The Original Handheld Retro Emulation Beast from 2009 - GP2X Wiz
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- The GP2X Wiz is an early ARM based gaming handheld device that released in 2009 by Game Park Holdings. While it was not a success, the Wiz was very popular with emulation enthusiasts due to its open platform and many popular emulators were ported to run on the device. With the impressive specifications of the GP2X Wiz meant it could run many systems at good levels of performance. And it came complete with an AMOLED Touch screen. In today's episode we take a deep dive into the GP2x Wiz and see why it was considered an emulation beast as far back as 2009. Please Enjoy!
Download GP2X Wiz Emulators, Homebrew, Applications - dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...
TimeStamps:
00:00 - 00:33 - Early Handheld Retro Gaming Hardware
00:34 - 02:21 - Origins of the GP2X Wiz
02:22 - 03:24 - GP2X Wiz Hardware Specs
03:25 - 05:23 - A closer look at the device and features.
05:24 - 09:39 - Emulation Performance
09:40 - 10:00 - Outtro
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#GP2xWiz #handheld - Ігри
In 2009 an AMOLED touch screen was basically a luxury feature. I still remember wanting one of these when it was released.
it still is for a pc monitor sadly...
I didn't even know AMOLED existed way back in 2009!
Samsung Jet S8000 having Amoled screen and 800Mhz processor at 2008.
@@agamaz5650 Weirdly it's still expensive to make. But apparently its not very energy efficient and breaks easily. 🤷♂
@@Bassquake76 Me too!
I remember the first Galaxy S released in 2010 was a pioneer and early adopter of AMOLED. It would take years for other phone companies to release OLED screens. The iPhone X in 2017 would be the first OLED iPhone.
I wrote a report on the GP2X for my computers class in middle school. Something about how I believed these devices would be the future of handheld gaming... What a blast from the past this is
Seems you were just a few years ahead of your time.
Quite a few....
Remember when " dedicated handhelds are dead"?
Steam deck revitalized the market @@Matanumi
I just remember hearing about GP32 its predecessor and some thought it was a GBA knockoff
Did you get a good mark?
What a nice video :) Most community members will probably remember me as EvilDragon. I started with the GP32 and the GP2X actually made me open up an online shop (simply called "gp2x Shop" back then). My only intention was to make it easy for everyone here in Germany to get hold of the GP2x without any importing hassles or customs.
I paid GPH a visit two times. Back when they were still small (before the GP2X F200 was released) and later on just before the WIZ.
The Wiz originally HAD a double DPad... I might still have a prototype of that one. Horrible, unplayable unit. Thankfully, we managed to get GPH to change the DPad before release. They actually didn't have any gamers in their company :) But to keep costs low, they made a minimum change to the mould... and that's the reason the buttons still look like that.
I have tons of stories from back then... could probably fill a book. I could fill a book with the full Pandora story alone, I guess... wow, what a flashback :D
Thanks for that episode!
You should totally write a book! 😀
Yeah i remember you.. i did the same as you but in the UK - well.. I already had an online shop called GameSeek (selling latest PlayStation games etc) but sold loads of these consoles - the Wiz and Caanoo etc if you remember that too (and also GCW Zero)
EvilDragon! 👏🏿
.Gogeta§§J4BR. from gbaemu and zodiacgamer here =']
Holy shit. What an awesome surprise. An a homebrew fan during that era, gp2x was a big deal to us. I always wanted a video of one. And to finally have one made by the awesome mvg even! Thanks man!
I always wanted a GP32 back in 2006, but Lik-Sang was closed by Sony.
I have a GP2X Caanoo. It's a very premium feeling device, but never got much in the way of software support.
Here in Brazil we had the Dingoo. Such a nice console that supported video and music playback, FM radio and a lot of emulators. It was launched in 2009 and was the form I enjoyed GBA games and watched animes.
Dingoo was great. I even ported my game,.Rockbot, to it. Took just a couple lines of code to set correct resolution and input buttons and it just worked (C++ and SDL).
Now we have so many devices, I kinda never bothered except for the Pocket Go.
I had a dingoo in the US. I loved it
Dingoo was chinese handheld
Thumbs up to Dingoo!
Dingoo was great - basically my introduction to the whole retro ecosystem. I wouldn’t have gotten into emulation at all if it wasn’t available through ThinkGeek in the early 2010s.
I owned a Dingo A320 years ago. It was crazy for the time
Still got mine!
I ported my game, Rockbot, to it. Really great device. Still have two working, with a few issues (shoulder buttons break over time).
Yeah I remember in 2010 when I lived in Australia and I ordered from a Hong Kong company something Asia it was only 99 Aud back then, you could play a lot of system, however the megadrive was never really good. You could also install a mini sd card which was quite hard to find as I could only find micro and normal sd card, and then you could install a Linux based os with a lot more features!
I owned a Gemei A330. 😊
@@vivi_foufouPlay-Asia?
One of the OGs here, started with a Gp32, upgraded to the Gp2x, 1st batch Open Pandora, then made it a goal to collect every single edition released which I recently managed to achieve, some of the rarities that took a while to acquire were the black Gp32 and the Gp2x f300 vocamaster...
The days of the Gp32 were the best, I remember comparing the backlit screen of my Blu+ to a Gba and wondering how could ppl use this thing?
The Gp2x days were the greatest community wise, beta testing latest emulator releases, getting excited when a bug in a game you liked was fixed, checking the gp32x forums daily... Those were the days... The the 2 more months 😂 phase when the Chinese company doing the mold for the open pandora kept screwing the team scattered across Germany, UK and Turkey who were trying to bring it us... Until I finally had it in my hands... If I recall correctly, my order was #83? Those were the days...
You certainly have a nice collection there... those were awesome times, yes :)
@DragonboxDeED am still missing the Pyra though... What's the lead time for it those days?
Unknown. That's why we won't sell anymore until we've delivered the ones already preorderd :)
@@hosam7609
@@hosam7609 We're concentrating on delivering all current preorders first, no idea when it will become available from stock yet.
You forgot the GCW Zero :P
Still got my old GP2X! Never picked up the Wiz because of the weird dpad/button configuration, but it was an amazing scene in the mid 2000s. Still remember checking the forums almost every day to see the latest emulator updates and homebrew releases. I remember sitting on a train one Saturday morning, playing Streets of Rage II on picodrive on my GP2X, and feeling like I was living in the future, haha! 😂
I remember getting a GP2X Caanoo as a kid and playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night endlessly on it!
While I was always familiar with emulation on the PC, the GP2X was what made it a "thing" for me, and I never looked back. A good friend had a GP32 that he showed to me and I was blown away, and while looking in to that device, it led me to the GP2X community. Since I was always more of a handheld gamer, this avenue of playing classics lit a fire in me that I still explore to this day.
Yeah funny thing was I had a friend back in the day that had a GP32 and I always wanted one of the various handhelds they came out with over they years and I was just looking the history of them up a few days ago. Wanted an Open Pandora back in the day too lol.
The GP2X just grinds out the FPS a bit too much, sadly.
Man, hearing the words OpenPandora opened up so many memories in my brain of that era of bespoke handhelds. I remember wanting either of those two so badly, but being a teen with basically no allowance meant that I wouldn't join in on the portable emulation fun until years down the line when HENkaku came out for the Vita/the big wave of 3DS downgraders came out to let me mess about with CFW.
Still have my gp2x and Caanoo. We used to check the forums for the latest updates to squeeze out a few extra fps on favourite emulators.
Now, powerful open handhelds are everywhere.👍
But it had a few original games on it.
@@XVa-uj8ma Great GTA Clone
@@DoubbleDdragon Sadly I only played Lair on there which was great though.
@@DoubbleDdragon Payback :) Yep, neat game :)
I wish I had this as a kid, but I was absolutely hooked on my jailbroken PSP. That thing was a complete monster and to be quite fair, absolutely still is nowadays.
The PSP was my biggest treasure on my teen years, on the late 2000's/early 2010 his hardware was very powerful for both his own games and emulation, not to mention how he could run PS1 games natively, and a portable PS1 was groundbreaking for me back then.
I rocked a PSP GO in high school and that thing is a beast. I use a PSP 3000 nowadays. I gave up the game suspend feature so my hands won't be cramped.
I jailbroke a PSP I found at a thrift store since I couldn't get a GP2X at the time haha, that was my first hacked handheld!
Wow, small world and a pleasant surprise to see this pop up on my phone :D. I'm the author of Boomshine2x, which for some reason GamePark Holdings decided to pick as one of the games to ship with it :P. The Wiz and the GP32 were my favourite ones overall, never really loved the GP2x as much but still used it a bunch!
that's cool!
