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Anyone use a Tapwave Zodiac?


Austin

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I just won a Tapwave Zodiac bundle on eBay today. $67 after shipping--Not a bad deal at all, IMO. The thing comes complete with the box and instructions, all the accessories and a few games to boot. I was seriously expecting it to go for $100 to $150. I think I managed to get lucky with it.

 

So, has anyone had any personal experience with this thing? I remember trying it out at CompUSA back between 2003 and 2005. It was impressive then, but the price was a little too much. I've been doing quite a bit of research on it and have been watching some YouTube videos, and it looks like it has held up really well these past five years since Tapwave went under. It's still a fairly powerful console for a handheld--Not up to PSP standards, but I'm sure the 128mb RAM in it will help loads with MAME, and it looks like it can do SNES and Genesis emulation at full speed as well.. Add onto that the fact that it does tons of PalmOS games and full-speed source-ports of old PC first person shooters like DOOM, Heretic, Duke 3D, etc, this definitely sounds like a better deal than those China PSP knock-offs that only do multimedia and emulation.

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  • 1 year later...

Still have one, hasn't seen use in a very long time. I got it when it was new though and it saw a lot of use back then. Was great for emulation of multiple systems on the go and had some good native games as well, plus all the PalmOS compatibility. Good times with it back then. :cool:

 

Hey, I just got one of these a few weeks ago! I have downloaded some free games and have 6 of the 8 SD games... still missing GTS Racing and Tiger Team: Apache. Anybody have any of those two? Anyway it is a real enjoyable handheld with web browsing (albeit slow). Great audio and controls too. I also use it for playing MP3s and reminding me of appointments. Real useful to me since I don;t have an Iphone.

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Congrats, welcome to the club. It's a pretty small one.

 

Ended up selling my Zodiac. Primarily used it for emulation while at work and it was certainly cool at first. The analog thumbstick turned out to be less than ideal for retro emulation though. The system also wasn't as powerful as I had hoped despite the numbers.

 

The games on the system itself weren't anything to write home about either. DOOM II was glitched and essentially unplayable (supposedly there is a patch, but I couldn't find it). That was a bummer. Tony Hawk looked cool but was damn-near impossible to control. The Z-Pak Fun had an OK breakout clone that played in a vertical mode. The Z-Pak Adventure was OK and I played Legacy a lot.. well, until I got lost near the end of the game (It's a D&D-style dungeon crawler). Unfortunately the other game included on that pack is essentially a shareware game and after finishing the first few levels, they want you to go online and buy the rest. Ha.

 

The homebrew is cool, source ports of great stuff like Flashback, Out of This World, etc.. Again, the analog stick isn't great for those. Other source ports like DOOM, DOOM II, Duke 3D, Hexen, Heretic, often crashed and I couldn't get the sound to work in half of them. Emulators were bugged to hell as well and would crash whenever they feel like it. Simply want to load a ROM? Crash. Change your controls? Crash. Exit out of the program? Crash. Hell, some of the official Tapwave games would crash too, even after a reboot.. Ugh.

 

It also needs a cradle in order to transfer certain applications properly, so there's a lot of software I haven't tried yet, in case I get one again in the future for colelction purposes.. it hates Windows 7 though.

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Congrats, welcome to the club. It's a pretty small one.

 

Ended up selling my Zodiac. Primarily used it for emulation while at work and it was certainly cool at first. The analog thumbstick turned out to be less than ideal for retro emulation though. The system also wasn't as powerful as I had hoped despite the numbers.

 

The games on the system itself weren't anything to write home about either. DOOM II was glitched and essentially unplayable (supposedly there is a patch, but I couldn't find it). That was a bummer. Tony Hawk looked cool but was damn-near impossible to control. The Z-Pak Fun had an OK breakout clone that played in a vertical mode. The Z-Pak Adventure was OK and I played Legacy a lot.. well, until I got lost near the end of the game (It's a D&D-style dungeon crawler). Unfortunately the other game included on that pack is essentially a shareware game and after finishing the first few levels, they want you to go online and buy the rest. Ha.

 

The homebrew is cool, source ports of great stuff like Flashback, Out of This World, etc.. Again, the analog stick isn't great for those. Other source ports like DOOM, DOOM II, Duke 3D, Hexen, Heretic, often crashed and I couldn't get the sound to work in half of them. Emulators were bugged to hell as well and would crash whenever they feel like it. Simply want to load a ROM? Crash. Change your controls? Crash. Exit out of the program? Crash. Hell, some of the official Tapwave games would crash too, even after a reboot.. Ugh.

 

It also needs a cradle in order to transfer certain applications properly, so there's a lot of software I haven't tried yet, in case I get one again in the future for colelction purposes.. it hates Windows 7 though.

