gaterooze
Coltrane Sundia
Okay, so I finally got around to buying a GP2X Mk2. I sold my GP32 last year and really missed it. I put off getting a GP2X because I was just too busy to use it, but my better half pushed me into getting it now.
I purchased it from GP2X.net.au, which I *highly* recommend to Australian customers. Excellent service, super-quick, and a great price. Also got the AC adapter, which came with both Euro and Oz plugs.
As with the GP32, I was again surprised by how small the unit is -- definitely a good thing. After using it for hours straight today, it doesn't hurt my hands at all. Very light, but it feels quite solid. Pulled the film off the LCD, but left the one on the battery/power strip.
The screen is enormous and super-sharp. Getting the viewing angle correct is important, but I found that setting the gamma to around 1.6 in the excellent CPU/LCD Tweaker program makes a huge difference and the angle becomes less important. Just have to work out scripts and whatnot to set it permanently. I also found that in MAME, when flipping the screen vertically, it helps to titlt slightly to the side (which is really the bottom of the unit). In any case, the Mk2 LCD is brilliant and old games have never looked better!
I was rather worried about the joystick from reading the forums the last few months, and when I first used it in the menu it seemed stiff, and the left direction was unresponsive. However, after playing games for a while the stick feels great! Shooters were accurate, platformers a breeze. Sometimes my thumb slips a tiny bit when moving down (note: I am using the new GPH cap), but I've learnt to adjust for that. btw, the new cap is not pointy at all, it just looks that way in the photos. I also unscrewed the cap a very short distance higher (0.5mm at most) which helped the left direction, as the underbelly of the cap was hitting the rim of the joystick aperture. I think I may try to fashion a small, cylindrical stick-cap to use between the fingers like an old-style stick, just for kicks. But as-is, it's absolutely fine.
At times the buttons feel too close, but again I'm getting used to that. Most emus allow you to re-assign buttons to Y/B, which is easier. The buttons themselves are okay, especially the L/R shoulder pads (the best on a handheld yet). I initially would have preferred a volume wheel than buttons, but after playing 1942 vertically in MAME, I'm actually pleased they went this route!
Speakers are good, quite loud with Volume Limiter off. Everything else physically seems great, especially the SD slot. I like the rubber port-guards as well. My Energizer 2500mAh AA's have been running for, I dunno, 3-4 hours so far and are still going strong. Haven't tried the AC adapter yet. I also picked up a TV-Out unit from Lik Sang a couple of weeks ago (was ordering something else at the time!) but haven't used that yet either. Nor have I used the USB cable, I just use a card reader. My SD (had it for a while) is a 1GB A-DATA 60x, which has no problems.
Oh, and I can overclock to 275 stable. I can reach 280 for a while in some programs, but above that it crashes immediately.
The inbuilt video player is brilliant. Music player is pretty good, but I haven't played around much with it yet. The photo viewer is excellent. Menu is fine, although other skins really make it come alive
Onto 3rd party software... WOW. Everything I've tried has been utterly fantastic. I haven't had time to test a lot, but here are some first impressions:
Homebrew games:
* Frozen Bubble -- excellent Zuma clone.
* Kobo Deluxe -- nice shooter, seems to be built on the ideas of Hunter's Moon, right? Very enjoyable.
* Tilematch -- Zoo Keeper, and a great version of it.
* Blockrage2X -- quite a decent Columns clone.
* Vektar -- everyone knows how good this is
Emulators:
* DrMDX -- flawless. Well, just about. The occasional glitchy title (e.g. Comic Zone) doesn't take much away from the thousands of perfectly emulated Genesis games!
* hu6280 -- yowza this is good! More or less perfect.
* MAMEGP2X -- superb, of course.
* SquidgeSNES -- I have to read more about the settings, because most games seemed fairly slow (or 'skippy') to me. I think I'm just using it wrong -- a script to overclock should help immeasurably too, once I work out how to do those. Still, it's very promising -- Super Mario World ran fullspeed with sound!
Other:
* Quake -- marvellous to see this on a handheld. After turning the brightness up and remapping the controls (L/R for turning, thanks), it was a real treat.
That's all so far, pretty much a random assortment. Much more to come in the following weeks. My biggest problem now is working out how much $$ I can donate to some devs!
