Why isn't there a decent portable emulator yet?

[Fenrir]

Look. You people gotta give me a solid explaination because I don't understand.

WHY is it that noone has created a decent 4:3 open source neutral handheld with a fucking normal D-pad on the left and 4 freakin' buttons on the right and 2 shoulder buttons capable to PERFECTLY emulate everything from the 16-bit era downwards?

Am I begging to get to heaven here?

Is it that hard with nowadays technology? I am really blasted and very annoyed. As easy as that. A decent-sized screen (let's say PSP, but 4:3), with shitloads of memory inside (come on, don't tell me it's IMPOSSIBLE to have 10 or 20 gb of built-in memory in a handheld. Heck, iPods have loads more). A solid CPU, nothing extraordinary, and bang. Dumping every MD, SNES, NES, MS, Amiga, C64, PCE and shitloads of MAME roms in there and there you go. PCs from YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago have already accomplished this task. I can't believe that noone in this world has already released a freakin' handheld with the most basic shape (a freakin' GBA is enough) with a pc-like architecture capable to run the most widely known emus.

Why? Why is it so?
And no, PSP, Gizmodo, GP2x and similar are not ok. Firmware downgrading, glitchy emulators and only a handful of games work well. The only emu game I've been satisfied with was Zelda III on PSP and a bunch of MD games (appearantly the MD emu kicks ass). But I still don't see the point. Why isn't there a machine like that? I am sure it'd sell loads all around the world, as we old gamers tend to grow older and miss our gaming past.

Well? I'm so frustrated by this

[D]

Why is there not an arcade perfect console that can run all arcade games especially unreleased arcade games combined with hdmi output and wireless controllers, wireless arcade sticks and wireless racing wheel peripherals

Don't say pc, pc is not a console.

[Fenrir]

Hallo?
We're talking 8 and 16 bit emulation here on a tiny, basic handheld
Maybe you wanted to reply to another thread and you misclicked?

[Wonderbanana]

Pandora has potential.

[Fenrir]

Nice! I like potentials. Potentials are what makes the world go around!
But srsly. Why isn'there something like that? Even a pocket pc modded with a handheld casing ffs?

There must be an explaination.

[cools]

You just described the Pandora. It's everything you want in terms of hardware.

Perfect emulation is just reliant on the programmers.

[Ex-Cyber]

As far as I know, there is not a single 16-bit console that is "PERFECTLY" emulated on any platform, and the emulators that aim for true accuracy (e.g. bsnes) would certainly not run well on "PCs from YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago".

[D]

As far as I know, there is not a single 16-bit console that is "PERFECTLY" emulated on any platform, and the emulators that aim for true accuracy (e.g. bsnes) would certainly not run well on "PCs from YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago".

THE FUTURE IS NOW
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=23152
What is not perfect about it?

[Fenrir]

As far as I know, there is not a single 16-bit console that is "PERFECTLY" emulated on any platform, and the emulators that aim for true accuracy (e.g. bsnes) would certainly not run well on "PCs from YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago".

I have a PC now. But I had a pc YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago as well (whereas Y&Y&Y = more than 6) and played emulated PC engine games like a charm. Also SNES.
And, being able to compare their performance to actual systems, I'll tell you that yes, the emu was near perfect.

OF COURSE it wasn't perfect because nothing in this world is perfect jeez those boards are a real pain when it comes to useless nitpicking but let's call it "it was so good that the difference from a real machine was unnoticeable", is that fair enough?
When something is emulated so well that it plays just as the real deal, it is perfect for me.

Pandora could well be it, but its design is probably a bit painful. I wonder if it is possible to "switch off" all those keys to prevent accidental pressing during the play session...



Can't believe that it isn't possible to put the equivalent of a Pentium2 with xxx ram and a good graphic adaptor in a GBA casing, then rip a dang windows xp, install it on the built in memory and here you go all the PC emus working without updates! If I were smarter and knew how to do stuff I'd try it myself

[Fenrir]

As far as I know, there is not a single 16-bit console that is "PERFECTLY" emulated on any platform, and the emulators that aim for true accuracy (e.g. bsnes) would certainly not run well on "PCs from YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS ago".