 

I agree that the system can be somewhat challenging but that is just part of the fun for me. So far I haven't run into too many glitches on the games I have and several of them are very enjoyable. Some of my favorites are Gloop, Shippy, Battlejewels, Stuntcare Extreme, Zapem and Orbz. I am more into retro gaming so these really appeal to me. The SD card games are okay and although Tony Hawk can be difficult to control it is still fun and playable if you stick with it. The bluetooth was hell to get right but I now have it configured close to perfect and the internet browsing is working well if a bit slow by today's standards.

 

Those cradles are hard to find and in fact it is the only official Tapwave accessory I am missing. My hotsyncs have been fine without it though and I now hotsync through bluetooth so no cables are needed. Haven't tried emulation as I not really into that but I am sure that would be full of problems and I do not want to chance crashing the whole console. Anyway thanks for replying and if you do get another one and the free software is no longer around feel free to let me know and I can always e-mail you some. If you do happen across those last two sd card games please let me know as well.

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Both of those games you are missing are pretty rare.. At least that's what I noticed when I was looking for games on the system. Sellers on Amazon both wanted $40+ for them, possibly even more. I wasn't really "collecting", I just wanted to play, so I said "no thanks", haha.

 

There are a few other games that were finished that didn't see a release. Tomb Raider is one of them and you can find it somewhere on the 'net. Supposedly it's pretty good, probably a good bit better than the N-Gage one (which was a pretty solid port in itself).

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  • 1 year later...

Hi,

Compared to Austin, I am doing the opposite way: from the iPhone to the Zodiac.

 

My children have iPod Touch 2nd gen and as their iOS can't be upgraded anymore so they can't access most of the new games released on iTunes. I really think that this is an artificial limitation to oblige owner of "old" iPod Touch/iPhone to buy a brand new device as anyway the games on iPod Touch/IPhone remain basic.

So I refused to enter that vicious circle to keep playing new games and then remembered my children were playing with some cool games on my Palm and that Tapwave did a Palm handeld system.

I found on ebay UK a brand new Zodiac mint in box to offer to my son.

 

Many games are available for download here: http://dl.openhandhe...c.cgi?0,0,0,0,4

 

Added to the wide library of games from Palm PDA, there is a potential of several hundred of games and although they are old, there are suprinsingly not so different of what we could have today on iPhone (many Palm games are now available on Android or iOS by the way)

 

Some games released specificaly for Zodiac are impossible to find :o

 

I am looking especially for Vorum Fighter: no trace on the net at all

Does anyone got it?

3VUl.jpgqbos.jpg

Edited by Felyx
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You must have been the one that made a couple of comments on my old Zodiac videos. :)

 

I have never heard of Vorum Fighter. It doesn't sound like an official Zodiac release to me. Perhaps it was a download-only title, but if so, chances are it wasn't Zodiac-specific. Or, it was a prototype that was only in the early stages of development, and was never finished. I don't recall hearing about it when I was researching Zodiac stuff a little more heavily when I originally made this thread a couple of years ago.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi,

Compared to Austin, I am doing the opposite way: from the iPhone to the Zodiac.

 

My children have iPod Touch 2nd gen and as their iOS can't be upgraded anymore so they can't access most of the new games released on iTunes. I really think that this is an artificial limitation to oblige owner of "old" iPod Touch/iPhone to buy a brand new device as anyway the games on iPod Touch/IPhone remain basic.

So I refused to enter that vicious circle to keep playing new games and then remembered my children were playing with some cool games on my Palm and that Tapwave did a Palm handeld system.

I found on ebay UK a brand new Zodiac mint in box to offer to my son.

 

Many games are available for download here: http://dl.openhandhe...c.cgi?0,0,0,0,4

 

Added to the wide library of games from Palm PDA, there is a potential of several hundred of games and although they are old, there are suprinsingly not so different of what we could have today on iPhone (many Palm games are now available on Android or iOS by the way)

 

Some games released specificaly for Zodiac are impossible to find :o

 

I am looking especially for Vorum Fighter: no trace on the net at all

Does anyone got it?

3VUl.jpgqbos.jpg

 

I've got this game and it does have a rumble feature (I think) so it may be Zodiac specific... I think I have the demo and the game is not great as all the ships come at you from the right at different speeds and different weapons but that is about it. Not too exciting a game but it is what it is. PM me your e-mail and I'll see if I can send it as an attachment.

 

BTW, as an update to my post above I now have the Zodiac Cradle and those two other SD card games so I am complete as far as official Tapwave products. I am only missing a few 3rd party cases and I will have all the Tapwave related accessories.

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The good old Palm OS is an old glory and a lot of editors are not offering their apps and games for it anymore.

They are still many sites referencing apps and games for Palm but as they link to the editors pages most of the time the links are broken.

