Saturday, December 29, 2007

OPEN2X?!?!?! Can you eat that?

Ever heard of a project called OPEN2X? Their aim is to bring a new firmware and a new way to make programs for the GP2X by dynamically linking libraries and not static linking as it stands now, thus making the produced executables faster and smaller! The new firmware will bring back many of the features that the Firmware version 4 stripped off the GP2X, such us USB networking, NAND memory access, new boot scripts, faster booting times and many more! You can read more on their progress at their Wiki site{ wiki.open2x.org }! I am eagerly awaiting their first stable public release! Lately with every new firmware release GamePark Holdings has been SYSTEMATICALLY diminishing the many possibilities the GP2X originally had and is trying to turn it into a simple gaming console and not a handheld computer with Linux as it originally was. Hopefully OPEN2X will remedy this. Especially for all of us owners of a newly bought GP2X f-200 which came preloaded with firmware v4.0.0 this project will be salvation! Currently there is no need to downgrade your firmware to a lower one since GP2X f-200 has a touchscreen, and older firmwares don't support it...As things stand now, the only way to easily develop things on your GP2X or have advanced features is to buy a GP2X CRADLE which connects to the EXT port of your GP2X and adds 4 USB ports, TV out,Left and Right audio out, support for connecting Wi-fi dongles and many more!


After a lot of searching around the GP2X file archive and GOOGLE, i came across the best emulator for this handhled according to my opinion. I always was an adventure games fan! Especially the adventures of the "GOLDEN ERA"! I am talking for the masterpieces of Lucas Arts(Loom, Monkey Island 1,2,3, Sam & Max, Full Throttle etc). In order to play them on WINXP i have been using the fabulous emulation environment called SCUMMVM! Guess what...this emulator has now been ported to our beloved GP2X, also with touchscreen support! What more could one possibly want than being able to play one of the fabulous adventures this emulator supports on the bus, or on the train! GP2X is truly the Emulator Fan's "AMIGA" ;-)

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