THE FUTURE IS NOW
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=23152
What is not perfect about it?

Exit stage ----> right.

[cools]

Pandora bulky? It's the size of a DS.

For me at least, the controls look to be in the perfect spot.

Should be out soon, so we'll know for sure then. I'm massively fussy about controls so if they're shit or good I'll be outspoken about them

The developers are making the system to do precisely what you're after.

Btw X86 stuff is hideously battery hungry. Pentium II's gobble more power than the current Intel Atom/Via C7 stuff. What you're asking for is the equivalent of running a netbook with a few AA's. It's not going to happen - even shrinking the screen down won't save much power.

[Fenrir]

Pandora bulky? It's the size of a DS.

For me at least, the controls look to be in the perfect spot.

Should be out soon, so we'll know for sure then. I'm massively fussy about controls so if they're shit or good I'll be outspoken about them

The developers are making the system to do precisely what you're after.

Btw X86 stuff is hideously battery hungry. Pentium II's gobble more power than the current Intel Atom/Via C7 stuff. What you're asking for is the equivalent of running a netbook with a few AA's. It's not going to happen - even shrinking the screen down won't save much power.

I didn't think much about power (but hey we're the game gear generation... doesn't frighten me to waste 6 AA in 4 hours ).
However, you're right, I edited the post while you answered. It looked very big at first because I didn't have anything to compare it to. But then I saw the slots and everything was clear.

BTW, I'm not talking about a P2 "per se"... but something equivalent. For example, I can't believe that a iphone or an ipod touch or, hell, a PSP, are less powerful than a P2. If someone can manage to squeeze enough power in those devices, without killing the battery life, there could be someone around here capable to replace a P2 processor with an equivalent processor that is not as power-hungry, no?

[cools]

The problem is the good P2 era emulators are mainly X86 assembler, which isn't portable. The newer stuff is in high level languages which generally cannot be optimised as well as the low level stuff - but it's far more portable.

Have you seen the Dingoo A320 ? It might be more your bag, and it's available now. The emulators still need work though.

[Ex-Cyber]

The technology to have a suitable combination of price, size, battery life, and processing power is scarcely a few years old, if that. Combine that with the fact that it's going to be hard to round up money for a platform that the investors don't "own" the way conventional consoles, handhelds, and cell phones are "owned" (i.e. someone gets to charge money for the privilege of publishing software), and it shouldn't be hard to see why it took this long for something like Pandora to happen.

BTW, I'm not talking about a P2 "per se"... but something equivalent.

We're probably about there with the current generation of low-power SoC products. Pandora is expected to be able to run Quake 3.

For example, I can't believe that a iphone or an ipod touch or, hell, a PSP, are less powerful than a P2.

They're clocked in roughly the same range as a P2, and those types of chips often don't get as much done per clock cycle as you'd expect from a desktop CPU (usually having smaller caches, shorter pipelines, and narrower memories for cost/size/power reasons). Additionally, a lot of the PC-targeted emulators used in the P2 era have hand-optimized x86 assembly language for some of the more CPU-hungry parts, whereas a lot of emulators ported to handhelds are using portable C routines for the same tasks.

Have you seen the Dingoo A320 ? It might be more your bag, and it's available now. The emulators still need work though.

Looks interesting, and the price seems pretty manageable. Is it based on Blackfin?

edit: looks like it's based on a sorta-MIPS SoC that's also powering some cheap Chinese netbooks...

[Fenrir]

Thanks guys, that was REALLY informative.
Also, I looked out this Dingoo thing. See? That wasn't difficult. This is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not an all-rounder, but that little machine is clearly capable of emulating everyting under 32bit; it's small, essential, no big deal, and it costs way less than 100 bucks. I've seen a lot of movies on youtube and this looks like the thing I'm looking for, especially for 16bit emu.
I still don't clearly understand if the emus are built in and you just have to dump the roms in it (hmmm... that can be nasty) or you can customize everything.
If it's capable of emulating more than 95% of the 8 and 16 bit roms around there, well, I'm sold. For $80 it's more than a bargain.

[Wonderbanana]

A DS + a card like a Cyclo DS will give you far better portable emulation than that Dingoo thing imo (at least atm).

Neo Geo games run pretty much perfect; I often play Blazing Star and Mark of the Wolves at work on it. MD emulation is great and SNES aint bad either.

[cools]

From what I know, the emulators aren't built in to the Dingoo per-se. They're files you drop onto the storage.

I wasn't so impressed with emulation on the DS. The PSP is brilliant for it though.

[Wonderbanana]

I wasn't so impressed with emulation on the DS. The PSP is brilliant for it though.

No question the PSP is better, I just don't find it very portable or practical like the DS. I would really love to see a smaller version, preferably in a clamshell casing

DS emulation is quite good now, I'm certainly hapy with the recent emulator releases.

My only thought was reading up on the Dingoo it seems the MD and SNES emulation is quite poor where as on DS you get a lot more emulators anyway and those two running better (again based on what Im reading not experience) than the Dingoo.

As an example the Dingoo struggles with Neo Geo but the DS can run say the Metal Slugs perfectly. If you already have a DS then a card is cheaper to buy than the Dingoo too.

After that essay I must say I'm still tempted, if only because I like new gadgets to play with especially handhelds

[cools]

Agree on the portability

My preorder has been in since the first few minutes of the Pandora becoming available... Looking like May will see the eventual release.

[Fenrir]

I wasn't so impressed with emulation on the DS. The PSP is brilliant for it though.

No question the PSP is better, I just don't find it very portable or practical like the DS. I would really love to see a smaller version, preferably in a clamshell casing

DS emulation is quite good now, I'm certainly hapy with the recent emulator releases.

My only thought was reading up on the Dingoo it seems the MD and SNES emulation is quite poor where as on DS you get a lot more emulators anyway and those two running better (again based on what Im reading not experience) than the Dingoo.

As an example the Dingoo struggles with Neo Geo but the DS can run say the Metal Slugs perfectly. If you already have a DS then a card is cheaper to buy than the Dingoo too.

After that essay I must say I'm still tempted, if only because I like new gadgets to play with especially handhelds

Did you really read somewhere that that Dingoo has a poor MD/SFC emulation? I've seem some movies on youtube and it looked pretty nice.
Well then, if it is true, I don't want to buy a piece of crap
PSP emu is too bothersome, I don't want to downgrade and do all that stuff... DS, on the other hand... it sounds pretty interesting. I don't have a DS flash card though, are there decently sized cards? Like, 512mb sounds not so nice.

About Pandora, I've read that they've already exceeded the preorder quota and they'll wait to produce more of them. By the way, I guess it's going to take a year or two before realizing if emulators can work miracles on that machine, I guess.

[cools]

Not quite - videos have been produced of the development board demonstrating various WIP emulators. The most impressive of which is the greater than 100% PSX one.

DS flashcards are dirt cheap, and capacity limited only by the MicroSD card you shove in them.

[Fenrir]

I see now how the DS work. That's nifty.
Also, I guess it's time to wait for Pandora to come out then. That PSX thing enticed me, even though I'm really just interested in 16 and 8 bit emulation.

On a side note, if we have to dump emus ourselves on the Dingoo, how can we know what its (limited) os is capable to recognize and what not? Or has it its specific emulators? Like, dingoo-only coded emulators?

[Wonderbanana]

Fenrir - theres a video in this thread of Neo Geo in action on DS + a few other bits and bobs too:

http://www.22g.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5257

And yeah I did seea number of reports on poor MD?SNES emulation, particularly reports of poor or no sound. That said like anything it'll probably get better.

[gameoverDude]

Neo DS is good, but unfortunately you must make a tradeoff: Will you cut off part of the screen to play in full detail, or will you give up some detail for the full onscreen image? Shame the DS is 256x192 per screen as opposed to 320x240.

Anyway- Garou and Pulstar run perfect. Blazing Star has a few graphic glitches but it's playable.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Neo DS is good, but unfortunately you must make a tradeoff: Will you cut off part of the screen to play in full detail, or will you give up some detail for the full onscreen image? Shame the DS is 256x192 per screen as opposed to 320x240.

Anyway- Garou and Pulstar run perfect. Blazing Star has a few graphic glitches but it's playable.

If you want the true MVS resolution specs, it's at 320 x 224. Sure the PSP can handle that resolution with no problem. It's no can do with the NDS platform. Suppose if Nintendo did bless it's NDS handheld with 320 x 240 resolution -- would be just about resolution-wise perfect for MVS emulation right? ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[robthebanks]

Wait, I tried to get an SNES emulator running on my DS (I have the M3 DS REAL card) and the only thing out of the select games I tried that worked was Earthbound. Am I missing something, or is my card the problem? According to the German dude on youtube, the Dingoo can't emulate SNES either...

Edit:

Pretty sweet that you can TATE the Dingoo thingy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc0O5F-x ... re=related

[Ex-Cyber]

About Pandora, I've read that they've already exceeded the preorder quota and they'll wait to produce more of them. By the way, I guess it's going to take a year or two before realizing if emulators can work miracles on that machine, I guess.

I don't know what anyone would consider a miracle, but things are pretty promising. A lot of dev work has already been done, between developers who got prototype units and developers targeting the Beagle Board (a very reasonably priced eval board using the same SoC); some demos can be seen on YouTube. I mentioned that Quake 3 was expected to run; I'd forgotten that I had already seen it running. Likewise, things like nullDC and psx4all are running (although nullDC is, predictably, not running very fast).

[gameoverDude]

Neo DS is good, but unfortunately you must make a tradeoff: Will you cut off part of the screen to play in full detail, or will you give up some detail for the full onscreen image? Shame the DS is 256x192 per screen as opposed to 320x240.

Anyway- Garou and Pulstar run perfect. Blazing Star has a few graphic glitches but it's playable.

If you want the true MVS resolution specs, it's at 320 x 224. Sure the PSP can handle that resolution with no problem. It's no can do with the NDS platform. Suppose if Nintendo did bless it's NDS handheld with 320 x 240 resolution -- would be just about resolution-wise perfect for MVS emulation right? ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Once I get around to putting CFW in my PSP, that's one of the first things I'm thinking of - that Neo PSP emu. PSP could even handle CPS1 (it's 480 x 272 vs. 384 x 240).

The DS seems decent with SNES on resolution (you don't have to downscale THAT much), but some games are unfortunately not compatible.

[iatneH]

If you want a smaller portable computer with some decent specs, have a look at the Sony Vaio UX series, and the Raon Digital Everun Note. You will still need to plug in a proper USB controller such as a Genius though, so these will be relatively bulky. But they should run circles around the Pandora and pretty much any netbook in terms of performance, at the expense of form factor...

I used my UX to play NeoGeo and SNES emulators and MAME (and even WarCraft III) last time I went travelling, and it was good except for finding some way to prop it up on my suitcase.

Otherwise, the PSP is rather good. The resolution is not ideal, but it's the closest you will get to what you are describing.

edit: I never knew about that Dingoo thing. Form factor is nice, but I cannot find anything about how powerful it is...

[Cthulhu]

From what I know, the emulators aren't built in to the Dingoo per-se. They're files you drop onto the storage.

I don't think you're going to see built-in or auto-included emulators with anything. The legality of doing that would vary depending on where the units are produced and sold, and even if it did turn out to be totally legal in both places, a big lawsuit from one of the gaming giants would very possibly kill off a small producer. Small operations probably can't cough up large legal fees.