PMPs/portable games rant
Someone on Something Awful was asking about devices that play movies and music and video games (basically Portable Media Players or PMPs), and I wrote up a big-ass reply.
Subject: Tell me about Multimedia Handheld Gaming Consoles! ( I made that up)
Poster: FuzzyWuzzy
Post: Yeah, I made up the name Multimedia Handheld Gaming Console. but what I want is a handheld gaming console, that can play music and videos. I would like one that has a lot of support for emulators and such.
My reply:
I've had a GP2X and didn't like the crappy joystick on it, but the newer models had a different design that I never got to try. I had the very earliest model and I didn't like the battery life too much, or that I had to buy batteries for it and had to remove them to charge the thing. Also the build quality was a bit subpar. It could output to a TV (IIRC before the PSP Slim came out) and the emulators on it were indeed nice. The community was allright, I lurked the forum for it and there was some stupid drama and such but you'd get that anywhere. Also the SD storage for it was about the cheapest storage you could get, short of maybe CompactFlash. It has USB Host, meaning you can plug in a USB device to it, and the GP2X can use it, like a computer does. People were plugging in gamepads and the like, which may have increased my opinion of the system if I didn't intend on it being portable. I guess I could have taped a USB controller to it or something. In all I ended up liking it somewhat but not enough to justify keeping it, and sold it for what I bought it for.
I have a DS, and I also ended up getting a PSP for dirt cheap that I couldn't pass up, and I use the PSP a lot more for homebrew, everything on it runs better than the DS equivalent, and there's some outright nifty shit you can do with it (install remotejoylite, output the video to your computer monitor, plug in a nice gamepad or whatever, and just kick back). I like both screens about the same but I have a 1st gen/fat version of both, and the screens on them aren't exactly stellar. I haven't had much time to play with DS Lites or DSis, or PSP Slims, so for all I know one might have a significantly better screen than the other (and for watching videos that's obviously important). Oh, about forum communities, the GP2X community was rather sophisticated in my opinion, I guess due to it being niche and all that. PSP and DS forum communities have lots of awful GameFAQs-esque posters asking the same questions over and over or just in general acting/typing like 13 year olds.
For the record I've had a few ipods (4G that is currently broken, "Classic" that got stolen) but only ever used them for MP3s, and with stock firmware. A friend is giving me an old 5G or 5.5G soon and I plan to rockbox it, so who knows, my opinion of them as media and gaming devices could change. The Classic had a really vibrant screen, I thought it looked great.
What else could I mention... I've owned lots of PDAs/Smartphones but most are awful to game on for games that don't rely solely on the touchscreen, save for the ones that for whatever reason were blessed with an amazing D-pad (looking at you, iPaq h19xx series). My Mogul could run Street Fighter III: Third Strike and I couldn't control it at all, what a shame. I played a few rounds on the mini-QWERTY but doing supercancels and all that with your thumb on WASD for movement, and the keyboard not reporting multiple, or held-down buttonpresses properly, it wasn't worth playing at all. Whereas I played SNES and NES ROMs every day on my h1910, and there ended up being a really nice port of FinalBurn (arcade emulator) that I never tried, that came out after I sold it, that would have run just fine on it. Usually they're really nice for video though, and there are some nitfy touchscreen games. And for non-action or just plain slow games, you can make do with crappy controls or onscreen soft controls.
By the way, there's a buzzword-ish term for the device you're thinking of: PMP, or Personal Media Player. I think of devices exactly like the GP2X and Dingoo when I hear this term, and to be honest there's a lot of non-namebrand PMP devices out there that can run emulators and play videos and shit that aren't just the GP2X, Pandora, etc. and some of them are rather cheap, the Dingoo is a good example. I never really considered the GP2X to be all that special when I realized how many bizarrely-named Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. handhelds there were that could play loads of emulators and had big screens. The GP2X is just one of many in my book, it just was popular due to the GamePark 32's legacy, and the hardware developers openly supporting software development on it.
This is getting a bit more wordy than I intended it being... anyway, I guess my point here is, there's a lot of choices, and in my opinion none of them are perfect. Some are definitely better than others in some areas, and to me your best bet (assuming you're not a huge geek like me that doesn't mind owning tons of gadgets) would be to make a sort of checklist and prioritize what's important to you, to choose your ideal device that will do it all (or more than likely, "do most of it all"). Mine would look like this kinda, in no particular order, this is just criteria I'd be interested in:
-How nice the screen looks (contrast ratio or something?)
-Screen size
-Screen resolution
-Screen aspect ratio
-Ability to hook up device to TV/other big display
-Built-in speaker quality (shitty on most PDAs, average on DS, great on PSP)
-Durability (my GP2X was a first gen and felt a bit flimsy)
-Battery life
-Ease of swapping out, and/or charging battery
-Removable media support (such as, max capacity supported, what format (MS Duo or SD, etc.), the iPod will fail in this category of course)
-Use as USB Mass Storage (DS won't work unless you like carrying around a card reader)
-Homebrew community
-Ease of running homebrew on (hacking it vs. being designed for it, etc.)
-What games I want to play (emulators for whatever consoles that run well, retail games for that platform, homebrew games...)
-Controls (I personally would not rely on most PDAs for gaming, or an iPod, or an iPod touch, since I like having buttons)
-Other connectivity (GP2X has USB host, DS and PSP and iPod Touch have WiFi, some PDAs and the fat PSP have infrared...)
-Accessories (most PMPs are probably not going to do well in this category)
-Individual system gimmicks (dual screens on DS, App Store/PS Network/Virtual Console etc, contacts manager, agenda...)
Maybe that could get you started! Some of the above is going to be subjective either in what you consider good or in stuff that isn't really quantifiable (there isn't a way to measure "how much I like the control scheme" on a DS or PSP...), but most will be hard data that you can easily cross-reference.
