The Tapwave Zodiac is a mobile entertainment console. Tapwave announced the system in May 2003 and began shipping in October of that same year. The Zodiac was designed to be a high-performance mobile entertainment system centered on

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

music Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ...

, photos, and

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

for 18- to 34-year-old gamers and technology enthusiasts. By running an enhanced version of the Palm Operating System (5.2T), Zodiac also provided access to Palm's personal information management software and many other applications from the Palm developer community. The company was based in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is th ...

. The Zodiac console was initially available in two models, Zodiac 1 (32MB) for US$299, and Zodiac 2 (128MB) for US$399. Some of the game titles for the product included ''

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 ''Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4'' is a skateboarding video game and the fourth entry in the ''Tony Hawk's (series), Tony Hawk's'' series. It was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision under the Activision O2 label in 2002 for the GameCub ...

'' (

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

); ''Mototrax'' (Activision); '' SpyHunter'' ( Midway); ''

Madden NFL 2005 ''Madden NFL 2005'' is an American football simulation video game based on the NFL that was developed by EA Tiburon, along with Exient Entertainment and Budcat Creations, and published by EA Sports. The 16th installment of the '' Madden NFL ser ...

'' ( EA/MDM); '' Doom II'' (

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

); '' Golden Axe III'' and ''

Altered Beast ''Altered Beast'' is a 1988 beat 'em up arcade video game developed and manufactured by Sega. The game is set in Ancient Greece and follows a player character chosen by Zeus to rescue his daughter Athena from the demonic ruler of the underwor ...

'' ( Sega); '' Warfare Incorporated'' ( Handmark); and ''

Duke Nukem ''Duke Nukem'' is a video game series named for its main character, Duke Nukem. Created by the company Apogee Software Ltd. (now 3D Realms) as a series of video games for personal computers, the series expanded to games released for various co ...

Mobile'' (

3D Realms 3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller (entrepreneur), Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game ' ...

/MachineWorks). Due to insufficient funding and strong competitive pressure from the

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 200 ...

(PSP) from

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

(which was pre-announced at E3 on May 16, 2003, and shipped in North America on March 24, 2005), and the DS from Nintendo (released on November 21, 2004), Tapwave sold the company to an undisclosed multibillion-dollar corporation in Asia in July 2005. The Zodiac console garnered strong product reviews and received many industry awards including ''

Popular Science ''Popular Science'' (also known as ''PopSci'') is an American digital magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. ''Popular Science'' has won over 58 awards, incl ...

''s Best of What's New Award, ''Stuff'' magazine's Top 10 Gadgets of the Year, ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fran ...

'' magazine's Fetish Award, CNET's Editor's Choice Award, ''

PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tec ...

''s 2004 Next Gear Innovations Award; '' PC Magazine''s 1st Place Last Gadget Standing at CES; ''Handheld Computing'' magazine's Most Innovative PDA of 2003; ''Time'' magazine Best Gear of 2003; and the ''

Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'' Best Products of 2003.

History of Tapwave

* May 2001: Tapwave was founded by former

Palm Palm most commonly refers to: * Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand * Palm plants, of family Arecaceae ** List of Arecaceae genera * Several other plants known as "palm" Palm or Palms may also refer to: Music * Palm (b ...

executives * May 2002: Tapwave closed initial Series-A funding * May 2002: Tapwave signed

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

licensing agreement with PalmSource * May 2003: Company was formally launched at Palm Developers Conference & E3 * September 2003: Zodiac entertainment console launched at DEMO conference * October 2003: Zodiac console began shipping to customers directly from livescribe.com * November 2003: Tapwave announced that “over 1200 game developers” had signed up for the Tapwave developer program * February 2004: PalmGear and Tapwave announced partnership to launch an online store to feature the best applications, game titles and ebooks available on the Palm OS platform * April 2004: Synchronization between Zodiac and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

desktops enabled by MarkSpace * June 2004: Zodiac launched into

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

retail distribution with CompUSA * October 2004: Zodiac launched in

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and sold through

, Dixons, and

Currys Currys (branded as Currys PC World between 2010 and 2021) is an electrical retailer and aftercare service provider operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, specialising in white goods, consumer electronics, computers and mobile phones. E ...

