Tapwave Zodiac - The Failed 2003 Gaming PDA

Greetings and welcome to an L G R thing .

And this thing right here is the Tap Wave Zodiac released in October of 2003 for a price of $299 for this silver model with 32 megabytes of ram known as the zodiac one and $399 for a black 128 meg model known as the Z two .

So what is this ?

Well , the zodiac was described by Tap Wave as a mobile entertainment console built specifically to appeal to gaming and technology enthusiasts aged 18 to 34 who have quote unquote , outgrown a game boy and need a device that can help organize their life .

Yeah , more accurately , it's a short lived and increasingly forgotten gaming focused personal data assistant or P D A running a customized version of Palm Os 5.2 T and became one of the most high profile failures in early two thousands .

Tech .

In my mind , the zodiac is right up there .

We're down with the nokia engage and the Gizmondo just one of several of those failed devices from the early two thousands that attempted to merge the features of handheld consoles and A P D A .

But the main reason the Zodiac stood out to me back then was because it ran Duke Newcom Mobile , a unique version of Duke Newcomb 3d originally made exclusively for the system , but more on that in a bit because just looking at this packaging gives you a good idea of what Tap Wave was trying in vain to accomplish .

Enjoy true console quality gaming , listen to music , view photos , watch videos , take control with leading organization tools and customize it with thousands of Palm Os applications .

Yeah , this mash up of P D A s and portable game consoles was not an uncommon idea at the time .

And you know , it kind of made since when it was announced in May of 2003 .

But by the time it came out later that year , it was making less sense , month to month .

Let's start out with Tap Wave Incorporated themselves .

A company founded in 2001 by Palm executives with the goal of producing a gaming device centered on the palm operating system .

And in case you're not familiar in 2001 , Palm was practically on top of the world .

In terms of mobile computing , their P DS bridged the gap between the functionality of a laptop computer and the mobility of a contemporary cell phone and Tap Wave was one of the many companies jumping on the bandwagon to do something fresh with the platform , which in the case of the Zodiac was focusing on mobile gaming , first and foremost , simple two D games were already a good fit on Palm P DS with their color touch screens providing a nice way to play solitaire and various puzzle games .

But Tap Wave took it a step beyond any other Palm Os device and indeed further than any portable game console .

Keep in mind when Tap Wave was putting together the Zodiac , the major handheld on the North American market was the game boy advanced by Nintendo a system that was great for games , no doubt but seen by some like those at Tap Wave as being a bit child really couldn't hold a candle to the multimedia capabilities of A P D .

So when Tap Wave announced that the Zodiac would combine all the software and multimedia and color touch screen stuff of a Palm Os five P D A with an analog joystick , 200 megahertz R nine processor A T I graphics and wireless multiplayer .

The gaming and technology press were psyched .

The Zodiac ended up winning all kinds of awards .

There were over 1200 game developers reportedly signed up to make games for it and preorders started pouring into Tap Wave .

The future was bright and then it wasn't for one thing .

The Zodiac struggled with distribution only being sold through Tap Wave's website during its launch window and sales remained glacially slow even when it started being sold in stores like comp USA .

And then there were the games themselves which were few and far between at best and lack .

Luster .

The rest of the time Zodiac launched with a few recognizable IP S like Duke Newcombe Doom and Tony Hawk's pro skater .

But there were already other games in this series available on the much cheaper Gameboy advance .

Then there was the fact that the Zodiac was not alone with nokia's engage , releasing at the same time while also including the ability to place phone calls and send text messages .

And the latter point was pretty important since the P D A , it was quickly moving away from dedicated P DS and more towards hybrid devices like the trio 600 T mobile sidekick and the Blackberry 62 10 giving the public an early intoxicating taste of what would become known as the smartphone .

While the zodiac was stuck having to tether to a cell phone , a modem or a PC to go online using infrared Bluetooth or a sync cable and didn't come with built in Wi Fi at all .

And then finally you get the DS hitting the scene in 2004 , the Sony S P set to launch in fall of 2005 and cell phone games running on J two M E and Brew were just exploding .

And so the writing was on the wall Tap Wave only sold around 200,000 zodiacs over its entire time in the market and shut down all service and support for the device on July 25th of 2005 and then selling off the rest of the company to an unknown buyer .

Well , there's a many tech tales for you .

So let's go ahead and unbox this device which I found complete ish on ebay a while back for about 100 bucks .

And first up here in this little tray , we get the zodiac one itself .

We'll talk about the specifics of it more here in just a moment and you get a little baggy with some paperwork and manuals and presumably the software CD .

It was supposed to come with a CD of Windows software to do all of the syncing and stuff like that on your PC .

And yes , it was originally just for Windows .

They released some Macintosh software later , I just downloaded a copy of the software .

Anyway , the rest of it and here you get some cables , this is the charge and sync cable .

So you get this end right here that plugs into the device itself .

And then the other side can either be USB for doing all of the syncing or you can attach another piece and plug it into the wall to do straight up charging .

You also get a little carrying strap which I never use these things .

So I am leaving it in the plastic and finally you get some truly not comfortable tap waves .

Zodiac ear bud headphones I don't like these .

The , my ear holes hurt .

All right .

Let's talk about the device itself and here it is , it's a neat little thingy weighing about 6.3 ounces or 178 g .

And it's about on par with its contemporary palm P D A s in terms of size .

But compared to a modern hybrid game console or even a modern smartphone , it is absolutely tiny and looks charmingly dated with its bulbous rounded blob shape .

Ah , the early two thousands .

I almost missed this style of design , but then I don't anyway , underneath its little fold over leathery cover here , you get a 3.8 inch back lit transl reflective LCD screen with a resolution of just 480 by 320 encasing everything is an anodized aluminum shell .

Yeah , this thing is not plastic .

It is aluminum , which feels pretty solid in the hands .

I gotta say I like that .

Look at a little bit closer here and on the front you get the power button , a home button , an unmarked back button , two tiny speaker holes , one on the left and one on the right .

And then one of the biggest selling points , the analog joystick over here and it's pretty decent to use with most games , but a little bit too slippery for my taste , could have used some texture or something on the top .

You also get four rather gummy feeling face buttons for interacting with menus and games and such over here on the right and then on the top you get two even Gummier feeling shoulder buttons .

Seriously , these things suck .

There is a bit of a click when you press them down .

But it's always a strange struggle to make it happen reliably , especially if you have larger hands .

I have issues with the cramped joy cons on the switch for instance .

But I would take that any day over the awful cramping claw maneuver .

I have to pull off here .

There's also the fact that the flexible rubber on these buttons tends to fall apart .

As you can see .

In fact , perishing rubber parts are a problem on these in several spots .

Spots like around back where you're supposed to be able to hold the stylus .

Yeah .

No , the little black rubber bits just fall apart and the stylist no longer stays in there .

I have to use some sticky tack to hold it in place .

You also get a spot on the back for tying in carrying straps as well as a recessed reset button for resetting things with a button on top of the unit .

You get another button to enable or disable the Bluetooth as well as dual S D card slots used for other expend the storage or inserting game cards .

Yep .

The Zodiac games were distributed on S D cards and came in these DVD style keep cases .

I only have these two games , Duke 3d and Doom Two .

Really , any Zodiac games can be hard to find , but the packaging is kind of nice in a somewhat boring way .

I was happy to find these .

And finally along the bottom you get a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack as well as a spot to plug in the combination power charging and sync cable .

Speaking of charging , there's a good chance the original battery in any given zodiac is dead as mine was when I got it .

Thankfully replacing , it is pretty friggin easy .

You just unscrew four little torque screws and then snap off the back and there you go .

You can just drop in a replacement 3.7 volt lithium ion battery pack of which new ones that hold a full charge can be found surprisingly easily online as I'm making this video at least .

