks) quake etc, basically any fps that uses wads thats older than 10 years old
theres a megadrive emulator and a snes emulator too. obviously performance varies depending on handset, i have no problem with my n95 though.
DS
http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk/ big list down the side, lots of system emulated
http://forums.qj.net/f-nds-homebrew-software-and-releases-65/t-inprogress-ds-homebrew-list-games-117061.html bit more indepth with download locations for each homebrew game/emu on ds
I've had specific success with snemulds, metroid 3 runs fairly well but you have to switch layers all the time to see the map, but it runs 95% speed, definately playable. Scummvm works practically flawlessly now.
One thing you've got to worry about with DS is the varied flash/passkey/supercards etc that are out there. each one uses a different filesystem. so sometimes when a new card comes out you might have to wait a while until somebody brings out the revelent patch to make the homebrew work correctly.
PSP
http://forums.qj.net/f-psp-homebrew-discussion-12/t-guide-popular-emulator-installation-and-configuration-106161.html
Theres a lot of info regarding the best known emus for psp and how to configure to get the best performance.
PSP is by far the easiest console to mod and get homebrew running on. (well at least it was until the new slim ones came out, but that said it's still relatively easy to mod em) Once the system is modded it's just a matter of dragging homebrew onto your memory stick and running it from the game menu.
The Neo geo CD emulator is fantastic. it even plays games from zips (with very slight hit to performance). It plays metal slug at full speed and only slows down when theres a ton of stuff flying around the screen.
snestylme will play most games at full speed apart from the super fx games. battletoads plays nearly at full speed but only if you turn the audio off and have quite an aggressive frameskip. metroid 3 plays full speed until you get to the laser eye thing in the first section of the game. where it stutters to a halt.
I've yet to find a game the megadrive emulator can't play. in fact the games run faster than my pal versions hehe.
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fastbilly1
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If you count the Zodiac as part of the Palm family, it does runs Palm 5.0, then it runs:
NES
Genesis
TG16
Gameboy
GameGear
With very few hiccups, and SNES with a lot of hiccups.
MAME is a your mileage may vary sorta thing.
The gba has a decent NES emulator but that is about it as far as I know. I dont think you want to count the Gameboy/GBC rom setup do you?
Iphone has that NES emulator, a prototype PSX one, and rumors of a SCUMM one. Though I could be mixing up the Iphone with the Ipod Touch - I dont really keep track.
NES
Genesis
TG16
Gameboy
GameGear
With very few hiccups, and SNES with a lot of hiccups.
MAME is a your mileage may vary sorta thing.
The gba has a decent NES emulator but that is about it as far as I know. I dont think you want to count the Gameboy/GBC rom setup do you?
Iphone has that NES emulator, a prototype PSX one, and rumors of a SCUMM one. Though I could be mixing up the Iphone with the Ipod Touch - I dont really keep track.
Searching around youtube has shown the GBA to have a good looking Neo Geo emulator. I think it has SNES too.
Link wise, I've been looking at the PSP lately, and www.psp-hacks.com is a great site.
Symbian S60v1 and S60v2 have pretty good support right now. S60v3 was quite an overhaul because of the different resolution support, so it has much less software. I've got a Nokia E62 - I can't get scummVM to work properly on it, haven't figured out why. All the other v3 software is shareware with limited times, so I've given up trying emulation. iNES doesn't seem to work nearly as well as vNES.
Link wise, I've been looking at the PSP lately, and www.psp-hacks.com is a great site.
Symbian S60v1 and S60v2 have pretty good support right now. S60v3 was quite an overhaul because of the different resolution support, so it has much less software. I've got a Nokia E62 - I can't get scummVM to work properly on it, haven't figured out why. All the other v3 software is shareware with limited times, so I've given up trying emulation. iNES doesn't seem to work nearly as well as vNES.
Here's what I've been able to gather on the DS so far.
There are a LOT of flash carts for it that require varying degrees of modification (none to flashing) of your DS. A lot of them only support GBA or DS roms, so it's not really emulation. If you limit it to homebrew only it gets easier, but there are still a few options there. So far, I've found NinjaDS and DS-Xtreme both have homebrew support and are supposed to be pretty good. Price for both of them is over $100. The biggest problem I'm seeing with the DS is it seems to be pretty heavily fractured. Haven't even started looking at GBA yet, but the situation would appear to be the same there. The fracturing leads to some compatibility problems, not all the solutions use the same filesystem or whatever, so after getting the ROM you have to patch it too. Sometimes not though, so that could get hassly. I'm going to keep researching for a bit, but it seems that the DS Homebrew community isn't that strong because they have a lot of good DS games, so the main interest is apparently on pirating DS games. PSP Homebrew is apparently stronger because they don't have so many good PSP games, a number of people have the PSP just for homebrew and emulation. GP2X obviously is homebrew/emulation only.
DS has a weird thing that MP3s drain the batteries quicker than games, whereas the GP2X and PSP seem to be the other way around.
On the PSP:
Depending on the version you have, you're better or worse off. I would focus on Pandora's Battery method - each other firmware has a specific solution, some firmwares don't have solutions at all (except for Pandora) - the downside of Pandora is that you need an already modded PSP to make it work (or one running on 1.5). So if you get a PSP Slim as your first system, then you need to find someone else to mod it safely. If you want to be unsafe, you can take the battery appart, and desolder part of it - that's risky as you can get a VERY LARGE EXPLOSION if you fuck up. You can also buy premade batteries just for doing what Pandora does. I haven't found out yet whether you can properly format a Memory Stick to change the firmware without having access to a modded PSP - ideally there should be some PC software for it, but Sony seems to have done a good job of keeping the system closed so that it's hard to figure out.
GP2X is obviously plug n play as far as emulation goes, but I'm concerned that support for it might be dying. Some GP2X devs seem to have been getting bored, which indicates that what is available now is probably all there's going to be. Also, a lot of the support seems to come from GP32X, and their new system is the "Pandora", which looks like it suffers from all the mistakes that Atari, NEC, etc. made with their handhelds, and hasn't learned from Nintendo's success at all. In short the Pandora looks like a piece of shit, and a number of the GP2X devs don't seem to realize this and will likely jump from it. So while the GP2X has good design I think it'll pretty quickly become a retro device itself.
That brings up a point you should look into in terms of comparison: Future support. PSP will likely continue to have very good support. DS support doesn't seem to be as good, but again it seems like it'll keep going. GP2X, being much smaller looks like it might lose it.
Support for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm will probably continue, but they're even more fractured than the DS - hardware configurations vary so widely that it's pretty hard to properly review the OS.
iPhone will probably have good support on account of Apple's cult mentality, and it's a single design that also helps. Unfortunately controls will be an issue, with stuff like scummVM being excellent, and other emulators only working well for turn based games that don't require fast reflexes (actually, I think the same goes for most of the Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian ones).
There are a LOT of flash carts for it that require varying degrees of modification (none to flashing) of your DS. A lot of them only support GBA or DS roms, so it's not really emulation. If you limit it to homebrew only it gets easier, but there are still a few options there. So far, I've found NinjaDS and DS-Xtreme both have homebrew support and are supposed to be pretty good. Price for both of them is over $100. The biggest problem I'm seeing with the DS is it seems to be pretty heavily fractured. Haven't even started looking at GBA yet, but the situation would appear to be the same there. The fracturing leads to some compatibility problems, not all the solutions use the same filesystem or whatever, so after getting the ROM you have to patch it too. Sometimes not though, so that could get hassly. I'm going to keep researching for a bit, but it seems that the DS Homebrew community isn't that strong because they have a lot of good DS games, so the main interest is apparently on pirating DS games. PSP Homebrew is apparently stronger because they don't have so many good PSP games, a number of people have the PSP just for homebrew and emulation. GP2X obviously is homebrew/emulation only.
DS has a weird thing that MP3s drain the batteries quicker than games, whereas the GP2X and PSP seem to be the other way around.
On the PSP:
Depending on the version you have, you're better or worse off. I would focus on Pandora's Battery method - each other firmware has a specific solution, some firmwares don't have solutions at all (except for Pandora) - the downside of Pandora is that you need an already modded PSP to make it work (or one running on 1.5). So if you get a PSP Slim as your first system, then you need to find someone else to mod it safely. If you want to be unsafe, you can take the battery appart, and desolder part of it - that's risky as you can get a VERY LARGE EXPLOSION if you fuck up. You can also buy premade batteries just for doing what Pandora does. I haven't found out yet whether you can properly format a Memory Stick to change the firmware without having access to a modded PSP - ideally there should be some PC software for it, but Sony seems to have done a good job of keeping the system closed so that it's hard to figure out.
