Nintendo Player – An Unofficial, Not-For-Profit Fan Site

NES On the Road: Pocket PC

If an NES fan was presented 3 wishes, they would most likely be: a toploader, Panesian pr0n games, and a portable NES. As you have noted already by the title of this project (you sly cat, you) we’ll be focusing on wish number three of playing the NES on the run.

There are answers to this problem out there, though, only one commercially produced product, by the name Game Axe, provides Famicom/NES (with an adaptor) play in mini-SEGA Game Gear like size. Great idea, but the actual production and overall quality of the system is far below anybody’s wants. Still, it’s the only choice we have.. or is it?

Recently a new site has popped up describing thorough, step-by-step instructions on building a portable NES, an NESp. This is the NES player’s best method to go but the downside is it requiring skill in the technical department and a large sum of dough.

Are we all out of hope!!??? Of course not, youngins. Another way, and the most overlooked, is via Handheld PCs running an NES emulator. Below will discuss the basics, process, and results of this portable choice.

An Introduction to Handheld PCs

First off if you’re a newbie to handheld land I’ll give you a quick overview: the market is separated into the Palm OS and Windows CE / Pocket PC. This article focuses primarily on the CE / PPC side of the market seeing that most are colorized and running at high processors.

Now to break down the PPC market even more into three main categories:

My personal PPC is a Casio Cassiopeia E-500, which has been tested to be the best HPC to play emulators on due to the convenient position of a “D-Pad” and corresponding buttons to the right.

Choosing an emulator and Transferring to your Pocket PC

Next on the list will be finding a proper emulator to run on your PPC. Right now there are 4 different choices given, here’s the list:

NesCE – (Compatible with iPAQ, Jornada, and Cassiopeia) Freeware $0: Average at best, not good.

PocketFC – (Compatible with iPAQ only) Freeware $0: Good.

Pocket GB – (Compatible with iPAQ, Jornada, and Cassiopeia) Shareware $10: Excellent, though it is not free, best choice.

PocketNES – (Compatible with iPAQ, Jornada, and Cassiopeia) Freeware $0: Very good, second best choice.

Since I’m broke (plus don’t want to shell out anymore moola), I’ll be going with the PocketNES. As mentioned in the table above, you should choose the corresponding file type to your system: ARM, SH3, or MIPS (eg: since I have a Cassio, I have to choose MIPS). After the download, gather up the roms you’d like (remember: roms are illegal, only download ones that you own the copy of).

Next follow the instructions that came with your PPC on connecting it to your computer (PC or Mac). If you are running a Windows operating system, you should have Microsoft’s Active Sync included in the HHPC’s software or package or by doing a quick search at http://www.micosoft.com for it.

Pic: the black wire connected at the bottom plugs into the back of my computer’s tower USB port

One more important step, choose if you would like the files on the actual PPC’s memory or (if applicable) a memory card. The iPAQ, Jornadas, and Cassiopeia E-100 to E-200 all use SD-memory cards. Cassiopeia E-500′s use different postage-sized multimedia cards. The usual amount of both storage cards are from 16 megabytes to 128 megabytes. This is probably the best way to go since bogging down the PPC machine’s memory with roms isn’t a good thing. (Note: When saving ROMS to a memory card, save them to a created folder called “My Documents”. If saving straight to the memory itself, place them in the already made “My Documents” folder.

Operating Pocket PC’s Operating System

After transferring the files to your PPC we now have to get things running. Unfortunately Microsoft’s design for Pocket PC’s are awfully cumbersome and hard to navigate at times. Thus, for this part I’ll be using screen shots taken when I hooked my Casio to a PC-run emulator.

Click onStart- Programs	Programs- click on File Explorer
My Documents- choose My Device	My Device- click on Storage Card
Storage Card- go to PocketNES

PocketNES Set-up and Play

	What you should be seeing, the instructions are pretty basic. But- before opening a rom and getting your game on, click on the ‘Options’ tab to set up the settings. Choose the Graphics setting first, Controller, then Sound.
Make sure your Graphics settings appear as the below (you’ll have to click on Skip 3 Frames)

The Controller setting can be anything you wish; here’s my personal set-up.

Lastly for Sound, choose the option to turn music off for much smoother gameplay.

Now to the games! Click File- Open Rom- scroll to desired game title- PLAY!

Other features: there’s also an option to load/save save states of games as an option: you are able to use the D-pad, A, and B buttons by using a stylus to click on the miniature control pad at the bottom

Final Fantasy	Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Super Mario Bros. 3

-Microsoft’s Pocket PC Page
-Official Casio Cassiopeia site
-Official Compaq iPAQ site
-Official HP Jornada site
-PocketGamers.Org