Racketboy

I’ve recently had some interest in this nifty GP2X as it has a GREAT deal of potential if you are interested in portable game emulation in addition to watching videos on the go. Sure, Sony’s PSP is a beautiful device in the same price range and obviously has better commercial support, however Sony has been doing its best to keep homebrew emulators and apps from being able to run on the device.

Sure, if you are determined to play your homebrew stuff on your PSP, you can do it, but there is a bit of a hassle involved. That is the appeal behind the GP2X — it’s actually made with homebrew stuff in mind. There is very little commercial support behind it. Instead, people develop all sorts of good stuff for this powerful handheld — from Linux, to media players, to console emulators.

I’m far from an expert on the device, but I’m going to try to share the info that I have dug up that might be of interest to gamers that are in the same situation as me.

First of all, I’m a little wary of the GP2X scene right now as I prefer being an end user rather than being in the thick of the emu community. People get excited when a GBA emu starts running at 40% speed versus 30% a month ago, while I prefer a mature release when things are at 90%-100%.

Pros

• SNES and Genesis Emulator: All the original Sonics, and *ALL* the 2D Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana?
• Portable gaming, video, and music that will edge out the PSP. Dedicated homebrew scene that is actually encouraged, and support for various nerd friendly formats like OGG & XVID.
• TV out for when I get sick of the tiny screen. Full screen output so 720*480 will look correct on the TV.

Cons:

• Serious compatibility issues off the bat. Video can play too fast, sound out of sync, weird scanlines and errors.
• Emus can only really start development after console release. So it may take a year for things to smooth out.
• Joystick instead of D-Pad. A bummer considering the D-Pad prevalence in SNES/Genesis.
• SD format. I use CompactFlash because my Canon digital camera uses it. SD won’t see any multiuse for me, especially if I get bored with this unit or if unit breaks.
• Homebrew beta machine instead of primetime release.
• Terrible battery life.

A lot of these things should be ironed out. Firmware updates should increase battery life (everything is at 100% power drainage for now, no sleep modes). Also there have been attempts at GBA and PS1 emulation, and the hardware is presumably dual 250mhz Arm9 procs, so it has the potential power for it. Just needs optimization.

I’m not ready to drop $200on this thing quite yet, considering the inevitable headaches in store. And now that the awesome, new DS design has been revealed I’m paying more attention to its emulation scene. I would love to still be able to play my real GBA carts (plus DS games) and I think the dual screens and stylus support has some real potential.

Anyway, if anybody has any additional info/opinions, I’d love to hear them.

Here are the links that I found helpful for the GPX2:
Wikipedia
Lik-Sang
Domino.org

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Portable Gaming, Emulation