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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."
If I could, I'd make some kind of palm gaming application so that people could download ROMs of their favourite old-school games, kinda analogous to iTunes and their pay-per-download system.
99 cents for all-you-can-play-forever ROMs?
That'd be super sweet.
There's one important factor that is often ommitted from such considerations; battery life, which is a very finite resource. I personally carry in my bag a cybershot camera that i use to videoblog and a clie, and although convergence devices have hit the market that provide a PDA with video capabilities i'm not so tempted to buy one any time soon for that very same reason. The camera would take just over an hour of video before it runs out of battery, which i personally use almost daily, and that wouldn't affect the PDAs battery at all. Separation of concerns is a good thing, and i'd imagine that gaming that'd be intensive enough to consume a PDAs battery mean it's better to have a dedicated gaming device even if that means carrying two gadgets. PDAs are meant to be reliable and a PDA that's out of battery power isn't reliable at all.
Here is Yet Another Example (YAE) of playing games on a PDA: I'm the proud owner of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, and I've finished ID's Doom and Lucas Art's Monkey Island I (using ScummVM ported for the Zaurus) on my PDA. Just take a look at the Zaurus Software Index to see which games are available. So yes, I think PDAs are growing more and more into gaming platforms, keep an eye on them. Ow, and besides gaming, you can do a lot other things with PDAs, which you can't with GBAs and others.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Instead of PDA + GBA, why has not anyone tried GBA + PDA? I mean, you could just add a touchscreen, stylus holder, flip-down KB, and a small CPU/mem to an ordinary GB Advance. I think that would be more akin to what a "gamer" would want. Perhaps that's what the N-Gage was going for? But why the high prices?
The mentioned PDA uses WindowsCE, I consider it annoying as it means it is quite unsync'able with something else than Windows (OK, there's a commercial conduit for OSX but even...). : ;) no, why wasn't this comparison more open ?
Now, I'd have been quite happy to see it compared with a Linux PDA
the GBA has an ARM7500FE while my Zaurus has a StrongARM@202.
I can play Doom (prBoom) and Quake on my Z (OK, let's forget Quake
Maybe because this came from an individual which could not afford anything else than what he actuallly tested.
It's a pity because it just is not exhaustive.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Even then, it depends on the game and how slick you are.
Most people don't type in math equations watching the screen constantly, pressing buttons in semi-regular bursts for 10 minutes like they do when they're playing tetris. It's generally pretty obvious when someone isn't paying attention because of a game; most people are just to polite to remark on it.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
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.
Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console? Good luck searching for one. There are plenty of games (and genres of games) that are better on a PC than they are on a console.
Some of us older gamers can remember the time when consoles couldn't even save games unless the cartridge came with built-in storage (ie, almost anything that came before the PS1), and it's only recently that online multiplayer gaming has become possible on the latest generation of consoles.
Still, try finding a real equivalent of Everquest or even Warcraft III on a PS2/X-Box/GC. You can get close, but not close enough to earn you a cigar.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Because when I'm waiting for a meeting to start, I'd feel like a real asshole whipping out a Gameboy. At least maybe SOMEONE in the room will think I'm using my Palm for legitimate reasons!
I am not left-handed, either!
My advice to you: Avoid the original GBA at all costs. The SP is much more comfortable to hold (for me, anyway), has a 10 to 15 hour rechargeable battery and (most importantly) a lit screen. The original GBA does not have a lit screen, and while it looks fine in sunlight, if you're indoors or on a cloudy day it's a complete bitch to see, even if you're sitting directly beneath a lamp. (Penny Arcade isn't joking in this particular comic) Our family owns both an original GBA and the SP... The original GBA is basically regulated to second-player status in multiplayer games, whereas the SP is used most of the time, mainly because you can't see the original. Go easy on your kid's eyes, get the SP.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
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. ......
....
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.
So you would rather spend $8,000 on a TV that has lower quality resolution and dots per inch than a computer monitor than $500 to upgrade a computer?
I prefer a thumbstick to a keyboard and mouse.
I like you guys. You are easy to kill. Joysticks are slow and unresponsive. Mice are precise and lightning fast.
The one advantage the PC had for me was online multiplayer. An advantage its rapidly losing
Yeah right.
Actually, there is a lot of diversity on the PC, you just need to look past the big-hyped items. Your list doesn't include MMORPG, single-player RPG, sims, or turn-based strategy, for example. All of these have had major releases in the last year, you might even have heard of one or two. The last FPS I played was Serious Sam SE and RTS has yet to improve on Total Annihilation, IMHO.
Yeah, everyone in the AGB development community is up in arms about the Tapwave.
... anywhere other than mail order? Sorry.
I think it's going to fail, for the same reason that the GP32, the Cybiko, the Wonderswan, and the other parade of near misses have. Or, rather, for the list of reasons:
1) Nobody's ever heard of the damn thing. You're on slashdot and people are all "the what?"
2) Tapwave can't undersell the hardware like Nintendo can. $300 for a portable gaming machine has never gone over well, and it never will.
3) This thing isn't getting a game library of any real size.
4) I can buy a tapwave at:
Toys R Us? No.
Babbages? No.
The Mall? No.
Walmart? No.
See, being able to sell to kids is kind of important for something like a game platform. The Cybiko had long distance wireless! That should have won them the war! Except it was ugly. I mean, shit, you could get those things in stores that exist in middle America. They had the Cybiko at Walmart for $50. And it still lost.
Why? Because they tried to brag that they had games like stuntcar, klondike, skiing, snake, and checkers.
OMG! Checkers! King me, random person a mile away! I am the master of Draughts! ALL PHEER MY MORRIS SKIZZNILLZ! (don't have much of a ring to it, do it?)
I am happy that this device got off the ground. I am impressed that it can play all dozen of the PalmPilot games in a ridiculous quarter-screen box. Wow, it's even got a graphing calculator, which is clearly the first thing I look for in a system that costs me over four times what the industry leader with all the games wants.
And there is nothing, I say nothing, about Zelda which is anywhere near as cool as Acid Solitaire. Without Acid Solitaire, I'll have no idea what the kids at school are talking about, with Marjora's Mask, which allows you to peek at *two* cards from the top of your draw pile.
The company's too small to court real developers and without real developers its market is too small to attract them on its own. GP32 had the right idea shipping an emulator, but you couldn't buy one without living in Korea, and besides, the GP32 is ugly enough to get you beat up every day.
Adults don't remember how a kid's life works. This thing is doomed. The AGB has only one thing to fear, and that thing is the PSP.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
A $100 gameboy getting dropped onto concrete is sad but acceptable...a $300 PDA is not.
It's not even necessarily sad. A month ago, I was running to catch a bus (you know that period of time when the bus is pulling out and you are running alongside it and you're sure the driver can see you in his reaview mirror but he isn't stopping and for some stupid reason you keep running in the hopes that you can reach the front door and knock on it and then he'll be forced to notice you and stop and let you on?).
My GBA SP popped out of my pocket and bounced twice on to the road, where it proceeded to get run over by a bus.
Ruefully, I collected it and turned it on. It works great. The only ill effects were that the cartridge popped out (it also still works great) and some serious scratching on the top cover. I like to think of it as battle damage.
Seriously, these things are like Timex.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects