The Gamegadget

[elgarta]

I was talking to a friend at work today about some of the chinese gaming emulator handhelds which are floating around and my friend brought this one to me attention: The Gamegadget. From what I have been able to find, it appears to be made by a UK based company called Blaze Interactive.

What is GameGadget?

GameGadget is like an iPod for games - you can enjoy all of your favourite retro video games, music and eBooks and you can access the GameGadgetGames Marketplace to download new content instantly!

• Each GameGadget is capable of playing potentially over 100,000 classic titles across multiple platforms from the early years of gaming to more recent times.
• GameGadget is also a powerful multimedia device capable of storage and playback of audio, e-books and photos.
• You can expand the internal memory of your GameGadget with additional SD Memory cards that work seamlessly with your GameGadget.
• All GameGadget's come with a 12 month warranty, USB Charge/transfer cable and rechargeable battery.

Now this seems very similar to the Dingoo/GP2X consoles but it has an interesting feature which I don't think has been done before, and that is a built in game store much like the iTunes store or Android market. Now it mentions on the site that this store/market is called 'games™. The only games it advertises on the website are old Sega Genesis/Megadrive games. This makes me wonder if they actually obtained the rights to sell these roms.. and whether it will support anything other than old Sega games like the SNES.

Is this going to be the iPod killer like it states on the website? (Now why it would kill the iPod i don't know seeing as it is a different platform...) And more importantly, is this going to be a legal way to obtain rom images when you can't obtain the original cart/disk? The idea seems quite interesting really.. but when there are already other alternatives floating around (and lots of ways for those evil pirates to get free games!) will this be a practical & popular alternative?

For those who are wondering what it packs under its hood..

Hardware specs:

• CPU core: 433mhz dual core CPU
• Internal Ram: 64MB RAM / 2GB Flash RAM
• Input: D-Pad, 2 shoulder, 4 face, Start, Select & Reset buttons
• Outputs: Stereo Speakers, Headphones Jack & TV-out
• Display: 3.5" LC
• Screen Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels resolution (16 BIT colour)
• Battery: Li-Ion (rechargeable)
• Additional Storage: SD/SDHC
• Connectivity: Micro USB
• Dimensions: 140 W x 75 H x 16 D (mm)

For £99.99 (Approximately $158 US) it seems like a hard sell, especially when you need to pay for extra games and it is unknown whether the library will expand in the future. But I am sure someone out there will be interested in this device and want to know more. Seeing as it is made by a UK based company, I doubt it is nearly as illegal as it's Chinese cousins, so it might be able to obtain some mainstream popularity amongst Sega enthusiasts.

Edit: Cleaned up some text and added a picture.

 

[raulpica]

Nice cashing on the Dingoo design.

The "dual core" CPU moniker is also probably fake, as there aren't any Dual Core ARM chips working on those frequencies, nor an ARMv7 chips (they usually go from 600Mhz onwards), so it's either an ARMv11 (which is REALLY crappy) or a MIPS processor (given the frequency, I say it's probably the same one in the Dingoo and the SCDSTwo).

I'll go for the latter one. It won't go over GBA, when it comes to emulation power.

 

[elgarta]

One of the reasons that I think the high price tag is a bit much. The idea of having a legal source of roms sounds cool, but for what you actually get I wouldn't buy it. My PSP Go can play those old Sega games and lots more, plus I paid less than this thing would

 

[gibberish]

Nice cashing on the Dingoo design.

The "dual core" CPU moniker is also probably fake, as there aren't any Dual Core ARM chips working on those frequencies, nor an ARMv7 chips (they usually go from 600Mhz onwards), so it's either an ARMv11 (which is REALLY crappy) or a MIPS processor (given the frequency, I say it's probably the same one in the Dingoo and the SCDSTwo).

I'll go for the latter one. It won't go over GBA, when it comes to emulation power.

You're right, it's MIPS. It's an Ingenic JZ4750. Slightly more powerful than the Dingoo, but not dual core and capable of only a very few PS1 games.