So for anyone who wants a modern handheld, the DS and PSP are available in a variety of revisions. Each of those platforms offers a nice stable of games (DS moreso than PSP) and seem like perfect choices for anyone wanting a handheld gaming device. Even when discussing emulation, the PSP seems like the no-brainer choice for anyone looking to emulate older games. But what if there was another option?

I present to you, the Dingoo Digital A-320:

Now, I know what you're thinking. What the heck is that thing? It's not a gameboy? It's okay, let me explain.

It's a Chinese personal media player, the type of device that is a dime a dozen. The Dingoo A-320 however is one of the few worthy of attention when it comes to gaming. You see, most chinese PMPs that claim they have emulation usually do it poorly, or have horrid controls, or feature some other deal breaker. The Dingoo however is different and I hope to show that through my review.

The emulators for the native OS make up the bulk of the offering out of the box, featuring NES, SNES, GBA, NeoGeo, Sega Genesis/Megadrive and CPS1/2 (Capcom arcade) emulation. It also has a variety of features that you'd expect from any chinese PMP, so video, mp3 and radio playback are there in addition to a text/ebook reader and photo viewer. There are also games developed by Dingoo Digital themselves but nothing really worth mentioning. Below are the emulation results with respect to the bundled emulators.

NES: Near perfect. A few games have slight audio problems.

SNES: Poor. Many games work fine, but others, such as games with SuperFX chips, simply fail to run.

GBA: Very good. Most games work great, with a few running slowly or without sound.

Genesis/Megadrive: Haven't tried this myself so I can't comment. Not very good from my understand.

CPS1/2: I've only tried a few SHUMPS, and many run quite well, but there is noticeable audio slowdown in some.

This is out of the box, with no enthusiast support. There is a faster firmware out there that allows the underclocked system to run at full speed, improving emulation. You can emulate games from all these systems and still get 7-8 hours of battery life. Not only that, but the dingoo includes a TV-out cable, meaning that the device is used as a controller while the video and audio is outputted from your tv. A portable game emulator that also works on your TV?  Oh, did I mention the screen is pretty good? See here:

So where does that leave us? A couple good emulators, a couple bad ones. The device itself has pretty decent controls, with the dpad rating above the PSP's d-pad but below the DS's d-pad. The face buttons are good, but the shoulder buttons are not especially good and somewhat akward to use. The build quality is a little above what you'd expect from a $80 chinese device. The build quality is decent, but still below that of the DS and PSP. The big issue for me is quality control, as since these have to be ordered online, RMAing would be a hassle compared to returning a defective system to a store. The screen and controls are quite good but with only a few good emulators built in, surely the system has something else to offer?

Thanks to the homebrew community, it does. In June 09 Dingux was released, and after a short period of time a dual boot installer was released. I'll save you the details of progression here. Today, it plays many games (OpenTyrian, Duke Nukem 3d, Rise of the Triads, Doom(prboom), Hexen, Heretic) with new ones being added all the time. It already has a great GUI built in that makes selecting games and emulators easy.

The emulators offered in Linux are already exceeding the native OS. Snes9x runs games better than the built in snes emulator and it's completely unoptimized for the system. Mame4all has also been ported which works wonderfully recreating many arcade favorites in 320x240 resolution glory. There also gnuboy (gb/gbc emu), a sega master system emulator , ScummVM to run your old lucasarts games. No tv out support yet though, but it looks like it will exceed the emulation capabilities of the PSP with better battery life and better controls.

Where it goes from here is pretty much up to the community exclusively, with hobby programmers improving it all the time. The end game seems be having dingux as the only operating system on the unit, but that can't be done until all native OS features are added to Dingoo Linux. The progression so far is pretty staggering, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it will go in the next few months. Full-speed SNES emulation is pretty much the holy grail for me, as even with the inconsistant SNES emulation the that the unit currently has, playing SNES games portably is as awesome as it sounds.

Other reviews:

Gadgetoid

Pocket Gamer

Resources:

Dingoo Scene

Dingoo A320 Forum

Dingoo-Digital support site

Dingoo Linux (dingux)

For the record, I know the dingoo isn't that new, as it was released earlier this year. Feel free to ask me any questions about it. If you are itching to reply something along the lines of OMG PIRACY, maybe you should find another topic to post in.

Thanks for reading.

PS: ThinkGeek is selling this as the "Pocket Retro Game Emulator".

Edit Jul27: Edited for clarity, added/removed some info.

This can't possibly be legal in the U.S.

Haxors are allowed on this site?

There's nothing illegal about emulators. There are no roms included with the system.

How much does it cost, dood?

Didn't know that.

$83-$99 USD, depending on vendor.

That's not too bad. I may consider it if I fail to hack my future PSP.

OMG PIRACY

lol. what a noob :P