x68000 posted on Sep 4 2005 at 11:18 PM said:
the screen will not be bigger on the psp when playing emulated games as they have a native 4:3 ratio, so the screen on the gpx2 will be a good 1/2" larger whilst playing them.
Several PSP emus have excellent hardware scaling, NeoGeoCD for example can go full screen and looks brilliant, as well as several scaled 4:3 modes.
No resolution is optimal for all emulation. The GPX2's 320x240 is good but not perfect. For example, if you want CPS1/2 (384x224) emulation - you either have to cut 64 rows of resolution off or scale the image DOWN. Either way, the GPX2 is incapable of displaying every detail - so you will NEVER see a CPS2 game on GPX2 without missing 20% of its graphic detail. It may still look acceptable, but you will probably notice the difference. By contrast, devices like the PSP or Zodiac have plenty enough resolution to show every detail in that case. So the PSP resolution does have its advantages.
Next, we have systems that are significantly smaller than 320x224. NES is 256x240. Without scaling it looks like a square. It's not supposed to be that shape, it should be 4:3. On GP32 scaling was too slow to do smoothly. But on GPX2 you will have the video hardware to smoothly scale it to the correct aspect ration. So you WILL need to use scaling to get every system to its proper aspect ratio. And MANY retro systems were 256x240 (or 256x224/256).
Let's suppose we get lucky and GPX2 is capable of good GBA emulation. GBA is 240x160. Which unscaled would like a weird little rectangle. You need scaling to make it look better.
The main advantage for 320x240 is some systems will fit that nicely, like most (but not all!) Genesis games, NeoGeo games and several arcade platforms. They won't need any scaling to look right and be full screen or close to it. It's with emulators for these systems that the GPX2 has its main advantage over PSP - the PSP basically has to scale EVERYTHING to have full screen. The GPX2 in some cases won't need to scale anything. But in many cases it will.
Everyone knows I'm excited for the GPX2. But people should also realize that its not perfect. No system is.