 

This is why it is quite hard to find some of them: try to find Samurai cat books 4 to 6 and you will see: those cartoons were freewares but only downloadable from Handango and so far I just never found them.

 

Even hits like Skyforce is impossible to find anymore :(

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It is a good news/bad news scenario with Palm. SInce it is essentially an outdated platform most of the software is very ceap or free but on the other hand since so few use it the availability is next to nil. You can still get many games on CD and SD card on E-Bay for next to nothing but they don't come up often. It has taken me over a year to get all the Palm SD card games although there are only a dozen or so.

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Seems your luck may still be here: take a look!

 

http://www.treo.net.cn/bbs/thread-78232-1-1.html

 

Also, as a return favor, I'm specifically interested in the preservation of galactic realms: into the void and it's add on rebel assault. should you know anything as to where they can be found please keep me informed: those gems must not die!

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Hey, another Zodiac gamer... and I thought I was pretty much the only one. Unfortunately I only have the SD card card game of GR that came in Z-Pak Adventure. There is a video of Rebel Assault on Youtube here-

You might want to contact him and see if he stil has it.

 

P.S. I think that is the file I sent Felyx earlier on... I thought it was a demo but it is the full version.

Edited by metarog
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  • 3 months later...

Hopefully I am not breaking any forum rules here but I have hit a stumbling block in my Tapwave collection and I hope someone can help out. As far as I can tell I am only missing a few third party accessories to have a complete Tapwave set and since Tapland shut down last year there is no Tapwave specific board anymore so this is my best hope.

 

Does anybody have a Panache stylus with tether or a Globalsource/Innopocket aluminum case? I also need the green SD card version of Duke Nukem but I do have the black one at least. That is all I need to have everything made for the Zodiac. I have an extra Commandplay game grip in case someone wants to trade or we can work something out. I have a few other extras as well so let me know if you need anything Tapwave related.

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  • 11 months later...

Yes, I have almost all games and apps on SD card and with a few exceptions all run great. You can put 100's of programs in a 1gb card with no problems. You just have to make sure that you set up the files correctly on the card. Essentially, you will have a launcher and program folder for each game. If you have any issues let me know as I have mine all set up fine. Good luck.

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  • 1 year later...

Yes, I have almost all games and apps on SD card and with a few exceptions all run great. You can put 100's of programs in a 1gb card with no problems. You just have to make sure that you set up the files correctly on the card. Essentially, you will have a launcher and program folder for each game. If you have any issues let me know as I have mine all set up fine. Good luck.

 

RESURRECTION

 

I got me a Tapwave Zodiac 1 to play with recently. Perhaps I should say ANOTHER. Anyone have a handy dandy zipfile with all the images for this system that I can unpack to an SD card to enjoy this dead dead system?

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Wow, I haven't thought about the Zodiac in a long time. I had one, and I kinda liked the stunt racer game that came with it. Doom was serviceable -- and the free version was way better than the commercial one. I remember liking an NES emulator called LittleJohn or something similar. Mobile has moved on and I doubt the batteries on these are doing very well after all this time. I don't think mine lasted more than an hour or so even when new.

It's Palm compatible so I'll bet there's a piratical collection of warez somewhere out there. You should try some of the early low res monochrome Palm stuff like Dope Wars. Definitely a little slice of an era gone by.

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Is there any point in owning a Tapwave in this day and age? I don't think it had a wide selection of games, and I'm pretty sure the PSP has got it beat emulation-wise. I have seen the system on auction sites from time to time (particularly ShopGoodwill) but I'm not convinced it would have a purpose in my collection.

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I don't think it's worth bothering with today, even as a curiosity. A Palm V would be a better PDA. What few exclusives it had are better elsewhere. Tapwave came along at a transitional time, right before massive development on much more powerful and popular platforms.

 

Disclaimer: I think the exact same things can be said of the Atari Jaguar, and a certain set of people around this forum seem to feel pretty strongly about that.

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It certainly cannot compare to a PSP as far as game library and ease of use. However, at the time it had one of the clearest displays and most responsive touchscreens around. Some of the games were fairly good and you could play just about all palm games although most of them do not hold up well today.

 

The Zodiac has a classy form figure and very rugged shell so they do last unless really abused. I am one of the few Zodiac collectors and now have just about everything that was available for it. Since it was a commercial flop they are getting tough to find CIB and as mentioned the battery will fail eventually although all of mine do still hold a charge. I still test all of mine out every year and do play some games every so often.

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No, there's not much point to owning a Zodiac today outside of collection purposes. Some of the official releases on it are fun (I spent a lot of time with the Eye of the Beholder clone, despite getting stuck eventually) and the system does feel good. I couldn't find several of the official releases though (like the original pack-in racing game), so most of my time was spent with homebrew, source ports and emulation, all of which are better elsewhere.

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