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Handhelds Businesses Apple Hardware Entertainment Games

Emulate Nintendo on Your MessagePad 217

Posted by pudge from the yes-that-nes dept.
Green and Geeky writes "That Marvel of a PDA, the Newton MessagePad, has always been a good product. It does a lot of things: plays MP3s, connects to the Internet wirelessly, can be used to bludgeon someone, fits in your pocket (if you're a giant), etc. Now, it plays Nintendo games. Strange, yes, but still pretty cool. I can't play Legend Zelda, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior on my Palm V." And I don't need to waste money on a Game Boy Advance!
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Emulate Nintendo on Your MessagePad More

Emulate Nintendo on Your MessagePad

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  • Bandwidth Fun (Score:5, Funny)

    by TPIRman ( 142895 ) * on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:07PM (#8417250)
    Newtendo has hit the big times! However, earthlink just let me know that if I get much more traffic this month, I'm gonna be shut down until next month.

    Well, it was nice knowing you.

  • Anyone figured out how to... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by podperson ( 592944 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:08PM (#8417260) Homepage
    ...install Newton OS on an iPaq?

    The iPaq's with ARM chips are basically a Newton with a color screen and more memory. Then we really wouldn't need a GBA.

  • Here it comes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GoMMiX ( 748510 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:09PM (#8417262)
    I smell a cease and desist letter on it's way, $5 bucks says the term DMCA will be used ATLEAST once!

    • Re:Here it comes (Score:4, Informative)

      by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <taiki.cox@net> on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:36PM (#8417401)
      Given the number of NES emulators out there, I doubt this one is very special.

    • Re:Here it comes (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "I smell a cease and desist letter on it's way, $5 bucks says the term DMCA will be used ATLEAST once! "

      I doubt it. Emulators are not illegal. ROMs are not illegal. Illegal is when you use an emulator to play a ROM you're not licensed to have. I don't even think the DMCA would be involved here unless somebody bypassed a protection scheme to get the ROM uploaded. That, however, is up to the original infringer, not the guy who makes it available for download.
      • in fact, the silhouette SNES emulator for mac os began as a nintendo project. that's why the developers are anonymous.
      • You've got it backwards. Copying the ROM image is what's illegal. Copyright does not govern the *use* of the item. (In fact it provides everyone with the specific right to copy a program from e.g. the hard disk to RAM for the purpose of running it.) Presuming that you had legally obtained the ROM image there is no law that would prevent you from using it with an emu.

  • Amazing (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:09PM (#8417268)
    Most Slashdotters are too young to remember the NES
    • What about SNES. I remember it. Is there an emulator for any PDA?

      • Re:Amazing (Score:4, Informative)

        by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:18PM (#8417311)
        there is an SNES emulator for the tapwave zodiac, And there are also SNES emulators available for PocketPCs The zodiac though has the best layout for SNES IMO. The snes emulator for the zodiac is currently being beta tested, and runs very well.
      • I have Snes9X running on my Zaurus 860 now... FFIII, Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, all the great games run just like they do on the console. You can get it for your Zaurus here [killefiz.de]. Also available are NES, GameBoy/GBA, Genesis, MAME, Atari 400/800/XE and even a Scumm emu for Monkey Island, The Dig, etc. After all, it does run linux and a lot of apps can be ported to run on it. Check out the Zaurus Software Index for more cool stuff.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)

      by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:15PM (#8417293) Homepage
      the old Slashdotters never left the slashdot.org. They were just modded down.
      Surf safely. Don't Slashdot and Surf

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)

      by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <{slashdot} {at} {monkelectric.com}> on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:15PM (#8417295)
      Aye, but some of us don't need to emulate as we still have them :)
      • Funny? I was just playing Duck Hunt the other day. Broke 500,000 points. Best gun game ever.

        I've been playing lots of nes recently. It's too much of a PITA to reach behind the tv to toggle the manual RF switcher for my atari or intellivision.
        • Yea I didn't really intend the comment to be "funny" but I think people liked it and didn't know where to put it :) Kudos on the duck hunt score :)
      • I need to emulate one because mine kept dying. :P But to capture that lovin' NES feeling, I bought a Dreamcast and put all my ROMs on one CD. mmmm.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In my day, we didn't have fancy consoles with DVDs, pretty colors and 64bit 3D graphics. We had 8 colors, all em' shades of green! and a controller with 1 button that would only go right but that didn't matter cause everything on screen was just a undecipherable blob ... and thats the way it was and we liked it!