I can’t believe you’ve actually made a video about this😭😭 I loved my Wiz. I bought this back in 2012 from ThinkGeek and this thing blew my mind. I had sold my old GBA at the time, and the Wiz emulated GBA games without a hiccup, which was amazing at the time. Thanks for this video. Brings back so many memories of high school. I met my best friends after playing with this thing in Math class in my Freshman year, and they were curious to what it was
Still have my GP2x, recently set it up again on a new SD card. Its amazing to see that a lot of these emulators are still going today on other low powered handhelds, GP2x left a lot of legacy imo. I did have a Open Pandora too, ordered a few hours after preorders started, waiting over 2 years and finally got it. It was nice but at the time I wasnt using it much. Actually sold it for more than I bought it for due to the large price increases over time.
I remember being on the original preorder/waitlist for the Open Pandora back in 2008. My god, how time flies.
Bought one back in 2009 or 2010. Still have it as one of my prized first emulation possessions. Back then most people did not even know emulation was possible. To run NEOGEO CD, and some PS1 on it was mindblowing. You did a great job with the story telling and the video of the OLED screen is impeccable. Just gorgeous.
I just pulled out my GP32 BLU. Amazed at how well it worked.
Big shout out to the old GP32 community and the folks that did the emulation ports.
Used to use that forum every day. Great little machine for its time. I'm sure I remember someone trying to port Metal Gear Solid VR missions to it?
dingoo a320 was the first emulator handheld i heard of in 2009 it cost too much so i bought a fake psp
I remember seeing these GP2X in college, even though I didn’t buy it, I was amazed seeing NES and SNES games being emulated on a handheld at that time!
The history lesson about Gamepack was really cool! And definitely the sort of stuff I’d like to see
I love historical stuff.. Even when it's gaming.. It's beautiful to learn old and new things.. My personal favorites to learn about when it comes to videogames is (The making of Super Mario World and the history behind it, The impossible port of Doom 3 for the OG Xbox, Resident Evil 2 for the N64 being on one cart while the game required 2 disc on PlayStation X and the history behind it, the impossible port of Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Super Nintendo "I'm still shocked that Capcom got that game running on that on system" and The video game crash of 1983 in North America..) All are my personal favorites when it comes to gaming history..
I had an OpenPandora back in 2011 and it's probably my favorite handheld of all time. The emulation for the time was incredible and unmatched by any other systems. It was also just fast enough to be used as a Linux powered netbook for some browsing and media playback. But beyond those things what probably made it very special for me was the community of home brew ports to the system. I remember playing so many source ports of old games and home brew games that where really high quality on the system. It had a lot of issues during its development but once I finally got my hand on it, it did not disappoint.
Was the OpenPandora project and being on the forum boards that got me picking up my first Caanoo and Dingo and ended up with quite a few of these OpenDingux handhelds.
Getting my OpenPandora was wicked and such a great way to play all them emulators and homebrews
I remember seeing it back then and wanting one so bad. But I was 13, had no money, and Linux was (and usually still is) way over my head. So I just stuck to my old iPod touch :(
I had a GP32! Good fun, for a while. I sold it to one of the staff at CEX Camden in London who couldn't believe I was getting rid of something so esoteric.
I wanted one of these so badly as a kid. Thanks for the throwback - I wasn't even expecting to remember the WiZ like this!
I had one and sold it. I still regret that decision. I had a GP32 BLU, and a GP2X at one point, too. The GP32 wasn't super amazing, but the GP2X I feel had a fantastic emulation scene. I did fool my entire high school Japanese class with an app on my GP32 that made meowing cats sound and nothing else, though.
This video inspired me to order a GP2X Caanoo, the only iteration I've never owned. I snagged one for a great price from an eBay seller in Australia!!! Thanks for helping me revisit these fantastic memories, MVG!
Oh heck yeah! I remember getting one of these back in the day. It was such a great little system, and even the box looked nice. (I still have both, but unfortunately no charging cable.) I also remember the Cannoo making its debut, but I passed it over as another open source handheld, the OpenPandora, was beginning to cause a rumble. Eventually I got one of these to replace my Wiz wholesale, and even ended up buying the upgraded version of this device as well. I'll never forget the Wiz, though. That thing sent me down a rabbit hole worth exploring, and got me through many a dreary day. So many games, so little HASSLE. I finished the original Quake on this sucker!
