The Palm OS is considered a dead OS for Smart phones. In recent years, though the operating system has clearly been one of the most prolific, it has been surpassed in many ways by the Symbian, Android and most importantly, the Windows Mobile system. These OS’s have been on the whole very detrimental to the overall development of the OS. However, some of the best emulators that are available free on the market for Smartphones in general are available exclusively for the Palm OS.
One of those emulators is the Little John Palm OS (abbreviated as the LJP) emulator that runs a variety of games whose ROMs can be legally downloaded online.
As you can conjecture from the word “ROM”, the LJP emulator can emulate old game system games very well. These game systems are the Nintendo Entertainment System or the NES, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or the SNES, the Nintendo Gameboy and the Gameboy Color (GB/GBC) from the Nintendo line of systems. Sega’s Genesis and Megadrive systems are also supported as are Sega’s Master System or the SMS, and the Sega Game Gear. All of these are retro game systems that will immediately induce a signature tear-jerk from all the nostalgic fans of these old gaming systems that had nurtured their young brains with pixelated heroes from a far-off world. The Bandai Wonderswan (WS) and its color version, the Wonderswan Color are also supported (albeit without sound) and the NeoGeo handheld consoles, the NeoGeo Pocket and NeoGeo Pocket Color and the Atari 2600 are very much supported by this excellent emulator.
This emulator features excellent sound whose output from the Palm Centro or the Palm Treo Smartphone is extremely pleasant to the ear, while retaining the nostalgic blips and raises whose sweet mono sound one has not heard in ages. It also supports multiple screen modes (zoom/smoothing) for the best possible experience, and also adjustable or auto frame-skipping for the smoothest experience. In the Palm Centro Smartphone, no other software is needed to use LJP since the processor is fast enough already, but the other Palm models running the Garnet OS might need Lightspeed, Warpspeed or Unlimited Dynamic Memory Hack (UDMH) to run properly.
LJP also supports SRAM and multiple saves and loading states. It also has a Turbo mode that speeds up everything at the cost of frames – leading to better speed but lower graphics quality.
While LJP is still running, it is an Open Source Project, meaning that there might be several bugs, if there are not any already. They all appreciate a little donation of both time (for developing the application better or to find bugs and potential bad code) and money (of course!). This project is completely free to be shared and tinkered around with, and that is the magic of open source!
LJP can be downloaded from the Little John Palm OS website and to download free ROMs of your favourite games, they can also be downloaded from ROMNation. So go ahead, give your Palm OS Centro a new life with Little John Palm!
