Giana Sisters Download

The Giana Sisters download is finally available for you GPH Wiz users. This is the recent release from the Giana's Return team. From what I understand, this will be the public beta release to find errors in the code and determine the next steps for releasing it to other platforms.

To be clear, though, this is the full game of Giana's Return. It's quality is that of a commercial GP2X Wiz game! It is being released under the "beta" tag because the team wants gamers to test the game out and submit their opinions. If you have a GP2X Wiz, I would suggest that you take this opportunity to check out this new Giana Sisters download which is hosted over at PDRoms.

If you don't already know about or have a Gamepark Wiz, I suggest that you check out our GP2X Wiz review.

GP2X Wiz Games

If you've been following the GP2X Wiz at all, you may already know that it's set to launch at the end of this month. You may also know that GPH (GamePark Holdings) have already announced games like "Asura Cross Wired" and "Her Knights: All for Princess" for the system.

However, you might not know anything about any other games that are in development for the Wiz. In an earlier post, I already talked about some "GP2X Wiz Flash Games" that are being developed. Now, let's discuss some games that are believed to be in development. There is very little information available about these titles, so I will present pictures (click on them for larger images) of these games for our speculation.

GP2X Wiz Party must be a Mario Party clone. Judging by the name and the picture, I'm not sure how it could be anything else. That's not a bad thing, though, as the party game genre is a popular one. These types of games are always worth keeping in your stash for when you want some multiplayer action without the learning curve. The art style looks nice, so let us hope that translates into good minigames and an overall enjoyable experience. In making this title, they already took ideas from previous popular games, and I would assume that they'd take ideas from their minigames, too. Hopefully they borrow from the fun ones to make this GP2X Wiz game!

The picture at the top of this post is for a game called Rhythmos. Rhythm games have fared well on touch-screen systems like the Nintendo DS, so it seems reasonable that it would work well on the Wiz.

To the right, you can see an image for "Legend of Sword." This is an RPG being developed by BITMAGE. My guess is that the storyline for this game will be based on "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" franchise from 1995. It seems that BITMAGE is doing a bit of this re-inventing older game franchises.

Deicide 3 looks to be a futuristic adventure game where the police have mech suits like you see on the right. It looks like this was originaly developed by Studio Jacobin in 1997 and BITMAGE has bought the rights to bring the game to the GP2X Wiz. If you want to see some cool concept art for the 1997 version of the game, check out the archive of the old Studio Jacobin Deicide 3 website (which no longer exists) and keep clicking NEXT a the bottom of the pages.

There are more games to come. Titles like "Figure Skating Queen," "Perfect Goal Manager 2010," "Brain School," "Side Mind," "World Bumper Car," "Enormous M," "Mother's Tycoon," and "Wiz Party" just to name a handful of the ones we've heard about. I'll try to dig up more information about some of these games and post here when I do. For now, though, I'll leave you with more images of some of the aforementioned titles.

Wiz Skins / Faceplates

I don't really have a lot to say in this post. I mostly wanted to post some pictures, that I obtained, showing skins that will (most likely) be available for the upcoming GP2X Wiz handheld console. If you like the look of the Wiz on the left, then you may be interested in getting a new skin for your Wiz (when it comes out of course). From what I can tell these faceplates will be in the form of a sticker that you can apply to the front and back of your GP2X Wiz console. See the "Full Article" below for more pictures, and click on any of the pictures for larger versions.

GP2X Wiz Flash Games

I just got some good Wiz news today. It seems that casual game developer Pixelthis Limited is working on bringing their games to the GP2X Wiz. They plan to have three of their games ready for the Wiz's launch: Mr. Ice Cream, Rune Mage, and Magic Beans. If things go well from there, more games will follow.

From what I can gather, GPH is really pushing to get the latest Flash 8 Player working well on the system. That may even be the reason for them recently pushing back the release date of the Wiz from March to April. This will make it easier for developers like Pixelthis to release their games on the system, because this will open up Wiz's potential game library to any developer creating Flash content.

Mr. Ice Cream
Everyone's favourite Mr. Ice Cream is on his way! Serve delicious ice cream and toppings in 5 stunningly drawn locations around the world, and meet 30 international characters with their own unique animations. Can you help Mr. Ice Cream keep his customers happy?

Rune Mage
Rune Mage is an addictive puzzle game featuring 25 levels of intense game play across 5 stages. The game is enhanced with great manga-style character art. Follow the character as he works his way up from Neophyte to Master Rune Mage, and conquer the different elements to win the game!
Magic Beans
While experimenting with beans in his secret underground laboratory, Dr. Blah accidentally creates out-of-control Magic Beans! Try to control Dr. Blah’s creation before things get out of hand. A frantically addictive game that will turn your perspective on falling block games upside-down!

Thanks to Peter from Pixelthis for all of the above pictures and game descriptions.

GP2X Wiz Homebrew (Quake 2, X-COM, MAME)

My sources tell me that the GP2X Wiz is due to be released around March 5th, but prototypes of the Wiz are already in the hands of some great homebrew game developers.

These guys have been hard at work getting games ready for the launch early next month. I'm not talking about some silly little games like pong or tic-tac-toe that any mediocre programmer can whip together. I'm talking about games that you've actually heard of and played before. Check the full post to get an idea of what I mean.


Open systems like the GP32, GP2X, and now the GP2X Wiz are popular platforms for running older games. Sometimes great games that you know and loved from years past have their source code released by the original developer. That allows homebrew developers to port the game to these platforms. When source code is not available, you often see homebrew developers making their own version of an old game or creating an emulator to play the original game on this new platform.

Recently, I've seen and read about some interesting games running on the Wiz. Have you ever played UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense)? Well, thanks to a guy called "Pickle" you can play it and it's sequel X-COM: Terror from the Deep on the GP2X Wiz.

In fact, this Pickle guy has been pretty busy lately. He's got games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Quake II running on the Wiz. Here's a video of Quake 2 running.



I mentioned emulation as a way to run popular games. A lot of people get these handheld consoles just for the emulation of older systems. I believe that emulators running on the GP2X Wiz will range from emulating systems like the Commodore 64 to the Playstation PSX. One of the most well known and popular video game emulators is MAME. If you didn't already know, MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and its job is to run all your favorite arcade games. A developer called "Franxis" has been working on bringing MAME to the Wiz. Here's a video he made of his latest version.



Of course, whenever we're talking about playing your old games on any system, it's worth noting that you need to own the original game to legally play the game. In fact, you will need files from your original version to play the games mentioned.

Coming Soon: GP2X Wiz

The GP2X Wiz is the next cool handheld from Gamepark Holdings. Some of you might know of their GP2X handheld, and you might even rembmer the GP32. All of these systems are geared more toward the "homebrew" scene that likes tinkering with cool new gadgets than consoles that require you to own official commercial titles.

There is a whole group of developers that write and port games, applications, emulators, etc. to these systems. Often, this translates into free open-source games and tools for the enjoyment of all owners of such systems.

DJWillis is such a developer, and he has recently received a prototype Wiz console to test. He was kind enough to post a couple pictures of the Wiz sandwiched between a older GP2X and a GameBoy Micro. This ought to give you a good idea of the size of the Wiz.


You can find a blog post about his impressions of the Wiz here. In upcoming posts, I plan to discuss some more details about the GP2X Wiz including system specs, upcoming games, release dates, etc. I also hope to get some better pictures and videos of the machine in action. Stay tuned!