Literally shaking with anticipation, I tore through the outer packaging, and set to the box. Instruction manual? Why would I need that? No, I went straight for my shiny white console and the attaching stylus, then to the back room for a couple cheap AA batteries. (I learned later that the GP2X is a battery monster; if it's running full-bull playing games, it can suck the power right out of my batteries in four hours. Ouch. I'm buying rechargeables tomorrow)
The stylus is retractable, and is only about an inch long when it's fully compressed, but there's no fear of losing it because there's a handy strap that attaches where the wrist strap normally goes on (if you bought a wrist strap; what a waste) the back of the GP2X.
Anyways, I have this to say: if you're going to rip movies from your own DVDs and stick them on the GP2X, make sure you encode them as .avi using DivX or XviD compression, not mencoder. I made that mistake with The Matrix; my computer reads it fine, but it's all garbled on the GP2x. And I REALLY don't feel like waiting two more hours to convert it again. (if the last paragraph just flew over your head, don't worry; it would have done the same to even me about a week ago).
Luckily, all the movies I've pirated off the web or Bittorrent or whatever are all DivX or XviD, so they all work fine (hello, Bourne Ultimatum).
As for games, this thing comes with two good puzzle games: one that plays like a really deranged version of Bejeweled, and another that is a clone of Picross. If you don't know what Picross is, it's like Sudoku, but instead of random numbers, you make pictures, and... It's complicated. You can play it free here: http://www.wiipicross.com/
Also for games, it has several homebrew games, and even more ports of different games that are already out on several different platforms. I can play Doom and Doom II on my GP2X. Also, you can play Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, but Quake is currently only compatible with the old kind of GP2X, the F-100. I bought the new F-200, so... no Quake. :( And Duke Nukem 3D requires the shareware paks to play, and I can't find anywhere to pirate them. I could find the Doom and Quake ones, but somehow not DN3D... No idea why.
Finally, it can run emulators. Emulators let you play games from other systems on the GP2X, as long as you have the ROMs for them (I can't remember what ROM stands for, but it's all the files off a game cartridge. A good site to get ROMs off of is www.vimm.net). No 3D games (so the emulators kind of stop at SNES/Genesis/Sega-CD era), but you've still got tons of great classic games that you can play on-the-go, for free. (Just don't let anyone catch you playing that bootleg copy of Chrono Trigger...) My recommendations for old games: Metal Gear, and Kirby's Adventure (for the NES), Mortal Kombat II, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Zero Wing (for the Genesis), and Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound and Zombies Ate My Neighbors (for the SNES).
Anyways, I highly suggest anyone interested in being able to play your favourite Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis games or Duke Nukem and Doom on-the-go, or a portable movie player that will play all your bootleg movies (you dirty pirate, you), I highly suggest the GP2X. It's a lot more user-friendly than you'd think, being run on Linux (which is normally only for the very computer-savvy) and all.
Another note: everything works fine if you want to use it with your Mac if you don't have a PC (ten points if you fall under this category); I'm running Mac OS 10.3.9, on a Power-PC-based mac from 2003, and my GP2X interacts with it perfectly.