Subject: Tell me about Multimedia Handheld Gaming Consoles! ( I made that up)
Poster: FuzzyWuzzy
Post: Yeah, I made up the name Multimedia Handheld Gaming Console. but what I want is a handheld gaming console, that can play music and videos. I would like one that has a lot of support for emulators and such.
My reply:
I've had a GP2X and didn't like the crappy joystick on it, but the newer models had a different design that I never got to try. I had the very earliest model and I didn't like the battery life too much, or that I had to buy batteries for it and had to remove them to charge the thing. Also the build quality was a bit subpar. It could output to a TV (IIRC before the PSP Slim came out) and the emulators on it were indeed nice. The community was allright, I lurked the forum for it and there was some stupid drama and such but you'd get that anywhere. Also the SD storage for it was about the cheapest storage you could get, short of maybe CompactFlash. It has USB Host, meaning you can plug in a USB device to it, and the GP2X can use it, like a computer does. People were plugging in gamepads and the like, which may have increased my opinion of the system if I didn't intend on it being portable. I guess I could have taped a USB controller to it or something. In all I ended up liking it somewhat but not enough to justify keeping it, and sold it for what I bought it for.
I have a DS, and I also ended up getting a PSP for dirt cheap that I couldn't pass up, and I use the PSP a lot more for homebrew, everything on it runs better than the DS equivalent, and there's some outright nifty shit you can do with it (install remotejoylite, output the video to your computer monitor, plug in a nice gamepad or whatever, and just kick back). I like both screens about the same but I have a 1st gen/fat version of both, and the screens on them aren't exactly stellar. I haven't had much time to play with DS Lites or DSis, or PSP Slims, so for all I know one might have a significantly better screen than the other (and for watching videos that's obviously important). Oh, about forum communities, the GP2X community was rather sophisticated in my opinion, I guess due to it being niche and all that. PSP and DS forum communities have lots of awful GameFAQs-esque posters asking the same questions over and over or just in general acting/typing like 13 year olds.
For the record I've had a few ipods (4G that is currently broken, "Classic" that got stolen) but only ever used them for MP3s, and with stock firmware. A friend is giving me an old 5G or 5.5G soon and I plan to rockbox it, so who knows, my opinion of them as media and gaming devices could change. The Classic had a really vibrant screen, I thought it looked great.
What else could I mention... I've owned lots of PDAs/Smartphones but most are awful to game on for games that don't rely solely on the touchscreen, save for the ones that for whatever reason were blessed with an amazing D-pad (looking at you, iPaq h19xx series). My Mogul could run Street Fighter III: Third Strike and I couldn't control it at all, what a shame. I played a few rounds on the mini-QWERTY but doing supercancels and all that with your thumb on WASD for movement, and the keyboard not reporting multiple, or held-down buttonpresses properly, it wasn't worth playing at all. Whereas I played SNES and NES ROMs every day on my h1910, and there ended up being a really nice port of FinalBurn (arcade emulator) that I never tried, that came out after I sold it, that would have run just fine on it. Usually they're really nice for video though, and there are some nitfy touchscreen games. And for non-action or just plain slow games, you can make do with crappy controls or onscreen soft controls.
By the way, there's a buzzword-ish term for the device you're thinking of: PMP, or Personal Media Player. I think of devices exactly like the GP2X and Dingoo when I hear this term, and to be honest there's a lot of non-namebrand PMP devices out there that can run emulators and play videos and shit that aren't just the GP2X, Pandora, etc. and some of them are rather cheap, the Dingoo is a good example. I never really considered the GP2X to be all that special when I realized how many bizarrely-named Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. handhelds there were that could play loads of emulators and had big screens. The GP2X is just one of many in my book, it just was popular due to the GamePark 32's legacy, and the hardware developers openly supporting software development on it.
This is getting a bit more wordy than I intended it being... anyway, I guess my point here is, there's a lot of choices, and in my opinion none of them are perfect. Some are definitely better than others in some areas, and to me your best bet (assuming you're not a huge geek like me that doesn't mind owning tons of gadgets) would be to make a sort of checklist and prioritize what's important to you, to choose your ideal device that will do it all (or more than likely, "do most of it all"). Mine would look like this kinda, in no particular order, this is just criteria I'd be interested in:
-How nice the screen looks (contrast ratio or something?)
-Screen size
-Screen resolution
-Screen aspect ratio
-Ability to hook up device to TV/other big display
-Built-in speaker quality (shitty on most PDAs, average on DS, great on PSP)
-Durability (my GP2X was a first gen and felt a bit flimsy)
-Battery life
-Ease of swapping out, and/or charging battery
-Removable media support (such as, max capacity supported, what format (MS Duo or SD, etc.), the iPod will fail in this category of course)
-Use as USB Mass Storage (DS won't work unless you like carrying around a card reader)
-Homebrew community
-Ease of running homebrew on (hacking it vs. being designed for it, etc.)
-What games I want to play (emulators for whatever consoles that run well, retail games for that platform, homebrew games...)
-Controls (I personally would not rely on most PDAs for gaming, or an iPod, or an iPod touch, since I like having buttons)
-Other connectivity (GP2X has USB host, DS and PSP and iPod Touch have WiFi, some PDAs and the fat PSP have infrared...)
-Accessories (most PMPs are probably not going to do well in this category)
-Individual system gimmicks (dual screens on DS, App Store/PS Network/Virtual Console etc, contacts manager, agenda...)
Maybe that could get you started! Some of the above is going to be subjective either in what you consider good or in stuff that isn't really quantifiable (there isn't a way to measure "how much I like the control scheme" on a DS or PSP...), but most will be hard data that you can easily cross-reference.