When a PDA is better than a GBA for Gaming

An anonymous reader writes "Conventional wisdom says that it's silly to buy a $300+ PDA to play games when a $100 Game Boy Advance SP is going to be better at it. At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2. FiringSquad just posted an ASUS PDA review that focuses on some of the games that only a PDA has the horsepower for, and helps readers figure out how to pick out the right PDA."

Comments

Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[more]

Both PDA and GBA are silly. Modern people carry their phones around anyway - from young children to elderly. Play with the phone, it is likely to have much more computing resources than the GBA, and about the same as that bulky PDA. Several good games are available for phones already; check out http://www.midlet-review.com for details. N-cage is only one option, most Nokia games and a few other are really incredible platforms for running Java and native solutions. There is a lot of bad games, but that does not mean that all the mobile games are bad.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[more]

The phones have 40% of the CPU of PDAs and 20x the CPU of GBA. It is sufficient to run most games, especially if compared to the GBA. The power consumption of modern phones for running the games is very, very low. Basically, the phones have a slightly more battery-saving architecture than the PDAs, but the difference in CPU performance is very small.

A Nokia series 40 phone that runs two weeks without reloading runs for 4 days with the CPU fully loaded, and a Symbian series 60 phone runs for 2-3 days with the CPU fully loaded. The batteris are not the problem, I have to admit that the form may be a problem for you. It is not a problem for me or my children.

Forget action games

[homer_ca]

I tried gaming on a 400Mhz Dell Axim. Morphgear is a pretty good arcade and console emulator, but it's just a little choppy with the sound on. The big problem is the controls. The directional pad is a little mushy and imprecise. Maybe it's better on other PDAs. The IPAQs I've seen in stores have a more substantial click on the pad. I also don't think the buttons were built to take the constant pounding of gaming and they're obviously not replacable. Still, for non-action games like Final Fantasy or Nethack it works fine.

You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation

I say that all the time. I think it's insane that a friend of mine just spent $500 to upgrade his PC to get Halo playable, when he could have bought an Xbox for about 100 bucks used.

I much prefer sitting on the couch playing games up on the big screen than sitting in a task chair 18 inches from a monitor. I prefer a thumbstick to a keyboard and mouse. I also prefer the types of titles that come out on consoles, and find the console exclusives to be some of the best games around.

More precisely, I generally dont care for FPS titles, and am more interested in a fun game than hi-res eye candy.

The one advantage the PC had for me was online multiplayer. An advantage its rapidly losing as more and more people plug in their Xboxes, PS2s and GCNs.

The console is catching up to the PC graphically as well - it's far surpassed the low-end PC's with so many HDTV ready titles showing up. 720p or 1080i on a big screen for me please.

And of course, the cost of entry is miniscule, compared to PC hardware. Perhaps ATI and nVidia should find a way to subsidize their hardware through software sales to try and close the gap.

Or buy both...in one!

[Cpt_Kirks]

The Tapwave Zodiac is no longer vapor. It's shipping now.
Games are problematic, most Palm games should run, others are being worked on. It's pretty open for development, so many emulators are possible.

Specs are:
Memory: Zodiac1 = 32MB*
Zodiac2 = 128MB*
* 12MB reserved for system use.
Processor: Motorola(R) i.MX1(TM) ARM9 processor (200 MHz)
Graphics
Accelerator: ATI(R) Imageon(TM) W4200 graphics accelerator (with 8MB dedicated SDRAM).
Display: 3.8 inch transflective display
480 x 320 (half VGA), 16-bit color backlit display (65,536 colors) Portrait and landscape display capabilities Digitizer for enhanced interactive game play, navigation and text input.
Sound: Yamaha(R) audio component and stereo speakers
Standard 3.5mm stereo headphone plug
Earbud-style headphones included
Support for select third-party portable speakers
Vibration: Supports silent notification and interactive game play.
Controls: Variable pressure analog controller (joystick), 2 triggers, 4 programmable action buttons, 1 special function button,
1 home button, 1 power button, and 1 Bluetooth button.
Expandability: Dual expansion slots for MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital (SD) cards
and SDIO cards, including digital cameras and more.*
Zodiac Connector for additional peripherals.
* Slot #1: supports MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital Cards (SD).
Slot #2: supports MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital Cards (SD), and
SDIO cards.
Wireless Connectivity: Built-in Bluetooth radio with dedicated activation button.
Ideal for multiplayer wireless gaming, sharing information and connectivity to other compatible Bluetooth enabled devices.
PC Desktop Connectivity: USB Cable, USB Cradle (sold separately)
Cover: Protective Flip Cover
Wrist Strap: Convenient strap
Battery: High-capacity Rechargeable Lithium Batteries - 1540 mAh
Power Supply: AC Adapter / Battery Charger (120 volt AC, 60 Hz) International connectivity kit (sold separately)
Size/Weight: 5.6" (143mm) x 3.1" (79mm) x .55" (14mm) / 6.3 ounces
Color: Zodiac1 - Slate Gray, Zodiac2 - Charcoal Gray
Software Specifications
Operating System: Tapwave enhanced Palm OS 5.2T
Writing Software: Graffiti 2
Included Software:
Games: Stuntcar Extreme, AcidSolitaire
Media:
Music: Tapwave MP3 player
Photos: Tapwave JPEG Photo Viewer
Video Playback: Kinoma Player 2
Video Creation: Kinoma Producer (Quickly and easily converts AVI, QuickTime, MPEG1, MPEG4 files for use on the Zodiac entertainment console).*
*QuickTime software required to use Kinoma Producer on PC
eBook reader: PalmReader
Organizer: Address Book, Date Book, To Do List, Memo Pad
Other Stuff:
Alarm Clock (Tapwave Alarm Clock with integrated stopwatch & MP3 music feature),
Wireless-based chat & shared whiteboard (PhatPad by Trumpetsoft)
Graphing Calculator (powerOne by Infinity SoftWorks)
Microsoft(R) Word(R)-compatible Word Processor (WordSmith by Blue Nomad)
Connectivity: Web Browser and SMS client for use with compatible Bluetooth enabled phones (bonus software on CD).