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)

      by jefdiesel ( 633290 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:54PM (#8417507)
      Most slashdotters are too young to remember The Newton

    • Re:Amazing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by WorkEmail ( 707052 )
      I disagree, most of us were raised on that damned thing. Let me say a few things that will trigger some huge memories for a lot of people. Karnov, Ikari Warriors, Captain Skyhawk, Spy Hunter, R.C.Pro AM, and many many more. Anyone between 21-30 right now most likely spent a reasonable amount of time playing this system. I was born in 1979, so I did get to play on the Atari beifly, but this was really my original, the first system I was hard-core on. In my opinion the best consoles ever, in no order are, The
    • Some, no doubt, but for those too young to, I suggest you read my sig (or if you have sigs off, just go to consoleclassix.com :P and you can play all the NES games you want for free online, if there's a cart available).
  • it's not the same without the original gamepad

  • Portability is a bit of a pain... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:11PM (#8417276) Journal
    I actually quite like the Newton, though I think it was a bit ahead of its time and tried to do too much. It's a cool hack to get it playing Nintendo games, but would you really walk around with a bag to hold the 'pad, to play games on ?

    It's useful when allied with a briefcase. I can't see it really as a games platform (on the other hand, my phone plays Doom quite well, (Nokia 9000 :-) so whatever floats your boat - the phone's easier to carry though :-)

    Simon

  • MIRROR (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrisopherpace ( 756918 ) <cpace@noSpam.hnsg.net> on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:12PM (#8417281) Homepage
    http://hnsg.net/~cpace/ninendo/ I'm only on a 512 line, but this should hold for a while, lets keep earthlink off his back!

  • Google Cache Version (Score:5, Informative)

    by CeleronXL ( 726844 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:18PM (#8417315) Homepage
    Why doesn't Slashdot link to Google cached versions [216.239.41.104] of pages instead of slamming webmasters using little Earthlink accounts with ~10 MB of bandwidth? Oh well. There's the google version.

    • Re:Google Cache Version (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      if you mirror the home page, he's still gonna get slammed once people click on the links to other pages. esp. the ones with the screenshots.

      slashdotted in 3...2...1

  • Newton's still the best. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dan Crash ( 22904 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:20PM (#8417320) Journal
    If you've never actually seen the latest version of Newton handwring recognition in action, take a look here under Newton Usability [newtenlightment.de]. "Eat up Martha", my ass. Makes Graffiti look like the kludgy hack it is.

    And did you know you can sync your Newton with iTunes [pixell.net] wirelessly? Even the latest iPod can't do that.

    Apple got everything right with the Newton except the size. What a foolish mistake they made cancelling it as a product instead of redesigning it in a slightly smaller form factor.

    • Re:Newton's still the best. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The size is what makes the last Newtown's stand out. The large screen is what made the handwriting so effective - you had real estate to write the words out on. The small screens from the palms really required the use of Grafitti for input.

      Plus, my Newton can't get lost in my coat pocket. I always know where it is.

    • "Best"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:31PM (#8417379)
      "Eat up Martha", my ass. Makes Graffiti look like the kludgy hack it is.

      Sorry, I have a MP2100 and the famous Simpson's reference was not far from the truth at all. You had to be exceptionally careful with your handwriting, and still often had to correct it. It would misinterpret taps, and it was impossible to correct letters out of order(say, you forgot to cross your t- out of order scribbling got me 90% of the time).

      Graffiti is not a "kludgy hack", its a system that is designed to quickly and accurately enter data, which is what a PDA needs; my Handspring was much better for most of the typical PDA usage- entering phone numbers or appointment times. Sure the Newton's natural system is faster for writing large amounts of text(assuming you have perfect handwriting) but people just didn't(and still don't) use PDAs for that sort of thing. They use- gasp- notebooks(and I don't mean the electronic kind)

      • Best! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dan Crash ( 22904 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @07:29PM (#8419255) Journal
        I've heard this before, and it just doesn't ring true for me. Graffiti requires you to be much more "exceptionally careful" with your handwriting. If you can make Graffiti work for you, you can certainly make the Newt's much more flexible handwriting recognition engine work with much less effort.

