Tapwave Zodiac Review

Fairly good write up, as a developer of t he zodiac i can say its a heck of a fun system to code for, and the games listed only begin to scratch the surface of what the is possible. The Imageon card in the zodiac is one HECK of a good graphics card, and games and apps (like good movie players that make great usage of the imageon mpeg decoding features) are just around the corner.

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Lead Programmer/CEO Vicious Bytes.com

You seriously don't need the light/sound all the way up. The speakers are loud, the screen is bright. As far as play time goes... I've been getting around 4-5 hours on a single charge playing the SNES emulator thats out for the Zodiac.

Nice writeup. Looks pretty appealing to me. BTW this RTS game - Warfare Incorporated, how do you control things?

480x320 @ 16-bit? How much would it bump up the price for some 640x480 @ 32-bit goodness?

dextius: Mah-tee-ahs, but don't pause between the hyphens - say it like one word.

Nighteyes: It does.

Dechter: You do know that there are 1Gb SD cards as well, right? And AFAIK they’re not only smaller and lighter than a CF, but faster as well. The Zodiac can fit not only one of these babies - but two.
And no matter how many Mhz the Pocket PC PDAs have, they still can't compete with the Zod's graphics accelerator. That's what really makes this PDA so special (among a couple of other things like the built-in force feedback).

Mad Brahmin Disease: What do you mean? The Zodiac does have a touch screen - that's why it comes with a stylus just like any other PDA :S

As a Zodiac owner, I'm pleased that the shack has finally mentioned this little gem. Although not as powerful as its PocketPC brethren, it accomplishes many of my goals for a PDA. As a physician, I needed a palm with plenty of storage space (2 SD slots cover it), a nice color screen, and compatibility with all the medical software that I'm accumulated over the years (my last device being the aging but equally excellent indie Handera 330)

I think my primary uses for my Zodiac are #1 medical reference, #2 gaming, and #3 mp3 player.

Unfortunately I believe the Zodiac has very little and a rather poor selection in the way of "exclusive titles," limited to the ones mentioned in the review, so the major utility of the Zodiac is its form factor (analog + buttons) in combination with the numerous emulator software available. Currently, there are several, including LJZ (SNES, NES, Genesis, GB, Pocketswan, Neogeo), Guineapig (genesis, gamegear, master system, TG16), columbo (colecovision), CaSTaway (atari st), and a possibly upcoming GBA emulator (firestorm gbaz). In this respect, the Zodiac resembles the GP32.

If you are more interested, I would encourage all to browse the 2 major zodiac sites:
www.tapland.com
www.zodiacgamer.com

Actually I'd love to play RTS games with a STYLUS. Too bad Zodiac doesn't have touch screen.

Or imagine Advance Wars on the Nintendo DS. Awwww yeah, I get that feeling, too.

A minor correction regarding Duke3D: It was not a Doom 2 port. It was a Build engine game, like Blood and Shadow Warrior and Tekwar and several other titles.

The hardware sure seems low-power and high priced when there are PocketPCs on the market with 640x480 transreflective screens, 128mb memory + compact flash 1GB (and up), 625mhz CPUs, and wireless all for under $300 (stack those Dell coupons!).

For some reason as soon as i saw the first pic i thought Atari Lynx. I still have mine :)

You may have noticed that the Zodiac's 480x320 is a whole multiple of the GBA's resolution, 240x160. While I'm not an advocate of copying games instead of buying them, I sure would like to put my entire GBA library on a Zodiac and play them through a good emulator :D

Thanks to my text highlighting habbit i've discovered a secret.

[/I would not even recommend this to die-hard Duke fans. [like dognose] ]/

what do I win?

Very entertaining and informative review. Thanks Alec :D

Great writeup, thanks!

2-4 hours of gaming? Uh... I hope that RTS has save anytime feature.

hmm.. how do you pronounce "Matias" ...

Matie-ahs ?
Mahh-tays ?
Mah-tee-ahs?

Oh, and nice review. I use my treo 600 for gaming, and the nintendo emulator ROCKS.. I play RC-proam all the time..

Palm OS as a gaming OS is soo cool, but I think the new Treo 650 will be a better buy than the Zodiac.. (faster cpu, more memory, camera, phone, internet connection, palmos, oh and you can use it to get your laptop on the internet too with pdanet)..

Original content from the LNC guy! Kick ass! :D