GamePark 32 (GP32, Geepee) handheld
Written for CGEoC Yahoogroup, SRH, and friends
Jeff Mitchell, skeezix@skeleton.org

Game Park company is: http://www.gp32.com

Abstract: Like a Gameboy Advance. Great emulation, small commercial library.

Executive Summary: If you want modern new games, and don't speak Korean,
stick with GBA. If you want retro computing and emulation, in any
language, this unit is *stunning*. For English, many commercial games
exist, but not like the GBA which has a *massive* library. Great
hardware, but the library is the killer.

Some game reviews later.

Pics from some professional reviewer: http://www.gbax.com/gp32pics.html
Some professional review: http://www.gbax.com/gp32review.html

Background:

I'd been hearing a lot about this unit in various circles and when a guy
who worked with Palm told me to port XCade from Palm OS to GP32 I just
couldn't hold back any longer. I scored a good deal through him (name not
to be mentioned so he doesn't get beat up ;) and the rest is history.
A lot of people have shown interest in the unit, and theres a lot of
mis-information floating around, so I figured I'd post my review.

The GP32 has been around for a little while now.. sometime around the end of
2001 or early 2002 it was launched I believe. The company is a small
Korean independent, which is to say they haven't a lot of marketing or
distribution, but they do have talented engineers. The word has mostly
spread through gaming sites who've done a good job of reminding us about
the Nokia N-Gage, GBA SP, and the GP32. A GP32 emulator (GeePee) exists
which can assist development or game reviewing.

First impressions: *Wicked!*

Open the box (nice packaging), toss aside the manual and get a first
glimpse of the unit. WOW! Big screen! Small unit! I had thought it would
be larger than the GBA but turns out its not.. or not by much. Very light,
very big screen, nicely placed buttons. Wicked.

Manual: OKay.

Good enough to get by. Its a handheld gaming machine. Whats to know?
Put the games in, and they run.

Screen: Gorgeous. Would be nice if backlit, but GBA isn't backlit either.

The screen is similar to that on the GBA.. only larger. I'm not sure offhand
of the resolution of the GBA but the GP32 is 320x240 (like a PocketPC but
sideways instead of tall). The screen is just as dark as the GBA's, as no
backlight or frontlight or the like is built in (though there is a 3rd party
one available, like the afterburner is to the GBA, and the new version of
the GP32 will have backlight.. just as the GBA SP does.) So what we have is
a high resolution high colour screen that is very big and gorgeous, and
hard to see without a good lightsource behind you if you're indoors. Outdoor
lighting does *very* well. I was tooling around at a bus stop and it was
excellent, as it was in my house's main floor during the day. In the evening
I needed a light source to make it playable with dark colour games.

Audio: Sweet.

This thing has true stereo sound; I'm talking two speakers on the device
even! Theres a speaker on the left and right side, which is way cool. I have
noticed than in full playing position (one hand on d-pad, the other on the
action buttons) that I sometimes cover up the speakers and muffle the sound
a little, but such is life. Volume is good. I'd say sound is on-paw with
the GBA since although the GBA doesn't have dual speakers, it has superior
production values in the software.

One very interesting thing is that the GP32 can play MP3s out of the box!
The included software (that you download from the website) lets you send
over mp3s from your PC, and then play them on the handheld. I've not gone
much into it beyond the "wow, it works!" factor. I have a dedicated mp3
player. You'll need expansion media to store the mp3s on of course..
see below.

Video: Untried.

Yes, this thing can play video; you buy an app from Game Park called
Movie Park, and you can watch DivX and AVI's and such on this sucker. The
cost is meagre ($7.50USD I think?), but I have no need of this feature so
I passed on it.

Power: Excellent.

This unit takes 2 AA batteries and runs for 10 hours. This isn't like
Palm who says 10 hours and means 5 hours.. this is an honest 10 hours.
The unit just keeps on giving. Thats why it has no backlight.. same
as GBA. Keep the cost down, the battery life long.

Controls: Very good, not perfect.

Excellent layout, good feel. The unit sports select, start, two action
buttons, the d-pad/joystick, and two shoulder buttons. GP wisely put the
select and start buttons near the other controls, so the games could opt
to use them as additional action buttons if they chose (though so far
the games use them for pause and menus, mostly, as they should.)

The joystick is really good, but a little on the "loose" side; ie: When
trying for precise control (like when using it to control a mouse pointer
in some adventure games) it is a bit too sloppy.. the weight of your
thumb pulling it one way or the other unless you're careful. But for
vertical shooters or the commercial games for the unit, the controls are
quite good, I'd say on par (but different!) with the GBA. The GBA d-pad is
well designed and solid.. not loose, not stiff, and solid. The GP32 joystick
is a really good control (similar in feel to the Neo Geo Pocket Color's),
but due to the fact its a joystick, its a little more fidgety than the GBA
d-pad.

So its can be a bit of a drag when using the ScummVM emulator to play
Lucasarts adventures for instance, sometimes. Good most of the time until
you need to crosshair over a couple of specific pixels.. rough.

