Got My Wiz

[HunterZ]

Finally got my Wiz the other day from ThinkGeek, which I intend to primarily use for running various 8- and 16-bit console emulators. Had a 4GB SDHC card that wasn't being used, so I've been loading it up with emus and ROMs.

Things I've noticed so far (wall of text!):

Unboxing/Accessories:

• It came in a nice-looking cardboard box with only the device (with stylus in its integrated holder), a USB cable, a quick-start guide, and a mini-CDROM with a manual on it I think (which I haven't looked at).
• The USB cable is able to charge the device from the AC/mains instead of a computer's USB port if I plug it into an iPhone power brick (handy for using it in bed).
• Looks like it was pre-loaded with the latest firmware.
• The Wiz is small, about the size of an iPhone but thicker. This is of course a double-edged sword in a portable device. Fortunately the only real annoyance I've had with this is that it is sometimes hard or uncomfortable to reach the A/B/X/Y buttons when holding the device in certain ways.
• I have a generic FAT32-formatted Kingston 4GB SDHC class 4 card that was lying around unused, and it seems to work fine.
• So far I haven't found a way to reset/reboot the Wiz without powering it off and back on. I have had to do this a LOT while testing and learning things.

Software:

• So far I've loaded gpfce-wiz (NES), PocketSNES (SNES), Temper (PCE/TG16), LemonBoy and ohboy (GB/SGB/GBC) and a bunch of ROMs for each. I plan to also install a Genesis emulator eventually (hopefully today).
• I've noticed that none of the emulators seem to support goodmerged .7z archives (not really a surprise) but that all except for ohboy support .zip files of individual ROMs. As a result, I've gone through a big production of uncompressing my goodmerged ROMs, running goodtools on them to sort them into folders, deleting the folders I don't want to waste SD card space on (non-English games, most hacks and PD ROMs etc.), then using Linux to create individual zip files for each ROM (a folder at a time via: find . -name "*.whatever" -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 -I {} zip -9 -m {}.zip {}).
• The diagonal tearing is noticeable in all emus, but it's usually subtle enough to not be distracting. The exception to this is when it is visible due to the screen flashing, but that doesn't bother me too much either. Also, gpfce-wiz has a "rotation" version that apparently tries to alleviate this, but it seems to do it by trading out the diagonal tearing for an even more annoying flickering effect (imagine if the tearing still happened, but the tear line was rapidly moving across the screen).
• Most emulators seem to map game controls functionally rather than spatially. This might make sense if you're not familiar with the original console's controller layout and want to be able to map on-screen button instructions to the labels on the Wiz's buttons, but I find that this can cause problems because some games intend to have certain buttons grouped together so that they can easily be used together. Fortunately, most emulators where this matters also allow you to change the behavior, either by remapping, or by "swapping" (as I just found out with PocketSNES) between functional and spatial mappings.
• I've found that gpfce-wiz sometimes fails to load a ROM the first time I tell it to for some reason. Trying again usually works.
• gpfce-wiz has great compatibility. I usually test new NES emus with some tough games like Castlevania III (tricky mapper), Empire Strikes Back (digitized sounds), Crystalis (mapper/graphics jitter) and a few other games and it handled them all fine. I did notice that some VS games don't load, and an FF2 Japanese-to-English translated ROM I have has some graphical glitches on the title screen (haven't tested it in other emus recently though, so it may be "normal").
• When I initially installed PocketSNES, I set up INIs for both it's "compat" and "fast" binaries. I noticed that only the "compat" binary would launch for me this way, but that both launch just fine via the Launcher tool on the Wiz's main menu. In light of this, I've decided to forgo using INIs for anything to maximize compatibility. Could this be what is causing problems for people trying to run PocketSNES on the Wiz?
• PocketSNES seems to be able to run Super Metroid at 60fps with transparency enabled, at least through the intro sequence. I think I may have seen a dip to 45fps when fighting Ridley at the beginning, but I'm not sure what clock speed I was running at at the time. I also had the emu freeze on me a little before reaching Kraid the first time; so far that seems to be a freak accident (*touch wood*).
• LemonBoy has a pretty menu and zipped ROM file support, but I hate all of its scalers and the default screen size is smaller than that of the original GameBoy. ohboy has very pretty scalers that do a great job of proportionally enlarging the picture, but it has sparse menus and no zipped ROM support. Doh! I wonder if there's a good GP2X GBx emulator that I can run with GINGE?

 

[Darkknight512]

That is pretty much what I would say about the Wiz. Try using a different GUI for launching programs like Gmenu2X or Win2X, they are faster and you don't need to use INI files so less mistakes. They also let you underclock or overclock for programs that don't have it built in, for example I have my Wiz underclocked to 30 Mhz for Reader2X so when I'm reading book I have about 1 more hours of battery. If you have not checked it out yet, take a look at PCSX4ALL if your into Playstation One. It is currently in version 2 of the beta but they already have a few games running at playable speed, most notably being FF7.