        I think it's a conceptual problem, really. The Newton attempted to recognize all handwriting, and thus many users blamed the Newton when it couldn't decipher their illegible script. It was Apple's fault, not theirs.

        But the Palms didn't even pretend that they'd recognize your handwriting. They simply forced users to learn a new way to write. If Graffiti failed to recognize what you wrote, well, then you must not be doing it right. So people blamed themselves instead of the device.

        my Handspring was much better for most of the typical PDA usage- entering phone numbers or appointment times

        I think entering phone numbers and appointment times became "typical PDA usage" because that's all you could conveniently do with Graffiti. That's my experience anyway, YMMV.

        Sure the Newton's natural system is faster for writing large amounts of text(assuming you have perfect handwriting) but people just didn't(and still don't) use PDAs for that sort of thing.

        I'd say that there's an amount of text between the size of a phone number and a "large amount of text" which is what the Newton was really designed for. Short notes, quick e-mails, reminders, that sort of thing. And lots of people have been very successful using it for just that.

        Again, whatever works for you, works for you. But I personally really liked what the Newton did, and would've loved to see what a 2004 Newton OS and handheld would be like.

      • Re:"Best"? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Xyde ( 415798 )
        You must have only used it for 10 minutes. To correct an arbitrary word:

        1. Tap and hold next to the word until the pointer turn into a large dot. Then drag over the word to select it.

        2a. Rewrite the word. or,

        2b. Double in the selected word and select the correct word out of the list, or click the keyboard button to enter it with the on-screen keyboard, or click the underlined a and just rewrite the incorrect letter.

        Let's see, that's 3 ways to do it. You claim there are none. Do yourself a favour and

      • Sorry, but the parent post is just silly dumb. All you need to know is that Newton will allow you to write complete cursive sentences while translating them to typed text on the fly. The fact that this joker can't tweak his handwriting to make the interpreter more effective is entirely PEBKAC.
    • While some may want a mini-newt.. Most of us that have used netwtons, miss the size in the smaller 'modern' pda's.

      Such tiny modern screens make it pain in the butt to use. Sure it fits in a shirt pocket ( though the newt fits in a SUIT pocket.. its inital target market ) but still...
      • Well, that's why I said "slightly smaller". I like that the Newton has a lot of screen real estate. But I recognize that a lot of people didn't, and found the Newton awkward to carry around.

        To be honest, I think that if Apple had responded to the market by making a smaller Newton, they would've seen a huge rebound in market share, and the Newton would still be around today. Even if they'd had to make the mini-Newt less functional, it would've kept the Newton brand alive until electronics became small enoug
    • Apple got everything right with the Newton except the size. What a foolish mistake they made cancelling it as a product instead of redesigning it in a slightly smaller form factor.

      True story - I was a Newton developer back in the day, and while on a business trip to the west coast, I damaged my Newt (cracked the screen by dropping it against the corner of a marble table) just before a client presentation. I called the folks in Cupertino and they very graciously agreed to take a look at it. I drove down ri
      • At the end of Defying Gravity [amazon.com], I'd read that the Newton group was already talking about designing a smaller Newton immediately after the original MessagePad launched, but you're left wondering how far they ever got with that idea.

        It sounds like they might have continued work on the Newton Cadillac [uzes.net] concept, as well as extending Newton Intelligence into other devices.

        Wouldn't it have been great if they had been allowed to try?

        Insanely great. :)

  • Windows CE (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:30PM (#8417364) Journal
    Pocket PC and Windows CE devices have been emulating PS1, GBA / GB, NES, Genesis, MAME, and many other consoles for a number of years now. Even PS1 runs incredibly fast due to the coding talent and dedication put in by various developers.

    While this may be news for this specific platform and OS, emulating NES is very old hat when it comes to the world of PDAs in general.

    Dan East

    • Re:Windows CE (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah but the Newton predates these systems and that's what's extra cool about this story.

    • Pocket Nester (Score:2, Informative)

      by poofyhairguy82 ( 635386 )
      For me personally the best Pocket PC emulator is Pocket Nester. [sourceforge.net] It runs nintendo games at full speed with perfect sound on my toshiba e350. Nintendo games are optimal because they are easy to find on kazaa (and I don't feel bad downloading them because back in the day I used to own almost everyone that came out) and they don't take up much space. Nothing like playing Dragon Warrior 4 in class.

