Following our very recent review of Drastic 1.2.0, the new DS Emulator for Pandora, Exophase has just released a couple of new versions in a matter of days, based on the 1.3 version. There are a number of improvements and while we will not go in a in-depth review here, let’s see in more details what this new version brings. Read More
As you know, the Pandora was designed by a small group of people initially interested in retro gaming. It also serves as a fully functional Linux-based computer and is completely open, allowing the end user to do anything and everything they want to do with the unit. As it turns out, the person who designed the Pandora’s motherboard is an audiophile, and he put in a powerful dedicated audio section. This review is dedicated to reviewing this unit’s performance as a DAP.
Another submission for the Dragonbox coding competition, Applimulator provides an unusual prospect : being able to run some Android games directly from your Linux session. Not all applications can be made to run, however, and limitations are numerous. But what is there to complain about when you can now run Angry Birds without having to switch systems?
The Pandora has been out for a while already (early models date from 2008, while the production only started to be reliable in 2012) and it was designed from the start to be a powerful machine capable of doing emulation of older consoles and computers. Over time, It has proven to be very reliable to do excellent PS1 emulation (thanks to notaz, and even with increased resolution rendering in the latest versions, something that Exophase contributed to) and GBA emulation (from Exophase and ported on Pandora by notaz), but until recently very few thought it would be able to emulate anything else. At least, anything more recent. Exophase proved everyone wrong when he started working a completely new Nintendo DS emulator that would be fast enough to run on the Pandora. Now, the beta has been available for a short while, for the DragonBox Coding competition, and it’s time to review in more details what it can and cannot do.
This has been less than a year that I joined the Open Pandora community with curiosity, and this has been very satisfying so far. Even though this remains a small, almost niche community, it is still very accessible and new-comer friendly. My only regret until now was that there was not much of a communication hub apart from the forum and the IRC channel. There used to be the blog called Pandorapress, but it has been inactive for some time now. It is a shame, since 2012 was a great year for the Open Pandora in terms of software and hardware, and it only gets better with the recent Dragonbox Competition. Hence the idea for this blog.