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wolly wotsit

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this is from the latest Gamesmaster UK mag

Zodiac.jpg


Dosnt even mention the zod's underground following, or the capability to emulate the snes

i reckon craig should write in and put all their facts straight, and that he already retails them.

ps the UK release should be cool
 
The Radio 5 (i think) breakfast show with Phill Jupitus mentioned it could play emulators, they were playing NES (possibly LJZ) for a few minutes on air which was quite funny. They did however mention it was a grey area so I can understand why some people dont want to mention it.
 
Guyfawkes posted on Oct 29 2004 at 08:27 AM said:
The Radio 5 (i think) breakfast show with Phill Jupitus mentioned it could play emulators, they were playing NES (possibly LJZ) for a few minutes on air which was quite funny. They did however mention it was a grey area so I can understand why some people dont want to mention it.

wow i feel honoured that you replied to my topic, u dont post much do you?
nice 2 see u again
 
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Guyfawkes = respected coder.

I'd probably be a little starstruck too. :p


Esentially you cant use the seedy underbelly of the grey zone to sell a product. it's got to win people over on it's massmarket merits. Probably why the gp32_console has som much trouble. hard to sell something that excels in aiding "quote,unquote" piracy.
 
Wow, starstruck over coders eh? Times have changed I guess.

Tapwave don't seem to be pushing the homebrew aspect of the Zodiac and you only have to look at Zodiac Gamer to see how large a portion of releases are commercial. Knowing that I'm not surprised by this article. How many reviews of the Zodiac even mention emulators etc? I mean real proper reviews by big sites. I'm almost certain that none of them do.

Any PalmOS based PDA can run the emulators so they can't point those emulators out as something only the Zodiac can do. In my eyes they are emphasising the big selling-point of the Zodiac, its gaming controls.
 
Im bored at work so wasting time on various forums :) Not sure about me being a respected coder but I do a bit of coding.

The Radio 5 review of the Zodiac was quite interesting, the review lasted for around 5 minutes, they spent half of that playing Mario on NES and the rest was talking about some other games (Bowling in particular which Phill liked alot) and the media player.

It's a tricky when advertising something, especially with the Zodiac as its a jack of all trades, depending on who you speak to you will get its a Pam for business use, games machine, media player, emulator system etc. The emulation area is a grey area on all machines and while more people are opening up to it, emulation is still seen as being dodgy because of the legalitys, take Firestorm on the Zodiac for example. Zodiac is a commercial machine in the same way you can say it about the GBA, DS, PSP etc so the majority of reviews will be based on their commercial software.
 
Most of the emulators are Palm based which can run on most Palms, but a few such as LJZ are currently Zodiac only. A few others such has the PC Engine emulator take advantage of the Zodiacs hardware like landscape view, the controlls, graphics chip etc.
 
Unless Tapwave specifically instructed magazines not to mention emulation, I don't see the harm in advertising the fact it can play various emulators. They're a grey area, but (most of) the programs themselves are not illegal.

Is it available in the UK yet? I'd get one if I saw it cheap :p
 
Its kinda available in the UK now, PC World should have them, Dixons and Currys will have them now or over the next weeks depending on which store you visit. Unfortunately the price is very high, £269.99 for a Zodiac 1 and £329.99 for a Zodiac 2. Hopefully after the Dixons group deal is finished in February the prices will drop when there is more competition.
 
I'd hope so! £270 might be a decent price for what you're getting, but right now it doesn't really do much that my GP32 can't or the PSP/DS won't. I'd consider getting one at around £150, though.
 
wolly_wotsit posted on Oct 29 2004 at 08:14 AM said:
PS sorry its so big, dunno how to make it smaller, just scanned it this morning


Howcome you are obsessed with the Zodiac? I don't see that many errors there. It WILL have a hard time competing with the DS and PSP. It has emus yes, who cares the GP32 has emus too, and even more of them.

The "commercial" games for the system consist mostly of tweaked Palm stuff. It will be hard to compete with PSP with those.
 
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I was just wondering why. I had a Zodiac and I didn't think it was all that. I guess if you never had one you want one more because it is a bit different. My recommendation would be to keep the GP32 for emus/homebrew and get a DS or PSP for commercial stuff.
 
No problem with the big pictures as most browsers auto-resize anyway. It just means more download for 56k owners.

As for the article, well, it's pretty correct really isn't it? Sure, it doesn't mention emulators, but like other people say, I'm not so sure that can. Besides, they are probably just using the software preinstalled on it for them and not even bothered to look for additional software.

The Zodiac does have the capability of being able to emulate more than the GP32, but it means developers need to optimise for it, which most people don't as they are too lazy or don't have enough time (and I do include myself in this). Don't take this the wrong way - I know a lot of developers work hard, but normally when porting an emu is concerned, hardly any optimisation is done on the actual core itself - work is normally just done on the gui/etc.

Yes, I know what Yoyo did for Snes emulation, before you click the "Post reply" button.
 
wolly_wotsit posted on Oct 29 2004 at 09:14 AM said:
PS sorry its so big, dunno how to make it smaller, just scanned it this morning
Umm... you use ImageShack. When you upload the image it provides you with forum code to post a thumbnail!



In fact ImageShack advise you to do this to save on their bandwidth, plus you'll save 56kers some trouble if they don't want to look at the image, plus it takes up less page space.
 
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