GP2X is obviously plug n play as far as emulation goes, but I'm concerned that support for it might be dying. Some GP2X devs seem to have been getting bored, which indicates that what is available now is probably all there's going to be. Also, a lot of the support seems to come from GP32X, and their new system is the "Pandora", which looks like it suffers from all the mistakes that Atari, NEC, etc. made with their handhelds, and hasn't learned from Nintendo's success at all. In short the Pandora looks like a piece of shit, and a number of the GP2X devs don't seem to realize this and will likely jump from it. So while the GP2X has good design I think it'll pretty quickly become a retro device itself.
That brings up a point you should look into in terms of comparison: Future support. PSP will likely continue to have very good support. DS support doesn't seem to be as good, but again it seems like it'll keep going. GP2X, being much smaller looks like it might lose it.
Support for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm will probably continue, but they're even more fractured than the DS - hardware configurations vary so widely that it's pretty hard to properly review the OS.
iPhone will probably have good support on account of Apple's cult mentality, and it's a single design that also helps. Unfortunately controls will be an issue, with stuff like scummVM being excellent, and other emulators only working well for turn based games that don't require fast reflexes (actually, I think the same goes for most of the Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian ones).
New portable gaming device "Pandora" gp2x successo
So I am seriously looking at buying a GP2X, and doing the mandatory research...
and I run across this
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/20/gp2x-community-system-dubbed-pandora/
a quick look around goggle found
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console) stupid BBCode.. can't seem to get this link working right. copy/paste.
http://pandora.bluwiki.org/
http://openpandora.org/
so now do I wait for this... or get a GP2X F200... or wait for the pandora to come out and then get a F200 after a price drop
I am interested in emulating old C64/amiga/atariST/DOS/etc games on the go and a keyboard would make that alot easier
it looks to have alot of similarities to subnotebooks (eee pc). I am very intrigued.
I see now that migo already mentioned it, and that there is a vocal minority in the gp32x community who don't like the 'pandora' and want to call it "a piece of shit" before its even in production.
I think I am the Pandora's target audience, it looks like the perfect answer for my needs. I am super excited
=Jubal=
and I run across this
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/20/gp2x-community-system-dubbed-pandora/
a quick look around goggle found
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console) stupid BBCode.. can't seem to get this link working right. copy/paste.
http://pandora.bluwiki.org/
http://openpandora.org/
so now do I wait for this... or get a GP2X F200... or wait for the pandora to come out and then get a F200 after a price drop
I am interested in emulating old C64/amiga/atariST/DOS/etc games on the go and a keyboard would make that alot easier
it looks to have alot of similarities to subnotebooks (eee pc). I am very intrigued.
migo wrote:Also, a lot of the support seems to come from GP32X, and their new system is the "Pandora", which looks like it suffers from all the mistakes that Atari, NEC, etc. made with their handhelds, and hasn't learned from Nintendo's success at all. In short the Pandora looks like a piece of shit, and a number of the GP2X devs don't seem to realize this and will likely jump from it. So while the GP2X has good design I think it'll pretty quickly become a retro device itself.
I see now that migo already mentioned it, and that there is a vocal minority in the gp32x community who don't like the 'pandora' and want to call it "a piece of shit" before its even in production.
I think I am the Pandora's target audience, it looks like the perfect answer for my needs. I am super excited
=Jubal=
The best and by far easiest to use cart for DS emulation/roms is the R4DS. That is literally plug and play. The only thing you need to get it working is a micro SD card. but they can be bought for about £5 for 1GB or about £12 for 2GB these days. Plus the R4DS is only £35. The fatlib has been released for the r4ds quite a while ago so lots of homebrew has been updated to be patched to work on the r4ds. Plus all roms work without needing for patching unlike supercards etc. Plus it's a slot-1 solution which means theres a standard cartdridge and thats it (no gba slot flash adaptors).
If you're going use the ds for emu/roms i couldn't recomend it highly enough.
If you're going use the ds for emu/roms i couldn't recomend it highly enough.