I ordered an Open Pandora in 2008.. That is a whole story in itself. I ended up getting a Dingoo and loved it. I finally got my Pandora in 2011. But by then I was buliding my own arcade cab so I did not use the Pandora very much - it was cool, but it was time to move on. I sent the Pandora over to Clint at LGR. He never did a review of it... I think they made like 5000 Pandoras? Oh yeah - GameEx was my frontend on the cab, Windows based. Great community!
Yea I'd love to see the full story of the pandora. I didn't realise they actually came out in the end.
@@OllieMartinGamer Story in short - the business fell apart. One owner destroyed it - the other one picked it up and delivered. Check out the Pyra, Pandoras younger sister. Very dedicated Owner and Community. Evildragon is one heck of a guy.
@@shanonshoffstall247 Thanks (EvilDragon here). Unfortunately still struggling with the Pyra (but won't give up), but I did manage to save the Pandora back them and we produced and delivered around 7500... demand was still strong back then, but the wifi module was out of production so we couldn't continue the production.
Awesome video for a truly great and under rated device, I still own a GP2X and always wanted a Wiz. I think I still even have my official GP2X rechargeable batteries somewhere too, they stopped holding a charge but looked too cool to throw out. This device was really such a rare beast here in Australia I don't think I ever knew someone else that owned one.
I only caught wind of these since Ashens made videos on their competitors, dingoo. These were all hard sells considering how cheap PSPs got back then. Right now AMOLED screens are rare on these type of devices, super cool that the GP2 had it
Awesome video! Saw the whole video in 1 min!
Road to a well-deserved 1,000,000 subscribers! MVG!
I remember all of those. I was so jealous of people who ordered the Pandora. I used to watch Ashens review of Pandora like 10 times. I wanted it so badly. The thing that put me off was the low build quality and high price. But that's because they were hobbyists who paved the way for handheld emulation, from scratch.
I was waiting for you to make this video since the short you uploaded a while ago
ffs mvg i was just looking at these and you go and make a video on them. great. thanks a bunch
I remember this thing! I still got it. I remember playing NeoGeo games on it while on a plane.
Great video about this old handheld.
Still have it somewhere around in the storage.
I’ve still got mine unused and sealed. I had a lot of memories of the gp32 etc. Great video
A week ago I decided to get mine out of storage and check the batery and now you upload this video! I had a good time with that device. Too bad the buttons weared off and most games are now unplayable. I hope I can find a new membrane somewhere.
Never heard of this one, but I do appreciate the look at what seems to be a real golden nugget in emulation history- it seems like a real cool device that has earned it's time in the spotlight.
Still have my GP2x… haven’t used it in years but it was very impressive for the time.
I remember reading about one of these around 17-18 years old. I barely had any money back then and getting one shipped to the UK was pricey. I am so glad to see a video review on one all these years later.
I owned the OG GP32x back in the day with the front lit LCD. I got it off Ebay and it came with an official caring case the the whopping 128MB memory card. I loved it because of the versatility and you had to curate your collection do to the small space. For 8 bit and 16 bit systems was still plenty. Like you I took it every ware and I only found out about it as a co-worker at the time but big into emulation. However, the front LCD light stopped working after owning it for a couple years. You could still play it but only in direct light. I was able to sell it as is back on Ebay and ended up getting more then I purchased it for. Thanks so much for covering this as I didn't think many people knew about the GP32.
I was actually using a lot of your work on Xbox before I moved to PSP and then on to other emulation stuff at the time. I remember sitting back, middle of summer in 2006, wishing I could do this kind of gaming on the go. Still passionate about retro emulation now, but really it al started here for me.
Notaz and Exophase 👍
I give thabks to those guys and all the others who pushed these developments, seeing this video makes me want to dig into the old cupboard and see which of these old handhelds i still have. I know i had to sell some but id bet there's a couple still in boxes here somewhere
Great video. I startet my mobile gaming in that time. I still have my GP32! And ist still works. Unbelievable!
I had the GP2X F-200, which was a slight revision of the original GP2X. At the time, it was quite impressive. I had no other handheld that let me play SNES games on the go as well as many open source game engines, and this was before smartphones were mainstream, so there was really nothing on the market that competed with these handhelds other than a hacked PSP. I didn't get a PSP until much later, and I actually found that many SNES games ran worse on the PSP.
