GP2X – Handheld Linux Game System

GP2X – Handheld Linux Game System

The GP2X is a Linux powered portable gaming console.

Check out the community site and the offical site – GP2X.co.uk

There’s also a Wikipedia article on the GP2X.

If you order from GP2X.co.uk, this is what’s in the box.

GP2X console (With 64M Internal Storage)
USB Cable for PC connection (With 2.0 Support)
Preloaded Linux with Media player (MP3, Divx, WMA etc.)
CD with Games, Utilities, MP3 player, Movie player
2 * AA batteries
SDK – Make your own games!
Full User Manual
How to Guide/ Movie Samples/ Game Ports included

Very promissing indeed, and great with the SDK included in the box – ready for homebrewing.

Let’s hope this will help drive the creation of more games for Linux. It would be great if the big game producers began porting games to this – I’m sure they could do it with relative ease.

Unfortunately it’s a vicious circle, low market penetration of the device translates to no software, and vice-versa. But as a portable media device alone, it rocks, capable of playback of industry standard media, also has TV-out, capable of playback of at DVD resolution (720×480), despite the native resolution of 320×200. To top this, this is the first portable media device I’ve seen, that supports the OpenSource audio format Ogg-Vorbis.

And with the emulators there’s plenty of old-skool games available.

Below are the product features copied from the liksang website.

Product Features
# Dual CPU Cores: ARM920T Host Processor – ARM940T Video Coprocessor
# 64MB – RAM
# 64MB – NAND Flash Memory
# SD Card Compatible for Storage
# USB 2.0 High Speed Connection
# Linux Operating System for Open Source Development
# 3.5′ TFT LCD Screen @ 320*240 (QVGA)
# TV-Out for TV Connection (640×480 amplified from 320×240)
# MPEG, MPEG4, DivX 3.11,4x,5x, XVID, WMV,MP3,OGG,WMA,JPG, BMP, PCX, GIF Playback
# Supports e-book, games, electronic dictionary
# Free Emulators for SNES, NES, GB, GBC and GBA, Sega Mega Drive, Master System, Spectrum, C64, Atari, PC Engine, MAME, MSX, Neo Geo Pocket, Game Gear and more
# Continuous Playback (8 Hours Video) (14 Hours Audio)

I’m really tempted to get my hands of one of these babies.