Overall impressions:
Screen: A
Joystick: B+
Build quality: A
In-built software: A-
Homebrew software: A+
I purchased it from GP2X.net.au, which I *highly* recommend to Australian customers. Excellent service, super-quick, and a great price. Also got the AC adapter, which came with both Euro and Oz plugs.
As with the GP32, I was again surprised by how small the unit is -- definitely a good thing. After using it for hours straight today, it doesn't hurt my hands at all. Very light, but it feels quite solid. Pulled the film off the LCD, but left the one on the battery/power strip.
The screen is enormous and super-sharp. Getting the viewing angle correct is important, but I found that setting the gamma to around 1.6 in the excellent CPU/LCD Tweaker program makes a huge difference and the angle becomes less important. Just have to work out scripts and whatnot to set it permanently. I also found that in MAME, when flipping the screen vertically, it helps to titlt slightly to the side (which is really the bottom of the unit). In any case, the Mk2 LCD is brilliant and old games have never looked better!
I was rather worried about the joystick from reading the forums the last few months, and when I first used it in the menu it seemed stiff, and the left direction was unresponsive. However, after playing games for a while the stick feels great! Shooters were accurate, platformers a breeze. Sometimes my thumb slips a tiny bit when moving down (note: I am using the new GPH cap), but I've learnt to adjust for that. btw, the new cap is not pointy at all, it just looks that way in the photos. I also unscrewed the cap a very short distance higher (0.5mm at most) which helped the left direction, as the underbelly of the cap was hitting the rim of the joystick aperture. I think I may try to fashion a small, cylindrical stick-cap to use between the fingers like an old-style stick, just for kicks. But as-is, it's absolutely fine.
At times the buttons feel too close, but again I'm getting used to that. Most emus allow you to re-assign buttons to Y/B, which is easier. The buttons themselves are okay, especially the L/R shoulder pads (the best on a handheld yet). I initially would have preferred a volume wheel than buttons, but after playing 1942 vertically in MAME, I'm actually pleased they went this route!
Speakers are good, quite loud with Volume Limiter off. Everything else physically seems great, especially the SD slot. I like the rubber port-guards as well. My Energizer 2500mAh AA's have been running for, I dunno, 3-4 hours so far and are still going strong. Haven't tried the AC adapter yet. I also picked up a TV-Out unit from Lik Sang a couple of weeks ago (was ordering something else at the time!) but haven't used that yet either. Nor have I used the USB cable, I just use a card reader. My SD (had it for a while) is a 1GB A-DATA 60x, which has no problems.
Oh, and I can overclock to 275 stable. I can reach 280 for a while in some programs, but above that it crashes immediately.
The inbuilt video player is brilliant. Music player is pretty good, but I haven't played around much with it yet. The photo viewer is excellent. Menu is fine, although other skins really make it come alive
Onto 3rd party software... WOW. Everything I've tried has been utterly fantastic. I haven't had time to test a lot, but here are some first impressions:
Homebrew games:
* Frozen Bubble -- excellent Zuma clone.
* Kobo Deluxe -- nice shooter, seems to be built on the ideas of Hunter's Moon, right? Very enjoyable.
* Tilematch -- Zoo Keeper, and a great version of it.
* Blockrage2X -- quite a decent Columns clone.
* Vektar -- everyone knows how good this is
Emulators:
* DrMDX -- flawless. Well, just about. The occasional glitchy title (e.g. Comic Zone) doesn't take much away from the thousands of perfectly emulated Genesis games!
* hu6280 -- yowza this is good! More or less perfect.
* MAMEGP2X -- superb, of course.
* SquidgeSNES -- I have to read more about the settings, because most games seemed fairly slow (or 'skippy') to me. I think I'm just using it wrong -- a script to overclock should help immeasurably too, once I work out how to do those. Still, it's very promising -- Super Mario World ran fullspeed with sound!
Other:
* Quake -- marvellous to see this on a handheld. After turning the brightness up and remapping the controls (L/R for turning, thanks), it was a real treat.
That's all so far, pretty much a random assortment. Much more to come in the following weeks. My biggest problem now is working out how much $$ I can donate to some devs!
Overall impressions:
Screen: A
Joystick: B+
Build quality: A
In-built software: A-
Homebrew software: A+
