Gameboy Emulator For PalmOS

isaac was the first of many to point out: "Gambit Studios has finally released Liberty, a Gameboy emulator for PalmOS." Here's the FAQ; there are reviews and comments on PalmInfocenter and re-Visor.org. Speed appears to be an issue and everyone keeps suggesting Afterburner. And for the impatient, here's the Liberty download page. Update 3 hours later: Gambit says: "It has come to our attention that Liberty is having some problems with a number of devices (and many devices NOT having problems). Due to this we have decided to stop the download of this application until the problem is fully investigated and a solution is found." Oh well; ref. the first noble truth of the Buddha. Update another 3 hours later: OK, it's available again.

Comments

Re:is it just me...

[kruhftwerk]

Well, considering that the gameboy is over ten years old with over a hundred million units out on the market, I think nintendo has made quite a bit back on thier initial hardware development investment. It seems that it takes about 5 years for a company to really start profiting on console hardware and with the number of re-releases of the gameboy plus an extra 5 year lifespan for the console, nintendo is probably making a pretty hefty profit on the hardware sales compared to most consoles.

Nintendo is not a big fan of emulators (neither is Sony or Sega), but there really isn't anything that they can do to stop them. With the recent settlements/injunctions between Sony and the , there is no way to say that creating an emulator is illegal. Of course, to play the games without the hardware, you need either a cart ripper or to download the ROM images from the 'net. The emulator doesn't do that, the users do that.

In fact, emulators are a great thing for the game market. It gives programmers an opportunity to work with an almost exact replica of the hardware for nothing. Console development was always a black art because nobody but official developers ever had access to the hardware; emulators change this and allows for an all new generation of programmers to learn like we all did with our C-64's and Apples.

But, I digress. Yes, coming out with an emulator right after a new console comes out would not be good for sales. Coming out after 4,5 or even 10 years later is not as big as an issue, at least with regards to future console development. Gameboy emulators have been around for years and that hasn't stopped them from developing the Gameboy Advanced (which isn't really a development, just a handheld version of the SNES hardware with a different processor).

In other words, emulators are a good thing, IMSHO.