Exciting looking emulation portable - GCW:Zero. Now kickstarted

[opt2not]

YEEEEEEeeah!!! Great stuff! Now to work towards that protective pouch 

[RandyT]

3.5" 4:3 Ratio screen versus a 5" 16:9 Widescreen on the Droid thing.

The GCW-Zero's screen should be as tall, but not as wide. Which is no big deal as old consoles & arcade games are 4:3 ratio, not widescreen.

See the image below for a scale comparison.  If emulation improves on Android, and they put a good phone in the things, it would be tough to ask for more.

[Jumpman64]

THEY MADE IT!

Well slap my face and call me Sally!  Woot!  :-)

 

[RandyT]

I just backed it as well.  If the HDMI port ends up working well, and it works with a USB gamepad, it could be a cool foundation for a bartop or a mini.

[WindDrake]

3.5" 4:3 Ratio screen versus a 5" 16:9 Widescreen on the Droid thing.

The GCW-Zero's screen should be as tall, but not as wide. Which is no big deal as old consoles & arcade games are 4:3 ratio, not widescreen.

See the image below for a scale comparison.  If emulation improves on Android, and they put a good phone in the things, it would be tough to ask for more.

Just ran the math (3.5" = 2.1" High 2.8" Wide and 5" = 2.5" high) so my original fuzzy thinking was indeed off. Thanks for the diagram.

I still want one. Atari 2600 and SegaCD on the go. 

[Generic Eric]

Argh....


Can someone identify the cost difference between this and what device preceded it?   On the monetary fence. 

[Malenko]

i just wish they'd stop emailing me every 28 minutes

[ahofle]

So does anyone know if the emulators available for Dingoo or Caanoo will run on the OS for this device? Or would we have to wait for emulators made specifically for this handheld?

It runs Dingux I believe, so it will run all the same emulators that the Dingoo runs.

[XtraSmiley]

Although the screen rez is fine for old school consoles, but what about MAME games? Many of them had higher rez right? So how would it handle them?

[Haze]

The screen res and CPU power are pretty much garbage even for classic consoles, looks more like another kickstarter scam to me even if they do make it.

320 isn't wide enough for CPS1
240 isn't high enough for a lot of PS1 screens which run in interlace mode, nor is 320 wide enough for a great number of titles.
240 won't work well with games of NTSC resolution, you'll get black bars, or very ugly scaling effects.
PCE, SNES etc. all do higher res too. even Genesis on occasion.

Based on control layout it doesn't look like something you'll be able to rotate either, so you'll be stuck playing vertical games in the middle of a tiny screen and even then find the screen isn't big enough even for pacman (224x288 resolution, hence why many old home ports had to scroll & move the status bar to the side)  sure you could scale it down but that will just look ugly and/or use more cpu power.

Basically if you thought the NeoGeo Gold X whatever it's called handheld was junk (and it was, plus they were just running hacked up copies of FBA) then this is no better.

at best you're likely to get some sub-par ports of the existing emulators for the linux platforms it runs, offering the same sub-par emulation you've always seen with no real improvements, and the product has no real reason to exist at all beyond the hype of it being yet another kickstarter project people are willing to pump endless money into for little outcome.  this offers nothing new over kit you could buy years ago.

maybe I should start my own to create the worlds best multi-game emulator, then just copy the mame source with a few tweaks, because it's REALLY not much different to what these guys are doing when it comes to existing handhelds.

sorry to be so negative over this, but bleah.

[XtraSmiley]

maybe I should start my own to create the worlds best multi-game emulator, then just copy the mame source with a few tweaks, because it's REALLY not much different to what these guys are doing when it comes to existing handhelds.

Yes please!

Thanks Haze, you just saved me some coin. THIS is the kind of real answers I enjoy from this forum.

That being said, I like my NGX, but yeah, it is junk.

[Bender]

sorry to be so negative over this, but bleah.

Hey, to each his own

I loved my Wiz (still do, but it's been hacked into my Micro DK) and My Caanoo
The GCW-Zero is just an upgrade of those plus an analog AND D-pad for a quick game on the go that fits in my pocket, I'm not expecting perfect emulation just some fun with classics on the go

Will it run everything, No
But will it be fun, fit in my pocket and cost just over a $100?
Yep!

[Malenko]

sorry to be so negative over this, but bleah.

Its bound to run them at least as well as my PSP, and its smaller. I'm not interested in 100% perfect emulation; I just wanna play some throwback games on the go or while Im going.

[Dcpmark]

The screen res and CPU power are pretty much garbage even for classic consoles, looks more like another kickstarter scam to me even if they do make it.

...

sorry to be so negative over this, but bleah.

Haze, i dont know if you saw this from earlier in the thread, what do you think of something like this? Are Android-based handhelds decent for running and scaling different MAME games?

http://www.wholesaleonepiece.com/droid-x360-game-tablet-5-inch-capacitive-allwinner-a10-android-40-ics-8g-hdmi_p4536.html

[opt2not]

The screen res and CPU power are pretty much garbage even for classic consoles, looks more like another kickstarter scam to me even if they do make it.

