The GP2X is officially awesome -
So, after some mucking around, my gp2x finally arrived, and whilst my initial reaction was "it's cool, but still pretty buggy", I now love it!
The inbuilt movie player and image viewer were slow and the screen quality was pretty ordinary with visible lines due to the interlacing.
However, a new firmware was released yesterday which fixes a lot of these issues, extends battery life, and generally makes the thing more polished.
I have discovered the DrMD SEGA Genesis emulator which is fantastic, and means I can fritter away the hours playing such classics as Sonic and Knuckles, Paperboy, and Mortal Kombat.
The MAME emulator is also very good, but some games need to be played without sound for playable speeds, thankfully the new MAMEgp2X 1.6 allows you to tweak settings per game and save them so you only need to get it right once.
I've also tried the SNES emulator, but again, still a bit slow with sound.
While the screen is small, it's still plenty big enough to enjoy movies on, and even scaling anger management down to a 350MB Xvid file produces good results. One thing I am annoyed about however is that while the device was advertised to play mpeg as well, it doesn't. I'm guessing it will in a future firmware, but it's annoying right now.
The sheer amount of development for the gp2x is astonishing with new applications and games popping up every day, and with a coding competition closing yesterday, I'd be willing to bet we'll see some great new stuff soon.
One other thing everyone whinges about is battery life, but I've hooked myself up with two sets of 2500mAh AAs which give me a good few hours each which is heaps.
If you're keen to get back into some of your retro games on the move, get the gp2x.
-Jonesy
So, after some mucking around, my gp2x finally arrived, and whilst my initial reaction was "it's cool, but still pretty buggy", I now love it!
The inbuilt movie player and image viewer were slow and the screen quality was pretty ordinary with visible lines due to the interlacing.
However, a new firmware was released yesterday which fixes a lot of these issues, extends battery life, and generally makes the thing more polished.
I have discovered the DrMD SEGA Genesis emulator which is fantastic, and means I can fritter away the hours playing such classics as Sonic and Knuckles, Paperboy, and Mortal Kombat.
The MAME emulator is also very good, but some games need to be played without sound for playable speeds, thankfully the new MAMEgp2X 1.6 allows you to tweak settings per game and save them so you only need to get it right once.
I've also tried the SNES emulator, but again, still a bit slow with sound.
While the screen is small, it's still plenty big enough to enjoy movies on, and even scaling anger management down to a 350MB Xvid file produces good results. One thing I am annoyed about however is that while the device was advertised to play mpeg as well, it doesn't. I'm guessing it will in a future firmware, but it's annoying right now.
The sheer amount of development for the gp2x is astonishing with new applications and games popping up every day, and with a coding competition closing yesterday, I'd be willing to bet we'll see some great new stuff soon.
One other thing everyone whinges about is battery life, but I've hooked myself up with two sets of 2500mAh AAs which give me a good few hours each which is heaps.
If you're keen to get back into some of your retro games on the move, get the gp2x.
-Jonesy