Pre gets NES emulation in Linux; our thumbs are in for a world of hurt
By Paul Miller 
posted Jun 14th 2009 7:04AM
posted Jun 14th 2009 7:04AM
posted Jun 14th 2009 7:04AM
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Looks like Pre has it's good spot in the "homebrew division"
I wonder, what's next? GBA emulator? Would love this one... :P
good to read such news :)
See I love Homebrew and the Pre looks to be nailling that market. This could be a cult device for years.
However, I still think the keyboard looks a bit pokey and small for my pudgy fingers.
The Pre is like awesome fruit sauce!
@John, no the Pre turns a certain fruit into sauce! ;)
Love to see a MAME emulator
great ... more junk for a piece of junk phone
GBA/NES/PSX emulator would be saweet. Though it is asking abit much. I do admire that you don't have to Ruin/Jailbrake the device to run custom Apps aswell as the App-Store stuff.
I can see Genesis / NES emulation, but is the PRE actually powerful enough to run PSX games?
winmo can run many psx games at full speed with a samsung omnia, just youtube "fpsece 1.0". I'm sure the pre can top that easily.
@ NickNick
I guess I'm just used to my Touch Pro's shitty ass graphics performance, thanks to HTC's ineptitude; also partially brought about because Qualcomm has the audacity to actually charge manufacturers to utilize proper drivers on their chipsets.
Its been only one week since Palm Pre release.. can you imagine what will come of this in one month?.. six months?
There is a PSX emulator for the iPod touch. Since the Pre has a more powerful CPU/GPU combination than the iPod touch, it will be able to play PSX games.
I can't believe nobody has yet said the famous phrase:
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Start!!!
*Select, Start (for two players)
(If there are corresponding buttons)
I can't remember, was it 30 extra lives or 50...
So... long... ago...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXKY-xQ9jqU&feature=related
:)
J, you're crazy!
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.
Hey Nuclear,
I can't believe I forgot the B and the A!
It really has been a long time. Good times, good times...
The developers of the new Contra should include that code into the new game!
*cough* Dingoo *cough*
Ugh, why don't you cough cough a desktop gaming machine while you're at it? Dingoo is great at what it does, but it's not a robust phone, organizer, 3g device, etc. If all you want is mobile emulation, then the pre is probably not right for you.
I can just imagine this...
*plays Gradius through emulation*
*inputs Konami code*
*causes phone to reset in developer mode*
LOL. Yeah, that wouldn't happen, but it was funny when I thought about it in my head...
I think they left it this vunerable to attract people to the homebrewery. Im certainly getting interested now. But with those shitty small buttons, you can't control shit
It'd be cool if you could map loads of buttons to up, and have in the shape of a large dpad, and then map loads of buttons to a and b similarily.
just get a bt gamepad then
There isn't really enough space for that to work.
You can use one of these
http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/bt-gamepad-en.shtml
It's no worse than the iPhone/iPod touch; the screen has multitouch.
You can always close the keyboard and use it like an iPhone. And the screen, while smaller, is the same resolution as the iPhone.
For using it iPhone-style, though, the pre is thicker, so I'm not sure if that'll make iPhone-style controls less comfortable.
If you could plug a gamepad into the USB slot on the phone -- AND actually be able to use it -- it would be an instant win
I bet somebody's already working on that ;)
The Nokia 770 was able to run in USB host mode, so it might require some similar work.
And the palm pre's micro usb is in the perfect spot to attach a pad if they wanted to expand the design. Could be an instant success.
What´s with the screen? I don´t remember NES in portrait-mode.
If I remember correctly, aren't there web sites that run NES emulators? If so, can you use these sites via the browser in the Pre? I only mention this because, if usable, such sites would allow you to play NES games without needing to muck about with your Pre and downloading ROM images. With unlimited data plans available, why bother running this stuff locally if the cloud can do it better, more conveniently, and without costing you anything. Besides, if this content is available online then surely the WebOS would be perfect for wrapping this into a dedicated application.
Feel free to shoot this down.
Not 100% on this but I believe those sites are flashed base, which the Pre is lacking. Pretty neat, been running emulators on my iPhone since 1.1.4, and before but this should be great for the Pre. Too bad the keyboard totally sucks, and is pretty much unusable.
How is its Java support?
Yeah XChrisX, the iPhone keyboard is much better to play games on.
@ Kelmon
This is the plugin that lets u run NES on Firefox. I've used it and it's really neat, like you said, that the games don't require roms. I like where this is going with the Pre
http://www.firenes.com.ar/
@XChrisX
Good point, the iphone keyboard is much better for gaming!! ..... Oh wait ... ???
Holy shit! What is wrong with you people?
All they said was, "the Pre keyboard sucks and is pretty much unuseable."
They DID NOT say "the iPhone's keyboard is better".
They DID NOT say "the iPhone's keyboard can be used for gaming."
Are you people of such limited mind that you can only conceive of "bad or good" and nothing in between? Do you not realise that a person can simultaneously believe that the Pre's keyboard sucks and the iPhone's does also, to a lesser or greater degree? My goodness, are you children? Disdain for one device *does not* equal praise for an arbitrarily-selected (arbitrarily selected by you) competitor! It's basic reasoning!
You might have well as assumed that they were praising the G1's keyboard, or the keyboard of the Omnia, or the BlackBerry, or any other smartphone out there! I'll say it again - disdain for one device does not equal praise for a competitor that you've arbitrarily selected out of thin air!
Judge people on what they actually say and *not* on the words that YOU put in their mouth.
That's real nice, guys. I raise a question about whether the Pre could play NES games via a web application and you guys go off and argue over the Pre and iPhone's keyboard. Couldn't you start your own thread for that or, better, not at all because we've heard it all before?
Question about the PRE!
Does the browser have full Flash support? Like if I go to Gametrailers.com (for example), can I watch videos in the browser? Or will I have to download them like I do on my Touch Pro + Opera 9?
No full flash support yet, but Adobe is working on something. Don't know the details but I'm sure you can google it :)
any smartphone w/o flash is a total fail!!!!
on my iphone i can go to a free porn site and watch streaming porn on my phone!!!!
The iphone 1g could already do this
No it couldn't.
And congratulations! We have our first, completely irrelevant iPhone post of the article! Tell 'em what he's won, Johnny!
*ahem*
You've won an all-expenses-paid trip to the land of being downranked! But not to worry, as there are plenty of other people who were anxious to take the same journey, all waiting with open arms in the realm of the iTard.
Have fun, you stupid asshole!
@Alex
and so could my Moto Q a full 2 years before the iPhone, along with a slew of other phones. What's your point?
@sweet greggo
So I guess the Pre doing this is pointless too. Perhaps that is Alex's point?
What's relevant is that the modder community got it together working in 2 weeks after the phone's release without an official SDK or such, not that it's possibe - we all knew it was.
I actually find this very smart of Palm. Homebrewers are usually the early adopters, and by making the Pre very "hackable" it'll gain a lot of traction. Sony did the same with the PSP I believe. Once it had a descent userbase they started to lock things up again.
Not really. Give the Pre 6 months before it dies a death. It's too average
it's really anything but average...