Zodiac Vs GP32


bmd3287

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Which do you think is better...Zodiac...or Gp32. I personally take pride in the gp32 and I dont really think the zodiac looks that great. It has a whopper of a price tag at about $500 for zodiac w/128 MB. I just dont see the point. Also, they are charging 20 bucks each for old genesis games that we can play free on the gp32!!! The graphics are great but I will stick with my GP32....until the PSP comes around. :D
 
The Zodiac has GREAT potential.

It's obviously better than the GP32, it just doesn't have the software right now.

I have the money to pick up a Zodiac but I'm waiting until decent fullspeed emus come out.

Until then GP32 > Zodiac.
 
Thats all true, but zodiac is charging people to play old games (You cant just download emulators and roms and play on the zodiac). Tapwave is trying to make it so that you cannot just download roms...you will have to buy the games for $20 a piece (golden axe, altered beast, etc.)
 
zodiac charging for roms (essentially) - I can understand that.
that's one of the major differences between gp32 and zodiac - low profile vs. high profile. Only a few people on the periphery of the mainstream have any idea about the GP32 or what it does, and the fact that it's "true" purpose is to be an emu box, essentially (yes, and homebrew of course -- but let's be honest..) The Zodiac, well they are advertising hardcore (relative to the GP32, anyway) with billboard signs and mentions in lots of PDA mags + websites and etc - and though the system certainly has great potential to be an uber-kickass emu box, they can't really portray it as such as that's still a very grey area.

the case is different than when you say "oh but then all PC's or PDA's are illegal if they can run emulators --" well that's not the point. PC's and PDA's can run emulators of the (questionable) roms for various systems but certainly no one is buying them just for that purpose (well, next to no one). Whereas a system like GP32 or Zodiac, it's pretty evident that it's primarily a game system - I guess the Zodiac can claim to be a PDA as well, but it sure LOOKS like a game system! Anyway if they don't want to get off on the wrong foot in their battle against GBA, Tapwave (like Gamepark) can't officially condone the use of "questionable emulators" - and leave it 100% up to the homebrew/developer scene to fend for themselves in that department. Which is pretty much how it's always been in any event, to whichever degree.

what emulators will we see for the Zodiac, then? Beats the crap out of me. The system is so brand new, I don't see how people can be jumping all over it just yet and having serious expectations - the scene needs a good 6 months to a year (at least) to organize and and learn the ins and outs of the system. I know there's apps for it already, but if you want to see some heavy duty business along the lines of SNES and Genesis and the like it's going to be at least a little while, understandably - if at all. I think we can all safely expect some worthwhile emu's to pop up sooner or later though.

I'm real happy with my GP32. It's got most of the bases that I want covered already, and I've already got more than my money's worth of enjoyment from it - the only way I'd trade up for something else would be for the usual (perfect snes, genesis, fairly decent mame/neo geo) and at a price much closer to GP32 than Zodiac - which means I will be waiting awhile, and that's just fine with me.
 
Actually a snes emu is almost out with the same specs as the gp32 one in only the first beta!
Since its open sorce people can play emulators and roms and create emulators.
And u can jus download roms, right now we have nes sms and castaway and work fine and more will come in the next weeks.
Though you do have the option of buying games(classic,ect), but u dont haft to since there will be emulators for it soon.
The gp32 is still cool for a two year old system,but its a small company.
Zodiac will b bigger and beter than the gp32 also they has 2 sd card slots that can hold 1 gig cards so thats two gigs with the internal 128mb
they also have smaller cards(128,258,500,ect)
 
I just dont like the idea of some new handheld gaming system coming along and charging WAAAAAY too much and turning all the GP32 fans into zodiac fans. I really couldn't care less about the zodiac. I am sick and tired of people basing all video games by how they look and it seems that is what tapwave is trying to do...impress people with graphics. "You can't judge a book by it's cover." <_<
 
I think that what happened was, a lot of people bought the GP32 until the false pretense that it was not long until SNES, Genesis + etc would be perfectly (or close to perfectly) emulated.. even the GBA! Looking around these boards the past year, you heard a lot of that kind of talk being thrown around by people getting a little excited - not knowing what they are talking about, essentially (getting excited by what was slowly coming down the pipe). And it has been a very fruitful year, for what it's worth.

Anyway, another device with that much more power has just come out (Zodiac, obviously) and the same people who shelled out for GP32 and got disappointed/impatient are giving it another shot, upping the ante with the higher price tag of the Zodiac. I'm sure many are just watching to see what happens, also.

It's a shame because that could kill the scene (if all the enthusiasm jumps right over to Zodiac right away then it deflates GP32 base, and the few dev'rs we have are tempted to hop onto the "more powerful, possibly easier to program for" machine).

But it also kind of cleans house of the "gimme romz0Rz" lamers and leaves behind the people who truly appreciate the GP32 for what it can do, and we get less posts every #@(*@! day "where's snes where's snes where's snes!!!!!" Obviously we still have some generous, diehard coders still cranking on the thing (now that they've spent all this time + energy learning how to develop for the freakin' thing!) and a pretty extensive library of vintage stuff to weed through as it is - if all development stopped tomorrow, there'd still be a hefty share of satisfied customers.