Say what now? I'm not sure if you're blatantly trolling, or just really just don't know what the heck's going on.  The GCW's specs are perfectly sufficient for classic console and arcade emulation.  I've used, and seen people use older PC's with worth specs as this for the basis of their machines.  The 1Ghz + Vivante GC860 + 512 MB of RAM is completely fine, far from calling it garbage.

And how is this a kickstarter scam? There already has been a prototype run of these units (about 150) and has been in the scene for the last year or so. That's much more lead-way than most products you see on kickstarter, and the fact that the play-tested proof is out there even strengthens this product as the real-deal.  Over at http://boards.dingoonity.org/gcw-zero/ there are tons of threads you can sift through that have people showing off the GCW they got in the prototype run, so saying this is just another scam is completely indignant.

Ok down to the nitty-gritty:

320 isn't wide enough for CPS1

Fair enough. There will be scaling there...not the end of the world. Given that most CPS1 and 2 games have very solid ports to home systems as an alternative. But really, at a screen size this small, unless you've got your nose right up to the screen, scaling will be acceptable visually.

240 isn't high enough for a lot of PS1 screens which run in interlace mode, nor is 320 wide enough for a great number of titles.

The PSX's native output ran multiple resolutions, including progressive modes at 240p, while only a handful of games supported higher, for instance Crash Bandicoot, and Wipeout 3. A majority of titles (and the PSX's library was probably the largest in console history) ran at 240p and 480i.

But why the heck would you want interlaced mode for this screen anyways?  What's the point of line-doubling/scan-lining when your screen's resolution is 320x240?
I think this is a by-product of today's retro gamers. Most people play retro games on emulators, and naturally have their computers, xbox's, PSP's set to higher resolutions with up-scaling happening. So they think, that's the way its supposed to be. Back in the day, no one talked about TV resolutions as extensive as now. Most people don't know that Standard Resolution is 640x480 (roughly VGA), but older consoles actually outputted half of that and were interlaced (line-doubled) to display at standard def. Hence 480i.

Here are the native non-interlaced modes of the PSX (240p):
256 x 240
320 x 240
512 x 240
640 x 240

Here are the interlaced modes (480i):
256 x 480
320 x 480
512 x 480
640 x 480

See what I"m getting at here?  You get a crisp image at progressive scan running at the native resolution without having the hardware push harder to double the line output. Which connects back to my earlier point of the specs being completely adequate. 

240 won't work well with games of NTSC resolution, you'll get black bars, or very ugly scaling effects.
PCE, SNES etc. all do higher res too. even Genesis on occasion.

This is a little facetious.
NES/Master System/Snes/Genesis all ran at 256×224 natively.

MSX = 256×192
ColecoVision = 256×192
Atari 2600 = 192x160
DOS games = mostly ran at 320x240
N64, like the PSX had most games that ran at 320x240, but some games had the ability to run at 640x480, but not a lot of them.

Basically anything made earlier than the SNES ran lower than 320x240 natively.
Sega Saturn can output a display resolution of 320×224 and higher, but it's similar to the PSX, some games were programmed to do so.

Are you really concerned about an 8 pixel black-bar, at the top and bottom? Back in the day, you'd still get the same thing, but the only difference is that on CRT's you had control over the vertical geometry that your monitor's v-scale. Unfortunately with LCD technology, we can't get that type of control (see my many rants on why CRTs are so much better than LCDs). Heck, even some of the cheaper TVs back then didn't have v or h-scale potentiometer, and compensated by having the shroud overhang the view-able image!

But come-on, an 8 pixel bar is not the end of the world.

Based on control layout it doesn't look like something you'll be able to rotate either, so you'll be stuck playing vertical games in the middle of a tiny screen and even then find the screen isn't big enough even for pacman (224x288 resolution, hence why many old home ports had to scroll & move the status bar to the side)  sure you could scale it down but that will just look ugly and/or use more cpu power.

Looks pretty good to me: http://youtu.be/3t0aR4W3KRQ?t=1m47s

I don't know why you think you can't play this in vertical mode.  If you can play Dodonpachi with it looking this good, pacman is a no-brainer. 
The screen is physically 3.5".  That's roughly the same size as an Iphone4's display, so if you've played games on your phone as a touch screen and display, I'm pretty sure you'll be fine without being encumbered by your fingers getting in the way on this screen.

Basically if you thought the NeoGeo Gold X whatever it's called handheld was junk (and it was, plus they were just running hacked up copies of FBA) then this is no better.

