Portable retro gaming

addyb

Just ordered one of these badboys. Will be arriving tomorrow but I'm away from Sunday (in Portugal for a few days) so won't get a proper play until next Thursday.

GPD XD  Plus Gaming Handheld Console by DroidBOX.co.uk

Will post some thoughts once I've had a proper hands on.

addyb

I'm away in Portugal until tomorrow so thought I'd post a few thoughts on the couple of hours I've spent with it so far.

Build quality is really good. It's pretty much identical to the 3DS XL. It has 2 thumbsticks that feel similar to the ps vita and it has 4 face buttons which have the Xbox layout but also in the corner of each one is the PS layout which is a nice touch. The usual 2 shoulder buttons either side are present along with start and select. The thumbsticks don't click in for another input so buttons for L3 and R3 are placed near both sticks. Besides that you have the usual android buttons, home, back, bring up app list etc. The volume controls and power buttons are also situated on the bottom half of the clamshell design.

Screen is a lovely 5inch 720p display which is also multi touch and it runs Android 7.1. It comes pre loaded with the usual apps, one of which is called happy chick which has a whole host of games across different platforms to try. Obviously legality issues aside it works well but I hear it's best to just get your own emulators and sort your own games out so I won't say anymore.

I will mention that I've tested reicast which is a Dreamcast emulator and besides some initial faff it worked fine with the 2 games I tried (SturmWind and Virtua Tennis)I also tried the psx emulator with gran Turismo 2 and again that worked a treat.  Besides that I tried a few top end android games like Real Racing 3, Modern Combat 5 and ShadowGun Legends and again these all work great with physical controls.

I've a lot more testing to do in terms of emulation and features. It's a no brainer that it will run all 8&16bit systems and it apparently runs psx games @99% comparability. Im more intrigued with the much improved psp, N64 and Dreamcast emulation. The latter I know will be hit and miss as it's still not perfect but will be interesting to see what can run.

Apart from that there's ps4 remote play id like to try and see if that's any good. Overall though im really impressed. I've always liked the clamshell design and its a really nice build quality. Performs great so far.

Drewster_UK

Looks like a real nice device - be interested to know how well N64/PSP works.

addyb

I'll be testing those next. I'm hoping Fzero and Sorry Kong racing perform well. There's a raft of psp games I want to try, particularly as PS2 emulation is a no go. The psp was pretty much the ps2 anyway with the library.

addyb

Ok quick games update.

Tried Virtua Tennis 2 and Crazy Taxi on reicast. Both run pretty much perfect.

Tried Sega Bass fishing and there's visual glitches and slowdown so not really playable at all.

Tried everybody's golf 2, Burnout Dominator, Sega Rally and God Of War on PPSSPP and all were fine. I had to tweak the settings a bit. Burnout has some frame rate issues with the sun and causes slowdown here and there but it wasn't that frequent and im going to tweak some more to see if it will get 100%
Gripshift loaded and allowed me to pick a game mode but then the game just stuck on the loading screen.

Will test some N64 later.

addyb

N64 games twsted

F-Zero works perfectly as does
Diddy Kong Racing
Mario 64.

Blast corps does work but is prone to crashing but I could try different plug ins and see if that resolves it. That runs full speed as well

addyb

Quite disappointed with the hit and miss Dreamcast and psp emulation so I've sent it back. I have preordered the gpd win 2 which although 3x the price, it can run PS2 and dolphin flawlessly. I'll also have my steam library

lpoolm

That's disappointing! Just stumbled on your thread and it all sounds great to start, screen power etc then goes downhill. I do love being able to play android games with proper controls but obviously it's not worth the money purely for that, I will stick with what I currently have!

addyb

For anything upto ps one it's excellent really. Having proper controls for Android games, along with pc ports from the PlayStore also make it great. PS2, GameCube and Dreamcast are my main emulation wants though and the gpd win 2 does all that and then some Will post some thoughts once I get it In a few weeks time.

Drewster_UK

GPD Win 2 is on my long term radar so will be interested to see what you think.