Palm and Treo Hacks

Play Classic Games

Do you want to relive the early days of computer games? It’s easy to find emulators that let you play the real thing, or remakes that kick the originals up a notch.

Any Palm can play classic games, but if you are really into playing games you should look at Tapwave’s Zodiac (http://www.tapwave.com). The Zodiac has familiar game controls and is laid out in landscape mode (480 x 320 pixels) to work better with games. The Zodiac also has a graphics accelerator and a stereo headphone jack. It comes in two flavors—a 32 MB model for $270 and a 128 MB model for $350.

Warning

As of this writing, Tapwave had announced that they were ceasing production of the Zodiac, which is unfortunate, because it is an excellent gaming system. As stores clear their inventories, you may be able to find deals on these handhelds. However, as people realize the potential with these Zodiacs, the prices may go up to keep with demand. So look carefully and compare prices.

Note that emulators tend to be more faithful to the original games while remakes tend to look and play better on Palm devices, unless your playing style depends on specific timing (or bugs) in the original games. For example, if you use patterns to complete Pac-Man mazes, they are more likely to work on an emulator than on a remake.

Emulators

There are several good emulators available for Palm OS.

Once you have an emulator, you need to find legal games for it. You can get legal games by searching the Web for games that have been ...