It is not an analog-style control.. I do not think it reports back the distance
from center, or weight, or speed of travel.. I think it reports back 8
directions. I'll find out later, but thats my gutt. Maybe more directions,
as it is a very good and fine tuned control and works *very* well in
most games.. remember that ScummVMis 3rd party swank-ware.

The buttons are pretty good; not quite as refined as the GBA, but not a
pain either. I didn't get sore after using them. They dont' feel like they'll
pop off or anything, but they are a touch more gadgety. Still, the unit
feels solid in your hands and should survive two year olds or drops like
a GBA would. Its the screen that would crack anyway :)

One note.. the battery cover on the back of my unit is a little loose, in that
it jiggles which can make a slight rattle if I shake the unit while shooting
down aliens. It wont' come off by accident, but it can be a touch
distracting. Sure, I'm that picky.

Expansion: *Wicked*

Commercial games come on standard SMC cards, typically 16MB. Some of it is
writable so the cards store the players saved games on them. Keen.

Theres a multiplayer port where you can buy and plug in a multiplayer
RF dongle that lets you play with up to 4 other players, or play ONLINE.
See below.

Since the unit has a documented architecture and API and a free SDK, and
uses standard SMC cards, a thriving community has popped up around it. If
you'd like to use any of the 3rd party free software (you *do*), you'll need
to buy an SMC card. I popped over to Futureshop and scored a cheap old
Lexar 64MB on sale. Slick. Suddenly I can install 40 games onto the unit
and never worry about changing carts like on a GBA :)

Many people buy the GP32 solely for 3rd party freeware.

USB is used to communicate with the device; Windows is supported by GP
of course, though free tools for Unix and Mac OSX have popped up. The
device essentially acts as an SMC card reader/writer when in PC-Link
operation, so you can use it to move files between your other SMC cards
too, if you like :)

Other ports on the device are the power adapter port (standard), an earphone
jack (standard; GBA SP uses a proprietary jack, god knows why!), and an
expansion pack (for the multiplayer dongle I presume, and apparently
there is a TV-out module coming out so you can play on the TV :)

Engrish: Pretty good; no problems with main unit.

This is a Korean handheld, with 95% (figure made up on the spot) of its sales
in Korea. The included manual was English (whew!) which I was very grateful
for. The unit itself uses English menus, and the PC-Link software used for
exchanging mp3s and 3rd party software with the device is all in English
(with Korean versions available of course). It doesn't feel like English
is an afterthought with the main unit. Not much anyway :)

NOTE: See the Library reviews below.

Library: Great for those who speak Korean, so-so for Anglos. Really
big emulation 3rd party scene, though.

It is obvious the target market for this device is Korean. Probably half or
more of the game library requires Korean to get by well; the game manuals
are all Korean, and many of the games are all Korean dialog. Some games
made a noticeable effort (the game checks the device details and goes
English for English users) while other games just use liberal English
for the important parts (Start, Player-1, Score, etc). Many of the best
titles are Korean only.

ie: The flagship RPG is absolutely stunning in artwork, audio, and
game play. I have no idea what the story is about, however, though the
company is working on an English translation to apply against the Korean
SMC card, and as a retail offering. Kimchi-Men is a side scrolling platform
arcade game.. no real idea what the story is or what the game options
are, but once you push Start, who cares? Little Wizard is a cute fighting
game (like mortal kombat, but cute and cartoony), and its running all
English. So the Engrish factor is hit and miss with the commercial library.

Games are available online through many outlets; you'll not find them
at your local gamestore. Maybe in Pacific Mall somewhere (a Asian
mall with tonnes of import electronics like the WonderSwan!).

So you'll be heading over to play-asia or lik-sang for most of your
purchases. Lik-Sang is very fast and very good, with very good
prices most of the time, from my experience.

Free Launcher: Very good.

When the unit turns on, you can pick whether to play mp3s or games. Pushing
Start will tell the machine to run whatever it finds on the SMC.. either a
game, or the Free Launcher (which refers to the fact it is both free of cost
and for running "free" (3rd party) software). Once the free launcher is up,
it lists any applications on the SMC card, so you cursor over to one and
hit a button to launch it. Easy. Yes, for free apps it means you need to
push at least 3 buttons, if not 3 buttons and some cursor moving. No
biggy. For commercial games it means you push one button to kick it off
(since you could still opt to run mp3s if the game's SMC card had mp3s
on it). So far no commercial game has mp3s with it, so it would be nice
if perhaps it had a provision for auto-launch in the BIOS, but what can you
do.

Company support: Unknown.

I didn't try contacting GP. They're Korean, so I imagine they would have
delayed English support, but you never know until you try, which I didn't.
If you crack your device, I'm told you can ship it back for a fix or
refurb without much question.

3rd Party forums: Very good.

A few very good support forums run by fans. A good developer group on
Yahoogroup. I'd say you needn't worry about finding help.. the
forums are easy to find and quite useful.

3rd Party Software: *Wicked*

This is where the unit really shines IMHO. The commercial library is hit
and miss.. some of the games (Little Wizard) are great fun, but many are
"okay" (fun for a few days, but not a lot of keep coming back). But the
3rd party scene is pretty funky.

Its not huge though.. theres a dozen emulators in the works, plus the
usual ports of Doom, Wolfenstein, Hexen, ScummVM, and others. Some of these
are in great repair, others are not, and growing. Theres not a lot of
developers here, so you can't expect hundreds of apps.. but the ones you
have are quite good.

ie: GPengine is a PC-Engine (aka Turbo Grafx 16) emulator. This is in my
opinion the "killer app" of the GP32; I installed GPengine, installed
about 30 Hucard ROMs onto my SMC card, and voila.. suddenly I've got 30
games to play without swapping cards. I should note that the TG16 had
high quality software, and these games runs full speed with sound on the
GP32. I had R-Type up and going in an hour, which was a thing of beauty.
Bomberman '94.. gorgeous. Galaga '88.. gorgeous. The TG16 software is
a shooters paradise, though theres some good racing games (Moto Roader) and
wargames (Military Madness), and even a few RPGs.

Theres a couple NES emulators.. nice. Theres two SNES emulators, though
they run a little slower.. Snes9x runs slower, but has save and sound.
SnesEmu runs fast, but lacks sound.

ScummVM runs very nicely.. I got Indiana Jones, Monkey Island and
Sam and Max going in minutes.

WonderSwan emulation is slow. GBA emulation (yes!) is slow.. about 7-10fps
at this time ,though they're working on it. Imagine if you can get GBA
emulation up to speed.. that would make the GP32 perfect.

Doom is nicely done, though it doesn't yet have save (garg!). Wolfenstein
runs perfectly with sound and saves working. (Including Spear of Destiny).
I didn't try Hexen.

Some free software such as tetris and various file managers exist. Nice
to have.

One universal problem with all of the above is documentation. This is free
software after all, and the guys who've done it have done excellent jobs.
But I must say the state of documentation is absolutely pathetic. I often
opened up the apps in a hex editor (Emacs of course) to search for the
path to put the ROMs into. GPengine worked out of box and can find roms
anywhere. Good luck with Scumm.. had to ask in the forums what files were
needed and where to put them. With virtually every 3rsd party app, you
had to screw around a little bit.. it needs to look for files here, not
there, that sort of thing. So say 3 or 4 apps were fine, but 8 were
atrocious. This is pure developer laziness.

I know -- I'm a developer. I've released tonnes of open source and
free and commercial software. It takes zero effort to include a 20 line
README that explains where to put the datafiles :/

Including zero info is *pathetic*.

This hurts the community.

Fortunately, the forums are very helpful and used to answering these
questions, and the download sites often have clues.. "put the files here
when you get stuck" :)

So all in all.. the 3rd party software scene *makes* the gp32, but has
some growing  up to do. This is natural for a small tight knit friendly
bunch, but its tough for the newbie GP32 owner who wants to penetrate it.

Now that I know who to ask or where to look, I have no fear, and the
developers are generally available and hanging around in the forums
themselves. Way cool.

Multiplayer: Untried.

Theres no one else I know with a GP32, and I don't want to bother
with the RF dongle, so I've not tried multiplayer. Many games seem to support
it though. In Asia there are GPRS high speed services everywhere, so its
natural thats how this works. Yes.. you can play a fight between two
Little Wizard players *across the internet* using your GP32, via GPRS on
your cell phone.

Again, I've not tried it. Imagine the lag to Asian countries ;)

Cost value: Really good, or rough, depending.

If you're into retro computing, emulation, etc, this is a really
really *really* good buy. Running a C64 on a gaming handheld is just
damned nifty.  My Palm OS unit can't do emulation half as well (and I can
tell you why if you'd like to know, since I write emulation software for
Palm OS and soon for GP32 ;), though Pocket PC emulation is quite advanced
these days.

The GBA has no 3rd party support due to the cartridge format.

So if you want only commercial games, and you're Korean or speak
Korean.. good buy. If you speak English.. stick to GBA. If you're into
emulation, this is an amazing buy. Carrying TG16 in your pocket is
simply amazing. I imagine you could do it this on Pocket PC, but
certainly not Palm OS anytime soon. No way on GBA.

Development:

The unit is ARM9 based, meaning you can use the ARM toolkits, the
GBA toolkits, or... our friend gcc. Setting up gcc for this is not
a walk in the park, but its not hard either, especially if you've
done this sort of thing before. I have, doing cross compilation for
Palm OS ARM units as well as various arcade and old school
architectures (Atari ST, for instance :), so this has been a snap for
me. Porting XCade to GP32 does not look challenging.. and is in fact
a hell of a lot easier than porting it to the Palm OS due to the
severe memory restrictions on Palm OS apps. GP32 gives you 8MB
of flat memory... yum.

Summary:

Great unit; small company makes it tough to make a lot of software, so
they concentrate (wisely!) on their local markets. Great for emulation,
but if you're English and don't care for old retro, stick with GBA.

Jeff