Why buy a GS instead of a PSP which is much much cheaper. discuss.
I have both and I recently bought a broken PSP for 10$ which I repaired and installed emulators. The emulators on PSP seem to be running better than they do on GS (at the moment), the screen is bigger and you can also run psx and psp games.
Not just games，gay.
There are many options for playing games.
For starters, basically nothing is updated on PSP anymore. The last Pro-CFW release was in 2012, and a lot of homebrew doesn’t even work anyrmore. The PSP hacking scene is basically dead.
If all you want is a device to emulate and play games on, then sure, stick with the PSP, especially if you aready have one.
For me, I want a device and community that I can contribute to and develop for. PSP is basically pointless for that at this point.
If you want just games, go for PSP. The thing is that this is a hackable system you could build apps for it or games, mod it and its open. This is for thinkering rather for games, games are an extra feature.
I got it due to the amount of moding/hacking you can do, this thing is 100% made to run old games and is linux. if you know anything about how people are with linux and open project, it gets a TON of love. you can also change out parts and upgrades SUPER easy. every thing about GameShell is a dream.
to sum it up, psp is made to run psp games and can emulate well-ish. but GameShell is open and is made around just emulate old games and more. not only that but upgrades come and instead of having to buy a whole new gameshell, you can just buy the new part.
PS GameShell can emulate ps1 and down, for now
( i may be wrong but when i was lookin at what can be emulate on Gameshell N64 is a no for now)
Can confirm that playstation games work. Successfully running wipeout 3 at full speed (my fave game of all time) , capcom vs snk, tekken 3 and gt2
PSP and Gameshell are different machines… Gameshell is designed to be an open computing platform, PSP is a games machine that is hacked open
Gameshell FTW
This is all very nice but I get the impression that most of the people that got a GS , even for hacking, they’ve never written a line of code in their lives. They just expect for the code to be ready in some repo to download it install it and discuss why it is or not working in the forums. That is not hacking.
Also I can take the argument even further by saying PS VITA vs GS . Vita can also play vita games above all the rest , plus it has an active hacking and homebrew community and it also costs less than GS.
I just bought a GS to test my programming language 
This is all very nice but I get the impression that most of the people that got a GS , even for hacking, they’ve never written a line of code in their lives.
Have you had a good look around the community? The people who got the GS for hacking / tinkering / modding / etc are fixing, creating, programming, and making things all over the place. Myself @duckyvirus @r043v @nmodnation @Petrakis @pezhman , everyone who entered the 1st GameJam, everyone who is participating in the 2nd GameJam, and more.
You also have people doing hardware mods, like all involved with solving how to and which battery / components to get, to get better battery life out of the unit (not a particularly difficult problem, but still), or @KalTalen attempting to create a clamshell enclosure.
They just expect for the code to be ready in some repo to download it install it and discuss why it is or not working in the forums. That is not hacking.
You seem to have a misconception about what hacking is. Hacking is simply solving problems with technical knowledge. Discussing a problem from a technical point of view in an attempt to solve it, is exactly what hacking is. From discussion, people go out and use the information and knowledge to produce a solution and contribute it back to the discussion so it can be iterated on further, improvements made, etc. Sure, there are the people who bought it expecting it to just work, and those people should have looked closer at what the GS actually was. The thing is, some of those people actually come to the forums, post about their problems, and help those that are able to assist create solutions for them and the rest of the community. Maybe one day they will know enough to start solving the problems for others as well.
Also I can take the argument even further by saying PS VITA vs GS
I re-iterate what I said above. If all you want is to emulate games, then sure, stick with PSP or Vita or any of the plethora of other cheaper devices that can emulate (There isn’t a shortage of them).
Finally, Let me ask you something.
Why did YOU buy a Gameshell? What are you looking for with this thread? Are you trying to validate your purchase? Are you playing devils’ advocate?
If you have a genuine reason, let it be known, maybe some good discussion can actually come of it.
I’m kind off passed the point of validating my purchase and moving towards the “devil advocate’s” area. I bought the GS both for the emulation and hacking part. I did some hardware mods myself , i tried softmods and other hacks from other people and attempted to play some games on its tiny screen with inconsistent results in speeds/display/controls etc. I got set it up for most emulators and games i like, i have modded the battery and the case slightly for back buttons, i have installed and used bluetooth controller with ok results and also tried the HDMI out which is basically broken at this point (crackled sound and slow speed). It 's ok, i know it’s an open console. I like it for what it is but I still think it is overpriced. I strongly agree that anyone who wants purely an emulation handheld device should look elsewhere thus the title of the thread which is the least expensive option for handheld emulation only.
This thread is for those people who come in here after viewing youtube videos for GS. Most of these videos present GS as an emulation device, I haven’t seen anyone focusing on the hacks or the community. What most do , is they get the parts out of the box, assemble it and play a couple of games which happen to run OK and that’s it. If people base their decision to buy a GS on these videos they are going to be disappointed.
We should review this after a year or so …
see what parts clockwork pi will release for the GS for further customization and also how the community will evolve the GS over time.
For me
psp can’t run lsDj and pico-8
I bought it mainly to run Pico-8 (and TIC-80). As a bonus it is also a decent headless Linux “server” for various other things that would run on a Raspberry Pi, etc. For me the emulation was also a bonus, and I’ve enjoyed playing around with that and will continue to. But as a dedicated Pico-8 device, and a nice hardware design, I think GameShell is great.
I’m surprised the official build still uses Retroarch and the poorly performing python launcher scripts to load all the “built in” emulators. That pretty much ensures anyone who tries GameShell for emulation alone will be disappointed. And some people give up rather than replacing all the emulators with something better like all the standalone emulators that are found here in the forums. It’s possible to have fast, fully optimized emulation on the device but you’re not going to get that out of the box. The issues around lima and fbturbo video drivers have also caused lots of confusion and poor experiences for people since quite often two people can do exactly the same thing and have very different results because they are using different video drivers without realizing it.
Hopefully the OS releases will focus more on replacing emulators with more optimized stand alone versions, improve the retroarch configs so it can be used more reliably out of the box, and replace the launcher with something more stable and optimized like one of the others that have appeared on the forums.
I think the tinkering side of things is fun in software too, but there’s a pretty big time commitment required right now to build out a GameShell device that does everything you might want it to do and also does it well. Anyone just looking to buy a device they can turn on and start playing emulators on is probably going to be disappointed in a GameShell. I’m kinda surprised they focus on that in their advertising, since it pretty much ensures some bad reviews and disappointment from folks who don’t realize that they basically have to put together a custom software stack to get what they want. Either that’s part of the fun, or it’s a thing that drives people away and creates negative feelings like this thread shows. 
That’s a great synopsis of the current state of the GS software.
I was just thinking that someone should make an image that has all the standalone emulators installed and set up correctly, but with no roms on it and upload it so that someone new can put it on his new GS and is ready to go.