Best Way to Take Emulation in Your Pocket

Post by **andymol21** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:38 pm

Ok, so I love to emulate, and I have the entire romsets of Nes, Snes, N64, MasterSystem, Mega Drive, 2600 and a couple more. But i have trouble taking all these sets on the road with me. My laptop's battery dies after a couple of hours play and is too big for my pocket, emulation on the ds, especially for Snes, isn’t very good etc... One of my main gripes with emulators in general is going into hundreds of menus and searching through the hundreds of games I have in alphabetical order just to find a game I want. This is why I love Maximus Arcade for the pc. I was wondering if any of you know of a front-end like Maximus Arcade for a any portable device that could even come close to satisfying my needs. At the moment I use my XDA IIs smartphone and Morphgear, which is a good compromise but i get the feeling like I can do better. Is a PSP worth my while in this respect?

Post by **diehllane** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:49 pm

Not sure, but you might want to take a look at a GP2X

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X

Do a search on the forum here. I know there are posts about it...

Racketboy did an article on it

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/12/ ... -easy.html

Post by **racketboy** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:51 pm

The PSP is supposed to be pretty good.
The DS isn't terribly either.
The GP2X is probably the least hassle and has some of the most potential.
But having your emulation on the same handheld for newer games is nice as well.
And personally, I love the DS form factor the most.

Post by **andymol21** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:55 pm

So what DS emulators do you use Racketboy? I only have Lameboy 0.9 set up for my moments of pokemon weakness. I had nesDS set up but found it unintuitive, this was a long time ago though, i should try it again! I'm thinking mainly of perfect Snes emulation as that is the one that my phone has most trouble with. Which Snes emu do you use on DS?

Post by **Funk, E** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:26 pm

I think the Tapwave Zodiac, Asus' Eee PC, and maybe the forthcoming Pandora are worth looking into, too.

Post by **andymol21** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:36 pm

Wow I'd never heard about the Pandora. A bit ugly but crikey its powerful! I'll look into that when it comes out. Thanks a lot!

Post by **PhilExile** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:24 am

Pandora looks a little clunky to me. I have a GBA, DS and PSP Slim. Lately, I've been using the PSP a whole lot more than the others. The emulators aren't that difficult to set up (just a little) and once you do they work really well. I was just playing some CPS2 and NeoGeo arcade games yesterday.

There is even a GBA emulator, but I've found its buggy with certain games. However, its still in development.

Additionally, there are a few good PSP games out there surprisingly!

The only thing I would suggest is getting a phat PSP. I've noticed some of the emulators still only work on the original hardware, though not many. I haven't seen a port of NeoGeoCDZ yet....

Hope this helps.

Post by **andymol21** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:24 am

PhilExile wrote:Pandora looks a little clunky to me. I have a GBA, DS and PSP Slim. Lately, I've been using the PSP a whole lot more than the others. The emulators aren't that difficult to set up (just a little) and once you do they work really well. I was just playing some CPS2 and NeoGeo arcade games yesterday.

There is even a GBA emulator, but I've found its buggy with certain games. However, its still in development.

Additionally, there are a few good PSP games out there surprisingly!

The only thing I would suggest is getting a phat PSP. I've noticed some of the emulators still only work on the original hardware, though not many. I haven't seen a port of NeoGeoCDZ yet....

Hope this helps.

I've never been a huge playstation fan... what I usually do is buy their console the minute the next one is coming out, so i got a PSOne when the PS2 was coming out and a PS2 Slim just as the PS3 came out. I have played on a friends PSP and Patapon is an amazingly fun game, so maybe whn the PSP2 comes! Overnight I set up a Nes emualtor on my DS and it worked really well today. Seems that the software really has come on since I used it last.
I'm really intrested in that Pandora though, I have about 250 euros burning a hole in my pocket at the moment and with a predicted RRP of 220 euros, I'm all set. I've exausted Google looking for information on it, might start a new topic asking for more information from people here. Seems it is predicted to ship around October this year, but all they have so far are some PCBs. Heres hoping it will come through as it looks like the answer to all my needs!

Post by JF » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:38 pm

Hi,

I have tried with PSP and NDS, but you cannot carry them in your pocket... too bulky for me.

Now I use a GBA Micro with NES, SMS, ZX Spectrum emulators and a couple of retro GBA games: Outrun, SF2, etc. It is small enough to have it in my pocket.

I just bought a GP2X... but it is in customs now...I hope to have it tomorrow.

Regards,

JF

Post by **racketboy** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:48 pm

andymol21 wrote:So what DS emulators do you use Racketboy? I only have Lameboy 0.9 set up for my moments of pokemon weakness. I had nesDS set up but found it unintuitive, this was a long time ago though, i should try it again! I'm thinking mainly of perfect Snes emulation as that is the one that my phone has most trouble with. Which Snes emu do you use on DS?

Actually NESds is the only one I've tried so far. I've been fooling around with too much other stuff at once so I haven't gotten around to trying others yet for the DS. I'll be posting my findings on the blog once I get that far.