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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."

29 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Successful? by sys.stdout.write · · Score: 4, Funny

    Describing it as "successful" is quite generous, considering I am a gaming fan and have never heard of it..

    1. Re:Successful? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If it made money it is successful. Since it did not fail, it is successful. There are lots of successful people and products I am sure you have never heard of.

    2. Re:Successful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      let's put this in perspective.

    3. Re:Successful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Describing yourself as "a gaming fan" is quite generous, considering the GP2X was successful and you have never heard of it..

    4. Re:Successful? by papasui · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Need to realize that it's a niche market they are after. They aren't competing with the DS or the PSP in the commerical games arena, but the homebrew arena.

    5. Re:Successful? by Patch86 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I didn't realise the universal measure of success was whether you had heard of it.

      Seriously though, success is relative. We're not talking about a DS beater here. They're a comparatively tiny company and their target is the very niche market of home-brewers and enthusiasts. From the stand point of the size of their company and their stated aims, they've been pretty successful so far.

    6. Re:Successful? by Anonymusing · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Whooosh.

      If selling 60,000 units was enough to be profitable, then it's a success. Maybe not iPod-like success, but still a success.

      --
      Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
    7. Re:Successful? by Hadlock · · Score: 2, Insightful

      60,000 units of anything lacking a national advertising budget is pretty impressive. Just because it's not sold at walmart doesn't mean it has to sell a million units in it's first year. If you hand build 3,000 gaming PCs at your house one year under "PCOLAMAN GAMERZ PCS" brand and make $20,000 in profit after you salary and parts costs, is that successful to you? Or did you fail and should you give up.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    8. Re:Successful? by Cyner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Obviously you're not the gaming fan you thought you were. The GPH has been around for quite a few years now, and have made several successful gaming systems. Just because they're not extremely popular like Gameboy or PSP does not make them unsuccessful.

      --
      FreeBSD.org - The power to serve
  2. 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?

    1. Re:Ouch by khellendros1984 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't see any mention of wireless support in the description, or in the stats on Wikipedia. My guess it that it's missing =/

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    2. Re:Ouch by daid303 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wireless is an addon module, details not yet released. If you want a 'everything in 1' device, then wait a bit longer for the "open pandora". Which is inspired by the GP2X and everything that was wrong with it. (I own a GP2X and it's an nice device, but the "open pandora" will greatly surpass that)

  3. 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. :)

  4. Re:any detailed specs? by lobiusmoop · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wikipedia is your friend

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  5. All you need to know by MrEricSir · · Score: 2, Funny

    is that NOBODY beats the Wiz!

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:All you need to know by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Alright then, I'm taking out my credit card.

      Oh wait, it's maxed out!

      VISA beats the Wiz!

  6. alternative to this which looks more promising by andycon · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://openpandora.org/ this is made by some of the same people that were on the first GP2X team i believe. from what i've read it seems more promising.

    1. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. Re:Yet another correction by Narishma · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just like there were no games for the previous handhelds from Gamepark (GP32 and GP2X) and people still bought them. They are used mainly for homebrew and as emulators of older systems.

    --
    Mada mada dane.
  9. Re:Run-on sentences...ftw! by TrevorB · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gamepark (GPH) is Korean.

  10. Re:No analog controls? by pelrun · · Score: 2, Informative

    The pandora is getting mighty close to completion; the last few boxes will be ticked in the next couple of weeks before mass production begins.

  11. Re:Huh? by Svartalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    No... They had a holdup due to supply issues much like Pandora's had- otherwise you'd have both of them available right now for your gaming pleasure.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  12. Re:What's that in Geek? by Svartalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    What's this in geek?

    It is a 533MHz ARM9 based SoC with OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenVG 1.0 hardware support and APIs to use the same. This means you can do OpenGL 1.4 type games with reasonable performance. It probably doesn't have the oomph to do ioquake3 stuff (CPU's just not there) but it should do the things they're claiming of it all the same.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  13. The size of WHAT? by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm sorry but the author of that sentence has never even seen or held a Game Boy Micro in person.

    From the specifications alone, you can see that the GP2x Wiz is 50% bigger and 70% heavier than a GameBoy Micro:

    Game Boy Micro:
    - 50Ã--101Ã--17.2 mm (86860 mm3)
    - 80 grams (built-in battery)

    GP2x Wiz:
    - 121x61x18 mm (132858 mm3, 50% bigger)
    - 136 g (with battery)

    As far as processing power goes, however, the GP2x Wiz wins. No debate there.

    I'm also not a fan of what seems to be a dual-gamepad setup, even if the pad on the right is supposed to be used as "buttons" (and even if the pad is split in four equal parts, it's still a gamepad). Weird, to say the least.

    1. Re:The size of WHAT? by Audiophyle · · Score: 2, Funny

      Game Boy Micro: - 50Ã--101Ã--17.2 mm (86860 mm3)

      Wow, 50-101 Angstroms is pretty small! I guess they named it Gameboy Micro for a reason!

  14. 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.

  15. 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.