Best emulation handheld that isn't a PSP (yep, serious)

[Domino]

Pretty much what the subject line said. I heard plenty of things about the GCW Zero and how the Kickstarter backers are still waiting for their units, yet you can get them in stock from ThinkGeek.com..

Then there is the Nvidia Shield which is a lot more powerful than the GCW Zero but well uses a Xbox style controller which I'm not a fan at all.

I don't know what other cool emulation handhelds are out there. To be honest I'm still new to the concept.

I had a Vita and a PSP in the past and sold them both. Not planning to get either one any time soon.

[bobrocks95]

Pandora? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)

[Domino]

Pandora? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)

Mmm. Pretty pricey for what it is. I don't need a keyboard.

[bobrocks95]

well its precursor was the GP2X, which is a nice little system, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's not as powerful as you'd want. Fresh out of ideas on any other handhelds, other than maybe adding a controller to your smartphone.

[scottmog]

Sony Xperia Play

[RaidenViper]

Laptop.

[shmuppyLove]

I was quite surprised by how good emulation on Android is with Retroarch.

I have a cheap 7" Hipstreet Android tablet and a USB OTG cable. I was able to connect my Hori HRAP EX-SE and play Einhander

But of course there are no built-in controls, so it's not as convenient.

[nasty_wolverine]

i am sorry, but best handheld for running emus is a psp.

nes, snes, gba, genesis, pce, gba, all the older consoles (atari, colecovision, vectrex), and PS1 natively, and mame. plus the widescreen design lets you tate. controls are godly in the psp2000 (but fuck that analogue stick).

[ZellSF]

i am sorry, but best handheld for running emus is a psp.

nes, snes, gba, genesis, pce, gba, all the older consoles (atari, colecovision, vectrex), and PS1 natively, and mame. plus the widescreen design lets you tate. controls are godly in the psp2000 (but fuck that analogue stick).

Just about any Android device today will severely outclass the PSP in both game compatibility and performance. Even the really shitty outdated Xperia Play mentioned here will.

Sure there's slightly more input lag, but I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff for being able to actually play the games you want to play with no performance problems.


If you want the best though: OpenPandora or wait for its successor (that would be the DragonBox Pyra). PSP is nowhere near the best, just the cheapest.

[antron]

NGage

[Endymion]

Here you go.

[antron]

^ that's awesome.

I'm reading that the Nvidia Shield can be rooted and has emulators available.

[nasty_wolverine]

Sure there's slightly more input lag

you are on a forum that hates input lag so much, that they stick to crts when they can, have detailed knowledge of monitor lag in milliseconds, has there own mame build which reduces lag.

So why should i put up with lag?

tbh android isnt for gaming, yet. maybe with android L and art with its native compilation will solve the problem.

psp is still the best, untill we hack the vita and make a sdk for it.

[ZellSF]

Sure there's slightly more input lag

you are on a forum that hates input lag so much, that they stick to crts when they can, have detailed knowledge of monitor lag in milliseconds, has there own mame build which reduces lag.

So why should i put up with lag?

The same reason we put up with lag in any other situation: the tradeoff is more than worth it. The compatibility difference is massive, the PSP really just isn't powerful enough to even emulate GBA or SNES well (despite many games running, there's so many that don't).

psp is still the best, untill we hack the vita and make a sdk for it.

Even if you discard Android (which I think is silly if you're including shitty emulator devices like the PSP) then the OpenPandora is in every way an improvement on the PSP. The GCW Zero should too, but I haven't tried one of those-

[nasty_wolverine]

The compatibility difference is massive,

using the word massive is overrated. like "attack the enemies weak point for massive damage"

the PSP really just isn't powerful enough to even emulate GBA or SNES well (despite many games running, there's so many that don't).

get psp-2000 and above (64mb of usable ram). gba runs perfect. snes does have some hitches, but playing around settings can make most (about a good 80%) run at 100%.

Even if you discard Android (which I think is silly if you're including shitty emulator devices like the PSP)

sorry, but the psp is not shitty.

then the OpenPandora is in every way an improvement on the PSP. The GCW Zero should too, but I haven't tried one of those-

no arguments against pandora, cause it uses linux and its open. but its design doesnt look like it would comfortable for long hours of gaming. GCW zero looks interesting, i am on the fence with that one.

[ZellSF]

the PSP really just isn't powerful enough to even emulate GBA or SNES well (despite many games running, there's so many that don't).

get psp-2000 and above (64mb of usable ram). gba runs perfect. snes does have some hitches, but playing around settings can make most (about a good 80%) run at 100%.

I have a 64mb unit. SNES compatibility for the selection I tried still was nowhere near 80% and the idea that GBA is perfect is laughable. Good enough for the games you want to play, maybe. Perfect? Hell no.

sorry, but the psp is not shitty.

I said it was shitty as an emulator device, not shitty in general.

[nasty_wolverine]

I have a 64mb unit. SNES compatibility for the selection I tried still was nowhere near 80% and the idea that GBA is perfect is laughable. Good enough for the games you want to play, maybe. Perfect? Hell no.

SNES, yeah i know, games that use mode7 a lot dont tend run at 100% all the time. apart from that its pretty fine. I played through super metroid on it without any problems.

GBA is almost perfect. never had any problems with it. what are these games that dont run proper.

I always have FPS display enabled on all emus. I would argue that either you are using old emulators and the not the latest ones, or you havent played enough with the settings.

[ZellSF]

This was 6-12 months ago, and I was using the latest emulators (and all the forks of them) and played around with every setting there was. None of them changed that the PSP just wasn't powerful enough for emulating GBA/SNES perfectly.

I would also definitely argue that having to adjust 10-15 settings per game and finding the right emulator per game is very, very far from ideal for an emulator device. It's a lot of work for a very minor input lag difference.

The SNES games I tried for the most part weren't mode7 (that said, I find mode7 support critical for Super Aleste). SNES support outside of mode7 was still pretty bad.

I really don't recall which titles didn't run well with the GBA emulator as that really fades out of memory quickly when you decide that the PSP just isn't going to work as a GBA. What use is remembering which titles do or do not run then and which settings you've tried? Only thing I vaguely remember was trying to get Final Fantasy VI working (the SNES version was a total failure on the SNES emulators).

[nasty_wolverine]

It's a lot of work for a very minor input lag difference.

input lag for playing shmups is bad. any kind.

The SNES games I tried for the most part weren't mode7 (that said, I find mode7 support critical for Super Aleste). SNES support outside of mode7 was still pretty bad.

I turned on axelay. it ran with a little slowdown. considering it uses so much mode7. otherwise fast paced games like contra and F-zero ran fine, at 100% speed.

I really don't recall which titles didn't run well with the GBA emulator as that really fades out of memory quickly when you decide that the PSP just isn't going to work as a GBA.

i have played all the castlevanias, metroids, gradius galaxy, rtype lightning, sonic advance 2, megaman zero games and can say that all run at 100% speed without any glitches.

What use is remembering which titles do or do not run then and which settings you've tried? Only thing I vaguely remember was trying to get Final Fantasy VI working (the SNES version was a total failure on the SNES emulators).

I played FFVI too, it ran perfectly fine. i got bored of it though cause i dont really like rpg's. samething happened with legend of zelda.

[ZellSF]

It's a lot of work for a very minor input lag difference.

input lag for playing shmups is bad. any kind.

Very minor input lag. We all hate input lag, but there's sometimes acceptable tradeoffs.

You should know that or you wouldn't be playing SNES games on laggy PSP emulators at all.

I played FFVI too, it ran perfectly fine. i got bored of it though cause i dont really like rpg's. samething happened with legend of zelda.

If you think Final Fantasy VI runs perfectly fine on a PSP, then we obviously just have very different definitions of perfectly fine.

