Emulators not playable with many games
 

I gave them a second chance, but there are several things that kill the emulators, besides wasting a lot of space not supporting zips:

1. Can not map keys for most of them. This results in easy pressing of the "start" button, since right next to the direction buttons.

2. Contra, Tecmo Bowl, Mario, Blades of steel, Bionic Commando, Gradius, etc are NOT playable without diagonals. Still, even with these games it is too easy to press the start button.

Unless you stick to Dig Dug, Mr Do, Galaga, Pac Man etc where only left to right or right angle movements are required.

Two questions not yet answered:

1. Why were these designed without diagonal mapping? D-pads on the other Maemo devices?

2. Why did Nokia show diagonal mapping in an overlay for the infamous 30 second video, but there are no diagonal- why show this?

If the keys were orientated like the G1's- no problem, since you can press two keys to get diagonal movement and not press other keys.

We may be no better off with the Pandora apps, since they are designed for a d-pad, so will probably also map to the control keys by default.

Could be a long dry spell for decent old school gaming on the N900. Ironic that I use my G1 for emulators when the N900 should be playing that role.

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

While I agree that I wish they supported zipped roms I guess the only thing I could say is that these emulators are not in the official Nokia Applications or Maemo Extras repositories meaning that its likely these applications may be changed/improved upon before becoming mainstream apps available to the public. Personally I'm pretty happy the emulators. Sure they're not great but they're good enough to pass the time when I'm bored :)

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

1) The dpad didn't really do diagonals. It looks like it would but in reality it doesn't (I have both the n800 and N900 sitting on my desk. :D).

2) No idea (maybe they did something to the emulators themselves and haven't released it?)

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

Too bad development/improvement on emulators are most likely halted due to the Nintendo-Nokia situation. If only these were re-added to the repositories...

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

Well, at least Dig Dug, Galaga, Galaxian and Pong type games and Pacman are playable;)

If we had the emulators that are on Android, we would have every old schools system covered but GBC and Turbografx. Even handles MAME and NeoGeo well. The 3430 would be a perfect match. Droid proves this, but Droid loads apps in the background. G1 and 1.5 / 6 does not do this, so must be a 2.0 thing. Some games actually play smoother on the G1 (528mhz) due to this "magic app" loading on the Droid.

The N900 deserves these sweet apps. Maybe we could do a Paypal collection to get the devs to port them? If you have ever used the apps you would understand. Nothing on any other device touches them for quality- not even the legendary Smartgear on WM.

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

I'd bet money that they will be readded to the repositories sooner rather than later. I think the only reason nintendo took action against nokia is because they officially advertised nes and snes emulation. Almost every other smartphone has similar apps but no action has been taken against them. And technically emulation is not illegal, only having roms which you dont own legal copies of is illegal.

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

Even if released again, the main issue is they are limited in playability due to the lack of mapping. Even the SNES ones does not provide the option. Most games are limited as a result.

Still, better to be able to play Galaga and Dig Dug, than nothing at all- just watch out for the enter (start) button ;)

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

I thought the snes emulator was still in develoment/extras...only the vgba emulator was released as stable.

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

Maby I am missing something. But I know you can remap keys in Drnoksnes. You just have to click the DrNokSnes on top of screen in the middle.

Re: Emulators not playable with many games
 

I don't think it could be hard to remap keys considering most of the emulators now have a tilt control option. But then again if the developers had access for the N900 for a while I wonder why they decided to implement tilt control first and not keyboard remapping...

For diagonal movement could you use the stylus cues (it overlays a layout over the screen that lets you do diagonal movement).