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...

Zottd, a great developer for the gamepark gp2x system has released his Gameboy Advance emulator for the handheld. It is titled Gpsp2x! and features a Dynarec'd CPU core.

GpSP2X is an official GP2X port of gpSP, a GBA emulator written from scratch by Exophase.

Philips 1982 Videopac 39 ‘Freedom fighters’On www.gp32x.com a news item stating the multi-platform Odyssey 2 (O2) emulator o2em was released for Gamepark's latest console. It doesn't feature an interface or ROM selector, but sample scripts are provided to allow you to run the games.I had some trouble getting it to run at first because my Windows notepad.exe program screwed up the scipts, introducing illegal non-Linux compliant carriage returns. One joystick is emulated with one of the action buttons as a fire button. The full keyboard is not emulated, but the shoulder buttons and the remaining 3 action buttons are configured to work as 0,1,2,3 and 4 in order to start the games. You need the Odyssey 2 BIOS to be able to use the emulator and the Videopac G7000, G7400 BIOSes are supported. I managed to get Timelord+ (Terrahawks), Killerbees+, KC Munchkin, KC's Krazy Chase and Freedom Fighters running perfectly with full sound and zero frameskip.

GP2XMaxconsole has written a review about the Linux based console that Shane R. Monroe has been ranting about in his Retrogaming Radio shows. And rightfully so, it is a flexible open source device that has excellent retrogaming qualities and tons of emulators and games for it. As we speak MAME, C64 (also +4,vic20,c128), Genesis, Nes, Tg16, Snes are very playable, close to full speed and getting better all the time.