Did You Get Your Retail Wiz? Post About It Here!


I got my Wiz yesterday from the gp2xstore. Here are my first impressions:

It is a little bigger than I expected. I can carry it in my pocket, but with the leather carrying case it feels as bulky as my first iPod.

Even though the surface is glossy, it has a slight texture on it, so it doesn't attract fingerprints much. The red on the console looks metallic, which did not look like that on any of the photos. It's cool, though.

I made a mistake while installing the screen protector, so the bottom of the screen is not covered. Once I start a game I don't notice it, though.

The screen is very bright.

I have seen the diagonal line a few times, but it doesn't bother me that much.

The touchscreen was way off until I calibrated the screen. Now it's way better (still not perfect).

The d-pad doesn't feel as good as the one on my Game Boy Micro. I'm having trouble changing directions in games like Ms Pac-Man.

The buttons are a little too close to each other, but I can get used to it.

I like the fact that I can rotate the "portrait" games like Ms Pac-Man and Burger Time so they take up the entire screen. That alone justifies the purchase of the console. Of course, that makes the controllers harder to use, but who cares.

I cannot judge how easy are the diagonals to perform, because as far as I know, you cannot reconfigure the button configuration in MAME4ALL, and I'm used to the Neo Geo CD controller. So I cannot do the special moves in games like Fatal Fury Special. If anybody knows if the buttons can be reconfigured, please let me know.

Speaking about Neo Geo games, the Wiz does not have enough RAM to load some of my favorite Neo Geo games, like King of Fighters 98 and Last Blade. A shame. You also have to overclock the Wiz so there is no slowdown on Neo Geo games, but that doesn't bother me. At 700 MHz Neo Geo games don't have much slowdown.

Some games have too much detail to be really "viewable" in such a small screen without hurting your eyes. Metal Slug is almost like that. Money Puzzle Exchanger is definitely hard to see in such a small screen. But there is no way in hell I would like a larger screen. This is my first GPH console; one of the main reasons why I never had a GP32 or GP2X was because I thought they were too big.

The strongest feeling I have about the Wiz is that it feels like a PC, not like a console. I stayed until 3 am last night configuring the games in MAME so they ran properly, and I'm not done. Some games like Gradius, Gradius II, Moonwalker, and Mortal Kombat don't run properly or at all, even though the package I got is supposedly complete. But what I lose in plug-and-play I gain in customability. Once I finish tweaking it, I will only have games I like there. I am happy with it and see myself taking it with me for years.
 
got mine today ,it was a lot easier to configure and start up emulators than my previous experiences with emu on the ds ,screen is great only problem i had was that the buttons feel a little spongy and it is wider than expected ,so all in all very impressed ,going back now to play more robocop arcade on it , :lol:
 
Got mine on Monday. First GPH console I've owned (I've got a GP32, GP32 BLU, GP2X F100 First Edition and a GP2X F200) that didn't make me think the controls were added in at the last minute after someone pointed out that perhaps a games console should have some sort of dpad/joystick/other input system.

"Holy crap," they'd say, "we need a *joystick* on this thing?"

Anyhow. Size is perfect. Weight is just right. D-pad works so far (not tried diagonals yet). Other buttons work. It boots in less than an hour and a half, which is a big improvement over the GP2X. Finally, GPH seem to have got it right.

Except:

Diagonal glitching on the screen is very noticable in every application - I even can see the menu redrawing one half of the screen before the other. Strangely enough, I didn't notice it so much in Sonic.

I haven't tried the touch screen yet. If it's as bad as the utterly, utterly atrocious GP2X F200 screen I'll be very disappointed.
 
I have only one complain about the wiz , I wish this thing brought its own wall charger this whole USB thing is gay. Everything else I can live with.
 
