The Pandora is basically the successor of the popular (in South Korea) GP32 and GP2X portables. Released in 2010 the Pandora has been a darling of the homebrew market – which it was marketed for first and foremost. While the Pandora handheld is a little tough to find, forget looking on eBay for one – the name is too ambiguous and too many other products shared this name. Believe me, I tried. Anyhow, for the lucky few that own one of these bad boys of open source portable gaming, let me show you 10 games that you need to play.
.jpg)
Hurrican
Basically, a fan made homage to Turrican – a title that made its rounds on the 16-bit consoles and computers of the time. Some ports are better than others and some need to be forgotten. Hurrican is one of the better ones in the grand scheme of run and jump 2D side scrolling shooting games.
Super Tux Kart
After Super Mario Kart hit the Super Nintendo it was very clear that fan ports and copies would be coming and quick. One of the better ones is Super Tux Kart, available for a crap ton number of platforms, this game is quite good. I enjoyed this one on Linux as it was one of the first “Linux” games I tried with my copy of SuSE 9.x going on 20 years ago.
Glaxium
Oh man, this one reminds me so much of Axelay on the Super Nintendo. Sure, the game world is not warped like it is in that forgotten Konami classic (Konami you can fix that and should. Now). This is a 3D “into the screen” style shooter shows the genre is not dead.
Serious Sam 1 and 2
Think the Pandora is not capable of good 3D? Think again. Serious Sam 1 and 2 are grouped together but I am counting them as separate entries. Partly because they are different but still similar. Anyhow, you are in for some great, hilarious, moments with these games as 3D gaming tropes are flaunted and run over – kind of like that Ash vs Evil Dead television series, don’t take anything too seriously when playing these.
Gorynlich
How long has it been since we got a good Gauntlet style game? Too long. That is how long. This one is basically an overhead dungeon crawl that makes use of Roguelike elements such as random level generation and tons of enemies to wade through and slice and dice. Gotta love this genre. Please someone, bring more like this out.
Tread Marks
Like Worms? How about driving around and just blowing the crap out of stuff? Yep, Tread Marks is just that. The environment is destructible and you should make use of that to your advantage. Make a canyon, cut a swath through a mountain, whatever you need to do to win. Interestingly, I have not seen this level of level deformation since Star Fighter on the 3DO (and later PlayStation One). Blow stuff up. Nuff said.
Freeciv
Civilization. Duh
Odamex
Doom, the grand daddy of first-person shooters has a port on the Pandora. Even cooler is, this port of Doom has access to online matches. How cool is that? Just as fast as you remember so get in there and work those BFGs double time.
OpenRA
Finally, we have a Command & Conquer Red Alert port. What list would be complete without a real-time strategy title? What game better than Red Alert? I used to rock this one on the PSOne console back in the day before I got a computer – then I learned how much better the game could be. Now it is even better because you can game on the go.
Know of a cool Pandora game? Let me hear about it in the comments below. Want to see more articles like this? Like, share, upvote, resteem, whatever you must do to get this article in front of friends. I pay attention to what is going well with you, the reader, and give more like it.
I would love to have gotten my hands on a Pandora, but the price was just too steep! Same for the earlier stuff from GP Holdings. By the time I could afford one of the GP handhelds, they had a newer better model, and by the time I could afford that, I couldn't find one.
If I could find an OpenPandora system, I could probably afford it, but now the Pyra looks like the new awesomeness, so I guess I'll wait for that.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Price is always an issue with these things. For one, even if it came from a big company like Nintendo or Sony, you are not sure it will survive and have good games released. By the time you realize that, the next new thing has come out and the previous model looks "eh" in comparison, though while still awesome it is just not that interesting anymore.
Something open source like this is even a wilder betting game. What if devs don't attach to it? The Pandora obviously has a robust development community for an arguably small market. That makes it rather interesting to me.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The open source aspect is what attracted me the most. Just rebuild and run whatever SDL-using game you want? Sounds awesome. But the price point was just a little too high... and I've a pile of other hardware... zippit z2 messenger, sharp zaurus, old palm pilots... maybe it's better that it's priced a little high. And it can run emulators... a handheld linux device with a keyboard, and game controls, just thinking about it makes me want the Pyra even more. shrug Maybe I'll make tons of steem so I can just go buy fun stuff like this.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Have you seen the GPD Win? I wonder if anyone has installed Linux on that and basically turned it into a Pandora portable that is better built?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I sure have! But I had forgotten about it. It led me to that whole line of GPD clamshells which I ultimately concluded wouldn't work because of one random facile argument or another.
I didn't realize they had 4GB of RAM!
Looks like at least Arch works on it. Though some tweaking for the wireless.
There's an 8GB version coming in the form of the GPD Win 2? Oh man.... runs ubuntu...
I have to walk away from the internet or I'm going to make some rash purchases.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I don't think the Pandora guys are related to Gamepark Holdings or the GP2x portables. I owned one of the Pandora units. Poor quality. The battery compartment was ill fitting and lost connectivity with the battery. Bluetooth was iffy. The promised TV out cable never really showed up for consumer use. I DID enjoy the Linux experience on it. Not worth the price. They have a new series of units coming out but.. same issues with price. Not willing to risk dealing with quality issues again.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Depends on which one you mean. One game park is not equal to another game park...
Did you own one of the original Pandora units or one of the Open Pandora?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The connection is there as there are members from Game Park holdings involved in the Pandora project, at least the original one.
The price was definitely a killer for me with this portable. I wanted one badly but it just wasn't going to happen as I kept reading problems from others that were able to get one (such as the problems you mentioned).
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit