A Few Questions About This Neat Little Machine

[J-Stik]

I've been looking at this thing for some time now and I understand it is still fairly new. I looked at youtube on emualtion for this thing and it seems to not run emulated games perfectly (with the exception of genisis/megadrive) but when do you think I could expect those brilliant emulation geeks to make nice working emulators from NES to SNES? Also I noticed that their are GBA emulators for the handheld but they don't work too good, do you guys expect that they'll work perfectly someday, cause if they did I would instantly be sold for this thing.

Now some of you may want to kill me... but what is homebrew :blink: I honestly don't really have an idea what it is and it seems to be a big feature for the system. Also what about running old pc games like duke nuke'em, do they work nicely on the system?

Also are their any like... first party games, or a game cartridge slot or does it soely rely on SD cards for putting games on it?

Thanks in advance, i've been looking at this but still not sure about getting it. If emualtion up to GBA would work perfectly I would get it without a second thought.

 

[bhess]

I do not own a GP2X myself, but I plan on buying one very soon. But I believe that most emulators are playable like NES, MAME, Genesis\Megadrive, many NeoGeo games are playable, lots of SNES games are around 90% speed, also, the GBA emulator has been making a lot of progress lately.

As for what homebrew is, it is basicaly original games that people make for a system.
As for 1st party games, there are like 2-3 commercial games, and they are bought online and they are stores on SD cards.

 

[Mudi]

Emulation is steadily improving... recently things have been going pretty well on the emulation front.

Some dos games have interpreters written, like my own CloneKeen2X for the Commander Keen series, but running the original games through DosBox or whatever tends to be very slow.

The SD card is the cartridge, Vektar was released on a 128MB SD card. It's just as valid a game cartridge as any.

 

[gaterooze]

Everything below the SNES (including NES, PC Engine, Commodore 64, etc) is fullspeed. SNES is fullspeed with sound on ~90% of games. Atari ST and Neo Geo are fullspeed with sound. Amiga is reaching fullspeed on many games, but compatibility is at around 70% or so. PSX is about half-speed at the moment, with great scope for improvement. GBA will probably become more or less full speed in time, but it will be hard work.

Duke Nukem 3D runs perfectly, it's brilliant. As is Quake, ScummVM (LucasArts adventure games), Ultima VII, and other PC favorites.

If the only reason you want this unit is for GBA piracy, then for less than half the price you can get a GBA SP + flashcard, which will play whatever ROMs you want.

The GP2X, however, offers *so much more*.

 

[jrrsteve]

Absolutely right gaterooze, and once you see the quality of the screen and watched a movie or two, its then that you realise just how good the GP2X really is.

 

[J-Stik]

Just GBA games? hah no, I was going more along the line of like... if it can run gba games then it would be able to run many other things as well but mosly i just want this thing for emulating everything. If PSX got to full speed that would be sweet but since psx doesn't use roms (iso's/ other images) wouldn't that kinda consume the whole sd card just for a psx game or two?

Well anyway thanks for all those answers, i'll keep an eye on this thing and I might consider ordering one from liksang. thanks a ton

 

[DaveC]

Just GBA games? hah no, I was going more along the line of like... if it can run gba games then it would be able to run many other things as well but mosly i just want this thing for emulating everything. If PSX got to full speed that would be sweet but since psx doesn't use roms (iso's/ other images) wouldn't that kinda consume the whole sd card just for a psx game or two?

Well anyway thanks for all those answers, i'll keep an eye on this thing and I might consider ordering one from liksang. thanks a ton

PSX will never be fullspeed. It is a 3D system and the GP2X is not. Plus the fact that emulating a 33 mhz MIPs + polygon engine and other hardware with a 200 MHz ARM is never going to be fullspeed. Yes the files are huge and guzzle card space like mad. Basically PSX is very impractical, I don't even bother. If you are a PSX nut that will get a thrill seeing it running , even if it is like a quick slideshow, then you would like it. Otherwise forget PSX.

The other stuff is good enough reason to get the unit though.

 

[gaterooze]

To be fair, there are a couple of 2D PSX games running fullspeed right now, and using PocketISO the file sizes can be improved, e.g. Castlevania: SOTN is down to 85mb.

I agree though, that it should just be viewed as a nice bonus, not a reason to get a GP2X (yet).

 

[yalborap]

To be fair, there are a couple of 2D PSX games running fullspeed right now, and using PocketISO the file sizes can be improved, e.g. Castlevania: SOTN is down to 85mb.

I agree though, that it should just be viewed as a nice bonus, not a reason to get a GP2X (yet).

Speaking of SOTN, what's the performance like on that in particular?

 

[Epicenter]

I'm inclined to agree with DaveC on this one, except the bit about card space, since you can remove extraneous files like FMV videos to get game sizes down to a tenth their former size at times. But performance is never going to get dramatically better than it is today, unfortunately.

 

[gaterooze]

Speaking of SOTN, what's the performance like on that in particular?

About half-speed. It looks lovely, but sloooowww...

 

[yalborap]

Speaking of SOTN, what's the performance like on that in particular?

About half-speed. It looks lovely, but sloooowww...

Damnable limitations!