Since the GP2X is based on the Linux operating system, games released for Linux could be ported over, correct? Yes, that is true. Popular games like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and Doom have already been ported to the GP2X by users. You need the basic files from the PC version and combined with release packages, you can have them right on your GP2X screen. There are many other freeware games available for download and of course, lets not forget Emulators!

Emulators allow you to run software from other systems on the GP2X as long as you possess a copy of the software you wish to run. There are emulators for many favorite systems like:

• SNK NeoGeo
• PC-Engine
• Nintendo GameBoy, NES, SNES
• MAME
• Sega: MasterSystem, Game Gear, Mega Drive
• Commodore C64, Amiga 500/500+/600
• Sony PSX
• ZX Spectrum
• Atari Lynx, ST
• MS-Dos

Many emulators will run most software perfectly and at the intended speed, but some others may have various issues (often to do with speed or sound). It's beyond this presentation to examine each emulator and how well it works. For your reference we urge you to read this review, it has several emulators tested and some conclusions. We personally tested several MAME games, which would be prefered by users anyway. Currently with MAME GP2X 3.7, 1138 unique games are fully supported. Inside MAME you can adjust the CPU clock and frameskip for better performance. From our tests, overclocking the CPU up to 250MHz is possible. Below is a table with framerates we got for various games, either 8bit or 16bit, Neo Geo:

Mame GP2X offers three modes, normal, compatibility and fast. We used the fast profile for the above tests. The "older" games, 8bit will run at full speed (60+FPS) on the GP2X. Newer games will run from 13~35FPS , depending on the game and how many sprites are drawn on screen. Mame GP2X offers the option to overclock your CPU before starting a game, to enhance performance. From our tests, we could get a stable system at 250MHz, and in Art Of Fighting 2, we saw an increase of 10FPS (20~40). This means, you can further speed up emulation by overclocking. Of course, this will drain your batteries faster also...

Other useful resources:

• GP32X.com
• GP2X Dev Portal
• GP2X wiki
• GP2X NewBie & PDF