I used it regularly for a while, eventually I did replace it with an OpenPandora which ran a lot of the same emulators and homebrew, but on top of a full linux OS, with a desktop, qwerty keyboard, extra power and many other improvements. This was the holy grail of handheld computing for me for a while, until I eventually got an iPod Touch and then an Android smartphone.
These days, there is not much you can't do with a smartphone so open source handhelds have a lot less use, but for a while, they were really something special, they created an entirely new market that didn't really exist before apart from a small amount of people using PDAs or Symbian phones to do the same sort of things, and those simply didn't have the same amount of emulators and game ports because they were primarily focused on business applications and there were not many people using them to play games.
Love these things. The GP32 was my first emu handheld, rarely see anyone cover it. Was amazing at the time!
I played one for the first time fairly recently and I was blown away by how amazingly playable emulators are on it for such an old device. That clicky thumbstick is amazing too
I had an original GP2x back when it launched. Such a janky little device but the community surrounding it was absolutely incredible, and some of the bespoke ports for it were really impressive. It was actually the first device I played Cave Story on. A handheld Linux gaming device specifically for emulation really felt special then.
My first retro handheld ❤
my first emulation handheld was a GPDXD back in 2015. It was expensive at the time (i think like $300) but I thought it was so cool that it could actually run so many systems. Stuff has changed a lot in 10 years!
The Wiz is how I played most of my first playthrough of Earthbound. Funny story actually. I was working at a factory and the machine I was on had a problem that resulted in a lot of downtime. So I put my Wiz in a ziplock bag to keep it clean and played about 65% of the game at work. Here’s where it gets funny/weird. When I got home, I wanted to continue the game on my tv. So I used a PC to copy the sram file over to my Ouya (remember that thing?) and picked up where I left off! I loved the Wiz. Still have it today.
nice
Still have my GP2X and Wiz! Such nostalgia for those handhelds…
A very nice bit of history. Thankyou.
LOVE your vídeos
I had one of this for years. It was amazing. I regret having sold it in 2016.
I was just telling my buddy about these the other day. It was the first emulator handheld I ever got. Pretty sure my brother still has it. Sold it to him when I got an Anbernic, which I gave to my buddy when I got a Retroid. Funny how it works like that, just slowly upgrading as time goes on.
I started my pocket emulation journey with Dingoo A320 in 2010. It was much worse experience than what I saw in YT videos about GP2X but it was also my first entry to the Linux and opensource development (and what in the end became my job). It was a lovely time when it was much harder to achieve satisfying level of emulation with limited power of the pocket devices. Hard times make great engineers :). Cheers from Czech Republic!
I still have my original GP2X (pre Wiz) & I loved it back in the day. It was so capable for such an early device but looking back on it now battery life was horrible, especially when you needed to overclock it. That said being able to play SNES games on the go & GBA games on a better display was such a pleasure. I’d like to hunt down a Wiz but they’re expensive now.
Was going to post the same thing, still have my GP2X and dig it out from time to time, yeah the battery life is absolute garbage, but if you get some AA USB-C charging Lithium Ion batteries it is a lot better. Stumbled across these batteries when I did the IPS mod for my Wonderswan and then got the flashcart, running both just crashes the system as the power draw is too high for a single AA alkaline battery.
@@TheKumaDono that’s interesting. I also IPS modded my WSC & use a Flash Masta cart & not had any power delivery or crashing issues? Probably the easiest screen mod I’ve done on any handheld too.
@@nicholsliwilson Very strange, mine wouldn't work even with a Duracell Ultra, the screen or the Flash Masta would bug out, but worked fine with retail games on any battery. Wasn't even playing anything particularly demanding, mostly I was playing the English patched Chocobo's Dungeon.
I remember in the UK, the UK distributor of the GP32/GP2X were heavily promoting their own successor to the GP2X in the Pandora , where they felt the GP2X Wiz, was just a mini-GP2X which wouldn't compete with the Pandora, since they reckoned the Pandora was at least a generation ahead compared with the Wiz, which is why they intended to sell both. A lot of pre-orders (more than they admitted to) came in from the UK, There were production issues causing delays, and since the UK Pandora company had more pre-orders than they reported, they requested to get struck off, which left a lot of UK customers with no money and no console and rightfully PO'ed .
Nice retrospective. I only knew about the GP32, I didn't know there were iterations.
I had both the GP32 and GP2X back in the day.