So don't'cha be all worryin' yo...

--EDIT--
plus I think a lot of us still really appreciate the GP32 + it's "outsider" spirit as compared to the Zodiac's obvious commercial/corporate goals - GP32 was quite obviously designed by fans (and priced accordingly), it's very sincere and it's idiosyncracies are what make it really cool (hell they even managed to squeeze a front lit version out, how cool is that!) - GP32 and Zodiac are for different kinds of people.
 
THe gp32 still has the power until zodiac comes out with more emulators than the gp32, witch will take a long time, even if the community here crumbles and shutdown, it will still be there and people will still code for it look at amiga for example. Thens theres might be a gp64 if gp32 dose semi well in spain(or whereever it is) and england.
 
ralp99 is 100% right.

I would also like to add that anyone bashing the Zodiac is just in denial or too poor to afford one. That thing kicks the pants off the GP32 hardware wise, right now it doesnt have software but that was the same story with the GP32 a year ago. Just give the Zodiac coders a few months go work on their projects and soon enough you'll see emulators for all kinds of systems, systems that would never be possible on our beloved GP32.
 
You do know the Zodiac runs PalmOS, right? So that means it can run any currently available PalmOS application. Since it's one of the more powerful Palms out there, there will be plenty of applications it will be able to run.

So what if it's expensive compared to the GP32? It can also do a lot more than the GP32 can right out the box (excluding other software/apps that may need to be installed). Things such as built-in Bluetooth, built-in video + mp3 players and built-in jpeg viewer. Vibration capabilities. Built-in rechargeable battery.

It really is one of the first multimedia handhelds because it has all those things built-in to it upon purchase, no need to install outside software. With the GP32, you have purchase a DivX video player. Sure, the GP32 had a buil;t-in MP3 player, but it wasn't that great of one anyways. I haven't been able to test out the ky2aa or whatever one.

For the $400 premium Zodiac2 package, it's not such a bad deal. One of these days I plan on puchasing a Zodiac2 myself. I will not bash it just because I don't have the money for it. I'd rather bash it if it was a bad console, but it doesn't appear to be one except for the small joystick problems they appear to have, which they seem to fix anyways.
 
Do u think its really worth that much to shell out all of that money? And does anyone know how the file transactions work? like is it like the old palms where u hotsync it?
 
What I don't like about it is the battrey... No swaping it :( You can use it for 5hrs or so, then you have to wait until you get to an outlet to recharge it... No matter how manny batries you have
 
Yeah, that is a little poor.

And yeah, the Zodiac connects through a USB cable or cradle and hotsyncs with your PC. I was researching the Zodiac earlier so I could turn in a project before it was too late.
 
NssOne posted on Dec 12 2003 at 04:37 AM said:
You do know the Zodiac .... Built-in rechargeable battery.
LiION battery packs suck ass water. :angry: NiMH AA cells are at 2300mAh capacity, and you can swap in a new set when one goes dead. Try that with 99% of the devices that use crappy LiIon packs! You will be hunting for a mains power outlet to suck power from :lol:

Even better, I can carry a few extra (and dirt-cheap) pairs of NiMH AAs around, and use them with whatever device happens to get used most that day. With LiIon, I would have to carry separate (and expensive) proprietary extra battery packs for each device, or carry around a bunch of wall warts (and search for wall sockets) for each device. So much for the weight savings of LiIon! :lol:

AA NiMH rules, LiIon packs suck! ;) So far, I've been able to avoid buying devices that depend on crappy LiIon packs, and I would not buy the Zodiac for that reason alone. :p
 
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Although I think that the Zodiac is a very nice machine and clearly superior to the GP32, I am scared of it. My fear is that it will be one of the 3DO/CD32/Jaguar's of the decade.

Say what you want for/against the PSP, it will have a huge impact on any "lesser financed" handheld in similar market segments, more so for any with less 3D flash (Zodiac,n-GAGE).

I'm not betting $500 against Sony right now...
 
Compare the GP32 to the zodiac what it actually can run now.

The GP32 can run most classic consoles at decent speed. While the zodiac can ONLY run atari st at a decent speed (and that much slower than the gp32, even though it is the same emulator, castaway). One of the reasons is that the Zodiac must keep the OS running at all times as well as the emulator, which, naturally, is much slower. The GP32 has no OS draining CPU while an emulator is running.

It is possible that in a few years the Zodiac will run emulated consoles better than the gp32. But in a few years there is bound to be something better than the zodiac on the market any how. The way I see it, the Zodiac is pretty much a flop.
 
You were very biased in your comparison of the Zodiac to the GP32. The Zodiac is still brand new, there aren't a whole lot of people who have been able to work that long on that system.

I bet if you compared the initial status of the GP32 to the current status of the Zodiac, it would be at the same point in homebrew/emulation development.
 
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