Is The Caanoo For Me? Or Do I Ask Too Much?

[ZeroAX]

Hi everyone, nice to meet you.

Even tough didn't know open consoles existed outside hand-made projects until a few days ago the truth is that I'm quite interested in one. I have always played emulators on my DS but a console that could give me more than the usual 16 bit fun is something to really consider but I really fear I'm asking too much out of a portable or that I would be better served by a PSP or just stick to what I already have.

My interest mainly hinges on a couple of games, how do they work?

OutRun (MAME): This is one of my favourite games of all time but the only video of it being played in the Caanoo runs very slow since apparently the console is running at 533Mhz. Does it run well if overclocked? Is it hard to overclock? What about Turbo OutRun?

Civilization II/C&C Red Alert/1830: Railways and Robber Barons (Dosbox): Having those games working would instantly make the console worth it to me. Unfortunatedly, I don't know how demanding those games are and while they ran perfectly in my old 486, it was a 66Mhz machine, which probably was quite powerful at the time.

OpenTTD/XCOM: UFO Defense: Those games have been ported. How well do they run? Are they really playable?

PSX Emulation: While perhaps I can't run some games via Dosbox, I'm thinking I could play CivII and Red Alert through PSX emulation. How good is it? Unfortunatedly this leads me to a PSP, since using a port would also mean not using the touch screen.

What do you think, am I asking too much? Should I consider other portables or just screw the whole thing? I'm really willing to learn

Thanks a lot, this community looks really involved and I appreciate it

 

[foleyjo]

For outrun wait and see. There are some developments going on with Mame and FBA . Check the news thread for more info

Dosbox can be hard to setup but some of them games should be available on the PS1

PSX Emulation is not perfect however some games work without issue. There are even games that don't work on the PSP but will work fine on caanoo. I also find it's easier to use L2 and R2 by mapping them to the touch screen.

 

[Akabei]

For all of your dosbox games. I guess most of them won't run at a decent speed(can't tell about 1830: Railways and Robber Barons, as I don't even know the game). Civilization II on the other hand, works great via the psx emulator. I never tried Command and Conquer, but I think it won't please you playing it without a mouse(that was my opinion, when I bought the game for my ps1, back then).

 

[ZeroAX]

Hey, thanks for your responses!

It truly seems like most gamse I want to run on DosBox seem to be too demanding for the hardware. The games I have seen emulated tend to be older titles while CivII is from 97, way newer than anything I have seen emulated on Youtube. So you are probably right most games will run too slow as people say that you can get only to a low-end 386 and those games are very much in 486 territory.

The problem of using PSX emulation is that it wouldn't incentive me to get an open-source console since the PSP alredy does that for the games I really want. And that kind of makes me sad because I really want one of these consoles, they look so fun! But it seems I'm missing an edge and as much as I love XCOM, it doesn't seem enough to make the jump.

Apparently the Pandora can run CivII so it might run C&C and 1830 but it's far more expensive than the Caanoo

Thanks!

 

[wuerzet]

Maybe check for the Android OS handheld console ?