I still remember vividly playing the FF7 Advent children movie on the GP2X and being amazed that I didn't have to re-encode it first.
Used to have one of this…. Not before my beloved GP2X…. After the wiz, with some of my savings, jumped to the open pandora rebirth. In all of them, the notaz psx4all emulator was Iike a prodigy of the science…. ( the GP2X was able to run Abe’s Odyssey like a Champ). I enjoyed that scene so much, i was daily looking for new things, ports, emus… on gp32spain… . I’m the only human in the world who finished Lucas Art’s The Dig, on a Craddled GP2X.
After that i got m hands on a first gen gpd win. And now i own a 6800U GPD Win Max 2. I’ll never come back to small screens.
sure lots of you have similar stories….
I still have my Wiz, the screen and form factor was simply outstanding at the time, and the packaging it came with was professional looking. Whilst the screen has succumbed to bitrot, I still have fond memories of playing with this console.
I had this back when it first released. I wish you would have covered the built-in games. It had some pretty addictive games built in and there was also some awesome homebrew for it.
I have one of the first Open Pandoras serial number 74 I think. The PS1 emulation was absolutely fantastic thanks to Notaz. Those were good times. The wait to get the Pandora was crazy, but thanks to Evil Dragon we did all get the consoles eventually.
Unfortunately, not everyone got one, as the UK distributor rather sold the Pandoras I produced for his customers as well to others... sadly. But yeah, most should've received one, certainly tried my best :)
I have one of these! I remember buying it on Think Geek way way back. I can't believe how far emulation handhelds have come.
My Anbernic RG353V gets its use every day. So glad I grabbed this thing. Really looking forward to the future release of flip models similar to the SP.
I had the F200 model. It unfortunately died, and was unable to be resurrected despite my best attempts. I'm glad your shining a spot light on these things! They were so ground breaking for the day.
I still have my original GP2X Wiz. This console was very good, not only for gaming, but also for homebrew programming. At the time I made several ports of games from the GP2X F-200 model to the GP2X Wiz. I also developed a Vectrex emulator for this console called Vecx4Wiz.
So much nostalgie... I still have my gp2x. It was a ton of fun to dev for, especialy using the second core to squeeze maximum performance.
Mine was moded with a dpad designed by DaveC, using the ngage dpad. It was perfection.
I still have one of these sitting in the original box in my basement. I had a lot of good times on this handheld. It had a ton of fun homebrew games as well.
I’ve had all of the GamePark handhelds since their release back in the day. I even had fun with the last one - the Caanoo … especially after they brought in the GP2X compatibility layer.
Honestly though the original games that came out for the GP32 are my favorites. Some still not available elsewhere - although some did become GBA games later!
Thanks for the nostalgia trip, I will be digging these out again and playing soon.
mvg just killed your chances of ever reliving it. watch the prices rocket now . he did the same stuff to alien resurrection
I just went through a 15 year flashback that ended at the Steam Deck I'm holding right now.
The Wiz was my first portable emulation console, and I loved every second of it. I specifically remember after school one week a friend and I used it to play through the entirety of Super Mario World. It was such a bast, and the first console that got me into homebrew stuff. Shortly after it I picked up a PSP, and the rest was history. It's a shame my cousin stole my original system. I would love to revisit it.
I first come across GPH when i saw the GP32 and bought one - loved it..! Remember playing emulated C64 games! haha. Later... by the time the Wiz was coming I contacted GPH as no one else sold it in the UK at the time (from memory) and yes began doing some good numbers on this console, really enjoyed it..! After this we sold the GP2X Caanoo that sold way more units... I actually did prefer the Wiz though. Proper decent little machine for the time.
Nice history to see handheld devices from 2009 to now
Back in 2009 open handhelds like the GP2X and the Pandora were the coolest things in the world for me. I really wanted a Pandora since it was a tiny Linux PC you could take anywhere but I could never convince my parents to buy me one. The GP2X was also out of my reach and eventually I just moved on and by the time I could afford one of these devices they were impossible to find and obsolete. I'm happy that we live in an era were ARM based Linux handhelds are cheap and powerful. I bought a PowKiddy RGB30 and I love it.
