if telefang is the one where you go into the 'electric tree' for some reason and it's kind of like pokemon but completely baffling and has a 'pokemon diamond' title screen then yes. i never found out what that game was. i have always held it as some kind of mystery video game from a parallel universe or something.

if telefang is the one where you go into the 'electric tree' for some reason and it's kind of like pokemon but completely baffling and has a 'pokemon diamond' title screen then yes. i never found out what that game was. i have always held it as some kind of mystery video game from a parallel universe or something.

yes, the tree that takes you to the e-mon (electric monsters) world.  it is pretty DISORIENTING to play, it like...doesn't lose that weirdo mystery when you play it.  you just feel like you're playing video games in an alternate universe version of the 90s.  you have to emulate it tho because the save function doesn't work, it just crashes the game.  i actually found a copy of it for sale on ebay (as in, the 'pokemon diamond' version translated in english, not just regular japanese telefang).  it was expensive though, but fuck i wanted to buy it even if playing it wasn't really doable.

i really like the idea of weird like...chinese bootleg games.  there's an ebay seller that sells nothing but bootleg famicom games, if they ever have any that aren't a good $15+ i might buy one because to me these games have this horrible aesthetic that i love

it's literally an android tablet with a resistive touch screen, what's so exciting about witnessing it? How is it reshaping the world of computers?

that and shit like that normally comes out in its own country and is hard as fuck to buy elsewhere.  remember that iphone clone that came out years and years ago???  tons of people wanted those but i know of NOBODY that ever found or got one.  never read a single thing about it.  if these things come out, they aren't really PURCHASABLE anywhere

It was the Meizu M8.  Took me forever to find because I just remembered it was called the M-something which is too hard to search for.  But yeah, tons of magazines and websites were talking about how it was gonna be an iPhone killer due to its price.  Everyone was talking about how they wanted these things (one magazine in particular did a huge article about it that I read but I don't remember which.  Maybe Wired?)  Did it ever even come out?  I'm not sure.  That's the problem.  Even if the device is promising, you gotta deal with somewhat shoddy companies.

Which is the problem with things like OpenPandora and the Wiz and the Dingoo.  Even if they could be great devices, the companies behind them can be pretty dang bad.  I can only really speak about the Wiz but I can say for sure that even though the company behind it really legitimately seems to want to do well, they didn't start out in the gaming market, they were in the personal media player market.  That means that they've made tons of VERY bad decisions (the reason the a/b/x/y buttons are laid out in the shape of a d-pad is because they actually wanted to have two d-pads, until someone finally told them that you'd never be able to hit two buttons simultaneously and nobody would buy this because of it).  There's also problems with not being able to get repairs or parts or anything like this.  Sure, for $30 it's almost a throwaway thing and go ahead but don't be surprised when you have Problems(tm).

reshaping it by changing the pricing. like yeah the ipad is amazing but its price is a major turn off. maybe im just not a huge fan of apple. like i have an ipod but i think their computers are overpriced. what im saying is, look at what it comes with, and for $30. its crazy. even if the touch screen doesnt work super well, it comes with a keyboard and a usb port. you could probably get a mouse on it

but ive never heard of any iphone clone that people actually WANTED. just people buying ones they thought were iphones. ive never heard of anyone saying "hey check out this chinese iphone with an inoperable touch screen i love it." im not sure which clone youre talking about though you might be right and i may be out of touch with iphoners (lol)

The ipad/tablets really aren't amazing, they're just small embedded RISC platforms that are largely used for multimedia delivery at the moment. Considering that the software is free and most of the parts involved are off the shelf mass produced components, 30 dollars really isn't that unbelievable if you're making a whole bunch of them and not looking to make a profit(perhaps even subsidizing the costs as this is a government project).

Despite all the fanfare, I'm really skeptical about this massive push to throw computers at kids all the time as if it'll somehow magically make them more educated future pioneers of industry. Having grown up when they started really pushing the whole "we gotta have computers in every classroom!!!" really makes me a little jaded about the subject and I can't get excited about things like this. Subsidized laptops/tablets are almost at the bottom of the list of things that children need, people's priorities are really fucking backwards here and I think it has a lot to do with these prominent idealistic techno-fetishist hacks like Nicholas Negroponte getting way more money and attention than they deserve from technology industry.

yes, the tree that takes you to the e-mon (electric monsters) world.  it is pretty DISORIENTING to play, it like...doesn't lose that weirdo mystery when you play it.  you just feel like you're playing video games in an alternate universe version of the 90s.  you have to emulate it tho because the save function doesn't work, it just crashes the game.  i actually found a copy of it for sale on ebay (as in, the 'pokemon diamond' version translated in english, not just regular japanese telefang).  it was expensive though, but fuck i wanted to buy it even if playing it wasn't really doable.

i really like the idea of weird like...chinese bootleg games.  there's an ebay seller that sells nothing but bootleg famicom games, if they ever have any that aren't a good $15+ i might buy one because to me these games have this horrible aesthetic that i love

the cover of 600 AD at 1:14 is seriously like the most haunting thing I've ever heard

oh yeah in related videos apparently there is a pirate game that is supposed to be Destiny of an Emperor 3 that actually looks pretty rad and done well somehow! It seriously looks like Final Fantasy VI for Genesis with a lot of Chinese people

also Nicholas Negroponte I heard this story about how a year after he did the OLPC thing it turned out all the schools had switched to Windows XP or whatever because everybody thought Linux sucked - like entire COUNTRIES hated Linux

Well they are four dudes developing, testing and repairing the device. It's understandable that it's taken them several years. It's not until now that they've gotten a small business together with external production partners helping out. They're currently in the process of producing the first actual test batch before the actual release and continuous production of the device. They've currently got 600 out of 4000 devices ready before the actual launch, and this stage involves a lot of testing and repairing so it will probably take them a good while before they can release the final product.

I don't think it's fair to take $300+ preorders on a product you delay for YEARS.

Of course they had to delay it because they're so small, but fuck after a few times maybe you should extend that theoretical release date to something a BIT farther in the future instead of constantly changing it.

I just checked the gp32x forums a minute ago (idk if they're the biggest community for these handhelds or not but it seems like most of the main developers for them hang out there).  From what I'm reading, it seems like a LOT of the developers aren't too pleased about this.  Even the ones with really early Pandora devkits haven't felt like it was even worth developing anything for it because so many people are losing interest due to it feeling like they're never going to get a device.  Even if it does start shipping this fall, it'll only be a small number of units, compared to the large number of people who want them.  Apparently it's been THREE years since they started accepting preorders, so some people have been waiting this long to get theirs.

The thing is, if they delay this thing too much longer, someone could easily come out with a similar device that's even better.  I'm actually kind of surprised someone HASN'T yet.

Who said it had to be Sony or Nintendo?  No reason some computer manufacturer couldn't release a tiny handheld computer with some gaming controls added in.  As for people talking about it on a frequent basis, this topic is the first I've seen from it in a long time outside of actual Pandora forums, whereas three years ago it was a different story.  Maybe I'm just not seeing it though but it definitely has declined in interest.  If they don't get this thing out soon and in big numbers, they could be in some pretty big trouble.

There seems to be a fair few of these type of  handhelds and to be honest i'd rarther have this:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingoo it is cheaper runs linux as well as it's native µC/OS-II OS and is open source like pandora, prob not nearly as powerful but I'd only use it for emulation anyway, so w/e

I want a pointless linux installation that instantly kernel panics on everything I own.

Yeah, the Dingoo is the closest competitor to the Wiz in terms of size, performance and price.  The only real problem I remembered with the Dingoo was that you couldn't hit Y and B at the same time but I think this was fixed in some firmware.  The big pro with the Dingoo is that it's cheaper than the Wiz, but the drawback is that it doesn't have a touchscreen like the Wiz does which is a big deal if you want to play ScummVM or Dosbox games.  If you don't though, the Dingoo could be better due to the price (I've not used one so I can't really say but Dingoo users seemed to be pretty happy with it).  Otherwise the Wiz and Dingoo are pretty dang similar, just depends on your priorities.  When it comes to something small you can put in your pocket and play roms on, either one would be better than the Pandora (unless you really REALLY want full PSX and N64 emulation).  They're far cheaper and the best part is they actually exist and you can go buy them right this minute.

edit: also the Wiz has more support from developers so if you're into homebrew stuff (and there's a handful of pretty good homebrew games for the Wiz) the Wiz is probably better, but if you only want roms then it doesn't matter.  However that might also affect the development of emulators, there could be a more obscure system (like the Wonderswan) that doesn't have an emulator for the Dingoo but like I said I've not used the Dingoo so I'm not sure about this.  I just know that on the main site with all the games and apps for these things the Wiz has a bit more available.