Pandora's Emulators - What Will Work And What Won't

[wraggster]

Prophet (ex newsposter on many emulation sites) posted a rather interesting post for newcomers to the Pandora and should be interesting to what can be overcomed in the future.

As more people around the world discover the Pandora, we're likely to get many requests for emulators. This topic is designed to clarify what sort of emulators are likely to work very well on Pandora, what sort probably won't, and what *might* happen (depending on many variables).

Defining terms: By "work well" I mean full speed emulation with full sound and very little if any frame skipping at all. By "work decently" I mean reasonably playable but possibly without sound and/or with some frame skipping. These are all speculative! By "NOT work well" I mean too slow or incomplete to be considered truly playable. Again, this is speculative!

NOTE: Just because you see a system on this list DOES NOT mean it will definitely have an emulator on the Pandora. DO NOT EXPECT there to be emulators for everything on this list, even if it's in the "should work well" group. The systems in this list are only there as a guide.

THIS IS NOT A LIST OF EMULATORS BEING WORKED ON! EVERYTHING HERE SHOULD BE REGARDED AS SPECULATION TO SOME DEGREE!

Emulators that could work well on Pandora:

8bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to)
NES/GB
SMS/GG
Atari 2600/5200/7800
Colecovision
Intellivision
Vectrex
Atari 800/XL
Commodore 64
Spectrum
Arcade games from the 70's and 80's (i.e. MAME etc.)
+ various other systems from that era

16bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to):
SNES
Gameboy Color
Genesis/Sega CD
Turbografx-16/PC-Engine/CD-ROM (technically an 8bit system but eh...)
Amiga
Atari ST
Atari Lynx
X68000 (Japanese computer with arcade quality graphics)
286 (and possibly 386) PC's via DOSbox
NeoGeo AES/MVS
NeoGeo Pocket (it actually has a 16bit CPU)
Arcade games from late 80's - 90's (i.e. CPS1/2, FBA, MAME etc.)

32bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to):
Playstation (PSX/PS1)
Gameboy Advance
Arcade games (some MAME games using 32bit CPU's i.e. PSX based)

Emulators that MIGHT work decently on Pandora (these are all speculative!):

Nintendo 64
Sega 32X
Atari Jaguar ("bit" level is arguable, but it's a 32bit era sysyem)
3DO

Emulators that will NOT work well on Pandora (these are all speculative!):

Nintendo DS (might eventually move into the "work decently" tier, time will tell.)
Sega Saturn (altho 32bit, it's very messy hardware to emulate)
Playstation 2
XBox
Gamecube
PSP
486 based PC's and higher
Current mainstream consoles (Wii, PS3, 360 etc.)

These lists are preliminary and speculative. But hopefully they give some idea of what will likely be possible or not. As always in emulation, you never know what some brilliant dev will do in the future, but it's good to have a sense of proportion. Remember, Pandora is very powerful (easily surpassing all current handheld game devices) but it's not a miracle machine.

Any mistakes or suggestions for additions/changes, please post below!

And remember:

THIS LIST IS SPECULATIVE - do NOT expect to see emulators for every system in the list!

agree or disagree via comments

[BastarB]

"16bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to):
SNES
Gameboy Color
Genesis/Sega CD"

The Gameboy Color isn't 16-bits, it's 8-bits =P

[khalid-neo]

strange the whole website is about dreamcast (DCemu.co.uk) and you dont mention the the dreamcast emulation .

[JKKDARK]

Obviously the Dreamcast should go with PS2, GC, etc.

[khalid-neo]

it should be mentioned at the first place

[yaustar]

strange the whole website is about dreamcast (DCemu.co.uk) and you dont mention the the dreamcast emulation .

It is a link to a newspost on a another site hence the hyperlink.

[sukhi-2006]

I've read enough about this cool handheld system.
This system needs full speed psx and nintendo 64 emulators that will be fine, if the system can handle any other emulator that will be great, I'm definetely going to buy one the system has lot of potential.

[Tyr]

I wonder how well the pc-fx part of mednafen would run on the Pandora , that would definitely be interesting to see.

[pkmaximum]

I'm just hoping on n64 =)

[kharaboudjan]

well, the only thing pandora will have more than the psp is N64 emulation. and it is not even 100 % sure that pandora will emulate it better than the psp. it will probably play PSX games worse than the psp becuz the pc dont play the PSX games like the psp does

well, the amiga emulator will probably be better on the pandora as well