Wrong. 
A. you don't need to hack up this unit, or get SD adapter hacks to get more games/other emulators on it (if there even is anyone supporting other emulators for the NGX)
B. The physical buttons on the GCW are reported to be of higher quality than the NGX. The NGX doesn't even have a d-pad!
C. NGX has less RAM. 
D. NGX has less storage. 
E. NGX has no wifi, no hdmi out.
F. NGX doesn't have an Accelerometer!
G. NGX doesn't have a mic!  (think about the multiplayer gaming possibilities on the GCW...)

Clearly the GCW is better.

at best you're likely to get some sub-par ports of the existing emulators for the linux platforms it runs, offering the same sub-par emulation you've always seen with no real improvements, and the product has no real reason to exist at all beyond the hype of it being yet another kickstarter project people are willing to pump endless money into for little outcome.  this offers nothing new over kit you could buy years ago.

maybe I should start my own to create the worlds best multi-game emulator, then just copy the mame source with a few tweaks, because it's REALLY not much different to what these guys are doing when it comes to existing handhelds.

sorry to be so negative over this, but bleah.

Please watch the videos previously linked. The emulators that have been (easily) ported from the dingoo already show a vast improvement from previous revisions. It even out performs the PSP ports, which a lot of people think is better, and are clearly wrong.
Again, the proof is in the pudding here. The early prototyping really helped push this "hype" to reality, and has jazzed a lot of people who understand what this unit really is, and what they want to use it for.

Honestly, if you want to take on an endeavor like this, please by all means. Not everyone has the funds to be able to just jump into the hardware industry, and if you do, then you're one of the more well-off ones. Heh, in fact, I'd love to see your solution for supporting multiple screen resolutions for emulating all the different hardware, without scaling, black-bars, and scrolling...better put a patent down on a screen that can physically shrink and grow to fit all sizes. Some kind of organic technology perhaps?

Granted, haters are gonna hate. For me, from the research I've done on what the current options for easily portable retro gaming are out there, all signs point to this unit being the best there is. Everything else seems to be either cheaply made, no longer supported, or require hardware/firmware hacking.  I just want something easy, and for a price point of $135, this little unit is definitely the top pick.

[404]

^^ the NGX has HDMI and an empty wifi slot inside the unit. Some sources have claimed that both units have the same ODM. The original Ram specs for the GCW were exactly the same as NGX. The developer consoles were the first batch with double the memory.

The leaked specs from the upcoming GameGadget which not-so-coincidentally is sold by blaze and success which both market the NGX to Europe and Asia respectively are exactly the same as both the NGX and GCW. The original GameGadget was basically nothing more than a slightly stronger dingoo as well.

[opt2not]

I stand corrected on the HDMI. So the empty slot for the wifi is for upgrades later?  I can't see any mention of wifi on their official site...

Yeah, the original GCW specs for RAM was the same, but no longer. The GCW is confirmed to ship the same specs as the prototype SE units, with the upgraded RAM amount.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the battery-life on the NGX is officially quoted to be 3-4 hours on a charge, while the GCW is reported to be 7-10 hours. Double the play time -- for me that's very favorable for the GCW, especially on trips and long commutes.

[404]

So the empty slot for the wifi is for upgrades later?

No. It's a blank spot internally. However, it clearly shows that there was some expansion or re-use of the board in mind when created.

Yeah, the original GCW specs for RAM was the same, but no longer. The GCW is confirmed to ship the same specs as the prototype SE units, with the upgraded RAM amount.

If i remember correctly, the very first batches out, which were a mere handful of units, did not contain the doubled ram. I could be wrong though. There seems to be some blurry edges in terms of who got what test units when.

picture of Success' latest expo catalog. Shows some new gamegadget devices which have been long rumored.

[Haze]

If people want to buy them / donate to the cause I'm not going to stop them, all I'm saying is I don't really see the point in it at all like so many other Kickstarter projects.

For the most part you'll end up with the same emulators as the existing Dingoo devices, and while yes you do have a lot more CPU power there is a big step between emulating things at an accuracy level needed for 'cheap as chips' hardware, and a level good enough to make a huge difference to the quality / experience offered.

I can just see it being a device people use with the emulators already out there, running the same quality of emulation they've played for ages, some crappy port of MAME4ALL with all the usual MAME4ALL bugs rather than the newer 'reloaded' ports etc.

Ok, it's cheap, but I'd still throw it in with the Pi in terms of things holding back emulation rather than allowing it to move forward in any meaningful way.

As for resolutions, SNES has some 512 wide ones, Genesis has the 480i mode, and like you point out PSX can do an awful lot more and it's not like you get to choose if a screen is 480, so you'll be forced to scale down any such screens and plenty of games run in the wider resolutions.  It's not going to be any kind of 'ultimate emulator handheld' however it's packaged up and with the pace things seem to be moving at it will end up even more dated very quickly IMHO.  Yes, a number of the 8-bits like SMS are strictly limited to sizes this can support, but even the MSX series could push higher.  For arcades PGM is 448 wide, even the midway games like MK use wider resolutions and you're going to be noticably chopping pixels, classics like Tapper,Rampage and Spy Hunter are 512x480, Popeye is 512x448 and there are a whole load of other games / systems people are going to be interested in where the screen won't be able to do them justice.  As for rotating it your dpad will end up at one end, and the buttons at the other,surely that's going to be more than just awkward?