And while we're in here , check out the chip running much of the show .

The amusingly titled Dragon Ball M one by Motorola and Freescale Semiconductor .

This R 209 T based system on a chip replaces the old 68 K based Dragon Ball and integrates things like USB support L CD control , analog to digital conversion and an S D card interface .

All working alongside the A T I M Maon W 4200 graphics chip set .

Ok .

Let's take a look at what happens when you power on the zodiac for the first time .

Yay sound effects all right .

So the initial thing that you have to take care of is the initial set up for the resistive touch screen .

So yes , this is not capacitive .

You can't just touch it lightly .

You have to press down a bit and it is ideally used with a stylus .

And the calibration is the first thing that you'll be taken care of as well as some calibration for the analog controller itself .

Simple enough stuff .

There's just a few other things to choose , like whether you're right or left handed , the date and the time and your time zone and stuff like that .

And then it lets you learn a bit about how graffiti two works .

And this , it's supposed to be one of those systems that makes it easier to have your handwriting turned into text , but it's a little more specific than some others I've used .

There are only certain ways that you can write it out to have it converted into text that is unless you customize it yourself , which I definitely would have to do .

If I were going to be using this , I would much rather just have a virtual keyboard and type that way even though that's not ideal either because the tiny little screen results in tiny little characters to tap on .

Either way you get a bunch of stuff that is pretty common across almost any Palm Os five device .

You know , all of that adult product software that makes this so much more grown up than a game boy .

You can take memos , you can enter dates into your calendar and make an itinerary .

You can read ebooks .

If you were to go to palm digital media dot com and get an ebook , you can calculate calculations using the calculator calculatingly .

You can look at photographs , which is quite a nice thing to have had back then .

Even though of course , they are only at 480 by 320 .

And then probably the most fascinating stuff for me were the video and music options .

It used the kno movie player by default , which unless you were downloading stuff specifically for that , you'd have to get kno a producer to convert stuff .

Naturally , it also has a built in music application for playing mp3 and such one of the biggest reasons I wanted a device like this in the mid two thousands .

And of course , you could play games and well , it came with just a couple of them solitaire being one of those and it's a pretty decent little solitaire program , but this is really not what you got this device for .

You could play Solitaire on pretty much any P D A ever made .

But the Zodiac , well , that was about the Zodiac games .

And as I mentioned earlier , the biggest one that I wanted to get was Duke Newco Mobile because at the time , this was the only way that you could play this version of the game .

It had its own exclusive levels and features and all that kind of stuff .

I didn't know anything about it really .

I just saw the screenshots and information on the 3d ROMs website and thought it looked awesome and I wanted it , but of course , I never got it until adulthood .

And now I am glad that I didn't waste my time because honestly , this is not a very good game .

It looks pretty good , at least a little bit better than Duke New in advance , which was its contemporary .

However , the levels are extremely small .

You just get a bunch of enemies that are randomly teleporting in all the time .

There's no music , the stuff that each enemy drops is , it doesn't make any sense for what they're actually shooting .

Like , it's just a weird version of the game and it is further let down by the fact that the controls for this thing suck .

Like , I mean , they're programmed fine .

It works as it's intended .

It's just physically .

The controls of the Zodiac are not suited to my hand .

I feel like you'd have to be like 12 years old at most for this to make sense .

And wasn't this supposed to be the adults gaming portable ?

Talk about a fatal flaw right off the bat , especially with first person shooters .

I also tried Doom Two because of course , that is the other game for this that I own physically and it's not much better .

In fact , it is probably worse because this game is sped up significantly compared to the MS DOS original .

It's just way too fast .

The music is fast , everything moves faster .

The control are way more responsive than they need to be .

It's just really tricky and as a result , much harder to play .

Still portable Doom Two would have been pretty friggin awesome at the time .

But then again , if I really wanted that , I would have gotten a Gameboy advance .

