Pharra

Thursday, June 22, 2006

GP2X Arrives - Videos!


That's Paul playing Vektar on the GP2X.

The "I Just Got My GP2X!!!" stickied thread:
Time to get my contribution buried in here for posterity and tradition's sake:
  1. GP2X
  2. TV-Out Cable (no extra cables to actually use that S-cable yet)
  3. 128mb SD card (4gig on the way)
  4. Carrying Case
  5. 8x2500mah AA's, charger (Energizer)
The screen has a great viewing angle, and I have a Mark 2/Mk2... check my videos!

Overclocks stabily to 280MHz, speedtests to 300MHz (as my sig suggests). THANKS TO EVILDRAGON FOR THIS UNIT!
I enjoy playing:
  • Quake 280MHz using every single key (look up/down is volume +/-, strafe is L & R)
  • Beats of Rage - When I finally got it running, I was amazed by the fluid animation of the game, the beautiful backgrounds, and the music! Techo from Mortal Kombat? Boss music from Streets of Rage? Awesome!
  • Streets of Rage 1 & 2 (3 has sucky music) for Genesis
  • Sonic - 'cause I missed that growing up
I can tell I'll need a lot more Beats of Rage mods (around 50 megs a pop) because that's just too much fun. I really enjoy Quake.

My oldest daughter doesn't have a favorite game yet. She asked me to look up Genesis strategy games. Herzog Zwei comes to mind...

The Miscellaneous Post:
I just bought this:
A-DATA Turbo 4GB Secure Digital (SD) Flash Media Model Turbo SD 150X 4G - Retail

It's listed on the Wiki
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/SD_card_compatibility

Edit: Why did I suddenly spend $100 on an SD card?
Because my GP2X arrived yesterday and once I played around with it, I was able to judge whether it was best to buy 1gig, 2gig, or 4gig SD card. Basically, I had to own the system and try it out with my eldest daughter's 128mb SD card to see just how good it was and just how much I'd be using it. Well after staying up until 12:30AM playing Quake1 and trying (unsuccessfully) to get OpenBor working, and loading up a ton of Genesis ROMs, I had my answer.

The GP2X is literally better than I had hoped for with regards to how much I enjoy it.

What I think about my GP2X:
I love it. It plays music, movies, shows my pictures (of family, kids, whatever) and plays a whole heap-load of games which, so far, haven't cost me a penny other than the 4gig SD card I bought to hold them. It is still en route and should arrive today. It is not fickle about what made the JPEG or (usually) video, nor where ROMs came from, with the exception of MAME ROMs, many of which need to be put through a conversion utility. Whoopdiedoo.

This thing runs:
  • Neo Geo
  • Sega Genesis
  • Super Nintendo
  • Sega Master System
  • Amiga
  • Atari variants
  • Arcade systems (<1996~1998)
  • Nintendo Entertainment System
  • Homebrew games
  • Linux ported games (that won't kill its dual 200MHz processors)
My only regret is that I don't have 2 because I can see I'm hyper-protective of it and my 9yo daughter wants to keep it with her during the day so she can use it when she has baby-sitting duty. Also having 2 would be cool because maybe I could get my dad interested in developing for it - but alas, there are better things to spend money on.

9 comments:

erghsdbh said...

Yet another gp2x user. We are now one step closer to world domination!

David said...

Uhh... Amen? *chuckles*

I love the thing. Very useful, and handles nicely that hodgepodge of chores the PSP doesn't do well.

erghsdbh said...

Yes my friends has one of those "psp" you speak of =P. I hate the damn thing with its firmware upgrades and horrible games taking up 1.5 gigs. I mean just think of what a gp2x could do with 1.5gb. Ill tell you one thing it would be alot better than playing some stupid port of gta for the millionth time.

David said...

Heh, try getting a 4GB SD card! MP3's, Neo Geo ROMs, Genesis ROMs, heck - loads of ROMs, pictures of family, and space for swapping out videos - here I come!

erghsdbh said...

I use a 1gig for games a 256mb for holding one single full length movie and a 128mb for holding around 30 mp3s.

Anonymous said...

Sweet, glad to hear it.

Just don't format that 4GB, it should be pre-formatted.

Use something to write to it, or set up the GP2X as a "usb network" and drop your games in the folder in "network neighborhood".

The "USB Reader" in the GP2X is a bit buggy and shows up as a HDD in windows, even though windows doesn't like HDD's with no Partition (most flash are formatted partitionless; like a big floppy disk).

David said...

Thank you, Nubie! I followed your advice and sure enough, with a SanDisk 2.0 USB card reader it showed up pre-formatted and everything works beautifully.

Anonymous said...

Sweet, glad you didn't "1GIG" format it :), so many people are you know.

David said...

Heh heh - we honestly my cautious nature would have told me "uhh, research before you do something stupid" but your advice made it "Oh, I was kind of expecting this to happen. I know what I have to do." which made it all a lot easier.