ricardocabellov5.5

As some of you already know I bought a gp32 at the last edition of bcnparty. I bought is because I knew that was a platform where anybody could develop "legally" for free. And that means lots of apps, experiments, emulators, new uses for the handheld and all that. Just the first day I got it I found the module (xm, mod, it..) player mikplay32 and was really cool as there is a lot of great music done by trackers and usually doesn't need a lot of space.. like 1megabyte for a big one. That was great and I was expecting really good stuff for it.

Then I checked pouet.net for some good demo for it and the best one was baardei/aardbei. Actually was amazing, really fast and shows what the handheld can actually do. Then I checked the emulators and I found that the emulators were a big battery killer. Somehow, using any emulator the screen started to do some white waves and then dead.. :( I checked some other emulators but more or less have the same problem.

A good point was the port of Quake, very impressive but a bit slow to enjoy the game.. Then I started to test those miniOS for the hanheld where you could have some icons and add other for your apps, change the background.. and that's all.. well.. not bad.

After some months I finally have some thoughts about it.. basicly, as nobody is paying for it and is not really easy to develop for it (atleast I tried to do that without good results), THE GP32SCENE IS FULL OF SHIT. A LOT of UNFINISHED games, apps, ports, tests.. the games are only some smallgames, like the typical flashgames, but the flashgames are usually better done.. there is too many shit and takes a lot of time and test to find something usefull/good. But of course as in all those non-comercial scenes there is some people that works hard to produce good stuff, and this is what I'm writting that post today, just to save your time in the case you get one of these handhelds. Apart of the mentioned tools/demos/games I said that's a selection of cool stuff developed for gp32:

Slubman Firmware If you get a GP32, this is the first thing you have to add on it, that's a new BOOTMENU/TOOL for the handheld that makes Windows detect the handheld as an externalHD (this is really cool, because the tools for tranfer files with the original firmware sucks), also the firmware does have some small WinCommander on it. If you get one, put that on it! elena Tetris in a tube, quite original and with good music (music from Project A/Impact Studios demo I think)

electronia Very addictive small game.

GPSpout Totally weird game, very experimental, without sound but is quite addictive as well.

Lacuna Probably you know that game, this is the 3D version, improving the original 2D game.

And that's all by now, if I get something REALLY GOOD for it I'll post it here. Enjoy!