But there is one kind of saving grace for the zodiac .

And that is the fact that it is incredibly easy to install your own home brew and independent software that you've downloaded .

And the hot sync capability is dead simple as you would expect for a Palm Os five device .

All you got to do is install the palm desktop software , hot sync thingy from tap wave and then press down the hot sync button on the cable or cradle , which is the cable in this case .

And there you go , it syncs everything that's on the zodiac itself to your PC and whatever you've told the PC to send to the zodiac .

It'll do that too .

And yeah , the palm desktop hot sync software makes it super easy .

You just plop a file in there , hit sync and there you go .

Or you can just copy things over directly to an SD card through an SD card reader on any random PC and then insert it and chances are , if you've done it correctly , it'll work just fine .

And yeah , there was a relatively significant scene of people making their own games and porting source code for other games and just making all sorts of cool stuff for the Zodiac .

And of course , it can run a crap load of palm software as well .

I am mostly interested in the Zodiac specific stuff though , since it takes advantage of its hardware , in particular , for example , one program that was kind of a killer app for the Zodiac .

If you can say that it had one and that was TCP MP or the core pocket media player .

This is available for all sorts of P D A kind of portable devices .

But the version for the Tap Wave was pretty awesome since it provided hardware scaling for all kinds of videos , namely divx , which was very popular at the time .

So if you were to encode pretty much anything into divx and put it on an S D card and play it back through this , you've got a neat little portable media player for watching your favorite youtube videos offline .

Um And another option for moving around files that just highly amuses me is the Bluetooth functionality .

And yes , due to the magic of legacy backwards compatibility goodness , you can make the tap wave zodiac communicate with a modern smart device .

So I've got a 12 megapixel photograph taken on my galaxy Note eight sending over Bluetooth to the Zodiac right here and there you go .

You can admire and edit your photographs right from the built in software of the Zodiac , even though it is pretty frigging slow because it's a giant picture .

But hey , it works another realm that's fascinating to explore with the Zodiac is the area of unreleased games that ended up getting leaked in the years following the device's untimely demise like this version of Tomb Raider one and two that never got completed .

And it makes sense that there are a good number of unfinished games like this for the system since so many developers signed on with high expectations only to see the system fail spectacularly with the gaming public .

Kind of a shame too since the hardware itself really is quite impressive for the blip in time that it existed .

And this in development , Tomb Raider build is a good example of that same with the home Brew emulator scene which puts that 200 megahertz arm processor to the test by emulating classic computers , arcade games and consoles sometimes poorly .

But while it tries its best , a soft mot P S P is still way better in this respect , if you're looking for mid two thousands portables with great emulators , but I still find these programs fun to fiddle around with regardless .

And that's about it for this video on the Tap Wave Zodiac .

One of the most fascinating tech failures that I remember watching .

I really was impressed when seeing the zodiac reviews in magazines back then and I thought having an analog joystick and a handheld was an amazing idea .

I think its goals of bringing console like games to a smart device were admirable and forward thinking .

The problems though were quite obvious , it was completely off target in terms of timing and execution for seemingly what most people wanted .

It had relatively pricey hardware , few worthwhile games , an increasing number of competitors .

And there's the fact that it lacked a built in cellular data or Wi Fi connection .

Tap Wave attempted to remedy this in December of 2004 with a $100 Wi Fi SD card accessory , but by then , it was too late .

So it was promptly axed and the Tap Wave zodiac became just another odd little thing in computing history and its legacy is that it ended up being the third worst selling portable of all time with only the Gizmondo in the R zone selling fewer units .

You know , you've got a stinker on your hands when even the gauge sells 10 times as much .

Yet .

It's precisely because of this failure that I find the zodiac so intriguing and I hope that you enjoyed seeing it here on L G R and if you did enjoy the video , then great .

I have plenty more on retro hardware and software .

So feel free to peruse my playlists or check back every Monday and Friday for new stuff and thank you very much for watching .