7 replies to this topic

[tremoloman2006]

Does anyone here have a Gp2x F200 Handheld Game Console?
If so, how is it? Does it run Stella and MAME well?

I've love to hear your input!

[Parrothead]

tremoloman2006, on Thu May 1, 2008 11:20 AM, said:

Does anyone here have a Gp2x F200 Handheld Game Console?
If so, how is it? Does it run Stella and MAME well?

I've love to hear your input!

I have the older, non touch screen GP2X and I LOVE IT. I have it running Mame (which it does excellant). Imaging having 100 Arcade games in your pocket I have it running the Genesis Emulator w/ 50-100 Games, SNES Emu does not work to well yet. There is a great C64 emulator for it and I have it running about 100 games. I have 100 or more Master System Games. And they all fit on a 1Gig card - It still amazes me to this day how you can fit all that stuff on one freakin card?? Also a good Lynx emu.

There are also quite a bit of great homebrew games for it as well. GET ONE NOW !!

[Reaperman]

I'm assuming the new one fixed a few of the problems that I had, but the older black GP2X is probably the biggest waste of video game money that I've ever fallen for.

The buttons are too small, stick halfway works, adapter input quit, battery input is unreliable, the unit is overall harder to use than a game system should be, phone plug doesn't play well with many headphones, software quality control/standards don't exist (I can go on about the software for days), unit sometimes freezes playing mp3's, and it stopped playing movies when I updated firmware. It does have some positives. Probably the best speakers ever put on a gaming handheld, great screen, tv-out/docking station, and what software is good, is excellent. But IMO for its cost, it was a huge waste of money, and I'd only expect this behavior out of a $50 mp4 player.

Really the one thing that got me about the new gp2x--they 'fixed' the worst control stick in the last 20 years, by replacing it with something that looks like it's probably the second worst controller in the last 20 years... maybe it handles better than it looks.

Edited by Reaperman, Thu May 1, 2008 9:13 PM.

[NixonTech2071]

Reaperman, on Thu May 1, 2008 7:08 PM, said:

I'm assuming the new one fixed a few of the problems that I had, but the older black GP2X is probably the biggest waste of video game money that I've ever fallen for.

The buttons are too small, stick halfway works, adapter input quit, battery input is unreliable, the unit is overall harder to use than a game system should be, phone plug doesn't play well with many headphones, software quality control/standards don't exist (I can go on about the software for days), unit sometimes freezes playing mp3's, and it stopped playing movies when I updated firmware. It does have some positives. Probably the best speakers ever put on a gaming handheld, great screen, tv-out/docking station, and what software is good, is excellent. But IMO for its cost, it was a huge waste of money, and I'd only expect this behavior out of a $50 mp4 player.

Really the one thing that got me about the new gp2x--they 'fixed' the worst control stick in the last 20 years, by replacing it with something that looks like it's probably the second worst controller in the last 20 years... maybe it handles better than it looks.

What makes the GP2X stick so bad?

[Ze_ro]

I love my GP2X (original black model). Stella works great, as does MAME (at least for older games...anything newer than around 1991-92 starts to be too much for it). For some of the newer games, there's also a dedicated CPS2 emulator, a NeoGeo emulator (has it's issues, but is decent), and a port of FinalBurn Alpha (haven't tried it yet, but I've heard it's good). I find the system very easy to use (basically just copy files to SD card, insert, run), and have great results with most emulators. Pretty much everything up to and including Genesis works great in my opinion. SNES is somewhat hit or miss (most games play well, others don't. Forget about SuperFX games), and anything newer is generally unplayable in my opinion.

There are also a lot of fun homebrew games too!

Before you drop money on it though, you might want to look into the Pandora. It's not quite available yet, but it could end up being a GP2X-killer if it delivers on it's promises.

--Zero

[ArcadeAction]

Ze_ro, on Tue May 27, 2008 6:09 AM, said:

Before you drop money on it though, you might want to look into the Pandora. It's not quite available yet, but it could end up being a GP2X-killer if it delivers on it's promises.

--Zero

I believe I just read on the official Pandora-forums (hosted on the main GP2x-community GP32x site) that it will be delayed, I believe (but not compltely sure) no official time-frame is given. Note that 'only' 3000 machines will be built in the first batch, as the interest seems to be huge, it will be interesting to know how quick it will sell out.

I own a GP2x myself since 2006 (so the old black one, the F100) and quite like it. I am not in the emulation-scene, although I've played some ports. I quite like the machine, but am still thinking about buying the new F200 screen, due to its touchscreen capabilities and digital gamepad. I'm a programmer myself, so I am interested in doing some mini-games for it.

The Pandora seems to be a very nice machine, but I don't think it's really fair that some of its main developer are dealers of the GP2x. They seem basically to take money from GP2x orders (but to their credit they say it's not a hot seller anymore) and build a machine that may eventually kill the GP2x and its Korean company GamePark Holding once and for all in the long term. Nobody said life is fair of course and Game Park Holdings is known for not really listening to its customers and having serious quality assurance (especially in the past) and supplying problems, but still it does not feel right to me. Plus the fact that I'm not really interested in 3d gaming (well I would be in a modern BattleZone/Hover Striker-clone of course ) and prefer the lower price of the GP2x, I will probably stay at that platform for the time being as it's a great for 2d games. I'll probably wait for the first buyers of Pandora and see how its community will develop over time and then decide if I will get one or not. It will also depend on what GamePark Holding will do. If they will go bankrupt I'll probably make the switch too, if they come with a GP2x-successor, it will get very interesting. Please note that I still have full respect for their main developer, aka CraigX, I even bought my GP2x from him and I am sure he is a hard working person that loves what he is doing. Making a portable with all the promised features will definitely be hard work. But I also have full respect for Game Park Holding. Running such company is probably not as easy as some probably think.

What I like about this small open source portables scene is that it does have similarities to the early home-computing scene, when you had a lot of choice and computers of different brands in different price ranges and technical possibilities. I love the fact that those consoles are fully "open" software-wise.

Edited by ArcadeAction, Tue May 27, 2008 4:01 PM.

[Reaperman]

NixonTech2071, on Sun May 25, 2008 9:04 AM, said:

What makes the GP2X stick so bad?

like any 'perfect storm' a large variety of factors worked against the gp2x stick. GPH also made steps to control many of the problems with the stick, but I really don't believe anything they've done actually fixed it. Even the replacement pad looks pretty bad to me. But back to the old stick's problems:

reliability
The primary concern is actually reliability on it. Though I didn't stick around too awfully long after launch, it seems that the stick used seemed to not be up to the number of actuations required for daily gaming. Word on the forums way back was that it was a controller originally meant for industrial applications. It was certainly stiff enough for that to feel true anyway.
We've all had gamegears and such with bad d-pads but it probably took them years to break rather than 3-5 months. However some of this may have been due to cap replacements--which brings us to-

the cap
the original cap was hard to grab with its convex shape and hard plastic material. The cap gave the stick a pretty long throw and it liked to spin on the shaft which helped make some common movements difficult to make on a regular basis, and precision gaming nearly impossible. Shooters, fighters, arcade titles are just rubbish with that throw and the spin. This all left gamers trimming the shaft on the cap (shorten the throw) and turning household items into better sticks, which may have allowed enough leverage to add to the above reliability issues. A short while after launch, I wound up purchasing a 'DaveC' cap which is very similar to the cap gph eventually decided to release. They're still no fun, but depending on the games, the benefits are really large. (IMO precision gaming is still not possible)

the switches themselves.
rather than being an 8 way stick, with 4 buttons, it's a 16 way stick with 8 buttons. That talk about a way to really screw up homebrew programmers--make the stick crazy. On the basic hardware level it works out but when it all translates over to ports and emulators it only works as well as the person who wrote your software told it to work. As you might guess gp2x software varies greatly between programmers, but is it really their fault that there's a 16-way stick? Assuming the stick was aimed at emulation wouldn't an 8-way have been just a little brighter. The diagonals are most effected by programming issues, since there's now a lot of them afterall and there's no feedback on the stick to tell you if you've just moved up, by upper-left or left by upper-up...


now I'm not totally comming off against sticks. The neo geo pocket's stick is the best method of controlling a handheld game I've yet seen. 4 nice and clicky switches, just like the arcade, to provide feedback and convex cap that never spins topping it all off. Nice short throw, and since it's recessed it doesn't get in the way. Now that's engineering. I really love that stick...

Edited by Reaperman, Tue May 27, 2008 11:14 PM.

[im_reg]

I've got one. Only got the Megadrive/Master System/Game Gear, SNES/Gameboy emulators on it at the mo. I love it.