Questions from a prospective buyer


baghee

Still Fresh
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Nov 10, 2003
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1
After a few years of frustration with playing games on my Casio Pocket PC, I came across the GP32, which if it meets my expectations would make me regret buying the Pocket PC. So here goes:

1. Other than the front-light is there any difference between the GP32 and the GP32 with FLU?

2. Can games/emulators be run from the Smart Media Card or do they have to be on the memory of the unit?

3. How does the front-light compare to that on the Gameboy Advance SP? Worse, Same, Better?

4. I am most interested in playing games from NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Atari 2600, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and ColecoVision. Can anyone suggest the best emulators for the following and note the cost and whether it runs full speed:

NES -
SNES-
SMS-
SG-
Atari 2600-
GBC/GBA -
ColecoVision-

Thanks! :D
 
1. None, really, other than the chance of getting an overclockable version, which, to me, is over-rated. Overclocking isn't needed much for the GP32.

2. Not quite sure what you mean by that, but you do need a SMC to play anythign on the GP32.

3. Hmm... well, looking at it it's slightly dimmer, but not noticeable dimmer. The GP32 is illuminated well by it's front light. It's worth the extra money to dish out and get.

4. Well, I would like to say that the GP32 has more to offer than just emulators. It also has some great ports of Doom, Wolf3D, and I couple other great games (that I can't think of off the top of my head). But I'll give you my opinion of which ones are best out of the ones I play.

NES - Little John
SNES- Snes9xGP or something like that, SNES doesn't run full speed on the GP32
SMS- fSMS
SG- Genesis? I believe there's GenEmu out there for download and try, but it only runs .SMD files
Atari 2600- I don't know what it's called, but it exists
GBC/GBA - There's one for the GBC and there's one for the GBA but it does not play commercial GBA games
ColecoVision- I don't think there's one for this....

There's also GPEngine (an emulator of the PC Engine/Turbo-Grafx 16 system) that's definately worth checking out.
 
1. The FLU has an on/off switch for the light, and drains batteries faster when activated (obviously).

2. The emulators and ROMs are stored on the SMC. When you actually play the game, it's loaded into the 8MB RAM for quick access.

3. Don't have an FLU...I can guarantee that the non-FLU is more visible in dim/middling light than the GBA, and it's easier to find a comfortable viewing angle.

4. Emulators...

NES - (Little John GP32 0.4) Great, perfect, excellent, full speed, astounding, incredible, magnificent, stupendous, awesome, etc. running out of superlatives here...

SNES- (SNES9xGP for sound and save support, SNESemu if you just need speed) Playable without sound, pretty choppy with. Overclocking can help, though, but few games can reach more than 15 FPS with sound. Remappable keys on SNES9xGP do a good job of making 6 buttons from 4.

SMS- (fSMS32, SMS32) Full speed with sound, frameskip 1 (30 FPS) for some games though (also applies to Game Gear).

SG- (GenesisMu) In the same league as SNES, but no sound or save support as of now.

Atari 2600- Haven't tried...I imagine it would run great, given the GP32's power

GBC/GBA - (GPvGB Test, fGB32) GBC runs at frameskip 1 or more in basically everything. Optionally, screen stretching extends the image to fill out the GP32's larger screen. GBA...well, you can count the frames per second on one hand.

ColecoVision- (ColEm 0.3) Seeing as it only needs to run at 66 MHz, I figure it's close to full speed (haven't used it, though).

Also notable are CaSTaway/GP (Atari ST) and GPEngine (PCE/TG-16), both run at a snappy framerate with sound.

And all the emulators are 100% free. :D
 
the gp32 does not have any space to store files, anything you run on it is run from the smart media card. The coment made about it loading into ram could be misleading. The gp32 does have ram but it does not have a harddrive or anything to save files on bored. The flu and regular are the same unit however the flu has had a light installed. The light is pretty much the same thing as the afteburner mod for the orignal gba.
 
ROM over 8MB cannot be emulated unless for smc buffering is used but as the smc is slow, some people have tried to add memory so that its 32mb, but preferably you could try to buffer the rom data onto the smc.
 
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