Recommend a portable emulation device?
March 23, 2012 5:48 PM Subscribe
What is the best reasonably priced handheld device I can buy for playing emulated games, particularly SNES and GBA?
I've done a little bit of research but there seem to be a lot of options.
I am interested in the Dingoo A320 (which is a few years old but looks like it has good build quality and a relatively active community developing emulators for it.) The size looks perfect and the screen looks very nice in the Youtube videos I've watched of it. I have also considered buying a used PSP and jail breaking it or whatever it is you do to install homebrew software on it. A little googling on that topic ended up leaving me confused. I get the feeling from looking at sites like DealExtreme that there are a lot of options I may not be aware of.
What I'd really like is a ~$100 or less pocketable device that'll simply and easily run SNES and GBA roms from memory. Playing other systems such as Genesis or PSX would be a plus. I don't mind a little tinkering to get things optimized as long as there are reliable guides out there.
Anyone on MeFi have a Dingoo or some other device that you love for this sort of thing, or a link to a good guide?
I've done a little bit of research but there seem to be a lot of options.
I am interested in the Dingoo A320 (which is a few years old but looks like it has good build quality and a relatively active community developing emulators for it.) The size looks perfect and the screen looks very nice in the Youtube videos I've watched of it. I have also considered buying a used PSP and jail breaking it or whatever it is you do to install homebrew software on it. A little googling on that topic ended up leaving me confused. I get the feeling from looking at sites like DealExtreme that there are a lot of options I may not be aware of.
What I'd really like is a ~$100 or less pocketable device that'll simply and easily run SNES and GBA roms from memory. Playing other systems such as Genesis or PSX would be a plus. I don't mind a little tinkering to get things optimized as long as there are reliable guides out there.
Anyone on MeFi have a Dingoo or some other device that you love for this sort of thing, or a link to a good guide?
Best answer: Funny you should ask. I just bought the JXD-S601 from dealextreme a few weeks back. Around 85-90 bucks. This is a emulator lover's wet dream. Its an android 2.3 handheld that looks exactly like a PSP and can play all the emulators flawlessly.
Im a mame devotee myself, it plays mame incredibly well, and it plays even the later NEOGEO mame roms great. It has snes, nes, gba, genesis preloaded, but you can load other emulators also (Apparently ps1 emulation works decently also)
The integrated joystick and buttons are fantastic, but the fact that its an android lets you load up apps and such. The touch screen is not very responsive, and you need to root it to access the full marketplace and the build feels flimsy though.
But, hands down the best handheld device and interface ever for Mame that Ive encountered.
posted by edman at 5:58 PM on March 23, 2012 [5 favorites]
Im a mame devotee myself, it plays mame incredibly well, and it plays even the later NEOGEO mame roms great. It has snes, nes, gba, genesis preloaded, but you can load other emulators also (Apparently ps1 emulation works decently also)
The integrated joystick and buttons are fantastic, but the fact that its an android lets you load up apps and such. The touch screen is not very responsive, and you need to root it to access the full marketplace and the build feels flimsy though.
But, hands down the best handheld device and interface ever for Mame that Ive encountered.
posted by edman at 5:58 PM on March 23, 2012 [5 favorites]
Response by poster: The JXD does look pretty good. It's a little larger than I would like and build quality is important to me, but the fact that it runs Android and therefore I presume has access to a wide variety of emulator software is a big plus. It'll go on my short list.
posted by raygan at 6:07 PM on March 23, 2012
posted by raygan at 6:07 PM on March 23, 2012
Response by poster: And I thought about a DS but I was never a big fan of the DS screen. Both the PSP and the Dingoo (and the JSX it looks like) have a larger and more colorful screen which seems like it might be more what I am looking for. I'll look into it though.
posted by raygan at 6:11 PM on March 23, 2012
posted by raygan at 6:11 PM on March 23, 2012
Response by poster: For future visitors to this page, I ended up going with the Dingoo A320 and I'm immensely happy with it. Here it is on Amazon, and again much cheaper on DealExtreme if you don't mind waiting for it to ship from China. Here is a link to the best Dingoo website I have found, Dingoonity.org.
posted by raygan at 7:40 PM on March 30, 2012
posted by raygan at 7:40 PM on March 30, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by naturalog at 5:58 PM on March 23, 2012 [1 favorite]