As the CLIE community looks on with awe, one inventive user manages to not only get Sega's Palm-only games working on CLIEs, but support any Sega GameGear game as well.
Recently Sega and Palm released several Sega titles from its GameGear portable gaming system for Palm-branded ARM-based devices. Designed specifically for Palm OS 5, the games were all ROM images from GameGear cartrages bundled with an ARMlet-based GameGear emulator. The emulator was hard-coded for the PalmSource Audio API and the Palm 5-way Navigator, both of which unfortunately made the games incompatible with ARM-based Sony CLIEs. Now, however, one enterprising enthusiast has managed to make the emulator compatible not only with the CLIE, but with almost any GameGear ROM.
 | | Ill: Hans Schmucker |
The process involves applying a patch to the Sonic the Hedgehog game, which disables the device checks to prevent the game from playing on unsupported devices. It also disables sound completely (as the CLIEs do not use the PalmSource Audio API at all), and makes it possile to repackage the emulator with any GameGear ROM image. While the tools needed to patch the game are freely available, however, the ROM images are not, and users will need to extract ROM images from their own legally purchased games in order to use them with the emulator.
Full instructions as well as the necessary tools are available from the enthusiast's web site.
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