All PSP emulators seems to be talking about frameskip as that's a setting you should use for example, I don't find that acceptable (and skipping displaying entire frames is adding input lag). Setting sound sampling rate to 11khz is unacceptable for RPGs. Slowdown is unacceptable, glitches of any kind is unacceptable.

If you know of any emulator that doesn't have to do those major tradeoffs to get a lot of games working, then do name them.

[Endymion]

I cannot believe that this is even under contention. An Android like the one that I linked to, with tactile, real, physical buttons absolutely destroys the PSP for emulation. There is no way in hell that I want to play anything on a PSP anymore after getting mine, and I paid about fifty dollars more for it earlier in the year. Its software out of the box is already geared towards this kind of stuff, plus, with a completely open environment like the Android system, there are custom firmwares available that open up all kinds of possibilities that you can never even attempt on a PSP.

Honestly, I kinda wondered about what the OP had been exposed to in order to even think that such old hardware was great for emulation.

[scottmog]

i am sorry, but best handheld for running emus is a psp.

nes, snes, gba, genesis, pce, gba, all the older consoles (atari, colecovision, vectrex), and PS1 natively, and mame. plus the widescreen design lets you tate. controls are godly in the psp2000 (but fuck that analogue stick).

Try running n64 on a psp. I run an N64 on an xperia play overclocked to 1.2ghz and it is fine for me. I have around 540 games in my nintendo/PS1&2 fanboy collection but my xperia play in the unforeseeable future will continue to be my small end all be all portable emulator and the android operating system is godly compared to the psp OS.

[Xan]

I second ZellSF's posts. I wonder why the myth that the PSP is great for emulation is still alive, because it never wasn't unless one has very low standards. Only POPS is worth using, for PS1 games that can handle L2/R2 being mapped to the analog stick anyway.

[NightSprinter]

Even then, not EVERY PS1 game is suitable to run in POPs. There's a battle in Mega Man Legends 1 that absolutely requires you to use all four shoulder buttons constantly for turning and aiming. Using the analog stick for L2/R2 on top of the shoulder buttons and everything else.. I can't see how one can win that battle on the PSP..

[mastermx]

PSP is terrible for snes emulation. Unless you have frameskip on. And I hate frame skip.

PSP has good gba emulation, neogeo cps1, cps2 and some very good shmup collections released for it, like gradius for example.

[Xan]

GBA isn't "good" either on the PSP. While some games like Metroid do run, others like the aforementioned FFVI need huge amounts of frameskip which makes it an absolutely pointless endeavour; not to mention you get to choose between horrendous amounts of screen tearing, or VSync which kills performance and introduces input lag. And good luck trying to play any of the FPS games like Duke Nukem Advance or Doom.

[Taiyaki]

iPad. 4:3 resolution and the emus made by rakashazi are rather good. You can also use wiimotes and maybe ps3 controllers.

[cools]

The GCW Zero is good but the 4:3 320x240 screen only looks decent on games that are that resolution or less - it simply doesn't have enough pixels to scale anything nicely.

I find the PSP too awkward to play in tate.

I had a great time on the train last weekend with my tablet (LG G Pad 8.3), MAME4Droid 139 and an NES30 pad.

[shmuppyLove]

I had a great time on the train last weekend with my tablet (LG G Pad 8.3), MAME4Droid 139 and an NES30 pad.

That controller looks amazing. I wish Amazon had it in Canada

[Ed Oscuro]

I was looking recently for an interesting project on kickstarter, that was aiming to make a real portable (handheld-sized) Intel / Windows PC. There was the OQO (how on earth did I remember that?) from years back, but those are obsolete now. However, there has been some kind of deal (or SOMETHING) where the name is being used still for machines that look similar. Naturally: http://oqo.com/

However, I'm still trying to figure out what that Kickstarter was that I saw, which was focused on that the developers called a "revolutionary" design with more focus on giving a modern CPU headroom to run at normal speeds in a handheld package, by focusing on routing heat away.