Pandora Open Source Game System: Retro Gaming Heaven?

Shanon Shoffstall gave us a shout today about Pandora, an open source gaming platform that promises to be a retrogamer's paradise.  It crams a 4.3-inch 800x480 LCD screen, qwerty keyboard, 128MB RAM and Wi-Fi into a clamshell case only slightly larger than a Nintendo DS.

Pandora is Linux based, so it'll support numerous browsers and developers are expecting it to be an extremely capable platform for running emulators (Super NES, Playstation 1, SEGA Genesis and many others) along with homebrew titles. Best of all, they're predicting a price of £199 / $320 / €212 when it's released later this year.

If the dev team manages to pull it off, this might be the machine that puts open source portable gaming on the map. Gamers will no longer be at the whim of Nintendo or Sony, and there's a very real chance that some skilled independent developers will be able to eke out a lucrative market selling affordable original titles for the machine. It includes dual SD card slots and TV a TV output, so it's possible for Pandora to act as a media hub, too.

Even though the product pics are rendered, the system has moved beyond the vaporware stage thanks to the recent release of the Pandora dev board to select GP32/GP2X/Zodiac developers. The site claims a March or April 2008 release, but I suspect we'll have to wait until late summer at the earliest to see the final system.

What do you guys think? Will you buy one? This thing appeals to me far more than the Asus eee PC because I think it has a good chance of sparking a fervent following much like the C-64, Radio Shack CoCo and Sinclair Spectrum did in the early 80s.

Pandora: The Cortex A8 Powered Handheld Linux Console
The latest specs on atomicthumb's wiki

Comments

[freakengine]

While it's cool and all, $320 for a handheld is too rich for my blood. WAY too rich.

[Richard Van Luven]

Here's hoping it gets to the market. Having used the eeePC, the Pandora seems to have a bit more thought put into it, and a little less "small for the sake of small". Don't get me wrong, I think Asus has a set of solid spheres for delivering the eeePC. As for fervent followings, I think those died off with the 80s as well. Best they can do is market it as a commodity like every other electronic device these days. But that's just my opinion, of course.

[Alan]

One of these plus SNES game Chrono Trigger = gaming heaven indeed.

[g738]

Interesting, but I'll wait for the 9" eeePC and/or check out the new HP Mini-Note 2133.

I could care less about computer games, what I'm after is a "writer's machine" that'll give me web access, email, a text editor similar to MacOSX TextEdit, and a few other bits & bobs for writing & text-handling.

Any wireless capabilities should be possible to turn OFF (I'm already getting all the surveillance my tax dollars can buy, I don't need any more, thank you). It should have an Ethernet jack and yes, a modem jack for dialup lines. It should be capable of handling heavy crypto (freedom of speech requires the freedom to choose who reads what you have to say). It should have USB ports and an SD card slot. I don't much care if the screen is color or B&W.

Pandora seems like a good thing for what it's designed for; I'm just looking for a different machine for a different purpose.

[james]

The upcoming 9" eee and Mini-Note are interesting looking machines, although I think I'll wait a year or two before jumping into the ultralight notebook market.

It's still early days, and I suspect Intel's Atom chipset is going to lead to dozens of tiny and very capable machines. That will make it easier for the OSS community to create good Linux distros that support ultralights without requiring awkward patches and difficult compromises (there's no way on Earth I'm going to try running Vista on a low-end processor).

[ug]

I think as far as value for your buck goes, an EEE style machine goes way farther than a dedicated game machine. With portable devices, the trend is towards convergence. Any device with deliberate limitations just winds up taking space in your pocket or your backpack. I think portable game systems are going to be limited to young kids who haven't gotten old enough to want a laptop.

[Moxie]

I'll buy it in an instant. This is not really something that competes with the EEE - This is a handheld gaming machine, and a lot better at that than any laptop (it's the controls, people. Controls and graphics processing). It then happens to have extended functionality - WiFi, keyboard, linux-based - which means it could double as a mini'puter in a pinch, for surfing the web, checking email, that kind of stuff.

And I'm old enough - way old enough - to want/have a laptop, but this is not a laptop. It is *far* smaller (size of a Nintendo DS, approx.) - something you hold in your palm and put in you pocket, instead of on you lap and in your backpack. You could possibly compare it, somewhat and a little, with a Psion 5 series PDA. A Psion with a massive brain transplant an gaming controls, that is :-)

[Dav]

um not to burst any bubbles here, but the PSP can emulate a lot of older systems and has a much more natural feel than this thing looks like it has...NES, SNES, GBA, Genesis, Game Gear along with some Atari, Commadore and others are out there...granted it cant do DS games (yet?) or N64 at full speed, but the homebrew scene there is still working on it...i just dont see a huge need for this since a lot of what it does has already been done. (@Richard...i got Chrono Trigger on my PSP and it ROX!)

[Pedro Vieira]

Another handheld "open-sourced" system to flood the market?

Really, what does this have that GP2X/Sony PSP/eeePC/I-Phone don't? I really think that technology developers stagnated in creativity. Let's hope that nano technology does that twist that we all eager for so long...

[zero-kill]

Well since it's open source does that mean that the "Pandora" icon won't be sued by the makers of Pandora.com's radio service? All this free-trade and stuff confounds me sometimes.

[michael]

i would buy this once it hits the sub $ 200 mark as i am a poor college student, also, i hope that some of the ergonomics of the system can be fixed cause it does not seem too comfortable at first glance. plus, since it is open source, it would be so much better development wise. to reply to dav's comments, the homebrew scene is greatly underground as it VOIDS the warranty and technically, you can get sued for emulating games on the psp, just sony did not take the time to do anything about it

[Laddie]

What does it bring to the table beyond what the GP2X/PSP/DS alread have?

We arent going to see commercial quality games on it, so beyond emulation what does it have to justify the price?

[james]

As I see it, Pandora's big advantage is that it has a qwerty keyboard and wi-fi so you can use it as an ultraportable much like the Asus eee. It's also an open project, which may result in broader community adoption.

But - looking objectively - I suspect this little box will have stiff competition from dozens of tiny Intel Atom based Linux boxes over the next year or two. They'll be slightly larger but a lot more versatile.

Pedro and Laddie:
Pandora is several times more powerful than the GP2X and PSP, slightly better GPU, cheaper, and far better gaming controls than the eeePC (and it's slightly smaller than the original DS to boot). The iPhone is not even close to competing with the Pandora - the iPhone is not as powerful, and it doesn't have gaming controls. It also has room for more storage than any of the systems listed.

James: this is much cheaper than the Atom platform, as well as consuming much less power. Of course, software will have to be ported to the ARM cpu architecture, but this is not difficult in most cases.

[DanH63]

If this actually makes it to market, gets good reviews from people that own them for about a month or so, I will be all over it. I've had a GP2X F100 MK2 since they first came out and I'm still really happy with it. What does the Pandora supposedly have that the GP2X doesn't? Analog inputs and a real keyboard!

I don't care about commercial games..I have a DS for that, and the only real reason I have that is that my famaly has several and we use them for multiplayer-single cartridge gaming. This would be 100% for retro and home brew for me. With all of the input options, not to mention the increased CPU power and dual SDHC slots it should be awesome, and I would be in line to get one (even at $300+) after it's out for about a month and gets any kinks worked out.

That said, I'm a bit skeptical that they can pull this off in the stated time frame without getting hung up on something (FCC qualifications, parts shortages, etc). I'll believe it when i see it for sale to the public, but if/when that day comes I'll almost certainly get one.