I may be buying a Dingoo A320 but have some questions first

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GAMESHARQ
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I was interested in buying a Dingoo A320 because I want to be able to play some old school games on the go.  But before I buy one, I need to know a few things first.  Could someone please answer some questions I have?

  1. I've never used an emulator before.  How easy is it to install the games and what exactly does the installation entail? (e.g. do I need to connect it to my PC using a usb cable?)
  2. I am interested in playing some very specific games that I played when I was a kid, like WWF WrestleFest and The Simpsons.  Does anyone know if these games are supported?
  3. Does it play NES, SNES, N64, and Genesis games?
  4. Is it free to download games?  What are the best sites to find games on?
  5. Do I also need to install different emulators on it, like MAME?  or does it come with emulators?  What are the best sites for additional emulators?
  6. How is the quality of the Dingoo A320?  Is it durable and well made or does it break easily?
  7. Is there anything else I should know before buying one?

Thanks in advance!

RomanNoodles
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 1. pretty much you just surf the web and surf for ROMs. if you just type in Roms, you will find tons. some good sites include coolrom.com and doperom.com. all you have to do is download the game and put it on, though it will be mixed in with all your other games... i recommend creating subfolders.

2. As long as they are either NES, SNES, GBA, Sega Genesis or Neo Geo, then yes. Also, if you look in the emulator section of this website, you will be able to find emulators for other systems.

3. see above

4. Yes. All these games are free, though some may be harder to find. some of the best sites that ive used include coolrom.com and doperom.com

5.it comes with NES, SNES, GBA, Sega Genesis, and Neo Geo. You can also upload additional emulators from this site.

6. Its pretty good quality... the plastic scratches kinda easy... ive used mine, in the last 2 days, for about 20 hours (go pokemon!), and it survived. The battery life on it really depends, because some people have said 6 hours, but ive squeezed about 13 or 14 out of it, but i might have just gotten lucky.

7. Extremely fun... a great way to play your favorite oldies on the go.

 ThE nOoDlE!

GAMESHARQ
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Thanks for such a fast response.

One more question - does it play Arcade games?  I should have mentioned this in my original post, but WWF WrestleFest and The Simspons were arcade games.

RomanNoodles
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 im not entirely sure about that... lemme check 

 ThE nOoDlE!

RomanNoodles
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 hmmm it seems that these types of games are run through MAME, but very weirdly... 

thats at least what it seems like on this site: http://progressiveboink.com/archive/simpsonsarcade.html

Scroll all the way to the bottom to see the instructions... im not sure if itll run on the dingoo tho

 ThE nOoDlE!

garsh
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Great questions!

1. It's easy as pie to load game ROM images. Yes, you connect via USB.

2. I haven't tested those games in particular, and I don't even know which systems those are on, so I couldn't test them for you now. Generally, GBA games almost always work. NES has a very high compatibility rate, but the religiously themed games from Wisdom Tree won't run, and there are minor flaws in many games. On SNES, any game that depends on a special co-processor chip (like Super FX) is unsupported. This pretty much means you just can't run Starfox, Mega Man X 2 or 3, and a handful of other fairly major classics. I can also tell you that Super Mario Kart and Soul Blazer won't run properly, and Secret of Mana has a pretty annoying issue that makes the text in menu screens totally illegible.

3. Not N64, but all the others, plus GBA, Capcom's CPS1 and CPS2 (arcade systems), plus NEO-GEO. Those are all the built-in emulators. There are great homebrew emulators that run on Dingoo natively (without modifying your unit) for systems like Atari Lynx, Atari 7800, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Sega Master System and Game Gear, and TurboGrafx-16.

4. ROM images are free, but not always legal. Because of that, discussion about where to find them is generally not advisable. They're not really hard to find, though.

5. There's no MAME emulator for the native firmware yet, unfortunately. There are great emulators available for the systems I mentioned before right here on this very site.
http://www.dingoo-digital.com/downloads/emulators

6. So far, I've been pleased with my Dingoo's durability, but I've been taking good care of it. A lot of users seem to think it's very fragile, though, and offer their horror stories to prove it. Your mileage may vary. I can tell you I've comparably cared for my Nintendo DS, but it's falling apart, while my Dingoo is pretty much flawless so far. It's a kind of a gray-market device, though, so it's finicky in some ways, and can take some patience and understanding to get the most out of it.

7. Here are some of the most important things to know upfront.

NEVER unplug the USB from the computer until you've clicked to "remove safely" in the task tray. You can "brick" your Dingoo that way (suspending it in an unusable state of function).

It works best with Windows XP. Vista might give you serious trouble.

Keep a paperclip or toothpick or something handy for those occasions when you run into an unsupported ROM that causes your device to lock up, and insert whatever you opt to use into the tiny "reset" pinhole on the left edge.

If you've loaded files onto your Dingoo, and they fail to appear in the menus, you might be able to easily remedy the problem by choosing "update jukebox" under the Music Hall menu.

Almost all ROMs will need to be unzipped (or decompressed, really). Except in the case of CPS1 and -- I think -- Neo-Geo, .zip, .rar and .z7 are NOT usable ROM file types. Even in those cases, the .zips need to be converted before they're usable, but that's a little more advanced.

Once uncompressed, some ROM extensions may also need to be renamed. NES ROMs, for instance, should have a .nes extension, and SNES should be .smc.

You can install your ROMs on your Dingoo in the "Games" folder. you can also put them in sub-folders if you like -- it's up to you, and Dingoo isn't very picky.

To run them, just choose "Interesting game" under the "Game Center" menu, and then browse to whichever game ROM you intend to play. The Dingoo will figure out which emulator runs it.

To exit a game, most emulators support pressing Start and Select at the same time to access the menu where you'll find the exit option. Some also support opening the menu by briefly sliding the Power slider.

Welcome and good luck. :)

Lepodo
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If you meant the simpsons arcade game, which i think you did. Check out this video

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiacpPI7_k

 

I'm not sure how he did it, but check it out