* October 2004: Zodiac launched in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and distributed by ECS * November 2004: Zodiac launched in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

and co-branded with Sonokong (OEM) * December 2004: Audible announces audio book support for the Zodiac * December 2004: Tapwave announces

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

SD card Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between San ...

for the Zodiac with “enhanced mail application and web browser” * January 2005: Tapwave and

Virgin Digital Virgin Digital was an online music store operated in the United Kingdom and United States by the Virgin Group. It launched on 2 September 2005 in the UK, and was refreshed in November 2006 to run through an internet browser, rather than the fo ...

announced strategic alliance for audio download and subscription services * July 2005: Tapwave discontinued the sale of the Zodiac mobile entertainment console and sold substantially all of its assets to an undisclosed multibillion-dollar corporation in Asia and wound down operations

Primary features

Music, images, and video An

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

music player is included in the system's applications, and allows the creation of custom playlists using drag-and-dropping of files. MP3 music files can be played from either SD slot, or the internal memory of the device. MP3 files can also be used as alarms, along with conventional Palm OS alarms. Photos (

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

or PNG format) could be downloaded to the device using the Palm Desktop software or loaded onto

s, and could be shared and made into a slideshow (with background music) on the device. The bundled video player on the device, Kinoma, would only play videos in a proprietary format, converted using the Kinoma Producer software (which supported conversion of MPEG1, MPEG4, QuickTime, AVI and DivX). The software however was limited in its conversion abilities, enticing users to pay for the full version. It has been suggested that this difficulty in converting video for the device diminished the Zodiac's success. Several aftermarket DivX and

XviD Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi ma ...

players have been developed (such as the

TCPMP The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) is a software media player which operates on portable devices and Windows-based PCs. It is discontinued, but still available from the official mirror site. Supported operating systems include Palm OS, Symbia ...

), and, at the time of bankruptcy, Tapwave were working on an update to supply

MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related ...

hardware decoding. Device design Due to the metal construction of the Zodiac, the device was seen to be more solid than other PDAs. However, on some models the adhesive on the shoulder buttons failed, and occasionally the screen was scratched by the screen cover when grit entered. Furthermore, due to the insecure clip holding the stylus, they could be knocked loose and potentially lost. Some alternative cases solved this problem with their own stylus holder. Compatibility The Zodiac is a

5-compatible device, and most software compatible with Palm OS 5 runs without issue. In particular, most Palm OS 5-compatible games play on the Zodiac. Tapwave also provided proprietary APIs to allow developers to take advantage of the Zodiac's graphics and sound hardware. A great deal of

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

and

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

games and

emulators In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peri ...

are therefore available. For example, there are versions of '' Doom'', '' Quake'', '' Hexen'', ''

Hexen II ''Hexen II'' is a dark fantasy first-person shooter (FPS) video game developed by Raven Software and published by id Software. It is the third game in the ''Hexen''/'' Heretic'' series, and the last in the ''Serpent Riders'' trilogy. Using a mo ...

'', and ''

Heretic Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

'' as well as versions of emulators such as UAE,

ScummVM Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companie ...

, and LJZ/ LJP, a multi-system emulator. There have also been attempts to emulate

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a di ...

games onto the Zodiac, the most successful emulator being PPSX. It is, however, nowhere near completion and many games are not playable yet. Battery The device has a total battery life of about 3 hours when using video, backlight+screen and CPU-intensive tasks, and while running as a dedicated audio player it is closer to 6 hours. The original battery was a 1500mAh

Li-Ion A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also see ...

; third party replacements with 2000mAh capacity are still available from some manufacturers. Software The Zodiac used a modified version of the Palm OS, designated version 5.2T. The main navigation menus consisted of 8 radially-arranged choices selected using either the touchscreen or thumbstick. It also came with the Palm OS Productivity Suite (containing a calendar, to do list etc.), an eBook reader, the Wordsmith word processor and the powerOne graphing application. It came bundled with two games, AcidSolitare (by Red Mercury) and Stunt Car Extreme (by Vasara Games). Models The Zodiac console was initially available in two models, Zodiac 1 (32MB), and Zodiac 2 (128MB). The Zodiac 2 was $100 more expensive than the original Zodiac.

Games

Games which utilized some or all of the Zodiac's hardware/software are incompatible with standard Palm OS devices. This does exclude platforms outside of Palm OS (e.g., Doom II is also out for PC, but the Zodiac version listed here won't run on standard Palm OS handhelds). This list also excludes standard Palm OS games which are also available for Zodiac handhelds, which were either identical or slightly improved on Zodiac, called "Zodiac tuned" (e.g. a game available for standard Palm OS only has the extra features of vibration and shoulder buttons as extra usable buttons when played on Zodiac). Some of the games were never released due to the discontinuation of the Zodiac in July 2005. However, the testing builds of some of these games were leaked and are playable. Zodiac exclusive titles * ''Acedior'' * ''

'' * ''Animated Dudes'' * ''Anotherball'' * ''Atari Retro'' * ''Avalanche'' * ''Bike or Die'' * ''Billiards'' * ''Bubble Shooter 2'' * ''Colony'' * ''Crossword Puzzles'' * ''Daedalus 3D – The Labyrinth'' * ''Dreamway'' * ''Firefly'': Pacman clone * ''FireHammer'' * ''Fish Tycoon'' * ''Frutakia'' * ''Galactic Realms'' * ''Gloop Zero'' by AeonFlame: (was shareware, but is now freeware) puzzle game where you direct the flow of liquid slime material to its goal by drawing platform lines and using other tools. * ''

Golden Axe is a series of side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade video games developed by Sega. The series takes place in a medieval fantasy world where several heroes have the task of recovering the legendary Golden Axe, the mainstay element of the series. ...

'' * ''Interstellar Flames'' * ''Jet Ducks'' * ''Kickoo's Breakout'' * ''Legacy'' * ''MegaBowling'' * ''MicroQuad'' * ''Orbz'' (was shareware, but is now freeware as of September 2006) * ''Paintball'' * ''Pocket Mini Golf'' * ''Pocket Mini Golf eXtra'' * ''RifleSLUGS-W: Wild Web Wars'' * ''Stunt Car Extreme'': 3D, 1st-person or 3rd-person racing game. Comes with the Zodiac CD. * ''Table Tennis 3D'' * ''The Green Myste'' * ''Tots ‘n’ Togs'' * ''Xploids'' * ''ZapEm'' Zodiac exclusive titles, also available on SD card * '' Doom II'' * '' Duke Nukem Mobile'' * ''GTS Racing Challenge'' * '' SpyHunter'' * ''Tiger Team: Apache vs Hind'' * ''

'' * ''Z Pak: Adventure'' * ''Z Pak: Fun'' "Zodiac tuned" titles * ''

'' (CD-ROM; uploaded from PC) * '' Warfare Incorporated'' Unreleased but leaked games * '' Street Hoops'', tech demo * '' MTX: Mototrax'', complete * ''Hockey Rage 2004'', complete, but crash on exit * '' Neverwinter Nights'', tech demo * '' Terminator 3'':contentFrame
Cinergi-interactive.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-23. Complete game, few sound elements missing. * ''

Tomb Raider ''Tomb Raider'', also known as ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'' from 2001 to 2008, is a media franchise that originated with an action-adventure video game series created by British gaming company Core Design. Formerly owned by Eidos Interactive, th ...

'', complete original first and second game

Ports

Several

homebrew Homebrewing mainly refers to small-scale, non-commercial manufacture of a drink, typically beer. Homebrew or home brew may also refer to: Computing * Homebrew Computer Club * Homebrew (package manager), for macOS and Linux * Homebrew (video game ...

(freeware) games were released on ports. * ''ZDoomZ'', a ''

ZDoom The present article is a list of known platforms to which ''Doom'' has been confirmed to be ported. ''Doom'' is one of the most widely ported video games. Since the original MS-DOS version, it has been released officially for a number of operatin ...

'' port to Palm/Zodiac * ''ZHeretic'', a ''

'' port to Palm/Zodiac * ''ZHexen'', a '' Hexen'' port to Palm/Zodiac * ''ZHexen2'', ''

'' port to Palm/Zodiac * LJP, a multisystem emulator for Palm/Zodiac * LJZ, the old version of LJP, discontinued. * pPSX, Emulates psx games at limited speed without sound. Low compatibility. Incomplete. * ''ReverZi'', an Othello/

Reversi Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. It was invented in 1883. Othello, a variant with a fixed initial setup of the board, was patented in 1971. Basics There are sixty-four identical game pieces ...

clone for Zodiac * ZodMAME, a

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserv ...

port to the Zodiac * ZodNEO, a NeoGeo port to the Zodiac * ZodSCUMM,

port to the Zodiac * ZSpectrum, a

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

port to the Zodiac * ''REminiscence'', a Zodiac port of '' Flashback'' * ''Thruster'', a fast-paced cave flyer. * '' Noiz2sa'' * ''Orbital Sniper'', Look down from high above and shoot hostiles in a city grid layout while protecting innocent lives. (Freeware) * ''Zodtris'', Zodiac only version of ''

Tetris ''Tetris'' (russian: link=no, Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Soviet Union, Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute o ...

''. (Freeware) * ''Zap 'Em'', a close conversion of '' Zoop'' for PC (Freeware) * ''ZoT'' * ''Zyrian'' * '' Another World'' * ''ZodTTD'', an '' OpenTTD'' port to the Zodiac * ''TCPMP'', a media player that could play back many codecs that the Zodiac did not originally support

Hardware specifications

Two versions of the Zodiac are available, differing only in the amount of memory and case colour. * CPU: Motorola i.MX1 ARM9 processor (200 MHz) * Memory: Zodiac 1 had 32 MB. Zodiac 2 had 128 MB. Both have 10 MB Dedicated to the System

Dynamic RAM Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...

* Graphic Accelerator: ATI

Imageon Imageon (previously ATI Imageon) was a series of media coprocessors and mobile chipsets produced by ATI (later AMD) in 2002–2008, providing graphics acceleration and other multimedia features for handheld devices such as mobile phones and Per ...

W4200 2D graphics accelerator (with 8 MB dedicated

SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random-access memory (synchronous dynamic RAM or SDRAM) is any DRAM where the operation of its external pin interface is coordinated by an externally supplied clock signal. DRAM integrated circuits (ICs) produced from the ...

) * Controls: Analog controller (or joystick) with 360 degrees of motion, built-in triggers and action button array similar to other gaming consoles. * Display: 3.8 inch transflective 480×320 (half VGA), 16-bit colour backlit display (65,536 colours) * Sound:

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

sound and stereo speakers, 3.5 mm earphone plug * External Connectors: 2 expansion slots (both are

MMC MMC may stand for: Business *Mail.com Media Corp., a former name of the US digital media company PMC * Marsh & McLennan Companies, an American-based global professional services firm *Master Municipal Clerk, a certification in the US for a munic ...

/ SD capable, one is also

SDIO SDIO may refer to: * Secure Digital Input Output, a type of Secure Digital card interface. It can be used as an interface for input or output devices. * Strategic Defense Initiative Organization The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisivel ...

capable), Zodiac Connector, 3.5 mm headphone jack * Wireless: Infrared,

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limit ...

(Compatible with some Wifi SDIO cards depending on drivers) * Battery: Rechargeable Lithium Batteries – Dual totaling to 1540

mA·h An ampere hour or amp hour (symbol: A⋅h or A h; often simplified as Ah) is a unit of electric charge, having dimensions of electric current multiplied by time, equal to the charge transferred by a steady current of one ampere flowing for ...

* Size and Weight: , ** Compare to the Palm TX which is smaller at 78×15×121 mm due to fewer buttons, but includes WiFi * Colors: Zodiac 1: Slate Gray, Zodiac 2: Charcoal Gray * Casing: Synthetic rubber, anodized aluminum, plastic

Peripherals and accessories

* 5V regulated DC switch mode battery charger, using proprietary connector * USB PC synchronization cable, incorporating pass-through female charger connector (allowing charging from mains while synchronizing) * Car battery charger * Cradle attachment for sync cable (poorly designed, unreliable electrical contacts) * Folding Keyboard (some 3rd party Bluetooth & IR models, unknown whether dedicated keyboard capable of using sync cable connector existed) * Some SDIO cameras could be used, such as the Veo Camera

References

External links

* (Archive)
OpenHandhelds Zodiac File Archive

Tapwave Reborn Zodiac File Archive
{{Handheld game consoles Handheld game consoles Palm OS devices Sixth-generation video game consoles Products and services discontinued in 2005 ARM-based video game consoles