Also how many buttons does it have? I can see 4 main ones, possible a trigger each side?  for the PSX you'd need 2 triggers each side for a good number of games.  Directions? looks like the only physical input it has for them is the digital d-pad, which may or may not be a problem depending on what you want to play.

As I said, sorry for not being enthusiastic, but it just seems to be a cookie cutter, cheap, chinese-build style handheld device and not remotely worth the hype and that's why I compare it to the NGX.  If that's what people want then fine, but it's not going to be some super-good product everybody is going to remember as the best thing ever made to emulate classic games, there are already devices out there capable of running emulators better, albeit the usual complaint being lack of 'real' controls for many of them.

As stated, this is my opinion, it just seems to be promising an awful lot and like so many kickstarter projects IMHO will end up under delivering if people have expectations too high.  They're upfront with the specs, yes, that's good, but at the same time I think people need to know what those specs imply.

It does have the potential to be a decent enough system to emulate other handheld systems, like the NGPC, Lynx, GBA, Wonderswan etc. but as these are the arcade controls forums I thought it important to make note that there are many arcades it's not going to play nice with.

[opt2not]

Quite honestly this is the best option for having classic games, both arcade and console on-the-go. Right now I play on my iPhone during commutes or when waiting around. But I can't stand touch controls, and the ports brought over are all poorly adapted. The GCW is a very sleek device that does promise a lot, but I err on the side of positivity (it's better for the soul), and have no doubts this handheld will be the best that's out there. Just looking at all the YouTube videos, it's plain to see.

Construction-wise, I gotta say it looks much more higher quality than the dingoo and NGX. From the build it looks close in quality to the PSP, there's even a video on YouTube comparing them together.

Personally my plans for usage is going to mainly be:
- old console emulation, 8 and 16bit, especially systems I wasn't privy to in my youth: MSX, TG-16, ZX Spectrum
- Portables like GBA, NEOGEO pocket, game gear
- a few games on PSX, like castlevania SOTN, Gradius Gaiden, R-type Delta, Einhander, and Legend of Mana. (All of these not requiring all PSX shoulder buttons). Oh and a slew of rpg's
- DOS emulation for FPS's like Doom, Hexen, duke3D, please-oh-please Dark Forces, and rise of the triads
- Scumm emulation: yeah Full Throttle, The Dig, Day of the tentacle!

All of these, except for the PSX titles are completely doable and proven to run really well on the GCW now.
The dingoo homebrew scene is already getting excited about this console, and dev support is coming over from there. Emulators will get better and more optimized than what the dingoo had, and the fact it's just a recompile with new libraries to get the old software working makes it even easier for devs already established in that scene.

Yes this is BYOAC and arcade is the main thing, but it was originally posted in the Consoles section and we moved it to Main so that more exposure to it would help the kickstarter pass.

We're all gamers here and I'd be willing to bet not exclusively just arcades for a lot of us. This is a very sexy product that IMHO is the best option for retro gaming portability. It handles all the old consoles, arcade, and DOS games like a champ, and from the list of things I want to use it for, it really is my be-all-end-all device.

I can't wait to get my hands on it! I think I'll be choosing the black version, it looks pretty sleek. Wesley Snipes said always bet on black.

[tris_d]

For the most part you'll end up with the same emulators as the existing Dingoo devices, and while yes you do have a lot more CPU power there is a big step between emulating things at an accuracy level needed for 'cheap as chips' hardware, and a level good enough to make a huge difference to the quality / experience offered.

Can you name several of those huge differences? What platform are you comparing it with, a PC?

So, would you say Dingoo is not worth its price, or not worth having at all? How about PSP? If MAME ran better on PSP I think that would be good enough to make this GCW:Zero redundant. I also hear Dingoo does much better job for MAME and majority of the games across many emulators, so what more people want?

I can just see it being a device people use with the emulators already out there, running the same quality of emulation they've played for ages, some crappy port of MAME4ALL with all the usual MAME4ALL bugs rather than the newer 'reloaded' ports etc.

What do you think is crappy about MAME4all, can you name several of those usual MAME4all bugs? What do you think is better about MAME4droid Reloaded?

If you ask me, I'd tell you the most obvious bugs in MAME4all are the same bugs from official MAME build. They were there in 0.37b5 build, and they are still there in the most recent MAME build. How apparently these bugs manifest depends on the hardware configuration. For example, MAME4all on PSP not only performs poorly, the reason it really sucks is that it doesn't handle properly when the game can not run at full speed. But at least those game that do run at full speed on PSP work fine. However with  MAME4droid you get video hiccups and audio crackling even when the hardware is quite powerful and runs games at full speed, and that's the case with both MAME4droid and Reloaded. It's because many Android devices have awfully uneven time interval from one frame to another, probably due to lots of background processing, so all those MAME bugs, that still exist in official MAME build and have always existed, just become much more apparent.

[Haze]

As an actual MAME developer I just think the old versions suck balls, the sound is just absolutely bleah on a lot of systems, graphical glitches galore, even stuff like CPS1 is held together by gross hacks in those builds and let's not begin to talk about the Sega systems where most of the versions they run are hacked up bootlegs because we couldn't handle the originals properly back then (look at Alien Storm, it's a mess, missing enemies, missing backgrounds etc.)  YEARS of work has gone in since the things they were made from, even just this year Robotron was seeing tweaks in MAME to how the blitter delays are handled.  On top of that things like the 4ALL builds tend to have their own sets of additional hacks, CPUs being underclocked in drivers causing sound to run badly, or drop out completely, complex priority schemes ripped out for performance reasons, and they're based on ancient versions so a lot of things people might be interested in are missing completely.

The newer versions are slower, yes, because we've been improving them all the time, a phenomenal number of bugs have been crushed since then, 0.37b5 is from 13-14 years ago, it's retro in itself, there are people using MAME today who weren't even born when that was released!  It just seems as soon as we start to see progress on the mobile front somebody comes up with another cheap rubbish device, ports all the rubbish old versions to it because it won't run anything better, and we're back to square one.

The emulation of many games in 0.37b5 was nothing short of a travesty, on both a technical level, and to the end user.  Sure there are many *newer* drivers just as bad in MAME today, but that's because it's a project in constant development where new things are always discovered and I assure you we know a lot more now about every single thing supported in 0.37b5 than we did when 0.37b5 was released.

[kahlid74]

As an actual MAME developer I just think the old versions suck balls, the sound is just absolutely bleah on a lot of systems, graphical glitches galore, even stuff like CPS1 is held together by gross hacks in those builds and let's not begin to talk about the Sega systems where most of the versions they run are hacked up bootlegs because we couldn't handle the originals properly back then (look at Alien Storm, it's a mess, missing enemies, missing backgrounds etc.)  YEARS of work has gone in since the things they were made from, even just this year Robotron was seeing tweaks in MAME to how the blitter delays are handled.  On top of that things like the 4ALL builds tend to have their own sets of additional hacks, CPUs being underclocked in drivers causing sound to run badly, or drop out completely, complex priority schemes ripped out for performance reasons, and they're based on ancient versions so a lot of things people might be interested in are missing completely.

The newer versions are slower, yes, because we've been improving them all the time, a phenomenal number of bugs have been crushed since then, 0.37b5 is from 13-14 years ago, it's retro in itself, there are people using MAME today who weren't even born when that was released!  It just seems as soon as we start to see progress on the mobile front somebody comes up with another cheap rubbish device, ports all the rubbish old versions to it because it won't run anything better, and we're back to square one.

I get the feeling you don't like Kickstarter, which is fine, to each their own.  My own experience with KickStarter has been beyond awesome but you get what you put in and if you don't put yourself out there, you're not going to see how bright the sky can be at night.

Perhaps if I was in the trenches with you coding MAME I would agree but I don't.  I couldn't care less about the accuracy of a game, only that it plays.  When I sit down to play Sunset riders with my 6year old nephew it's about the moment, and the experience of an age of gaming past. 

[Cynicaster]

I think that thing looks badass.  DoDoPachi in my pocket?  Yes please!

Forgive my ignorance but I have no idea how Kickstarter works.  Can I still order one, even though I didn't "pledge" up front?

[tris_d]

I think that thing looks badass.  DoDoPachi in my pocket?  Yes please!

It seems to me vertical games are awkward to play due to buttons ending up on top when rotated.

[XtraSmiley]

I get the feeling you don't like Kickstarter, which is fine, to each their own.  My own experience with KickStarter has been beyond awesome but you get what you put in and if you don't put yourself out there, you're not going to see how bright the sky can be at night.

Perhaps if I was in the trenches with you coding MAME I would agree but I don't.  I couldn't care less about the accuracy of a game, only that it plays.  When I sit down to play Sunset riders with my 6year old nephew it's about the moment, and the experience of an age of gaming past.

No I disagree, I don't "think" Haze hates Kickstarter, he just doesn't like cheap products claiming they are going to do something, which ends up being less than what's really advertised, like saying it will perfectly emulate old games when in reality the screen doesn't allow for the proper resolution on games.

I'll let Haze speak for himself though.

As for your "couldn't care less" comment. Geez, why even play MAME then? Just stick to one of the ---smurfy--- emulators out there that are more about speed hacks and what not? MAME is designed to do things correctly so that the game is as close to, if not just like the game as it was intended to be. It seems like you are wasting your time with MAME.

[Haze]

As an actual MAME developer I just think the old versions suck balls, the sound is just absolutely bleah on a lot of systems, graphical glitches galore, even stuff like CPS1 is held together by gross hacks in those builds and let's not begin to talk about the Sega systems where most of the versions they run are hacked up bootlegs because we couldn't handle the originals properly back then (look at Alien Storm, it's a mess, missing enemies, missing backgrounds etc.)  YEARS of work has gone in since the things they were made from, even just this year Robotron was seeing tweaks in MAME to how the blitter delays are handled.  On top of that things like the 4ALL builds tend to have their own sets of additional hacks, CPUs being underclocked in drivers causing sound to run badly, or drop out completely, complex priority schemes ripped out for performance reasons, and they're based on ancient versions so a lot of things people might be interested in are missing completely.

The newer versions are slower, yes, because we've been improving them all the time, a phenomenal number of bugs have been crushed since then, 0.37b5 is from 13-14 years ago, it's retro in itself, there are people using MAME today who weren't even born when that was released!  It just seems as soon as we start to see progress on the mobile front somebody comes up with another cheap rubbish device, ports all the rubbish old versions to it because it won't run anything better, and we're back to square one.

I get the feeling you don't like Kickstarter, which is fine, to each their own.  My own experience with KickStarter has been beyond awesome but you get what you put in and if you don't put yourself out there, you're not going to see how bright the sky can be at night.

Perhaps if I was in the trenches with you coding MAME I would agree but I don't.  I couldn't care less about the accuracy of a game, only that it plays.  When I sit down to play Sunset riders with my 6year old nephew it's about the moment, and the experience of an age of gaming past.

Nah, I think the concept is good, there just seem to be too many 'have your cake and eat it' type projects when it comes to cost and expectations and in the end a lot of them just end up being clones of your regular 'made in china' stuff anyway.

I mean surely if you were trying to do an innovative, interesting, and different for an emulation / retro targetted handheld you'd design it in some way that meant maybe the controls were removable from the screen, and you could remove them, then reattach them to the vertical edge instead, thus giving you a rotatable screen with the controls still on the left / right edge, with such a design you could also offer alt control parts, maybe one with an analog stick, another with 6 buttons, or a dual stick option.

Of course it becomes more costly, and requires more actual design work if you're to produce something still sturdy and at the same time not overly difficult to change, but if you're doing something targetted at retro games (and in doing that one of your real advantages over the phones / tablets on the market now must be tactile controls) surely things like that are what you want to be considering over 'generic handheld'

People want to throw their money behind it, that's fine, and of course what KS is all about, but if there are too many projects people back, where what they end up with is ultimately not much better than what would have likely come to market anyway then it may well end up putting people off showing the same support for future, and potentially more interesting projects.

[tris_d]

As an actual MAME developer I just think the old versions suck balls, the sound is just absolutely bleah on a lot of systems, graphical glitches galore...

What are you suggesting, people should carry laptops in their pockets? You can not compare mobile devices with desktop PCs, at least not without taking into account everything else, like price, convenience, circumstances, and such.

Sound is good for most games as long as there are no glitches. Perhaps it's not totally authentic, but different devices sound differently anyway. Maybe colors are not authentic, but different displays show different colors anyway, so who cares? And if some game is particularly badly emulated, then don't play it, there are thousands more. 

Glitches are all that really matters, but visual glitches, and audio crackling that usually goes along, are on the PC as well, the same ones - due to mismatch between game and display frame-rates, due to poor auto-frame skipping algorithm, and due to MAME devs reluctance to change the game speed to match refresh frequency of the given display. Basically, with any official MAME build and without CRT you pretty much ought to have glitches with quite a few if not most of the games. At least older build can be used with much cheaper hardware and the difference in speed gain I think more than enough justifies any inaccuracies, since making games run at full speed is really important to minimize those glitches, and that's all it matters.

...even stuff like CPS1 is held together by gross hacks in those builds and let's not begin to talk about the Sega systems where most of the versions they run are hacked up bootlegs because we couldn't handle the originals properly back then (look at Alien Storm, it's a mess, missing enemies, missing backgrounds etc.)  YEARS of work has gone in since the things they were made from, even just this year Robotron was seeing tweaks in MAME to how the blitter delays are handled.

As if someone could actually notice?

On top of that things like the 4ALL builds tend to have their own sets of additional hacks, CPUs being underclocked in drivers causing sound to run badly, or drop out completely, complex priority schemes ripped out for performance reasons, and they're based on ancient versions so a lot of things people might be interested in are missing completely.

I am under impression people are quite happy with MAME4all on GP2X. It seems to me it's just PSP and Android port that really suck, and so what they need are hacks, but hacks specific to that hardware, not GP2X hacks. MAME on handhelds is about playing games, not about accuracy and documenting history, so if they help games run more smoothly then hacks are just as good solution as any.

The emulation of many games in 0.37b5 was nothing short of a travesty, on both a technical level, and to the end user.  Sure there are many *newer* drivers just as bad in MAME today, but that's because it's a project in constant development where new things are always discovered and I assure you we know a lot more now about every single thing supported in 0.37b5 than we did when 0.37b5 was released.

What you call travesty no one cares about or even notice. If the game plays smoothly, that's all it matters. It's about having fun while riding on the bus, not... whatever it is you care about.

[opt2not]

Haze, I get where your concerns are coming from, and I understand the bitterness that a lot of the mame devs hold from the progression of mame, how it's been handled and the drama that ensued. But I think your jadedness is causing you assume a lot of things that doesn't sound like factual evidence.
Claims of the hardware quality is just your assumption since you haven't actually held on these in your hands. The only way to prove this is by physically assessing the product, something sheer visual images cannot fully cover. Humans are tactile beings, we really need things in our hands to fully analyze.
Your concerns of halting mame progression is a bit selfish since this device isn't only "just for mame", and the bugs comment is also a bit unfair since its not the fault of device like these that bugs from decades ago are still present.
And the "made in china" comments -- c'mon man, what's not made in china these days? Or Malaysia, or indonisia, or India... Everything practically is, but not everything is cheaply built. I'm going to wait till I have the thing in my hands to really judge the build quality, till then this is all speculation.

Your idea about modular controls is valid, but like you say, it's costly to produce. At the same time, being able to pull off this concept without it being cumbersome to change things around might be a logistical nightmare. Add that to your physically-resizing-screen for resolution support, and we've got a pretty fantastical device that's is a bit unrealistic.

Point is, there is never going to be a solution to fit all needs. But saying "this thing is crap" because it doesn't do x when it handles y and z well is a bit of a hallow statement.
I don't think this device is for you, since it sounds like you just want something that handles arcade emulation solely, while this unit is meant for more than that.

Like my aforementioned list of software/games I'm intending to run on the GCW: and that's the thing isn't it? A majority of people that are hyped to get this thing all want the same thing I do. Mainly, snes and prior consoles on-the-go. Look at the comments, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone mentioning arcade. Few are there, but most people want to run console and DOS games on this device.

To each's own, but I'm the type of person that is willing to throw a little money at something that looks promising enough for my needs. And even the story behind the conception of the GCW appeals to me: I'd rather give my money to a gamer, ex-low-level retailer that took the concerns of his customers and decided to make change to an existing failing product. He's also an American, and I'd rather give him money than some fly-by-night Asian knockoff company that doesn't give two shits about the end-user...and I'm Canadian.

[HaRuMaN]

Didn't think it would happen in this thread, but... 

[WindDrake]

Re; Mame, I agree with Haze. Hacking up old Mame builds isn't doing anybody any good.

The rest? I backed the GCW-Zero to play Genesis, NES, and Atari 2600 on the go. Everything else is extra.

[Haze]

Haze, I get where your concerns are coming from, and I understand the bitterness that a lot of the mame devs hold from the progression of mame, how it's been handled and the drama that ensued. But I think your jadedness is causing you assume a lot of things that doesn't sound like factual evidence.
Claims of the hardware quality is just your assumption since you haven't actually held on these in your hands. The only way to prove this is by physically assessing the product, something sheer visual images cannot fully cover. Humans are tactile beings, we really need things in our hands to fully analyze.
Your concerns of halting mame progression is a bit selfish since this device isn't only "just for mame", and the bugs comment is also a bit unfair since its not the fault of device like these that bugs from decades ago are still present.
And the "made in china" comments -- c'mon man, what's not made in china these days? Or Malaysia, or indonisia, or India... Everything practically is, but not everything is cheaply built. I'm going to wait till I have the thing in my hands to really judge the build quality, till then this is all speculation.

Your idea about modular controls is valid, but like you say, it's costly to produce. At the same time, being able to pull off this concept without it being cumbersome to change things around might be a logistical nightmare. Add that to your physically-resizing-screen for resolution support, and we've got a pretty fantastical device that's is a bit unrealistic.

Point is, there is never going to be a solution to fit all needs. But saying "this thing is crap" because it doesn't do x when it handles y and z well is a bit of a hallow statement.
I don't think this device is for you, since it sounds like you just want something that handles arcade emulation solely, while this unit is meant for more than that.

Like my aforementioned list of software/games I'm intending to run on the GCW: and that's the thing isn't it? A majority of people that are hyped to get this thing all want the same thing I do. Mainly, snes and prior consoles on-the-go. Look at the comments, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone mentioning arcade. Few are there, but most people want to run console and DOS games on this device.

To each's own, but I'm the type of person that is willing to throw a little money at something that looks promising enough for my needs. And even the story behind the conception of the GCW appeals to me: I'd rather give my money to a gamer, ex-low-level retailer that took the concerns of his customers and decided to make change to an existing failing product. He's also an American, and I'd rather give him money than some fly-by-night Asian knockoff company that doesn't give two shits about the end-user...and I'm Canadian.

Well it does just grate me a bit when people find out I work on MAME stuff, then tell me it sucks because (lets use the example of Alien Storm) it still has the same bugs, and ask me when I'm going to fix them, and I have to tell them '2004' ...

Also the last such thing I used took the same approach with the Genesis emulators, building off old versions with old sound cores before a lot of the secrets were unlocked meaning games like (from memory) Scooby Doo, and one of the Spiderman titles have absolutely horrible music, again the old cores were just being used because they were faster.  Even the MAME/MESS Genesis is heavily out of date now (I did it in 2007) and a staggering number of things have been discovered since then, just emulating them requires a lot more cpu power and is also a lot more difficult to get your head around (taking into account some register changes for the next 'vdp read slot' which could be every 8 or so pixels rather than every scanline etc.)   True if you're just casually playing a few titles you might not notice / care about the glitches, but if one of them happened to be your favourite game you probably will.

The MAME point has been hammered home already, but those versions also predate a great deal of work done on even absolutely 'must have' classics like Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands... that's why it depresses me and why I was glad to see people finally actually realising there is hardware out there capable of running the newer versions, with the newer progress, even if sometimes the fallback to older ones is needed.

Proper emulation needs good specs, at least if you're dealing with portable projects rather than handcoding everything in self-modifying assembly code locked entirely to the video system and general hardware profile of one machine profiled to the needs of one specific game, and nobody really does that these days because it's simply not worth it.

Is it all the fault of the device? No, but it's almost inevitable people will port the very same things they've always been porting, so aside from it being a new device you're not actually going to see much progress in offering better emulation than many of the previous ones.

[opt2not]

Re; Mame, I agree with Haze. Hacking up old Mame builds isn't doing anybody any good.

The rest? I backed the GCW-Zero to play Genesis, NES, and Atari 2600 on the go. Everything else is extra.

Hey WindDrake have you checked out the youtube video posted about the 7200 homebrew ports running on the GCW?

Donkey kong and Pacman looks and sounds pretty good!

[XtraSmiley]

My question to all you backers is, why not just buy a PSP and hack it to run these emulators? A PSP new is pretty cheap, and the screen is nicer than what you get here.

If you say, oh the PSP doesn't run the emulation as well, I'd have to say, I thought you didn't care about that? As long as it runs right?

[opt2not]

My question to all you backers is, why not just buy a PSP and hack it to run these emulators? A PSP new is pretty cheap, and the screen is nicer than what you get here.

If you say, oh the PSP doesn't run the emulation as well, I'd have to say, I thought you didn't care about that? As long as it runs right?

Actually I care about emulation, but I'm not naive to think that all games are going to be perfect. The PSP's support base is gone, emulators haven't been updated in a while now, and not all of them run that well in the first place.

But please read the previous posts about this, it was covered a little ways back. There's even a video for those who don't care to actually read the contents of this thread.

[XtraSmiley]

My question to all you backers is, why not just buy a PSP and hack it to run these emulators? A PSP new is pretty cheap, and the screen is nicer than what you get here.

If you say, oh the PSP doesn't run the emulation as well, I'd have to say, I thought you didn't care about that? As long as it runs right?

Actually I care about emulation, but I'm not naive to think that all games are going to be perfect. The PSP's support base is gone, emulators haven't been updated in a while now, and not all of them run that well in the first place.

But please read the previous posts about this, it was covered a little ways back. There's even a video for those who don't care to actually read the contents of this thread.

LOL, I know dude, I was being snarky b/c a couple of people were like we don't care about accuracy.

I know you have vested interest in this thing getting made, but the reality is that Haze is right and if one cares about a good hand held to run MAME as well as home consols, than this might not be it.

Good luck though, it's kickstarters like this that help push things forward.

[opt2not]

It's cool bro.

In other news:  Looks like we'll most likely hit the 2nd stretch goal...yay, hdmi cables...neat-o.    I was really hoping to get that carrying pouch, but now I have to figure out where to get a case for this thing. I don't want to get it scratched!

[Bender]

I think that thing looks badass.  DoDoPachi in my pocket?  Yes please!

Forgive my ignorance but I have no idea how Kickstarter works.  Can I still order one, even though I didn't "pledge" up front?

You can still pledge for 3 more days

Then they will be selling later this year on there website probably for a little bit more $

[404]

Didn't think it would happen in this thread, but... 

Don't mind being labeled in the haters club. I really see no point at this moment in a dingoo clone on steroids. Not to mention buying from a disorganized, dishonest team that already made a cut of money from the first two batches they sold without the need of kickstarter. Not to mention the product isn't exactly unique in the ODM market.

[shateredsoul]

Oh no, i'm not falling for this again...