It comes out the box with an English manual, a PC link cable, the GP32 uses PC smartMedia as its Hard disk and has 8meg of internal ram + its (upgradeable) OS, a USB port, a large hires screen (which is SO much better than the GBA one), two stereo speakers (one on each side), a joypad and 6 buttons (4 on front and 2 shoulder buttons), a 3v in socket, a headphone socket, volume control, battery compartment (2xAA for 10-14 hours) & an EXT out port which allows you to do many things including using the gp32 on your TV or for wireless multiplayer. ...The console is open source and fully supports people making their own programs for it, there is a GCC based devkit complete with graphics and sound libs.

Just read a review of the GP32, a handheld game console I'd never heard of before. Pictures of it look amazing, and the specs aren't too shabby either. Powerful enough to run emulators of a sickening array of game platforms, uses ?SmartMedia cards, support wireless multiplayer via cell phone. And, oh yeah, it looks like you can actually see the screen.

The biggest flaw I see in this thing is that it would be so easy to pirate games for it. Supposedly there were some attempts to provide for a mechanism to "lock" games to a particular handheld, but that appears to already have been circumvented. So, while the thing looks like a dream machine to me, it probably looks like a nightmare to game producers.

Still, though, I want one. And I bet Russell Beattie wouldn't mind one either, if he hasn't heard about it yet, given his professed love for his GameBoy Advance. And, speaking of Russell, I wonder just how well that wireless multiplayer support works...

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