Is It Worth Dropping The Money On A Caanoo Now?

[replicashooter]

Never really been into these portable emulation stations as they all seem to lack something but I really fancy a bit of MAME on the go and am looking at the Caanoo for satisfaction.
 
How is the MAME emulation on it? Bear in mind I'm allergic to frameskipping and lag but quite keen on shooters like Mars Matrix and old school stuff like Chase HQ.
 
Also how's the controller for SSFIIX and suchlike?
 
 
Finally, if anyone in the UK wants to sell their Caanoo then please let me know - Cheers.

 

[SammyCRX]

The biggest problem (for me at least) is that there aren't that many people using them now, so help with problems is fairly limited.  For example, I'm trying to work out how to get a keyboard working for the Spectrum emulator and I can't get any information or find anything online.
 
MAME is pretty good on Caanoo, but not all games work.  I really wanted to play Chase HQ, but I'm pretty sure it won't work on there, so I've been limited to the NeoGeo and SNES versions (neither of which are much like the original, at least not as I remember it).  More generally, the games that do work tend to run quite nicely, but you'll need to fiddle with the settings.  And you'll find a few which don't run very nicely (Atari ones in particular seem to run quite poorly).  Turning off the sound will help in most cases, although that ruins the experience for me.  The SNES and Megadrive emulators are excellent and they're probably the ones I use the most.
 
I don't regret buying my Caanoo and I play it fairly regularly, but you'll need some patience to get stuff working...

 

[LTStone]

Mame- no ChaseHQ
 
Try turbographix for chasehq and maybe amiga
Analogue controller is not good for me for fighters
FBA will play all the Streetfighters up to alpha3 but you cannot change the button mapping.

 

[replicashooter]

No ChaseHQ? NOOOOOOOO
 
All of the other formats were crap in comparison to the arcade version. Thinking about it I'd probably be better of grabbing a netbook and building a tabletop MAME out of it like this:
 

 
Loses a lot in portability but the screen, control and quality of emulation more than make up for it.
 
BTW - Does anyone know anything about the forthcoming GCW Zero and if that would be better with Mame/Amiga?
 
Cheers

 

[LTStone]

In that case have have you thought of getting a Pandora? Its an emulation powerhouse.

 

[replicashooter]

I had considered the Pandora but the iffy build quality and hohum reviews put me off as well as the price. I could make a nettop arcade machine for less than £200 but ideally I'd prefer something portable...
 
Decisions decisions...