GCW Zero

[emphatic]

I'd love to join in, but I'm lacking half a thumb, so I need to stick to joystick controlled gaming.

[opt2not]

That is the saddest thing I've read today.
Hang in there buddy!

[baddy]

To be fair, Game Park had some pretty good retail titles with the gp32. Most people just wanted the homebrew/emulators anyway.

Astonishia Story R ? I don't recall any other, and this was a Korean PC RPG remake, not that impressive. The other titles were pretty laughable...

[pubjoe]

I wouldn't know, I never played them, I just bought it for emulators, same as this.

[nem]

Astonishia Story R ? I don't recall any other, and this was a Korean PC RPG remake, not that impressive. The other titles were pretty laughable...

Tomak Save the Earth Again wasn't half bad. Although like Astonishia Story, Tomak was probably better on the PC.

However, the best game on the system was Her Knights. A really good belt scrolling beat 'em up exclusively made for the GP32. I remember there being talks of an arcade version of it as well, but unfortunately it never panned out.

[pubjoe]

Ah yes I remember there being a lot of talk about that on the forums.

[baddy]

Damn! This takes me back I remember it now, I never had the chance to play it having sold my GP32 before it got out.

Cheers for the flashback

[cools]

50%

[opt2not]

It was thrown up on slashdot recently:
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/01/1 ... your-money"

*edit: Man, I can't stand these slashdot comments, people actually think older systems like the SNES ran higher than 320x240.

[opt2not]

Also, today's pledges broke the #1 spot!

[FrancoB]

Subject: GCW Zero

Also, today's pledges broke the #1 spot!

Yep, it's flying today! It's risen 5% in the last five hours.

[baddy]

It was thrown up on slashdot recently:
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/01/1 ... your-money"

*edit: Man, I can't stand these slashdot comments, people actually think older systems like the SNES ran higher than 320x240.

Didn't it ? On start screen at least...

[Ultron]

With a 1280x960 screen it could have some decent scanline emulation going?
Also the 3D games could look better.
I know the screen is small, but aren't there mobile devices with that level of pixel density now?

[cools]

On a screen this small you would have barely seen scanlines originally - the 320x240 matrix will do a fine job.

[Ultron]

You hold a handheld screen closer to your eyes so I think you'd see enough detail to notice scanlines. Just how small is that screen, is it less tall than the PSP screen?

Besides, isn't the effect of scanlines supposed to be subtle rather than "in your face"?

[cools]

Indeed, and on good smaller size CRTs they become all but invisible

[opt2not]

It was thrown up on slashdot recently:
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/01/1 ... your-money"

*edit: Man, I can't stand these slashdot comments, people actually think older systems like the SNES ran higher than 320x240.

Didn't it ? On start screen at least...

Snes/Genesis both ran at 256×224 (Genesis native, and SNES Progressive. SNES had the ability to run higher at an Interlaced res natively).
NES/Master System was the same.

MSX = 256×192
ColecoVision = 256×192
Atari 2600 = 192x160
DOS games = mostly ran at 320x240
N64 and PSX had games that can run at 640x480, but a lot of them ran at 320x240 (for NTSC standard).

Basically anything made earlier than the SNES ran lower than 320x240 natively.
Sega Saturn can output a display resolution of 320×224 and higher, but it's similar to the PSX, some games were programmed to do so.

I think this is a by-product of today's retro gamers. Most people play retro games on emulators, and naturally have their computers, xbox's, PSP's set to higher resolutions with up-scaling happening. So they think, that's the way its supposed to be. Back in the day, no one talked about TV resolutions as extensive as now. Most people don't know that Standard Resolution is 640x480 (VGA - but for TV this was roughly the res), but those older consoles outputted half of that and were interlaced to display at standard def. Hence 480i.

These people keep saying "it's not 640x480 so it's crap", but it was never *really* that resolution in the first place...

[Ultron]

I read it has OpenGL, can someone tell them to give it OpenAL cause that makes a great difference?

[opt2not]

You hold a handheld screen closer to your eyes so I think you'd see enough detail to notice scanlines. Just how small is that screen, is it less tall than the PSP screen?

Besides, isn't the effect of scanlines supposed to be subtle rather than "in your face"?

GCW's screen dimensions are 3.5 inches.

Now remember, PSP is widescreen = 4.3 inches.

GBA SP's screen-size was 2.9 inches...and that's not a terrible size IMO. Even the Iphone 4s screen was the same at 3.5", and that's easy to play on. Apple upped it to 4 inches for the iphone5...

But really, I doubt you'll see any interlacing on the GCW for the older consoles 'cause you'll be emulating them at native res. So no need to "scan every other line" just to get to 640x480 since doubling the screen res to standard-res (480i) isn't necessary.

[pubjoe]

I actually do think that a panel around 1280x960 would be perfect but not for the same reasons as most people.

I want unadulterated pixel art on a screen this small. No filtering or effects. A high res screen actually allows for more resolutions to be displayed - in a pseudo fashion - without horrible jaggies OR filtering.

But I'm realistic. At this point, 320x240 is the next best thing for several reasons. For one, price. There are lots of comments about what would make this better, but to be honest, if it had cost much more I wouldn't have backed it. As is, the price translates to pretty much £100 delivered, which is the magic price point for this type of thing.