Is this the best portable ever for me? (G2X CAANOO) Or PSP?

[Erik_Twice]

With the 3DS not having any games I really want to play, I started to consider buying a PSP to play emulators and stuff. But now I have seen an open source console that blew my away: G2X CAANOO. It seems to have everything I wanted, except an analog shoulder to play racing games (Like Dreamcast).

But perhaps I'm getting too excited? This is what I'm looking for:

1) Playing MAME games: (Heard it's limited in the PSP)
- Robotron, Defender, etc. (Both pass)
- Neo Geo for Magical Drop and Metal Slug (Unsure about the PSP)
- As many shmups as possible (No idea)
- OutRun & Turbo OutRun (heard it doesn't run too well)
2) Playing Doom (Both)
3) Playing Quake (Only with the CAANOO, tough QII doesn't work too well)
4) Playing Old PC Games with DosBox, which Caanoo supports
- XCOM has it's own release
- Red Alert?
- Civilization II?
5) What about something that doesn't run in DosBox? Railroad Tycoon II? Simcity 3000? The Caanoo has a 533Mhz processor so it should run but the OS is Linux Based. Anyone know about this? If this worked my mind would explode. Hard.
6) MD/SNES/GBA/etc emulators (Both fit very well)
7) Playing OutRun 2 SP, which can only be done in the PSP. It's surprisingly important.
It runs Streets of Rage remake!

Some things that could be cool?

Amiga emulation. What can it offer me?
9) PSX emulation. The Caanoo also supports it. What could I play on it? I don't have any games I liked to play in it.


The thing is, I surfed some G2X boards and they aren't exactly fans of their own system! It seems the CAANOO was a poor revision of the previous system and stuff wasn't compatible.

Thoughts?

[DinnerX]

5) What about something that doesn't run in DosBox? Railroad Tycoon II? Simcity 3000? The Caanoo has a 533Mhz processor so it should run but the OS is Linux Based. Anyone know about this? If this worked my mind would explode. Hard.

Your mind is safe. It will not work. The problem isn't that the handheld is linux based, but that it uses an ARM processor. All those games are compiled for x86 and closed source.

[AppleQueso]

for MAME, you could look and see if Final Burn Alpha or Kawaks or something is available for NeoGeo stuff.

[Erik_Twice]

Your mind is safe. It will not work. The problem isn't that the handheld is linux based, but that it uses an ARM processor. All those games are compiled for x86 and closed source.

Aww, that's a shame. But at the end of the day,if my favourite 486 games work, it's a must buy. I have thought about it and all hinges on a couple of things:

1) Emulating OutRun well
2) Emulating Civilization II and C&C: Red Alert
3) OpenTTD

I expect MAME to work well, there's no reason for Robotron not to work well and while I doubt the ported version will be compatible with Tetris: The Grandmaster, I always have Panel de Pon or Magical Drop to play. I have seen videos and Neo Geo emulation seems very good. It also has a CSP2 emulator for shmup action, which is great.

At the end of the day, I would kill for a console that had the heavy PC games I like and the fun, visceral arcade fun I crave. Playing 1830 and then a round of Defender must be a blast. If it manages to do that, I'm sold

@AppleQueso

The Caanoo has it's own Neo Geo emulator, it looks like it plays well. People comment it slows down a bit with Metal Slug but AFAIK, that is arcade original slowdown. KOF looks perfectly fine.

[DinnerX]

Civilization II has a playstation version the caanoo may be able to emulate. Probably not quite what you're hoping for, but it might do.

Command and Conquer Red Alert has a DOS version.

It looks like OpenTTD has been ported to the caanoo. I don't know how well it works. http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/caa ... 0,0,29,672

[Damm64]

I buy it the psp for emulation reasons and so far works really good, i have CPS1 and CPS2 and they both work amazing (and i tried the neogeo one but only with metal slug 3). Also emulates Genesis (really good emulation almost like rela hardware), SMS, NES, Gameboy games, SGG, SNES (not the best emulator but i'd say it has like 80% of accuary) and PC engine.
I never tried the mame emulator or msdos for psp.
There's a port of metal slug anthology for the psp that has metal slug from 1 to 6, and there's metal slug XX for psp too. And the psp can play PS1 games but the image files must be converted before the psp can play them (very easy process).
I will check the mame emulator if is good enough.

[Erik_Twice]

If you can check OutRun for me, I would be grateful. Trying the MSDos one isn't worth it, the PSP isn't powerful enough to do what I really want and the lack of touch screen makes the games I'm most interested in not a very good choice.

[DinnerX]

Out run on the caanoo

Looks a little slow, but the guy is running the emu at a low cpu speed. The video is also two years old so there may be newer, more optimized version of mame out now.

[Erik_Twice]

Looks a little slow, but the guy is running the emu at a low cpu speed. The video is also two years old so there may be newer, more optimized version of mame out now.

Yeah, people comment he's playing at 533Mhz, which is not the correct speed. So I don't know how it will work with normal speed.

He also needs to slow down even tough he's not in high gear.

[DinnerX]

Looks a little slow, but the guy is running the emu at a low cpu speed. The video is also two years old so there may be newer, more optimized version of mame out now.

Yeah, people comment he's playing at 533Mhz, which is not the correct speed. So I don't know how it will work with normal speed.

Just to clarify: its not that he's telling the emulator to emulate slower than normal, its that he's set the caanoo's cpu speed at 533 Hz. A lot of handhelds can be overclocked considerably at the expense of battery life.