Not too long ago we were all wondering who MagicX were and trying to discover whether they had any affiliation with Powkiddy, and now they're going full speed ahead with new and exciting handhelds that will hopefully stand out above the rest and not fall into the 'disappointing review pile' that seems to be growing on our desks.
MagicX have been teasing that they were working on a DS emulator device since last year. DS emulation isn't anything new; I can run DS games on the TRIMUI Brick, but the problem is that not many handhelds have the appropriate display to show both DS screens at the same time and you're forever swapping between them to be able to figure out what's going on.
Well, MagicX have finally announced the specs for their new device, the Zero 40, and it solves this problem by using a 400 x 800 screen to accommodate all of the action. There's only one picture on the MagicX website as of this morning which I've used as part of the featured image in this article, and it reminds me a lot of an old Tiger one-game handheld crossed with the RGCUBEXX in its design.
MagicX Zero 40 Specs
The specs show that the display will be 'multi-touch', which means that touch functionality from original DS games will still be available on the Zero 40. Like the Mini Zero 28, the Zero 40 is going for the AllWinner Cortex chipset used by the TRIMUI Brick and Smart Pro handheld range which does make me feel confident.
Obviously, it will come with all of the usual emulated consoles such as the GBA, GBC, SNES and PS1 games, but I can't honestly imagine using this handheld for anything else other than DS games; in the same way as having to play a DS game on a TRIMUI Brick is annoying because of the screen size, playing an N64 game on a portrait screen is going to feel very odd because it will be incredibly small with a lot of dead space underneath it.
Still, if the price follows MagicX's other releases and comes in at around $60, then I would definitely buy this console just for DS Emulation and vertical scrolling arcade games. It looks sleek and has that nostalgic Tiger handheld vibe from my childhood as I said above, so it would definitely be worth a try. I'm a little concerned about those shoulder buttons, but I'll reserve judgement on them for when I try them out (and my judgement will be swift if they're rubbish!).
