A few questions

[cyrilsmith]

I am thinking of buying a gp32.I have a few things that have crossed my mind and I would be grateful of the help. 1) can the the gp32 use an emulator such visualboy advance plus gba roms. 2) I f the answer to question one is yes , then do the roms that are say 8mb in size on the pc transfer to 64mb on the smc.(my flash2advance will only hold 3 games on a256mb cart because of space needed to save games and the OS). 3) Assuming you can store an emulator and roms on the gp32 ,is it also possible to have a couple of mp3's and a 64mb avi, all on the gp32 at the same time for example. 4)I've heard that it is possible to get 2 hours of AV onto a 128 smc. What is the quality like when the files are so small.5)The player for the movie and the audio and the emulator would also need to be stored on the media card as well as the actual media, surely there is not enough room on a 128mb card, or is there. 6) FINALLY ( sigh of relief) The gp32 boast wireless linking.What applications are already in use for gp32 that uses the wireless feature. Are there any multi-player games available that use this feature.?????

 

[ralp99]

1. if you're asking if the GP32 can play GBA roms, then no, not yet, perhaps not ever anyway. emulators in development, to whatever degree, but it's not getting huge support for a variety of reasons. if you want GBA, buy a GBA (though it sounds like you've got one already). if you're asking can a GP32 emulator on the PC play GP32 games, then yes, it's called GeePee, though I myself have never used it.

2. unlike the GBA flash system, GP32 + SMC card deals with Megabytes, just as your PC does (as opposed to referring to things in terms of megabits, as is the case with GBA system like I said above.) So yes, 128 MB card for GP32 = 128 Megabytes. Capice?

3. you can store a ton of stuff on a larger SMC card at one time (max. currently is 128 MB - there's larger card sizes but they are not the proper voltage to work on GP32). So yes, you can fit movies, music, games, simultaneously.

4. haven't used the movie player myself yet. people around here generally say things look really good cause the screen size of the GP32 is smaller than a PC monitor, and thus doesn't need to run a film with larger than 320x240 resolution - also you can get away with lower frames per second. I have heard people say that if you split a film across two 128 MB cards, it looks quite comparable to DVD quality.

5. you can fit a lot of stuff on a card at once. I think most people around here shell out for two or three cards, so they can have a couple of movies and a card full of games I'd imagine. You can fit a LOT of high-quality games on a single 128 MB card. And no, you cant write stuff to GP32's internal memory, all the emulators/software/etc has to be stored on the card - internal memory just has the system BIOS + registration info.

6. wireless linking - again, haven't used it. some emulators are starting to support it though (so if you and a friend each have a system and are playing 2-player, you can play together without having to have a gameboy-esque cable between them).

I believe there is support in the works for GPengine (PCE) + NES emulators for this, at least.

hope that helps!

 

[cyrilsmith]

Thanks alot . Quite alot for you to wade through. I think i'll buy one, maybe two.Keep the kids entertained watching simpsons or recess while driving through France.Handy little hand held then, that can only get better as more software is developed .

 

[ralp99]

don't know that I'd recommend it for "kids" as it's more aimed at the retrogamer folks (people who prefer to play games developed at least a decade ago!) -- in general you'd think GBA would be more up their alley. also it's not a "take it out of the box, flip the switch on, play a game" kind of an affair, you gotta be at least a little computer savvy to hook it up and get gaming/DIVXing/etc (though if you're smart enough to register a nick and find a GP32 website, you're probably savvy enough at that point!)
anyway if they are truly gearheads, than who knows... (though it sounds to me that you're just looking for an excuse to buy one... go for it!)