Short & Not So Sweet Review Of 2x On T3

[Epicenter]

"Murky" Images? The screen's disturbingly bright, maybe TOO bright. It's an incredible flashlight. It's almost a desk lamp. As for 'non-widescreen', that's a bad thing? 16:9 isn't used on any handhelds but the PSP for a reason. It's a shitty idea with no logic behind it. It makes sense on a video player, not on a game system.

The whole thing sounds like he has never operated an emulator in his life; he makes it sound like brain surgery. 'track down bits of code'? What? There is no 'code' .. you get a pre-compiled program and throw some files in a folder the readme specifies. If you can't handle that, you probably shouldn't be writing reviews of video game hardware.

Granted the whole thing is written from the perspective that the GP2X is supposed to compete with the DS and PSP and be dripping with commercial games .. any idiot could tell you it's not.

The bit about the shitty controls, though, I will agree with. And the AA battery bit is going to isolate the GP2X from most consumers-- when you buy a GBA you can use any batteries, you don't need to hunt down >2400mah cells and a charger before it'll even function. I've heard from people who thought their GP2X was damaged when it tore through 2 alkaline AAs in 30 minutes. That's a real barrier to any real decent market pentration right there.

 

[Parkydr]

Given, the lad-mag style of the magzine, someone should send them an SD card preloaded with pr0n. I bet you'd get a better review then

 

[Alex.]

the horrible battery life...

I use 2500mAh rechargeables and get around two days worth of battery life, and I use it plenty during my daily commute to play music, some games, and running my own developments.

"Murky" Images? The screen's disturbingly bright, maybe TOO bright. It's an incredible flashlight. It's almost a desk lamp.

I sometimes use it as a flashlight to get around the apartment at night I have yet to write a small SDL program that fills the screen white to maximize this potential

And the AA battery bit is going to isolate the GP2X from most consumers-- when you buy a GBA you can use any batteries, you don't need to hunt down >2400mah cells and a charger before it'll even function. I've heard from people who thought their GP2X was damaged when it tore through 2 alkaline AAs in 30 minutes. That's a real barrier to any real decent market pentration right there.

But the GP2X was never intended for "plug-and-play", that's why you have to buy an SD card, some decent rechargeables, download most of the content yourself, and read readme's before using it to its fullest potential

- Alex

 

[reiboul]

I sometimes use it as a flashlight to get around the apartment at night I have yet to write a small SDL program that fills the screen white to maximize this potential

Just use the TEST mode I must admit I used it at night to attract insects, before chrushing them with my Mighty Socket! h34r:

 

[Alex.]

I sometimes use it as a flashlight to get around the apartment at night I have yet to write a small SDL program that fills the screen white to maximize this potential

Just use the TEST mode I must admit I used it at night to attract insects, before chrushing them with my Mighty Socket! h34r:

The GP2X was supposed to be an instrument of love not insectocide

- Alex

 

[dennis20014]

This review is VERY negative, but like all of you said it's pretty accurate. However they seem to miss out alot of positive but o well, can't always get good reviews eh?

 

[sephiroth111]

I agree with the SD full of pr0n idea. and i also agree with the flashlight (i have mine on my DS strap) either way, the review sucked, but those people dont understand what a good thing it really is. not much of a loss.

 

[Elephant Gun]

The article criticises the GP2X because it is mainly for playing illegal roms.

OK...

Just for the record: I don't give a shit about using illegal roms found over the net. I must have spent hundreds over the years supporting Sega, Nintendo, and arcade games manufacturers, and am simply revisiting the glory days of gaming. I am also looking forwards to getting the new Nintendo console and seeing how the retro downloads will work there (for a price I am willing to pay). The big companies will always get there money if they make good games.

 

[Epicenter]

Most of the console games I emulate I DO legally own. I have the cartridges not 100 feet away from where I presently sit-- and they're what I play the most, because I grew up with them. But as much as I'd love to shove my 23" CRT TV and consoles in my pocket, that's not terribly feasible. If someone wants to make a case against me, they can have fun.

Also note the only people who give a flying fuck about emulation anymore is Nintendo, because they are the only company making a profit off their classic games today.

 

[markiej]

It's hard for Mainstream Media to gush to highly about this product. The main appeal of the gp2x, for better or worse, is that you can load this sucker up with thousands of "free" retro games and have an absolute ball working your way through them. Those "free" games are not really free, are they? In fact, they're not exactly legal. In fact, they're pretty much completely illegal to use (unless you happen to own the original).

I had an atari 2600 as a boy, a colecovision in middle school, an nes in college, and a genesis after college (& a Dreamcast a few years ago). I bought about 100 games or so total. I sold probably 40 of them. I have a legal right to those other 60 games, though I've lost all of them. Anything else which I may, or may not, have on SD cards to use on my gp2x, would be illegal.

The legal use of a GP2X - homebrew and ROMs you have legal rights to (and how many people have legal rights to any arcade ROM) is not nearly as incredibly amazing as the possibilities opened up by the ubiquity of illegal ROMs. I don't know if a legit publication can rave about that in good conscience.

So, I would not expect a legit publication to go too nuts about this console.

 

[LordFu]

Just for the record: I don't give a shit about using illegal roms found over the net. I must have spent hundreds over the years supporting Sega, Nintendo, and arcade games manufacturers, and am simply revisiting the glory days of gaming.

Make that thousands for me. I've owned literally every console from the NES to the PS2, except for the Sega Saturn. I've had a PC since the 486. I've spent thousands on games alone, not including the cost of the systems and accessories.

I still buy a dozen or more new PC games a year, and keep my PC hardware up to date to play the latest and greatest. I'll probably buy a Wii, when it's out, but the other two will have to become considerably cheaper to get my business. Flashy graphics don't mean much to a guy who has just as much fun playing Lifeforce or River City Ransom as I do playing more modern games.

Excuse me if I'm unsympathetic to game companies complaining about how piracy hurts them. Lack of creativity is a bigger problem, IMO. What? Your uninspired clone didn't break any sales records? I'm shocked. Maybe if you focused on gameplay instead of spending millions on flashy graphics for your shiny turd, you'd make some money.

 

[Nighty]

I still buy a dozen or more new PC games a year, and keep my PC hardware up to date to play the latest and greatest.

Heh, and do you find the time to play them all? It's funny how people evolve over the years; back in high school when I was just a little kid with not a lot of money, trading illegal copies of games was the only way I and my friends could get our hands on them. My old folks never saw any reason to buy me computer games, prefering to buy me "mentally stimulating" stuff like Lego instead. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, Lego was damn cool! Although it was illegal and immoral, that's what kids with no cash do. No point in complaining about lost sales, since I wouldn't have bought the game anyway because I just didn't have the money... Looking back on those times, games didn't cost me a dime (except for the physical media they were stored on) and I played every one I could get my hands on...

Flashforward to present time: I'm 29 now, been working for a couple of years, and buying games (both new and classic) on a regular basis for pretty much as long as I've been earning my own money. Heck, I even have an MMORPG account I haven't logged into for at least a year. Most of my gaming purchases never leave their jewel case, a few notable exceptions (Halflife 2, Quake 4, Juiced) notwithstanding... Nowadays when I walk past a game that looks/sounds interesting, or that I read favorable reviews of, or that's made by a company whose work I enjoyed in my freebie-days, I kind of automatically pick it up, more as a show of support for the creators than with any actual intention of playing it; I just don't have the time to play that many games anymore, and after a long day of staring at a monitor writing code, the last thing I want to do is stare at that same monitor again in the evening (I work from home mostly) playing games...

Software companies should worry less about "piracy" IMHO; I know many people like me who spent 10 or so odd years "stealing" games, and who'll now regularly buy new games they don't really need (no intention or time to play them) for the rest of their adult lives as a sign of support for the companies that brought them so many joys during their childhood/teen years. That's why it's called disposable income: I can easily part with the cash now, something that was pretty much impossible 15 years ago. As a result, I'm a lot less picky about what to spend it on.

As for the ROMs... Seriously, who gives a rat's ass? I don't think content creators should be able to make money off their ideas untill the universe collapses in upon itself. Make a game, sell it for as long as it remains profitable (usually no longer than 5 years) and then release it into the public domain already; what's the point of defending your copyrights on software you don't even sell anymore, software you're no longer making any profit on? You made something, you got your cash off it, and now you're doing nothing with it, so stop sitting on it, and let people who want it have it already; it's not like it's costing you any money to give it away...

 

[markiej]

Make a game, sell it for as long as it remains profitable (usually no longer than 5 years) and then release it into the public domain already

It should probably be longer than 5 years, but, anyhow, I've always been a fan the paypal system. I feel that the publishers and marketers should get their money for the first 5 years off retail channels, but the code-creators should be entitled to a little payola for as long as its fun.

Example, last night I found that the gameboy color version of Scrabble is a perfect gp2x game. I anticipate playing it a lot. I'd love to offer the creative team, say, $5 from paypal. I feel the same way about a lot of ROMs I have, like Faxanadu for NES, or puyo puyo for Genesis. Most of the ROMs I have I will play once or twice and find them too hard or not fun enough to play regularly, but the ones that really click for whatever reason, I would be glad to donate appropriately to the dev team. I like the thought of an old forgotten Japanese programmer (like guys who put Pooyan together) to get some extra Kirin money.

I think that there should be website with paypal links for all the ROMs & so-called abandonware out there. I doubt the publishers would go for it though.

 

[Nighty]

Make a game, sell it for as long as it remains profitable (usually no longer than 5 years) and then release it into the public domain already

It should probably be longer than 5 years, but, anyhow, I've always been a fan the paypal system. I feel that the publishers and marketers should get their money for the first 5 years off retail channels, but the code-creators should be entitled to a little payola for as long as its fun.

The problem is that the devs will never see that money anyway. The copyright does not belong to them, it belongs to the company they were working for when making the game or the publisher that published the game (depending on the agreement between both parties). And they won't get their money through the company they were working for when making the game either, since most of them will have long since moved on.

Now if the copyright to everything a programmer writes remained his, it would be a different story, but as a programmer myself I'm all too well aware that the copyright of everything I write during company time (or even during off hours, but written on company hardware) belongs to the company. And then there's the problem of how to split the cash; not everyone was equally important to the development process, some people may have just been onboard for a little while whereas others will have been part of the team for the entire development cycle, how are you gonna track them all down, how are you gonna figure out how much each person deserves, ...?

Elite was written by two guys in a garage, but most games are/were written by larger teams consisting of programmers, project managers, artists, ... It's not as clear cut who deserves how much...

 

[LordFu]

I still buy a dozen or more new PC games a year, and keep my PC hardware up to date to play the latest and greatest.

Heh, and do you find the time to play them all?

Short answer: no, many games I buy get played for less than 3 or 4 hours.

I don't think content creators should be able to make money off their ideas untill the universe collapses in upon itself. Make a game, sell it for as long as it remains profitable (usually no longer than 5 years) and then release it into the public domain already; what's the point of defending your copyrights on software you don't even sell anymore, software you're no longer making any profit on? You made something, you got your cash off it, and now you're doing nothing with it, so stop sitting on it, and let people who want it have it already; it's not like it's costing you any money to give it away...

Agreed.

 

[dsraa]

Damn lamers. I hate those kind of people....pretty much everyone I've shown my gp2x to thinks its better than a psp, and that's quite a few people. Probably a bunch of fucken ipod trolls. I really hate those people and now I hate them even more!!!

You know I don't own one ipod, and neither do any of my friends, because I wouldn't even have any friends like that, that were so fuckin lame to use an apple branded product, because macs SUCK!!! I wouldn't even reccomend an ipod to any of my friends, not even anybody in my family!! Like my cousin, she's got an ipod, andI even hate those mac commercials, with the two idiots that are acting like ones a mac, and ones a pc, those are stupid as hell too!! I don't even find those remotely funny, they are just sad, because they are so stupid!!!


End of Rant

DSRAA

 

[craigix]

On the subject of buying things i used to pirate, am I the only one buying all my DVDs now because they are so damned cheap in tesco?

Most of their DVDs apart from the top 25 titles are £2.99, £3.99 or £4.99 now.

Got some great titles lately, I heart Huckabees for £3.99 was my weekend buy. At those prices I can't be arsed to torrent them.

 

[Shikaku]

Got some great titles lately, I heart Huckabees for £3.99 was my weekend buy. At those prices I can't be arsed to torrent them.

o.0

I wish something in America had the same thing...

 

[Nighty]

On the subject of buying things i used to pirate, am I the only one buying all my DVDs now because they are so damned cheap in tesco?

Depends; I still torrent stuff if I wanna see it like now, and not somewhere next week, but other than that I find I'm buying more DVDs as well, though I usually stick to the budget titles because 25 Euros for a movie is just too much... At around 15 I start considering it reasonable though.

Lucky for me, most movies I like are pretty cheap anyway. Seems like Hollywood is making a good fortune off of the chav crowd, and releases the good stuff to us Homo Superioris at a more reasonable price. :lol:

edit: Oh, and TV shows; I torrent those as well. Some of them don't even air here, or are lagging 2 seasons... Others I can pick up if I want to, but I just can't be arsed to shedule my life around a TV show, and since my MythTV keeps crashing every so often I use the Internet as my VCR instead.

 

[LordFu]

I've been picking up a lot of DVDs in the bargain bin. Hot Shots: Part Deux FTW!