Filed under: Gaming, iPod Family, Hacks
Gameboy Emulator for your iPod?
I don't know how effectively the controls would work with the clickwheel and all, but if you're one of the daring hackers out there who has installed Linux on your iPod and you're a gamer to boot, you'll be glad to hear that some crazy maniac out there is working on a Gameboy Emulator for the iPod. This doesn't look to be any sort of hoax, as there are some pretty convincing videos available of different games like Legend of Zelda and Mario running on an iPod with a color screen (albeit running very slowly).
You have to read through a lot of the forum to find the bits that aren't "when is the going to be released?" and "h00t!", but it looks like they have Mario running close to full speed ... on an iPod ... which is insane.
[via MAKE]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
aprodite said 9:42PM on 7-20-2005
"but it looks like they have Mario running close to full speed ... on an iPod ... which is insane."
Not that insane, seeing as the iPod sports the equivalent of 2 of the Gameboy's processors.
But it's still brilliant that they've got this working.
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Derek Jones said 10:00PM on 7-20-2005
I admit that I'm one of the many that are dazzled at the sight of 10 year old games running on modern gadgetry, and getting excited that it runs "almost as good" as the outdated gadget it was originally meant for. It really doesn't make any sense, but there you have it.
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Mike said 11:28AM on 7-21-2005
"Not that insane, seeing as the iPod sports the equivalent of 2 of the Gameboy's processors."
A single emulated instruction typically takes around 5 instructions, causing the emulated machine to be 5x slower than the processor running it. Getting near-full speeds on just twice the horsepower is impressive.
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Lee said 1:06PM on 7-25-2005
"A single emulated instruction typically takes around 5 instructions, causing the emulated machine to be 5x slower than the processor running it."
Your comparing apples and oranges. Some processors can do 1 instruction in a number of clocks and some can do a number of instructions per clock, some processors require several instructions to accomplish the same thing that another processor can do in 1 instruction! So what I am saying is, it depends! :)
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