My birthday was Sunday and I splurged and got myself a GP2X. What is it? It’s a portable game system (like a PSP or Nintendo DS) that is linux-based, fully supports homebrew games/applications, plays divx movies, MP3s, Oggs, etc. etc.
I’ve only had it for 3 days now, but I am SOOOOO impressed and happy with it. For the record, I’ve never owned a portable game system aside from those Mattel hand-held football/basketball/baseball games, so I can’t really compare it to any past systems.
I opened it on Sunday and was surprised to see it was smaller than I expected it. It’s only slightly larger than my MS mouse. it’s really light too – even with the AA batteries installed. After opening it, I wanted to go download some games and emulators for it, but my cable modem was down at the time (AARRGGHHH!). Since the GP2X takes SD Cards I grabbed a 128MB card from my digital camera and went looking for some videos to put on the card. It plays divx AVIs natively, so I dropped The Madagascar Penguins Christmas Caper on there. WOW! Looks and plays nicely!
Once my internet connection was back up, I found some homebrew GP2X games and tried them out. I found 11 that were worth keeping (I’ll list them in another post).
Next came emulators. I started to try MAME but you had to have the exact versions of ROMs or convert them. I didn’t feel like doing that yet, so I moved on to……Frodo – the Commodore 64 emulator. I LOVED my C64 back in the day so I was anxious to try it. I was pleased to find that it worked flawlessly. In no time at all I was playing Raid On Bungeling Bay, Lode Runner, Beach Head, Jumpman, and Impossible Mission. Incredible. It’s so cool ot see the blue/light blue commodore screen on this thing.
I have read lots of compaints about the joystick on the GP2X, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. It’s not the best, but not the worst either.
More details to follow in the days to come, but suffice to to say, I’m happy with it. Next up: Sega Genesis, and video conversions.
gp2x, review, reviews, game, games, portable, videogame, videogames, c64, commodore, divx
Glad to hear you like it. Some of the early reviews made it seem like it’s a mixed bag, “Early Adopters Only”. $189 still a little steep for me, maybe I can talk the misses into it. Keep the updates coming.
RESPONSE: Yeah – it is steep, but I never splurge on toys for myself :)
–Brian