SNES, Genesis, and NGP all run under the same emulator, called "Little John Z." It also emulates NES, TG-16/PCE, GB/GBC, and Wonderswan Color The Tapwave port is still early, and it depends on which system you use for performance. You can pretty much get 100% speed with sound turned OFF on SNES, Genesis, and NGP. With sound on, it varies by setting and by game; most SNES games seem playable enough with sound on, but Genesis games can slow to a crawl. Speed should get better with updates, of course. LJZ's Gameboy/Color and NES support is excellent, so you don't need to bother looking into other emulators.
I didn't like the TG-16 support in LJZ, so I've stuck with an emulator called "Dream Engine." It emulates a large number of TG-16 and PCE games very well, sound is a little off in certain games, but great for the most part.
With Master System and Game Gear, I use an emulator called "Gizmo Ultra." Both Gizmo and Dream Engine are from the same developer, Kalemsoft. It's pretty fantastic and I can't think of any games that won't run at the moment.
You do have to pay for Gizmo and Dream Engine, but LJZ is completely free.
AFAIK there are no GBA emulators for Palm OS. There was a company with an emulator called "Firestorm" promising perfect GBA emulation on the Tapwave, with screenshots on their site (it's probabl still there), but apparently Nintendo stepped in and wouldn't let them get it signed for release. I don't know if I believe this though, because I got Firestorm and the GBC emulation SUCKED. Games were choppy and wouldn't even run full screen, so it seems hard to believe that they could get GBA working 100%.
None of that stuff is on Palm OS AFAIK. There's only X-Cade, which emulates a few older arcade games like Galaga, Donkey Kong, etc.
It really depends on what you're doing with the Zodiac for how long the battery lasts. I'd say it's got be somewhere between 6-7 hours.
The screen is awesome.
Straight from Tapwave:
"Hardware
Processor:
Motorola® i.MX1 ARM9 processor (200 MHz)
Graphics Accelerator:
ATI® Imageon W4200 graphics accelerator (with 8MB dedicated SDRAM).
Display:
3.8 inch transflective display
480 x 320 (half VGA), 16-bit color backlit display (65,536 colors)
Portrait and landscape display capabilities
Digitizer for enhanced interactive game play, navigation and text input.
Sound:
Yamaha® audio component and stereo speakers
Standard 3.5mm stereo headphone plug
Earbud-style headphones included
Support for external powered speakers
Vibration:
Supports silent notification and interactive game play.
Controls:
Variable pressure analog controller (joystick)
2 triggers, 4 programmable action buttons, 1 special function button, 1 home button, 1 power button, and 1 Bluetooth button."
Keep in mind that with the Zodiac, you have to pay for pretty much everything. You'd want to get the Zodiac 2, which goes for around $400 (last time I checked). The you'd need at least one SD card for storing all the ROMs and music/videos on, whidh run for $50-$100 each depending on brand and size, so it's expensive.
I got my Zodiac only after taking a bunch of older gaming crap and a bunch of DVDs and selling them off for about $350.
I also notice that some of the newer Pocket PCs go for the same price and are MUCH faster, but I don't know how they are for gaming unless there's a joystick adaptor available? I use my Zodiac strictly for listening to music (sound quality is awesome), playing movies, and emulation gaming. The Zodiac games all pretty much suck, although the racing game you get with the system free isn't bad and is impressive enough (it's fully 3D and has a good sense of speed). It's too bad that we'll never see what the Zodiac can really do, although there are some impressive games still in the works. There's this one Diablo-style game in the works that looks stunning...I forget the name though.
The only advantage the Zodiac has is its slim, small, extremely portable design. It's a really sexy handheld device, and the gaming-style button set up and analog stick works great for just about anything. There are only a very small amount of games that might give you some problems due to only having analog control.