    • Re:Windows CE (Score:3, Interesting)

      by brandorf ( 586083 )
      Are there really PocketPC devices out there with enough memory to waste with a CD image for a Playstation Emulator? I fould what seems to be the site for the main PSX emulator, but there's no mention of the process required to rip a gaime. I assume you have to manually remove all sound and video, but it still sounds like these games would be huge in comparison to say, SNES.
      • Some games were small, maybe 10MB. And yes, some games were full CD sized at ~650MB. However, there are certain models of PocketPC devices that interfaces with the 1GB+ storage memory modules. Control has got to be pretty bad on them tho. I read that a lot of them have trouble with simultaneous button presses.

  • I miss my Newt. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bug-Y2K ( 126658 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:30PM (#8417369) Homepage
    I used a MP2000 as my primary computer for almost two years. I was "commuting" between the US & UK and used it - along with a Ricochet (R.I.P.) in the US and Nokia cell PCMCIA card in the UK - for browsing, email, telnet (with PT100, killer app!), etc. So I was wireless when mobile, and on Ethernet when at a desk... All pre-802.11. This was circa 1997 BTW.

    It was nice to carry virtually all my computing needs in a "daytimer" sized case. People bitch about the Newt's size, but compared to a circa-97 brick of a 7lb laptop? Is was VERY small.

    To date the NewtOS was pobably the most elegant OS ever created... and I've run them all. The only thing it didn't do well, at least until now, was gaming. I played a lot of NewTRIS, and I seem to recall a snood, or snood-like game too but Newtgaming was limited to puzzles or very simple action games (like a sub depth-charging thing that I can't recall the name of)

    I might have to charge it back up now and play some old NES game. =) Nice to see the Newt still breathing.

  • Gameboy for Palm OS (Score:5, Informative)

    by stuckpixel ( 146684 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:44PM (#8417448)
    I can't play Legend Zelda, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior on my Palm V.

    Um, actually you can. Gambit Studios [gambitstudios.com] has had a gameboy emulator out for the palm os for quite some time. Some of the older palms are a little sluggish, but it works.
    • And while you can't do NES games on the Palm V, Kalemsoft [kalemsoft.com]has an NES emulator for PalmOS 5 based devices. They also have a Game Gear/Sega Master System emulator as well. And with Tungsten E's being available for under $150 some places, that's a good reason to upgrade from the V. Color, tons more speed, more memory, and you can play MP3s on it as well.
    • Legend [of] Zelda, some Final Fantasy titles, and Dragon Warrior are all NES games. Zelda DX (Zelda for GBC) is a really weak and twitch-style version of a link to the past implemented with the graphics of The Legend of Zelda (orig. NES) and I think it sucks, but my girlfriend seems to like it.

      • Re:Gameboy for Palm OS (Score:4, Interesting)

        by PhoenixFlare ( 319467 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @03:13PM (#8417596) Journal
        Actually, Zelda DX [gamefaqs.com](Otherwise known as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX) is a colorized version of the Gameboy game Link's Awakening from 1994, with a bit of extra stuff added.

        Maybe you should watch a little closer the next time she plays it.
        • I've watched closely enough to know how uninspired it is. I have most Zelda games, including the GC titles, and I think I still have actual carts for all the old ones except N64 (I have the GC ports of them though) and some of them grabbed me (like the first one, and link on snes, and of course 64 and wind waker.

    • Hate to break it to you, but that doesn't help. Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior were all NES games. A Game Boy emulator does nothing to help you play those.

  • Eulogy for the Newton (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SoupIsGood Food ( 1179 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:50PM (#8417486)
    Progress isn't guaranteed. Innovation, once it hits the marketplace, is not destined to take root. The Newton was the first PDA platform, and going on six years after its demise, it's still the best. It had, essentially, one deficiency, and that was in its size. This was easily rectifiable, especially with the technology of the day. It's death was the result of ego rather than sound business, and perhaps the largest mistake Jobs made in turning Apple around.

    Now, even though we have machines who's hardware is more than equal to the old newton, none have its ease of use, utility or ease of development enjoyed by the Newton. It's utility as an everyday computer in the modern age is a testament to Apple's software engineers, who Got It Right the first time out, and a condemnation of Palm, Microsoft, Symbian and Sharp, who still can't approach it so many years after its demise.

