I present you... my latest toy:
The GP2X!
I ordered it from Play-Asia.com on Monday night, and it turns up on Thursday during the day. Not bad considering it's coming from HK! That's almost faster than most Australian online PC shops I reckon. *cough*. Hopeless!
Now what does it do I hear you ask? OK well if you didn't click on the wiki link above, it's basically a handheld console like the PSP - but the comparison stops there. This thing can run all kinds of home-brew games, programs and emulators. That means you can make your own, download a whole pile of free games, or run old games from the day of Sega and Nintendo. Things like the Super Nintendo or the original "NES" are currently being developed so you can play Mario or Zelda wherever you like!
You can also view photos, watch movies, play music, or read "E-books" on it. Powered by a couple of rechargable AA batteries, I think it is pretty nifty for a price tag of US$180.
Warning: below is a half-technically semi-review I posted in some forums.
Gamepark have released the source to their firmware, however it isn't the latest version and I hear it is incomplete. This is pretty important, and very dumb on their behalf. I think they will clean up their act pretty soon, considering the major involvement of many coders who are fans of open-source.
The unit itself is quite well put together, and as with most new things there are lots of teething problems. I'd say 99% of these problems are software related. I've tried a number of things and most of them run pretty well, with obvious bugs and problems since most software is sitting at version 0.1 or so... Things that have been written correctly run up to speed with no real noticable bugs. I think it's just a matter of time really.
Battery life seems very reasonable, and with new software to alter the frequency the cpu runs at, a couple of 2400maH Ni-Mh's should last a decent few hours. They're pretty cheap these days, anyways. I've had it for a couple of days now and I used the supplied batteries and now I'm on to my rechargables - but I haven't had to change them yet, so it seems quite good.
The screen is OK, not as good as the PSP's (but I'll stop comparing it with the PSP RIGHT NOW). The interlacing is down-right annoying for me. It seems each time you move your body independently to the screen, it appears. There is a small utility you can run to tweak this (and the cpu speed) which fixes the interlacing in a second and after that... well it looks pretty sweet to me.
The controls are nice - I feel very sure about pushing the buttons and getting a response every time. The 8-way joy stick takes a little getting used to, because the dead zone in the centre is so large. I like how it is digital, rather than analogue.
The sound player and movie player seem to work well, but I haven't thrown at lot at them yet. Basically just a short divx clip and a few songs.
I quite like the photo viewer, it loads the next photo as you are looking at the current one, and it features a great zoom-and-pan system to take a closer look at big 3..4..6..mega pixel photos.
I'm running firmware v1.2.0 which is not the latest but was the firmware supplied on my unit. The only real problem I see at the moment is the awful USB2.0 support. The problem is: it doesn't work. Set your computer to USB v1.1 and it's quite happy to load up the generic mass storage device. I don't use it anyways, because it is easier to pop the SD card into a card reader than hook up the GP2X to your computer.
My advice is.. if you love to fiddle with gadgets, it will consume plenty of time. If you hate fiddling with things like this, give it a miss until it's a bit more mature, and then at that time you can enjoy all of the sweet games and things you can run on it when they have been fully developed.
One final note: as for the "Second Edition" being released later this quarter from Lik-Sang, I don't think there is a 2nd edition (the hardware in my unit works perfectly). I've heard they are just trying to scare consumers to prevent them from buying from other shops who have stock at the moment. Take it how you will... they might be protecting consumers or scaring them, but I wouldn't pay too much attention to them.
Ahh yes. Lots of fun so far trying new games and seeing if I can relive my childhood on the run ;)
Now I know I haven't blogged in ages (has it been a month? Probably) so I will summarise everything I have done lately..... soon. For now I must rest. And play more Mario... muahaha.
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