Mine's been sitting at home for a few days while I finished up my school year at the dorms, but now I'm back home and I got to open it up today. So far I'm in love. I've played NES, SNES, and Sega CD games on it so far, as well as some Sudoku app that had a simple name (Sudoku2x maybe? I already forgot but I think that might be right). I was especially impressed that the Sega CD emulation was so smooth. The sound stutters a little, but I kind of expected it. I've played a bit of Night Trap and Sewer Shark, as well as fondly remembering how bad I am at Dragon's Lair. Oh well, now that I can take it with me anywhere maybe I'll get better. It took some tinkering with the settings to get Night Trap to run for some reason but now it's just fine. The only game that I noticed the diagonal tearing in was Marble Madness, and frankly I wouldn't have noticed it if I wasn't looking for it. I only genuinely notice tearing between screen changes, like when closing or opening an app, and that's not really a PROBLEM of any sort. The size is also fantastic for me, but I have small hands so others might not agree. The controls have also been great, I especially noticed this with Marble Madness, it's a thousand times better than playing it on a keyboard or on the NES. The controls were so smooth that the only issue I had was my own clumsiness, which is a first for me (in the past I definitely made mistakes but there were still plenty that I blamed the controls for). I was worried about the touchscreen but after I calibrated it it worked just fine, it double clicks sometimes without me meaning to but it's not a real issue. Over all I'm very excited to finally get my Christmas (!!!!) present, and I'm glad that I wasn't disappointed.
 
I was presently surprised to receive mine this past Monday. I did not expect it, and my wife called me and said, "You've got a box!"

I admit I was a bit puzzled, but realized that it was the Wiz.

Anyway, my initial impression is that the hand held looks great, and I have become nearly addicted to boomin2x. Now, what I thought was that the Wiz was already shipping and had a user base and development base. It appears that I am wrong, and I am one of the first users. Therefore, applications and the knowledge base is limited at this point.

However, I have one unfortunate problem, but not with the Wiz itself. :)

I own a DS, a GBA Micro, and a PS2, and currently I am playing games to finish on all three. Add to that work, fishing, playing basketball, reading a book, etc. My time for the Wiz is a tad short.

The Wiz looks great, feels great, and this is my first non-standard console of any time in my 20+ years of gaming. The jury is still out on how well it will end up. However, it does look very promising.
 
I am new to all this and just got my WIZ - can anyone point me in the right direction for where to start on how to build my own games to run on the wiz.
 
I ordered two on Sunday from dynamism because gp2x store was sold out. One arrived on Wednesday and apparently they made a mistake and the other one will arrive on Friday. I can't get my mp4 movies to play on it and the flash games run to slow to be playable. I was wondering if anyone knows what’s wrong. Other than that it is beautiful. The screen looks so good it should be fake and it is perfectly sized. I want to see if it can play n64 but I can’t find a wiz emulator for it.
 
I got my my Wiz finally from GP2XStore yesterday. For me, everything is great. The flash games are WAY too slow, and screen tearing is a bit of an issue in games like sonic 3D blast. Will someone please recompile PicoDrive with the Open GL ES that is now on the archive?
 
chickendung posted on May 22 2009 at 03:21 PM said:
I got my my Wiz finally from GP2XStore yesterday. For me, everything is great. The flash games are WAY too slow, and screen tearing is a bit of an issue in games like sonic 3D blast. Will someone please recompile PicoDrive with the Open GL ES that is now on the archive?
Click to expand...
I don't think its as simple as a case of going #include <OGLeslib.h> and compiling ;).
 
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chickendung posted on May 22 2009 at 10:57 AM said:
Well, if it is hard, I have about 70 bucks for donations. Also, someone needs to make a better SNES emulator. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
It's still very early days. Basically until more devs get a Wiz and fall "in love" with the device, things will be slow. There's always a slow period at the start of these types of hobbyist devices, as devs explore them and learn what's possible. I think a few flaws (screen tearing, RAM issues) may still be discouraging development, but once those are addressed things will pick up quite a bit. The overall design seems quite nice, probably GP's best effort so far.

Give it a few months yet. By Xmas I bet we'll see lots of wonderful emus and apps on the Wiz.

And consistently full speed SNES emulation remains one of the "holy grails" of handheld emulation. Hopefully the Wiz will get some solid SNES emus in the future. I think it has the speed to pull it off pretty well. And like everything else, I'm sure SNES would look stunning on that OLED screen.
 
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