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Gamepark Releases the GP2X Wiz

Posted by timothy on from the for-the-obscurantists dept.

Craig writes "Gamepark have officially released the follow-up to its successful Linux handheld, the GP2X. The GP2X Wiz is a 533Mhz Linux-based handheld that's a similar size to the GBA Micro, with a touchscreen and 12 games preloaded into memory, many of which are demos of commercial games. The system comes with 1GB of flash memory, which can be expanded with SD cards. The Homebrew Community have already released ports of games such as Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Warcraft and emulators for SNES, Genesis, Commodore 64 and the arcade emulator Mame."

7 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Ouch by Steauengeglase · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks like it would cause a bad case of dual Nintendo Thumb. Also, where is the wireless? Am I missing this in the product description?

  2. Android? by Facegarden · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anyone know if this can/will run android?

    I'm beginning to think that android should be on every portable, and for something like this that runs linux, one would imagine it's either doable at worst, or officially supported at best.

    Any thoughts?

    -Taylor

    --
    Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
    1. Re:Android? by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Android will likely run on the Pandora. The Pandora is the spiritual successor to the GP2X. (as opposed to actual successor)

      A bunch of community/forum elites got tired of fighting with lame design choices like the difficult to use joystick, or poorly thought out DPAD, or removal of networking/debugging support; they're making their own dream handheld, which is significantly more powerful, and is designed right.

      According to them, it has the best input scheme they've ever tried. ;) That could just be creators tooting their own horn, but after talking with them and reading their posts for the past year, I really doubt it.

      The GP2X F100 was the best version of the GP2X, with every version after that getting worse. Updating firmware was absolutely horrible, as no less than five versions of the GP2X were released, all of them bricked by different versions of the firmware.

      Despite the lame joystick, the F100 v1 was the best because of projects like USB networking, USB debugging, and even a Java VM. Then GPH replaced the USB chip with a cheaper one, cutting two of those features, and they continued to make bad choices after that.

      Despite all this, the community persists.

      The GP2X has very lackluster hardware, but emus are reported to run better on it than on a PSP or even iPhone. (despite both of those having significantly faster hardware) That's because of the relatively open nature of the platform.

      Most of the GP2X community (gp32x) is throwing their weight behind the Pandora, because it's fully open, rather than just relatively open. We don't want to have our input ignored, then fight with lame design choices. We want the devs to listen, and we want a platform that has mature open source drivers available - a platform like the OMAP 3530. :)

  3. Re:No analog controls? by digitalunity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Something I haven't seen really, and would like to see in handhelds is a strain gauge under the buttons to measure downward button pressure.

    I can imagine dozens of ways to use that force intuitively in games, from throwing objects in sports games to modulating throttle, brake and steering control in car racing games.

    --
    You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
  4. Re:alternative to this which looks more promising by Garbad+Ropedink · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're right. It does look more promising.
    I'm just looking at the site now.
    Why the hell haven't any of the big companies released something like this?! How?! How?!

    --
    And that was the last Terry Fox run I ever participated in.
  5. Re:No analog controls? by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The original GP2X(the predecessor to the Wiz) had an analog stick

    Actually, it wasn't analog. It was digital and had a very bad contact layout, which is why it had such lousy diagonals.

  6. Dingoo by ezelkow1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Im not sure the wiz is going to be as successful as their previous attempts. They are getting very strong competition from a bunch of chinese manufacturers releasing units all based off of ingenic processors. They all have comparable speed and specs to a wiz, with a few less features, but they are all half the price and already come with fully functioning emulators. The big one out now is the A320 dingoo. Theres a growing dev group behind it that have almost completed porting linux to it, but the unit already comes with emulators so its already fully functional out of the box. All this for 80$, half the price of the wiz.