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Gameboy Advance Clone Superemulator
Aluminum Tuesday writes "During a raging internal debate over whether to fork out for the new Gameboy Advance SP, I came across the Korean GP32, a handheld console that looks superior to the GBA in every way. It's capable of emulating the GBA, Super Nintendo, Commodore 64, etc. plus there's a SCUMMVM engine for Monkey Island games and a Java VM. Seems to have a huge online following. It runs its own OS, and there are programs capable of playing divx/mp3 files, though there's also a Linux port on the way. Not too expensive either. (99UKP / 149USD) That's a UK supplier; they ship worldwide, though I found this more expensive American supplier too. (179USD)" Gotta catch 'em all!
Come on there has to be a catch right ? Surely this violates untold numbers of patents or weighs three tonne, something! If not it's a very impressive little bit of kit.
I'm also curious if Nintendo is going to try to kill this thing. Although I'm sure Nintendo is making a profit off of GameBoys, I'm also sure they make most of their profits from the games themselves, so logically they'd have a reason to look the other way if this encouraged more people to buy gameboy games. However since when has logic ever raised it's head in legal/piracy issues?
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The GP32 has been out for well over a year now. I wouldn't hold your breath for a US release though.
/. front page, you might want to include the standard legal emu disclaimer. Support legal emulation! Only emulate those games that you own.
The next time this makes the
Well, I certainly appreciate the information on the construction quality, but your piracy comment is a bit out of line. IANAL, but I believe emulators are legal. Posessing a ROM for a cartridge you own, as a backup, is legal. Posessing a ROM for a cartridge you don't own is illegal.
A perfectly legitimate use for this unit would be consolidation. Say I own a Game Boy and a NES. I could get the ROMs for all of my carts, and put them on this thing, so I'd only have to carry around the one unit, but still play all of my games that I legally purchased.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
If it emulates the SNES, I think the performance specs of the GBA is about as powerful as a SNES, and with a similar architecture, which is why the emulators came out so fast for it, and so many SNES games are being ported to it
But, I could find no hard specs or architecture to back this up, so it is admittedly conjecture
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Don't buy it from upstategames.com. If you bother to check with BBB and tons of forums (eg. a lot of people who ordered the Flash Linker fot Neo Geo Pocket from upstategames), you'll probably end up with $179 out of your pocket, your pants down, and your @$$ reamed with Dimitri's fist.
If you must order a unit, then order one through lik-sang.com. At least, that's what http://www.devrs.com says.
Emulation isn't a gray area at all, IMO, if you only emulate games you legitimately own. For example, in the case of the Playstation, if you run an emulator on your PC and use actual game discs, you are not hurting Sony at all. Consoles are typically sold at a loss, and this loss is recouped through game sales. So if you emulate, they're actually making more money.
Of course, the companies probably don't see it quite this way. First of all there's a loss of control involved. If you only emulate legitimately, they're not harmed, but of course this isn't the reality of the situation. The other issue is that they don't want people to play their old games. They want people to go out and buy new games. Consoles tend to break eventually, but with emulation there'll always be hardware to run the old games, and if you've already got plenty of old games you're less likely to go out and buy whatever's being released now.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Moderators, pass the crack pipe.
This thing cannot, repeat CANNOT emulate the GBA. Check the site, there's no mention of this. Even trying it would be stupid - go ahead, run a working GBA emulator on this sort of hardware. Have fun with your 2 frames per second.
This isn't hurting Nintendo's current revenue stream at all, save for the fraction of a percent of original GameBoy games still being sold.
Yikes, several dozen other posts have already pointed this out, yet it gets both posted and modded up.
Oh, and for the record, Playstation emulators were popular years ago (everyone had Connetix's for a while), back when Sony WAS making hordes of money off the platform. And because the emulator didn't care what media you put in it, everyone used pirated copies of the games. So don't give me this horseshit that somehow PSX emulators are 'ok', when a system that doesn't emulate any currently sold system isn't.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Wait a minute.
s/Game Boy/Good Product/g
There is a Good Product out there. Somebody decides that they can make a compatible product for less. They try. Their first attempts are inexpensive, but not 100% compatible. Owners of the Good Product say "It's worth it for you to pay us big money, because it's worth it to be 100% compatible". Somebody else finally makes a 100% compatible product. Owners of Good Product have competition. Competition spurs innovation. Prices drop. This is a Good Thing.
s/Good Product/IBM PC/g
Because this happened to IBM, the personal computing industry was born. Aren't you glad this is the Way Stuff Works(tm)?