GP2X hand held console
Discussion
I bought one of the first ones into the country. If you want something where everything is pre-packaged for you and the minimum of fuss... look elsewhere.
It is an interesting piece of hardware though and playing Galaga through Mame is fun. If I could get Bubble Bobble to work it would probably be my favourite toy.
It is an interesting piece of hardware though and playing Galaga through Mame is fun. If I could get Bubble Bobble to work it would probably be my favourite toy.
rebelstar said:
I bought one of the first ones into the country. If you want something where everything is pre-packaged for you and the minimum of fuss... look elsewhere.
It is an interesting piece of hardware though and playing Galaga through Mame is fun. If I could get Bubble Bobble to work it would probably be my favourite toy.
what is mame like? compatible with many roms? Are the snes and megadrive emulator any good?
It's a very good piece of kit - good screen size, but it is bigger than the PSP, so not really as portable as you may first think.
Fully open system with an SDK and tools etc, etc so developers are porting a lot of stuff to it. I'd say it's not as amazing as the PSP but the fact it's open means you can get a whole lot more for it a whole lot more leagally.
Oh, and the media player side of things is good too - bigger screen means videos are better than on PSP or iPod, and agian the fact it's open mean there are loads of players out there.
Fully open system with an SDK and tools etc, etc so developers are porting a lot of stuff to it. I'd say it's not as amazing as the PSP but the fact it's open means you can get a whole lot more for it a whole lot more leagally.
Oh, and the media player side of things is good too - bigger screen means videos are better than on PSP or iPod, and agian the fact it's open mean there are loads of players out there.
Getting working ROMS is the problem with Mame on the GP2X. I've got all the ones I want to play but very few of them seem to work even though the website for the port lists them as working. They're fine in the regular version of XMame I would normally use.
Then again, it does say that it uses the Mame 0.34 Romset or something equally old... hard to get those these days. There are tools for converting but not much success so far. I'll have another attempt this evening and let you know how it goes.
If there are any particular games you're interested in, let me know and I'll try them.
Then again, it does say that it uses the Mame 0.34 Romset or something equally old... hard to get those these days. There are tools for converting but not much success so far. I'll have another attempt this evening and let you know how it goes.
If there are any particular games you're interested in, let me know and I'll try them.
New Zealand Story... I tried all three last night.
Bubble Bobble doesn't work at all although "Bobble Bobble", which is a hacked version minus protected does work flawlessly.
Rainbow Islands works but all the creatures and items are offset which makes it pretty unplayable
New Zealand Story was fine until I finished the first level at which point appeared to freeze.
I'm not selling this well... so here are some other good ones I tried.
Ghosts n Goblins works OK
Space Invaders and Asteroids work OK (for us old timers)
Any more you want me to try?
Bubble Bobble doesn't work at all although "Bobble Bobble", which is a hacked version minus protected does work flawlessly.
Rainbow Islands works but all the creatures and items are offset which makes it pretty unplayable
New Zealand Story was fine until I finished the first level at which point appeared to freeze.
I'm not selling this well... so here are some other good ones I tried.
Ghosts n Goblins works OK
Space Invaders and Asteroids work OK (for us old timers)
Any more you want me to try?
Out Run seems to be "too recent" for this version of MAME to cope with. By that I don't mean that the game itself is too new, I mean that MAME 0.3x that the GP2X port is based on can't run it.
Paperboy seems to work fine although it's not quite the same without handlebars.
Can't comment on the Amiga emulator though. One of the big reasons for running these games is nostalgia, and I was in the Atari ST camp
Paperboy seems to work fine although it's not quite the same without handlebars.
Can't comment on the Amiga emulator though. One of the big reasons for running these games is nostalgia, and I was in the Atari ST camp
Well I've just ordered one 
I'll have a look at the Amiga side of things when it arrives if I can fish out my Amiga stuff (hope I haven't chucked it all away!).
Got housey things to do at the mo though, so hope it doesn't arrive too soon as I won't get much time to fiddle with it for a week or so
I'll have a look at the Amiga side of things when it arrives if I can fish out my Amiga stuff (hope I haven't chucked it all away!). Got housey things to do at the mo though, so hope it doesn't arrive too soon as I won't get much time to fiddle with it for a week or so
Quick question to current owners though - how easy is it to get the games onto an SD card? Do it on a PC and then transfer it up? What about the er :cough: ROM files? Obviously I own a PCB for the arcade game, but is it the same ROM file for the PC MAME that works on a GP2X?
Call me thick by the way..... I am getting used to it....
Call me thick by the way..... I am getting used to it....
The SD card is easy. You should format it as FAT32 and you can then just read and write it as normal on a PC with the appropriate x-in-1 card readers. Some programs want to be installed in a certain location (MAME is one of these programs) but it's all very easy. No custom program required on your PC to do this and it's all operating system agnostic.
MAME ROMs, assuming you have the PCB
are available from numerous sources. BitTorrent is quite a good one but it tends to be a "full" set of recent roms (around 12-15GB). You need to convert them from the current MAME version (106 or so) to the one that the GP2X port uses (around version 0.34). There are tools available to do this... I used CLRMamePro which is a free download. It's a bit fiddly but it works.
MAME ROMs, assuming you have the PCB
are available from numerous sources. BitTorrent is quite a good one but it tends to be a "full" set of recent roms (around 12-15GB). You need to convert them from the current MAME version (106 or so) to the one that the GP2X port uses (around version 0.34). There are tools available to do this... I used CLRMamePro which is a free download. It's a bit fiddly but it works.
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