Any free NES Emulators for PDAs?

[Dobie]

I got a PDA (Palm Zire, really nice!) a while ago, and now I want an NES emulator on it. I've seen one, NesEm. But its cost is somewhat of a turnoff. $18.00 for an Emu seems a bit high to me. I'm a cheapskate, so $0.00 sounds better to my ears. Does anybody know of a FREE emulator for PDAs? If not totally free, then how about cheaper?

[Pantechnicon]

It's a rare animal you seek, Dobie. I went on a like-minded emu search when I got my Handspring Treo 90 and came up very short. I found one Game Boy emu, which required registration and payment to play any ROM above 32K in size. So just forget about Final Fantasy Legend III, et al.

Overall, it seems that the Palm PDA platform does not really seem to lend itself well to emulation. This has less to do with the Palm OS as it does the processors involved. My Handspring, for example, has only a 33MHz CPU, which doesn't give it a lot of emu potential except for older systems like 2600 (and does anybody know where I can find an Palm emu for that?

Alternately, I have seen some just amazing free NES emus for the Windows-compatible PDA's, which nowadays are running CPU's in excess of 300MHz. Sorry, but we Palm user are more or less left out in the cold.

[SoulBlazer]

Out of curiousty, since the poster said they have a PDA and not a Palm....

What IS the difference between the two of those, anyway?

[davidbrit2]

Well, here's a port of ColEm for Palm OS 5: http://www.palmgamingworld.com/arcade/colem.shtml

It's free, too. It runs great on my Clie NX60, though I don't think there's any sound support yet. I'm not sure what kind of Zire you have, but hopefully it's the Zire 71, because that little monochrome 16MHz 2MB thing definitely wouldn't be able to handle any decent emulation.

I remember seeing an old free Gameboy emulator, too, but I'm not sure what ever became of that.

[Anonymous]

All Palms are PDAs but not all PDAs are Palms.

There are basically two camps: PalmOS and PocketPC. PocketPC is more versatile, akin to a mini mini mini PC, but is very limited in what it can do in actual computer terms. It also adheres to a fairly strict standard so that most PocketPCs are the same, with RAM (which on a PPC acts like the hard drive) and Processor speed being the main benchmarks. They hit around 300mhz right now, and are capable of playing media files, surfing the net, and just being cool.

PalmOS is much less of a resourse hog. Until recently PalmOS ran on a Dragonball Processor, which runs at a whopping 16-20hz(edit - haha I mean mhz). The New Palms using OS 5.0 and greater are more powerful, but still not as powerful as the PPCs. I've got a Palm IIIc, and it works just fine for me, but I'd be surprised if it was even powerful enough to play an mp3. Palms do what a PDA should, take notes, keep appointments and contacts, and minesweeper/solitaire.

[davidbrit2]

Don't forget that the PocketPC/Windows CE OS is an absolute bloated piece of garbage, and an interface design nightmare.

The average Palm these days uses an ARM processor, and it's usually running at 200 MHz or higher. And with such a simple and elegantly designed OS, that's more than enough, usually. Watching movies, running emulators, and all that excessive geeky stuff is completely possible since they switched from Dragonball CPUs.

[Tom61]

I have several NES emus on my PDA, but it's a Pocket PC PDA, so that doesn't help you much. Pocket Nester is my personal fav.

For gaming, PPC is the best. I have emus for Atari 2600, NES, Game Gear, Game Boy, and SNES (slow) currently loaded on my Dell Axim. (there are alot more out there that I haven't loaded) I enjoy playing Doom on my PDA as well (GF Doom lets you play full screen, and I finally, with some help, figured out how to map the side buttons on my Axim to fire and open).


Don't forget that the PocketPC/Windows CE OS is an absolute bloated piece of garbage, and an interface design nightmare.

I don't see how the PPC interface is any harder to use than the Palm interface.

[Dobie]

I'm not sure what kind of Zire you have, but hopefully it's the Zire 71, because that little monochrome 16MHz 2MB thing definitely wouldn't be able to handle any decent emulation.

I have the Palm Zire 71. Its processor is something like a 200 or 250 mhz I believe, color screen, and what-not. Palm OS 5.0, plays video & mp3s, takes pictures, reads PDF and all microsoft formats with the software that comes with it. Throw in the 128 meg memory card, and I have one mean handheld machine!

Not the baddest kid on the block by any means, but it does more than I ever wanted in a PDA. You can buy games from Palm, but the freebie Sonic the Hedgehog demo I got from Palm's site leaves much to be desired in the way of performance. Really choppy. But I think that ColEm Coleco emu should run fine. Thanks for the help!!

[davidbrit2]

I don't see how the PPC interface is any harder to use than the Palm interface.

It's because originally, in WinCE 1.0, they tried to make the interface just like the desktop Windows 95. Then they had to make some modifications when they introduced the Palm Sized PC form factor, which made things very inconsistent. There was no file browser, and no real task switching facility. Then most of that got held over in the PocketPC remake, except now they've rearranged all the toolbars and menu bars, put OK buttons in weird places, and still don't have any elegant way to handle the multitasking. It makes for a very unpleasant system navigation experience. With Palm, if you want to see your applications, hit the Launcher icon. To run one, tap the icon. It doesn't do any true multitasking, so that takes a lot of load off of the system, and makes process management unnecessary. The applications do little state saves when they exit to give you the proper effect.

I just hope to god Palm doesn't ruin this interface elegance when they release OS 6.

[MarkM2112]

I remember seeing an old free Gameboy emulator, too, but I'm not sure what ever became of that.

There IS a Game Boy emulator for the Palm... it's called Liberty, and you can download at least a demo from here: http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&sid=AD69C42F-A679-4A2D-8472B21ED54D4D2E&prodID=7928

[christianscott27]

lemme wade in here with a old rumor, it was a fact but the particulars were lost to me. liberty was a trojan horse program that messed up a lot of users. research first and procede with caution.

[davidbrit2]

Huh, I never heard about that one. Where did you hear that? I should probably look into it if it's true.

[christianscott27]

one of many google hits on the trojan liberty subject.

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/lib_palm.shtml

[davidbrit2]

Ah! Okay. So it wasn't Liberty itself, but rather a crack program designed to get around registering. I can't help but wonder if the Liberty dev team released that themselves to thwart pirates. ;-) Thanks for clearing that up.

[rbudrick]

Funny story.
There's actually a horrible NES emu for the Game boy color out there. SLOWER THAN HELL!

I loaded it onto the Liberty Palm emulator on a Palm IIIc and it actually ran Donkey Kong at about 2 frames per minute in Black and White (Liberty was only b&W at the time...I think it still might be)..

Damn, I found that amusing, and more fun than Donkey Kong! I couldn't believe it even worked.

So yeah, there's your free NES emu for Palm.

-Rob