 

[HunterZ]

Thanks, I'll look into those suggestions.

Update on PocketSNES: Doesn't work as well as I thought at first. Seems to like to lock up a lot unless I run it with GINGE, which cuts the framerate down to 30-45FPS much of the time.

Got PicoDrive installed with a bunch of Genesis ROMs and it runs great.

 

[Darkknight512]

Thanks, I'll look into those suggestions.

Update on PocketSNES: Doesn't work as well as I thought at first. Seems to like to lock up a lot unless I run it with GINGE, which cuts the framerate down to 30-45FPS much of the time.

Got PicoDrive installed with a bunch of Genesis ROMs and it runs great.

The Wiz's that have been coming out of ThinkGeek seems to have problems with PocketSNES for some reason.

 

[HunterZ]

Yeah, although the problems I've been hearing about are with not being able to run it at all. Oh well.

 

[lnx64]

I was wanting to use the Gmenu2x, but every time I quit games, emulators or apps, it goes back to the Wiz built in menu.

I have no idea how to prevent that.

 

[Darkknight512]

I was wanting to use the Gmenu2x, but every time I quit games, emulators or apps, it goes back to the Wiz built in menu.

I have no idea how to prevent that.

I'm not sure, I know Win2X does not have that problem.

 

[geise69]

I love using Win2x. I think it's a very nice program. On my old GP2X i loved GMenu2x, but it has issues on the Wiz and it was never officially supported by the original author. Give Win2x a try. If you like it there is an install for it so it loads as the default interface. Also regarding PocketSNES, make sure you are using version 7.1.0. Profiling was added to give an increase in FPS for some games.

 

[belal1]

I just got my Wiz yesterday from ThinkGeek and have been testing out the device as much as possible.

My first impressions was:
1) Small device! I was expecting something a bit bigger, even though I've seen size comparison on some youtube reviews.
2) Someone needs to write GPH a letter concerning how terrible their English is. I mean...WOW. Frankly I feel it's so bad I'd volunteer my time helping them with their English.
3) PocketSNES locks up. I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong but I've tried to play Chrono Trigger and it keeps locking up after beating Gato (The Singing/Dancing Robot at the beginning).
4) The buttons up front are too close but I did not really have much of a problem using them even with my big fingers. The Left and Right shoulder buttons however are more of an issue. I wish they were more toward the center. If the front buttons were more spaced out, then the shoulder buttons would have been fine.
5) The Flash games run spectacularly well. I wish more games were included.
6) The Built-In games are real gems. Animatch and Tell Tail are my favorites so far.
7) I hate the proprietary plug they have at the bottom. It's horrendous and will be a headache if the cable they supplied ever gets lost.


Other than that, I love the system. I'm super happy that I did not buy the Dingoo A320 at this point. The Wiz seems like a more quality system but they really have to work on that English because it makes the whole system feel cheap at times. I love how we can download an emu from openhandheld.org and it'll just work. That's really awesome. And I hope more homebrew games come out. Personally, I'm more interested in these homebrew games than the emulation aspect.


-Belal1

 

[HunterZ]

Belal1: That sounds almost exactly like my experience so far, except that I haven't explored flash games or the built-in games. After being burned by all the shovelware on my iPod Touch, I'm enjoying playing some quality classic console games via emulators. I did install Cave Story, POWDER and OpenTyrian though to see how well they run (pretty good it seems).

I've also experienced PocketSNES locking up, and it's disappointing; it seems I can make it more stable with GINGE, but at the cost of a significantly lower framerate. I've put aside my desire to play Super Metroid for now and am exploring NES and Genesis emulation, both of which seem to work much better on the Wiz (diagonal tearing is the only issue they have, and it doesn't bother me). Emulation of the original Gameboy is also decent, except that the screen size isn't a good fit; OhBoy has scaling that looks great, but everything else about it is not as nice as LemonBoy, so that's kind of annoying.

 

[mnm]

3) PocketSNES locks up. I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong but I've tried to play Chrono Trigger and it keeps locking up after beating Gato (The Singing/Dancing Robot at the beginning).

I had the same problem with chrono trigger (freeze after beating gato), you just have to use Pocketsnes 6.5 for that specific game and everything will work fine.
Also for Chrono trigger dont forget to enable transparancies in the option menu and put the cpu at 600Mhz or more (660Mhz work nice for me).

I was wanting to use the Gmenu2x, but every time I quit games, emulators or apps, it goes back to the Wiz built in menu.

From what i read it's because on the 'exit' line code of almost every program built for the wiz there's a command that launch the default wiz menu. You have to edit each program code to fix it.