I had the wiz and the cannoo. I still have the Cannoo but haven't used it in years but a decade ago these were great devices
The canoo was the big one for me
I still have my Caanoo, got mine years ago from eBay
I had a GP2X and I loved it! It was the forerunner of the Wiz. I took it with me on all my travels and it was the follow up to my other travel mate: the GBA micro (which is still fully functioning today, but the GP2X is dead). I modded the stick of the GP2X - because it was terrible - so I could play Street Fighter 2 on CPS and Samurai Showdown on the Neo Geo. What great times!
This has unlocked a core memory, I remember hearing about this when I was 14 and I wanted it so badly
I always waffled on getting one of these back in the day.
I actually got an GP2X when I was backpacking in Australia. Sure, there's other things to do while backpacking Australia for a year, but sometimes you just want to be left alone for a while and play some games, and this machine was perfect for this, it had all my favourite systems running beautifully in a very small package.
Still have it, but haven't used it for a good ten years, and I believe the thumbstick is broken too.
Holy crap, this is timing... So I just moved, and found this in my old storage box. I LOVED this thing, picked it up from ThinkGeek back in the day... Used it for ~two years, but then sadly the screen started to die one pixel at a time. I finally threw it out during this move, it hurt a bit, not gonna lie. So many good MAME memories on it. :(
EDIT: For the story, I bought this when I went to University, I had it with me every single day for two years until the screen finally became too hard to use. I really think it got me through those first two years, lol... Working late at the lab? Time for a little break and play some Money Puzzle Exchanger. So much love for this thing. Recently I picked up one of the Anbernic offerings, and I've enjoyed reliving my GP2XWiz days through it.
Unlocked such a specific nostalgia in my brain of using my hacked PSP to play SNES and PS1 games (along with fan translated Japanese titles of course). Used to watch vids of this device with envy
I had the GP2X and the Wiz, mind-blowing for the time. Great little machines
I still have my Wiz! I probably spent as much time fiddling with it as playing games, being open source made it quite the tinkerer’s toy. I even got the composite video out cable for it - a cool addition to have, but a bit cumbersome to use.
Before I got my GP2X I used to play emulation on an hacked A320 that I still have on a shelve here. It was incredible what the community could do with these small CPUs.
MIPS architecture was really great, and I do believe it should be a competitor to ARM nowadays.
yep it was great cost to much for me at the time so i bought one of those fake psp mp4 players in 2010
never had one because it was too expensive for me at the time,,, but i still remember i would have love to have one! thanks fot hte sweet memory!
I remember this! So many of these new emulation systems remind me of it; I think the only time I've ever seen them for sale was a few months after they came out, in CEX, selling for twice their RRP lol
Canoo owner back in the day, quite the magic device, people at work were ultra impressed with what the system was capable of and I remember at least one colleague buying one for himself. I even used it connected to a CRT TV.
I had the GP2X and GP2X mk2 (white model with touch display) and these were my go-tos for Sega and NES emulation, along with all of my Axxo movie releases. I also had the video out adapter for when I go to friends houses for big screen action. Good times.
Wanted to get a GP2X original so much, I was reading forums everyday getting myself ready. I couldn't effort it and never managed to get one in the end. They were very forward looking
I didn't have this one back in the day, but I DID have a dingoo A320, which also came out in 2009! Even back then we were pretty spoiled with the things we could do portably!
Still remember owning the GP2X F200 in 2007. Fun times
I didnt have a Wiz, but I did have a GPH Caanoo in 2010! It was my trusty companion throughout college! I still have it, safely stored inside its original box. Still looks super sleek even over a decade later
I remember seeing a GP device(maybe the GP32) in the tiny ads in the backs of magazines and wanting one. it looked so cool
Very cool. Didn't realise such devices existed "way back when".
Was glad to see this thumbnail as I still have one that is practically like new! 🧐🧐
Oh wow this brings back some memories!! I remember blowing up my first GP32 by using the wrong power supply and then buying the overclocked front lit unit. What a time to be alive!
Mine was imported from Korea. I never saw one of these in the US for sale.
It was such an amazing console.
My memories of the unit are that it used an old-fashioned Motorola cell phone charger.
It was quite the conversation piece. Most people did not know what it was.
Looking back at this in the history of emulation The fact that you have $100 handhelds today that can't even do what this can, let alone Android TV boxes, makes this an amazing little system.
I got mine on eBay years ago. Straight from Korea, it was the same seller I got my Samsung Sega Genesis from. That's when gaming was cheap.
I'm glad I got a Wiz! Still do,in fact. I spent so much fun time playing emulation on it.