Similar to the keyboard on computers, a certain combination of simulataneous key presses can register an error on the phone and thus ignoring the key press. Secondly, the ring D-pad of most S60 phones don't lend themselves well to diagonal (ie. First off you're losing out on the left (L) and right (R) buttons at the top of the GBA since no S60 phone features these. You're playing games designed for the GBA's keypad. The single core architecture used in the Nokia E71 lends itself better to RPG games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Vampent thought to add a compatibilty setting that goes from 1 to 3 (where 3 is slowest but closest compatibility with GBA) in vBagX so some games work in one setting but not others. Super Mario Advance 2 (Super Mario World)Īll of them worked for me running on compatibilty mode 1. Here is a list of games I've tested and played: There is currently a running thread of compatible games on Vampent's forum. It was very playable but not as smooth as playing on a real Gameboy Advance. But there were a few dropped frames here and there in high speed games like Super Mario Kart.
I didn't experience any of the lag with the dual core architecture of the N82. There was no way I could play Street Fighter II the same way as I did on a GBA.
My E71 encountered choppy frame rate and lagged audio. This is highly dependent on the model and firmware of your phone. However there is a very very minor lag in audio on the N82 but the audio was very out of sync on the E71 by about 0.5 seconds.
VBagX supports full stereo audio on the GBA. You can adjust how much frames (0-9) you're OK with vBagX skipping to keep a consistent game speed. You do encounter some frame drops here and there even on the higher powered N82/N95. You can also manually change the screen orientation under Graph > Size (you can rotate the screen 90 degrees left or right, keep it at original reolution or expand to fill the screen). It can also handle screen rotations but the rotation must be done before starting a game otherwise the rotation will cause a screen problem. VBagX comfortably handles the portrait layout found on most S60 phones like the N82 and the landscape layout like the E71. Super Mario Kart Advance runs smoothly with all image layers on the Nokia N82 VBagX gives you the option to use Bitmap (software rendered) or Direct (hardware rendered) but Direct has never worked for me on either the N82, E71, or even other Vampent products on my 6682.įrom my experiences, the E71 renders games exactly as they are on the GBA but some games do run into issues with sprites not appearing in the right spot (see compatibility). vBag was installed on the memory card in both cases because all GBA ROMS (.gba) must be placed in \Data\Others\vBag\ A SanDisk 8GB microSDHC class 4 on the N82 and a Nokia 2GB microSD on the E71 memory card were used during this review. I don't have all of these phones so I'll be testing on both a N82 and a E71 to cover both of these architectures on vBag 's performance. It may sound impressive so find out if the claims are true that you can really get the GBA experience on your S60 phone by following the jump to read the full review.įor this post I will be reviewing vBagX x1.20 S60v3 on the most common Nokia S60 architectures:ģ69 MHz ARM1136JF-S + 220MHz StarCore SC140 DSPģ30 MHz ARM1136 + 220 MHz TI TMS320C55xDSP + PowerVR MBX 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator + IVA Imagine classic like Super Mario Advance 2, Super Mario Kart, and the Legend of Zelda on your phone:
With vBag your phone can play any number of games from the GBA's huge library of portable games.
The power of S60 phones have dramatically increased in the past few months and software like vBag make emulation of yesterday's dedicated portable gaming systems like the hugely popular Nintendo Gameboy Advance possible. One way to quickly increase the number of top quality titles is bringing it onto the S60 through emulation.
Just the number of top rate games available on one of these systems far outweigh all the games available on the S60. While Nokia is trying to build creditibility to their N-gage mobile gaming platform, much of the portable gaming market was and continues to be held by dedicated gaming systems like Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP.