> NES works great.
Perfect, full speed and sound @ 133MHz.
> SNES works almost great.
About full speed with frameskip 2 and no sound @ 133MHz.
I like to think, that sound is only a problem, because the SPC700 engine is not optimized yet.
> GBC works great.
Not GBA, but GBA emu is on the way.. Don't expect it anytime soon, but it might be completed sometime, and then you will regret buing GBA.
> Master System - works great.
Perfect, yes, but all the master system games suck. Really.
> Genesis/Mega Drive- no sound yet (I think) but graphics & gameplay are fine.
No. There IS sound.
It depends, if you are running games, with don't use coprosessor for sound. Games I tested that worked:
Dynamite Headdy
Gunstar Heroes
Sonic 1 *
Phantasy Star IV *
* these are very fun games, worth checking out.
> GBA is under development...
Yep, like most the stuff is.
> Scummvm (Monkey Island, etc) works very well.
Not Monkey Island 2 - I never got past the copy protection..
This is OLD port, so I had problems with some of my LucasArt/Lucasfilm games and
Beneath a Steel Sky did not work. Beware, I own almost every game SCUMMVM supports, so... Most of them worked fine, though. I have tested the following to work perfectly:
Zak McKracken (both Original and 256-color version without soundtrack)
Maniac Mansion
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Following games I did not get to work:
Beneath a Steal Sky (did not regonize)
Monkey Island 2 (could not get past copy protection)
Day of the Tentacle (I tried to copy the CD version without sounds, and it crashed)
I don't know about the mp3/ogg-support, because I wouldn't use it anyway. It takes way too much space on SMC.
> C64, Atari ST, Atari 800, Spectrum, etc are all almost perfect emulators.
Yes, if you like that stuff.
> Plus loads of great free homebrew games (eg. the brilliant Giana's Return).
Doom! You forgot Doom!
All the doom versions run at full speed with sound and music. I even heard there are some doom mods working..
"King of Fighters '91" was pretty good also.
And try "GPFinalWar" too.
I liked some other projects too, like "Universal Mercenary" and "Drunken Arcade Master"
Ofcourse there is Tetris, Sokoban, Solitaire, Chess and stuff like that.
> And the Linux port...
Yep, it is for people with chatboard. I don't have one, did not bother to try.
> How can you even consider getting a GBA SP?
Easy, better games are made for GBA SP. But you have to be very rich. Either you buy all your games or do piracy, which is a bad thing. If you want to get your copied games to work, you have to buy special hardware, which costs over 100e, and I'm not sure if it work after that. You can put 1-4 games on a small flash card, that you fake your GBA to think is an SMC carridge. And ofcourse, it is illegal.
Here:
GP32
+ You buy SMC card (< 50e)
+ About 50% larger screen, than your GBA
(in pixels (320x240), and in size)
+ Cheap
+ Normal Rechargeable batteries run fine
+ My GP32 is blazing fast with 133MHz
+ You have great development tools and community, if you want to do something yourself
+ Lots of FREE software
- Not so many games, as GBA
- Korean, so expect no support from GamePark, liksang and gbax will propably give you some, though. And manual is in English
GBA SP
+ Great games, big industry support
+ Can connect to your GameCube, but you need atleast 2 to make it fun
- You buy EZ2Flash card (> 100e)
+ But with card you can create your own programs
- End of product cycle (PSP, Nintendo DS, anyone?)
- Small screen
- Custom LiIon-battery (it dies, you buy replament and it costs)
- Slow (GP32 is roughly 10x faster), only GBA games run fast (there is no SNES emulator for GBA, guess why?)
So GP32 is like this custom thingy, and everybody writes new interresting stuff to it, and GBA is like old and "good enough" system, that has many games, because so many people have it - not because it is better in any way. Most of GBA games are remakes (Super Mario Advance, Sonic...), but some are actually good new games (Metroid Zero/Fusion, FFA Tactics) . Most of GP32 games run in emulator, and you should watch the community to get the latest games and patches, but it is fun. Sadly, most of the best stuff is still in beta, so you have to be active.
PS. DivX is fun. But don't go there. Your SMC is small. And you get about 1 megabyte/1 minute . So, you can fill your SMC with one movie. And you have to re-encode (eg. load many programs, and calculate more than 2 hours) to watch that movie. Load up games and demos instead.