    SoupIsGood Food

    • Not just one deficiency. In addition to size, there was the wonky handwriting recognition, and the price.

      You can roll it up into one meta-deficiency: the Newton didn't make a good PDA. From comments I'm reading here, it makes a heck of a compact mini-laptop. But that's not how it was sold.

      The reason the Palm took off big-time is that the Palm made a great PDA. The size was perfect, the handwriting recognition was solid, and the price was reasonable ($300 at introduction). The Palm doesn't work as wel
      • By the later generations of the Newton, the handwriting issue had ironed itself out, and the solution that Palm used had first seen the light of day as an add-on to the Newton.

        The price issue wasn't a killer, either, because the eBook was in the $800 range, and shrinking the package down to Palm (or even Psion) size would have halved the price (no keyboard or large touch screen.) The guts weren't too far different from the Psion, which was in a nice price point.

        The Palm was not a step forward, and the fac
        • The price issue wasn't a killer, either, because the eBook was in the $800 range, and shrinking the package down to Palm (or even Psion) size would have halved the price

          But an $800 price point was (and still is, I'd say) too high for a PDA. And that was the eBook, not even the Newton proper. The Palm, at introduction, was $300; at that price it sold like hotcakes.

          If Apple had shrunk the Newton down and cut the price a lot it indeed might have made a better PDA, but that never happened.

          The Palm was no

  • 1997 Technology? (Score:5, Informative)

    by XavierItzmann ( 687234 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @02:53PM (#8417501)
    The Apple Newton was discontinued in 1998.

    The Newton browses the internet wirelessly via Airport (a.k.a. Wi-Fi or 802.11);
    http://www.ff.iij4u.or.jp/~ngc/eng/newtwave.htm

    syncs with nSync (OS X)
    http://www.everchanging.com/newton/

    syncs your MP3 collection with iTunes
    http://www.pixell.net/newton/

    runs a Java Virtual Machine (waba)
    http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/projects/newton/waba/

    there's been a VNC client since... ever
    http://mywebpages.comcast.net/saweyer/newton/vnc.h tm

    A processor accelerator is available
    http://shop.pixsolution.com/catalog/product_info.p hp?products_id=29

    Apple was one of the original investors in the ARM technology, from way back before Intel ever dreamt of buying it. The Newton runs a RISC StrongARM at 162 Mhz (compare to a 2003/Tungsten T2 running OMAP/ARM at 140 Mhz !!!)

    If anything, the major weakness of the system is its limited memory heap, but we are talking about a 1997 design here.

    Can you say... Apple ahead of its time?

  • Gatta hand it to 'em... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Valiss ( 463641 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @03:02PM (#8417546) Homepage
    ...I swear this thing has the most loyal cult following ever. For a product that didn't sell well (or as well as it should have), I'm still amazed that people are still modding these things up. Great works folks!

  • My Newton (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OPTiX_iNC ( 691070 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @04:22PM (#8418084) Homepage Journal
    You wouldn't beleive the looks I get when I pull it out in public (my newton) but I still love it, and the NES emulator makes it so I can waste even more time in class.

    I have been following the NES emulator and have been using it since version 0.12. Right now several people are working on getting a NES controler working on the newton so we can play with a contoler.

    I wonder how many people are going to be storming the J&K Sales store to buy a newton now...

  • Am I missing something? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "I can't play Legend Zelda, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior on my Palm V."

    A quick google-search for palm nintendo emulator [google.com] turns up this [palminfocenter.com] as the first result...

  • Newton Revival (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday February 28, 2004 @04:57PM (#8418301) Homepage Journal
    What apple needs to do is bring the newton back. It was way ahead of its time ( well, and expensive ) but now the public has caught up.. The time is right for the return of the only true PDA ever.. ( bastardized versions of windows or the clunky 'palm-OS' don't really count.. )
  • And I don't need to waste money on a Game Boy Advance!

    Or on a Palm V! I have a spiral notepad and a pencil stuck through the wire. The nub on the end of the wooden stylus acts as a special deleting function, and text is automatically saved into the new-age graphite-wood memory system. Guaranteed never to crash.

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