Add another platform, Pandora, to the growing list of open source portable gaming platforms. Personally, as part of my handheld arsenal, I'm an owner of a GP2X F-200 and have mixed feelings about what is presently the most popular open source multimedia handheld (along with its sibling, the F-100). On the one hand it's very versatile and does well with a wide variety of emulators, while on the other hand it's a battery hog and the end user is left to his own devices to pretty much do anything (like install programs). "Pandora", while presently tracking to be double the price (around $320 US versus the F-200's $170), looks to have a tremendous all-in-one design with helpful features like an onboard keyboard and multiple controls, superficially making it seem like a superior option for running emulators overall. Still, it all comes down to developer support, which the GP2X handhelds have in spades. If Pandora works as advertised, no doubt support will ramp up quickly and we may very well have a new "alternative handheld" leader. I know I'd eventually be onboard if it was a little easier on the end user side to install and run software, not to mention if it featured intelligent battery life management. We'll be keeping an eye on this one...

The success of the Asus EEE-pc has driven hardware developers to come up with their own alternatives to the lean and mean Asus portable.

Lxdream is a Linux-based emulator for the Sega Dreamcast system that is currently under active development. The version number indicates that it is still a little ways to go until a 1.0 version but quite a number of demos and even some games are running. The latest versions boasts OSX support!

There's some buzz at some of my other blog haunts about two dirt cheap GNU/Linux PCs: Wal-Mart's Everex TC2502 Green PC and the XO Laptop.

Although we're all avid gamers here who would most likely enjoy playing Robotron or M.U.L.E. as much as the latest first-person shooter featuring humanoids with working pituitary glands, I bet most of us spend next to no time playing Windows pack-in games--those things that show up under "GAMES" on most Windows computers--you know, Solitaire, Free Cell, and so on. Well, apparently we're in the minority--at least according to GamerScore, who claims that Windows Vista's updated in-the-box games are so much better than the originals that even Mac-heads may end up addicted to them. Basically, what we're talking about here are improved animations.

The ps2 emulator PCSX2 has achieved a big speed-up making quite a few games actually playable. According to the authors on their website they achieved it through a complete rewrite of the emulator that was started with the goal to increase speed, whilst at the same time improve, or at least maintain current compatibility.

Wine 0.9.16 Released - a free implementation of the win32 api on Linux based OS'es. Wine is NOT an emulator but an api replacement. Wine enables Linux users to actually run and install Windows Based games on their Linux machines.

The latest release contains some noticeable improvements including: