Handheld gaming is a concept that has been around for a decade or two, and began with the famous Nintendo GAMEBOY.  Fast forward a couple years, past the GAMEBOY Pocket, GAMEBOY Color, and the GAMEBOY Advance.  The year is 2001, the month is May, and Tapwave, a privately funded company, starts up operation in Mountain View, CA.  Two years later they would release the Tapwave Zodiac handheld gaming console.  Winning numerous rewards and honors since its launch, the Zodiac has been a ground breaking and innovative PDA as well as gaming handheld.

            Fast forward to today, and the first thing you will notice about your Zodiac console, will be the quality of the device, it is not a plastic case like the GAMEBOY, or the DS and Sony PSP, and almost every other PDA out on the market.  That’s right, I said PDA.  You see the Zodiac is more than just a handheld built for gaming; it is a handheld built for tomorrow.  Once you have the Zodiac out of the box, plugged into charge, you will have about a two to three hour wait while the Zodiac charges its huge batteries.  When I say huge, that is not in the physical sense, but much rather the sense of storage.  The Zodiac packs in not one, but two batteries totaling 1540 mAH, in English, you will have enough power to use the Zodiac all day and not worry about a dead battery. 

            Once the Zodiac has been charged, you will turn it one to go through setup, which you may be pleased to know, that setup on the Zodiac is customized and optimized from the standard Palm OS setup.

            After you have gone through the initial setup, you can now take a minute to be taken away by the beautiful screen on the Zodiac.  The screen is large 3.8 inch transflective, backlit display, with a 480 by 320 (half VGA) resolution, and yes, it is in landscape perspective.  It also features support for 16-bit (65,536 colors) display.  Because the Zodiac is a Palm OS handheld, it has a touch screen, with hand writing recognition through Graffiti 2 or the on screen keyboard.  One downfall in most people’s eyes is the stylus location and how it is held on the device.  I however like the stylus location and how it is held on the device, because of it, I still have the stylus that came with it instead of having to buy a new one because it fell out of the stylus silo.

Now that you have the Zodiac charged and setup, you’re ready to start playing with it.  The first thing you should do is get familiarized with the customized radial launcher.  As you see here, the launcher is laid out in 8 spokes plus a side menu, if you can’t already figure it out, the launcher spokes correspond with a direction of the analog joystick.  Your programs, which are Hotsynced as with any normal Palm OS handheld, can be placed either in the Zodiacs internal RAM or on and SD, which is where dual expansion is quite nice.  If you have 2 SD or MMC cards you can use them both at the same time.  Also, one slot, slot number 2, can utilize SDIO cards, so you can add Wi-Fi or GPS connections, and possibly a camera.  You will notice that the Zodiac does not have built in Wi-Fi, but instead it does have Bluetooth built in, and can be used for communication with other Zodiacs using the included InkStorm, or connecting to a Bluetooth cell phone for checking mail and web browsing on the included browser, as well has multiplayer gaming.

            Gaming on the Zodiac is enjoyable and the graphics are at times rather Playstation 1-ish, however they still are capable of delivering fun gaming.  The ATI® Imageon™ W4200 graphics accelerator chip is what makes this possible.  The only real flaw in the Zodiacs gaming is the lack of development from third party developers and publishers. The controls of the Zodiac are comfortable and easy to reach, and may even remind a little of the Xbox layout rather than the DS or PSP.  However if you have large hands, you may find the Zodiac a little uncomfortable and may wish to invest in the CommandPlay GameGrip to make the gaming better for you.

            Because of this lack of development mentioned above the Zodiac has recently seen a shift to more of a Media aimed device rather than just a gaming device.  With the Zodiacs gorgeous screen and LOUD stereo speakers, it may just succeed there.  The Yamaha® audio chip, the same found in the Sony CLIE’s helps deliver rich and vibrant sounds for your music listening or video viewing pleasures.  However, you may wish to invest in a pair of quality headphones.  The included Zodiac ear buds work fine, however they tend to be a little uncomfortable and have a slight hiss in them.

            All in all, the Zodiac is great device and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an innovative PDA, but not for the gamer, at least for now.  The quality of the Zodiac is excellent and it is able to deliver what any PDA needs to, and does go above the call of duty in some areas, however it still falls short in others

I give the Zodiac an 8.5 out of 10 overall.

Pros:

Device Quality – Well Built

Gorgeous Screen

LOUD Speakers

Natural feel in hands

Lots of storage if you have a Zodiac 2

Plenty of buttons

Vibration

Dual Expansion

Cons:

Lack of game development

No cradle in box, must be purchased later

Included Web Browser

List Price

Included headphones are a little uncomfortable