I speak from experience when I say...

[ArbiterOne]

I had a Palm, as well as a Game Boy, and Palm beats GB hands down. Pros of Palm: Thousands of free games (check palmgear.com) Lots of games can be stored at the same time (no need for cartridges) Infrared linking (yes, I know, GBC) Lots of games on one handheld (no need for cartridges) Besides, as for the cost: Cost of Palm Zire: $99 Cost of Game Boy Advance SP: $99 Cost of normal GBA and one game (i.e. Golden Sun): $99 Cost of one GB cartridge $20-$40 Cost of registering KQ, a shareware Palm RPG: $16 Add to that the fact that you can get free games on a Palm, and it's a no-brainer.

First PDA

[MagerValp]

"My first PDA was the HP 95 LX, the very first palmtop computer featuring 256KB of RAM and DOS 3.22! In fact, this was the first true PDA released to the market, capable of doing more than just the super-sized electronic organizers."

The HP 95 LX was (as far as I can tell) released in 1991. PDAs had been along for a long time by then. I own two Atari Portfolios (80C88 @ 5 MHz, 128 kB RAM, DOS 2.11, released in 1989) myself, but there are even older ones, like the Psion Organiser 1 from 1984.

HP 95LX Not First

[bill.sheehan]

With all respect to the author, the Atari Portfolio antedated the HP 95LX by a good two years. I believe the Portfolio claims the title of the first commercially available palmtop.

GBA SP vs PDA

[figa]

Back in the day I bought a Casio EM500. It was a cheap PDA, it could run Mame, Doom, and Hexen pretty well, the screen was great, and the buttons worked for gaming (unlike the iPaq at the time). Two months ago I bought a Gameboy Advance SP. Here's why I bought a Gameboy rather than another PDA:

• I didn't feel comfortable flashing the PDA on the train. It's a lot of $$$ to wave around.
• I felt like I was destroying the PDA by using it. Though I was careful, I scratched the screen playing Pocket Slay. I can't stand using a PDA through a sheet of plastic, and at some point I pushed some grit around. When I played Mame games, I felt like I was going to kill the the buttons eventually. This is an unsettling feeling on a $300 device.
• The buttons on most PDAs aren't really configured for gaming. They're normally all on the bottom in a row.
• The PDA form factor is still pretty big, relative to the GBA SP, which is about the size of a big pager. When it's folded, it's pretty sturdy, so I don't have to worry so much about snapping it in half or cracking the screen.
• Gameboy programming looks like a lot of fun. The architecture reminds me of the Amiga. It's a whole other world from writing games for the Pocket PC.
• I found that I never used any of the PDA functionality of the PDA, no matter how hard I tried to incorporate it into my life.
• The GBA SP only set me back $100. My Casio depreciated $200 in the space of two years. The GBA is likely to hold half its value for the next two years for a TCO of $50 versus $200 over the same period.
• People stopped writing apps for the Casio's MIPS processor. That risk is still inherent in the Pocket PC world.

Needless to say, I'm happy with the GBA. There are some things I miss about the PDA, though.

• It would be nice to have compressed video playback. That's not happening on the GBA.
• I'm missing the ability to play NES games and other ported or emulated games. I think there's an NES emulator for GBA, but I don't have a flash cart setup.
• There are very few strategy games for GBA. I'm playing Advance Wars 2, and it's a great game. It's unfortunate there aren't more like it. I may find myself playing Pokemon. The platform is really geared to the 8-12 set.

Re:Only buy what you need

[ardiri]

> Hell, even the new ARM-based b/w Zire could be used for playing
> games with these emulators for a mere $99.

as a game developer for Palm OS, and other handheld platforms - i know first hand the issues with porting/writing emulators for the platform. we have written a GameBoy emulator (yes, to 16Mhz m68k) and an Atari 2600 emulator to multiple platforms - however, the processing power available, in addition to the memory constraints imposed by the operating system (4k stack), no global variables in ARMlets; make it very difficult or, virtually impossible to have emulators run on them.

based on our experience and understanding of the platform, emulation for stuff such as Atari, NES, SNES, GameBoy is definately possible; GameBoy Advance at a full 60fps is possible with high-end PDA's (ie: 200Mhz+) as will coin-op ports. however, something like MAME; with its generic engine - if ported will definately run, but maybe not full speed.

the bottom line is that porting to Palm OS is difficult; hence, why MAME/DooM et al have existed on Symbian, Pocket PC - but, not on Palm :)

the tapwave zodiac is a 200Mhz CPU; and, in our experience we have found the Tungsten|T3 cream all over it for pure CPU power (comparing FPS in our 3D engine). however, it does have a 2D accellerator; that some people may take advantage of - and, is actually more 'geared' towards gaming.

i own a Tapwave Zodiac (two actually), GameBoy advance and over 60 PDA devices (www.ardiri.com/pdas.jpg) - not one device suits my every day needs yet :( i am still waiting for that perfect device *g*