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I'm new be nice · Oct 18, 2014

For most people the Palm Pilot was a day planner, address book, and note taking device. Being a young 12 year old around the 2000s with my GBA I looked in wonder at my dads Palm Pilot. It lacked a lot of things my GBA had, but watching him play Worms with the stylus, being able to aim his shots with ease on the touch screen, I knew there was something interesting to the device for gaming so I got one for myself.

There was a surprising amount of gaming to be had on the device, as you can imagine there were RTS games, RPGs, even platformers like an entire port of Rayman:

Kings Quest 2:

Solskia (like Diablo):

Galatic Realms (RTS with 3 different Races):

I remember Air Hockey working amazingly well on the device, you'd control the paddle with the stylus and if you set 2 Palm Pilots down on a table they could connect with IR and get some multiplayer action going:

But best of all was that there was a GameBoy emulator for the device, I sunk tons of hours into Pokemon Gold and Links Awakening on the Palm Pilot.

There were First person shooters on this thing and racers with the camera behind the car too but I can't recall the names of those games unfortunately. They were pretty impressive graphically.

It was a great device to game on, the buttons worked well enough for platforming and the touch screen was really responsive, not to mention the battery life was good. Did anyone else ever experiment with the Palm Pilot for gaming?

Crub · Oct 18, 2014

Looks like that Rayman game is based on the GBC version.

Remember running NES and Game Gear emulators on my dads Compaq Pocket PC, around the same time. They ran pretty flawlessly if I remember correctly. Good times!

Cody_D165 · Oct 18, 2014

obligatory

I remember I had a friend in grade school who once stole his dad's Palm Pilot and brought it to school playing games on it, lol. I can't imagine he was very pleased.

I'm new be nice · Oct 18, 2014

Crub said:
Looks like that Rayman game is based on the GBC version.

Remember running NES and Game Gear emulators on my dads Compaq Pocket PC, around the same time. They ran pretty flawlessly if I remember correctly. Good times!

Oh, that's probably more likely. I didn't know any better as a kid.

Bending_Unit_22 · Oct 18, 2014

Where's my meeting with City Planning? Huh?

Not too surprising as this was after the Game.com existed. Sure it wasn't designed for games, but in high school about this time everyone was playing games on graphing calculators in class. As for playing games on it, never touched one except for a store display unit. I can't see how the pictured unit beat a Gameboy even with "free" games, outside of a few games/genres. Nevertheless, I wanted one and would have played games on it if I had one.

Kukawaki · Oct 18, 2014

I played the shit out of Rogue on my T|X

TI82 · Oct 18, 2014

Bending_Unit_22 said:
Where's my meeting with City Planning? Huh?

Anyways, not too surprising as this was after the Game.com existed. As for the "it wasn't designed for games!" angle, in high school about this time everyone was playing games on graphing calculators in class.

I remember some Yoshi game on the calculator being very fun.

SoulUnison · Oct 18, 2014

I just remember Snake and the game where you sold drugs.

Bending_Unit_22 · Oct 18, 2014

TI82 said:
I remember some Yoshi game on the calculator being very fun.

Bah, quoted before my edit to not sound like a jerk. Anyhoo, Tetris and Drug Wars I think it was called were the rage. I seem to recall someone had a Mario game running on it.

Great-God · Oct 18, 2014

Bending_Unit_22 said:
Bah, quoted before my edit to not sound like a jerk. Anyhoo, Tetris and Drug Wars I think it was called were the rage. I seem to recall someone had a Mario game running on it.

People still play on them, believe it. And yes, I've seen Mario, Pokémon, Wolfenstein and even a port of Counter Strike with a sort on LAN party function. (LOL)
The school I was in last year had a program in which they gave everyone an Android tablet for work... We beat half the SNES and GBA library on them

Bending_Unit_22 · Oct 18, 2014

Great-God said:
People still play on them, believe it. And yes, I've seen Mario, Pokémon, Wolfenstein and even a port of Counter Strike with a sort on LAN party function. (LOL)
The school I was in last year had a program in which they gave everyone an Android tablet for work... We beat half the SNES and GBA library on them

PIRATE!!!! You should be hanged by the Thames and left for 3 tides as an example to others.

Joking aside, I do recall Drug Wars being played by some kind of link cable. Counter Strike would have been interesting to see, but yeah no surprise people will game on whatever they have, even their phones (or palm pilots).

Mendoza · Oct 18, 2014

Kings Quest 2:

Thats... umm...

Great-God · Oct 18, 2014

Bending_Unit_22 said:
PIRATE!!!! You should be hanged by the Thames and left for 3 tides as an example to others.

Joking aside, I do recall Drug Wars being played by some kind of link cable. Counter Strike would have been interesting to see, but yeah no surprise people will game on whatever they have, even their phones (or palm pilots).

We did own most of the games... like... we lent them to each other... I don't want to be hung by the Thames!
Now seriously, what people do on those things is amazing, such dedication. (I never owned a graphic calculator, I was invincible in tick tack toe though)

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