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Emulation (Games) Classic Games (Games) Portables (Games) Sony

PSP Emulation Madness 328

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-is-going-to-be-awesome dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The PSP is now the ultimate in handheld emulation consoles, already it boasts Full Speed Gameboy Colour Emulation and improving Snes & Master System but added today it also has NeoGeo CD and Sega Genesis emulators added to the impressive list of homebrew releases."
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PSP Emulation Madness More

PSP Emulation Madness

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  • This is SWEET... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ALeavitt ( 636946 ) * <aleavitt.gmail@com> on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @08:36AM (#12693407)
    ... but so far it only works on the Japanese 1.00 firmware. So far there's no support for the US versions (1.5 and 1.51) so for most of us, it's nothing to get too excited about... yet. I don't know about you, but I don't want to flash my PSP's firmware... but I'm getting so impatient. Just imagine... a 1GB card of all of your favorite games for all of those classic systems, portable, on that gorgeous screen. I hope they hurry up and figure out how to run homebrew apps on the latest firmware.
    • So is Sony going to go crazy over this and start suing every one or is it the plan of sony to let people do cool stuff like this? I don't own a PSP yet but I am sure they have some where in the EULA that states "You are screwed if you mess with it" (or something like it).

      • Re:This is SWEET... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sjf ( 3790 )
        Clearly Sony doesn't want people to do this. That seems to be the point of the later firmware releases: to block unencrypted binaries. But, I don't see what is illegal or worthy of suit in running homebrew software on the PSP. Unless, of course, that homebrew is compiled (and probably distributed) with libraries that are copyright Sony. As far as I know, that is not the case.

        But, Goddamnit, I can't wait until we can run these emulators on the North American PSPs...oh the anticipation...

        • Re:This is SWEET... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by aliquis ( 678370 )
          I don't think they block unencrypted binaries to kill the homebrew games & apps scene, I rather think they do it to stop piracy.

          • Re:This is SWEET... (Score:2, Informative)

            by apoc06 ( 853263 )
            i agree. sony is one of the few companies out there that has embraced the homebrew scene of the mod community. they did release a the linux version of the playstation: netyaroze or something like that. the problem that pops up whether or not leaving the psp as an open platform will result in piracy like you said. there are already isos of various psp releases. sony released psp games in the closed UMD format so that only sony [not the developers] will be able to press the discs. that eliminates the scare of

      • Re:This is SWEET... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DeVryGuy23 ( 869999 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @09:09AM (#12693700)
        There is no reason for Sony to get upset about this. People are simply making their system more marketable. It isnt economically feasible to pirate games using Memory Stick DUO(you might be able to get 1 game on a 1 gig stick, which is freakin expensive), it'd be cheaper to buy the UMDs. As long as the mods dont interfere with the PSPs ability to play retail games, then why would they take legal action?
        • I absolutely agree. To this point, I have had no interest in the PSP. I've seen it as nothing more than an overpriced handheld.

          If I were able to play all my favourite old SNES, NES, GBC, GBA, TGFX16, or any other old system's games via a memory stick, I'd buy it in a second.

  • All these are for the 1.0 firmware only (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CerebusUS ( 21051 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @08:39AM (#12693434)
    No one's cracked the 1.50 or the 1.51 firmware yet, so US PSP owners are still SOL.
  • While it may be the "portable console" with the most emulators, Pocket PCs easily surpass it - if we're talking about hardware with a similar form-factor.

    Dan East

    • Re:Portable vs Console (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Serapth ( 643581 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @08:55AM (#12693586)
      Yes, but the Pocket PC video chipsets are pure arse compared. I have a HP3950 iPaq ( 400 mhz arm 64 ram ), and it cant run MAME or any other emulators worth a damn. I also have a PSP, and from what ive seen sofar, it will easily be capable of running most older emu's ( SNes, gameboy, earlier mame, etc... ). You really cant compare the two devices, they have different purposes. When it comes to graphics and sound, the PSP blows the PPC out of the water.

      But thats not the worst part. The controls for a Pocket PC are absolutely horrid for gaming! First off, the placement sucks... and secondly most units cant support multiple button presses concurrently.

      In summary, when it comes to gaming you just cant compare the two devices. The PSP way out performs the PPC, but it damn well better, seeing as it was designed for gaming. That said, it rather sucks at reading Excel spreadsheets :)
      • Yes, but the Pocket PC video chipsets are pure arse compared. I have a HP3950 iPaq ( 400 mhz arm 64 ram ), and it cant run MAME or any other emulators worth a damn

        I don't know what other emulators you are referring to, but in the case of MAME, it's not because of the video chipset in your iPaq, it's because MAME emulates the video hardware, or at the best of times, does not take advantage of the abilities of any video chipset in a given machine. That's why you need such a beefy processor to run simple s
    • The pocket PC does have the disadvantage of not having any controls apart from the stylus, although I concur that it's programming environment is definately easier to work with as everything doesn't have to be hacked before it can be used.
      • The pocket PC does have the disadvantage of not having any controls apart from the stylus

        Depends on the device in question. Mine has 10 customisable buttons and a 8-way d-pad. More than enough for any emulated system, 'cept maybe the C64/Sinclair ones, but I've got a qwerty slide-out keyboard for them!

  • PIM Suite? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by macemoneta ( 154740 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @08:40AM (#12693447) Homepage
    Has anyone ported a PIM (Personal Information Management) suite and user interface (like Opie) to it yet (or are there any projects in progress)? That would make the PSP attractive as a PDA as well.

    • Re:PIM Suite? (Score:4, Informative)

      by bazio ( 864132 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @08:44AM (#12693483)
      Don't know if the software has been ported or not, but the PSP wouldn't really be a very attractive PDA option, since it has no touch screen.
      • You kidding me? The PSP would be a wonderful PDA!

        Think about it - as soon as it becomes known that there is decent PIM software for the PSP, it becomes an acceptable tool in the business world. Install those emulators and a few games and you'll never have a boring meeting again, and the great thing is that no one will notice!

        They'll all think you're rearranging your calendar or taking notes while you merrily bounce your way from koopa to koopa.

        ;)

        Jw
        • "Think about it"

          I have, and I get hung up on the D-pad for input.

          "They'll all think you're rearranging your calendar or taking notes while you merrily bounce your way from koopa to koopa."

          You'll never bounce from koopa to koopa on the PSP. The DS, however, would make you happy in both cases.
          • It doesn't actually have to be usable, it just has to be plausible.

            As for no koopas, you missed the point the article, namely the part about the snes and gameboy emulators for the psp...

            Jw
      • I currently have a Tungsten C, which has both a touch screen and a keyboard. I find that I use the "Navigator" (4 directional rocker and center select button) more and more, instead of the touch screen. It's faster than getting out the stylus. The PSP has a similar set of directional and selection buttons, and it would be more than adequate as a PDA. You would probably want to do your data entry on a PC though.
      • Size matters too. I don't use the PSP as an MP3 player very much just because it's too darn big.

        It's a great game machine and has a good size screen for watching movies in an airplain or car, but there's just no practical way to carry it around all the time like a PDA for instant access.

  • Whats wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by timtwobuck ( 833954 )
    Next step, GBA games.

    That would seal the deal for me, and probably many others.

    I think that it isn't outside of reason, its touted that the GBA is just as powerful as the SNES, so the hardware requirements apparently are close to being met....
    • If the SNES emulator can get to full speed, do not expect the GBA. Just from experience on the PC, the GBA emulators required at least a P2 500 Mhz (if I remember correctly) and the SNES emualtors required a P100.

      Although, this may be because the SNES emulators were highly optimized and were partly done in assembly.
    • The GBA is actually considerably more powerful than the SNES - it's by no means certain that GBA emulation is possible. They have a similar feature set in some respects, which is probably why so many people seem to think the GBA is basically just an SNES in portable form.

  • Hopefully Homebrew Will Run Soon.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mean_Nishka ( 543399 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @08:41AM (#12693459) Homepage Journal
    I will add my voice to the choir on homebrew software.. I bought a PSP at launch and haven't picked it up in weeks.. There's simply no decent software out for this thing, with very little on the horizon.

    Sony would be wise to open the machine up - it'll drive hardware sales certainly more than UMD movies will. Existing homebrew apps like PSPVideo 9 are probably driving more sales than software :).

    • What would make more sense for Sony would be to get sega to make a commercial version of the emulator for the PSP. The question then would be... How many people would pay for the games.
    • No decent software? Obviously you haven't played Lumines or Hot Shots Golf. They are putting out good games of course you get a lot of junk too but those two are definite winners.

    • Currently, you can run unsigned code on any DS (reguardless of region or firmware version) with a small piece of hardware that inserts into the DS card slot and a GBA flash cart. You can even run the DS Downloadable demos (like they had at the kiosks at E3) with only a combatible wifi card for your PC. If you want a homebrew-able machine, buy a DS.

      I haven't played many of my commercial DS games in a while, but I play homebrew or E3 demos almost every day still.

      PS: I really hope they release an English ver
      • The above poster is correct, and emulation is also coming along. Gameboy and GBC emulation is already working, though with some speed increases needed for GBC. Other emulators are also coming along, though not every author is being that public yet.

        One thing that is worth pointing out, I think - most of the PSP emulators are ports of open source emulators - SNES9X, etc.

        There's nothing wrong with this, but most of the DS emulation projects seem to be written from the ground up for the DS - like I said, b

    • Sony would be wise to open the machine up - it'll drive hardware sales certainly more than UMD movies will.

      If the PSP is anything like the PSX, PS2, and presumably PS3, Sony doesn't WANT to drive hardware sales -- unless sales of game and movie media are driven at least equally as hard. The hardware is the razor, they make their money from selling blades.

      Let's keep the attractiveness of emulation on PSP in perspective, too; out beyond Slashdot, very few people actually have enough interest in homebrew p

  • Just say MAME... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bbzzdd ( 769894 )

    ...and I am sold. I'd love to lay in bed playing the Capcom classics on the PSP. I can do it now on the PC and modded Xbox, but the portable angle would be killer.

  • Things they left out. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rirath.com ( 807148 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @09:00AM (#12693639)
    They left out NES, TG16 / PC Engine, and the fact that so far, it's only 1.0. They also didn't mention that there's an up and coming emulator called PSPE that can run PSP some homebrew on your PC. No, it can't run PSP games... but it's interesting for devs and just playing around in general, and rather nice to have this early on.

    As much as I support PSP homebrew and emulation, it's premature to say it's "the ultimate in handheld emulation consoles". Many of these emus work at good speed, and many have sound, but it's still very early in the game. This is just ASKING for flames from the DS and GBA fans, not to mention the POCKET PC which can play everything from the Atari, NES, SNES, TG16, Amiga, C64, and etc including SONY PLAYSTATION.

    As for when us 1.5 folks will see homebrew... "soon", if you believe the rumors Several teams are hard at work on it, and the team Dynarox recently announced "In a really near future, a loader will be released to make games work via the memory card.", so far, no reason has been given to disbelieve them. This loader will probably be in the form of a bios replacement.

    And to answer all the silly questions that are bound to pop up: No, you can't do anything right now. No, you can't downgrade your firmware by any currently known methods. And yes, odds are that "backups" and "emulation" will go hand and hand when this is finally cracked. -- No, this did not kill the Dreamcast, and No, it won't kill the PSP either. -- Proof: It's easy as heck to convert video from your DVDs to MP4 and store on a memory card, but UMD Videos are already a commerical success.

  • British Games (Score:4, Funny)

    by mr_gerbik ( 122036 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @09:10AM (#12693705)
    "already it boasts Full Speed Gameboy Colour Emulation"

    But it only plays British games because the US releases are not in colour.
  • How long until we have a way to mod the PSP, and is it even possible?

    I'm thinking the mods will be along the lines of the PSO exploit for Gamecube, but I guess something is better than nothing.

    Anyone know the status on this?

  • Zaurus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dangerz ( 540904 ) <stuff@@@tildastudios...net> on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @09:32AM (#12693934) Homepage
    My Zaurus has been emulating other game devices for a couple years now. Declaring the PSP the *ultimate* emulation machine is a little far fetched.

  • Yeah great, but.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Keichann ( 888574 )
    A warning for anyone thinking of grabbing homebrew without reading up on it.

    Unfortunately the flash ROM on the PSP is completely writable by anything running on the machine. The 1.50 and 1.51 updates fix this, but in doing so locking out homebrew software. For anyone that can't see the connection - malicious writes to flash = a shiny PSP paperweight.

    http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=1962 [ps2dev.org] [ps2dev.org]

    So, if you're going to run homebrew on your PSP, beware the possible consequences. Mine just arriv
  • This is pretty awesome actually. I'm not one to go out and buy every new gadget that comes on the market, but I have to admit there is something very attractive about the PSP, and if it can run these emulators, it's even better. But I don't think I'll actually buy one until it's possible to run homebrew apps on the North American version. Otherwise it's not really that interesting to me.

    Kind of funny that Sony is trying so hard to stop me from buying their little machine... I would love to have one, but
  • how about ColecoVision? I sure do miss the football and baseball games from that machine. "Super Action Football" oh yeah!

  • Erm, no (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree&davidglover,org> on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @10:02AM (#12694317) Homepage
    Anyone who thinks the PSP is "the ultimate in handheld emulation consoles" clearly hasn't heard of the GP32 [wikipedia.org].
    • Anyone who thinks the GP32 is in any way comparable to the PSP hasn't even seen a PSP in person.

      Not to mention the GP32 has specs that are more comparable to the GBA, while the PSP has specs that are more comparable to a PS2.

      This isn't to say I wouldn't mind having a GP32 for some emulation---although it only does 320x240, so no hi-res/overscan games like Secret of Mana---but when it comes down to it, the PSP just kicks ass.

  • When the PSP gets buggy emulators everyone creams, but when the Revolution is announced to play old titles (perfectly, no doubt, I might add) everyone is as down on it as can be. Funny how them double standards work.
    • If Nintendo announced the Revolution would play those old titles FOR FREE, then we'd have something to cream over.

      But you and I both damn well know that that won't be the case.

      • Re:Ain't it funny... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by bynary ( 827120 )
        When did it become wrong to pay for things? If there is something that I really enjoyed from previous generations, I will pay for it. This whole "everything digital has to be free" movement is sickening. It's this idea of entitlement. Nintendo's not just going to release old games for the hell of it. Suck it up and pay for good software.
        • It's not wrong to pay for things. What's wrong is Nintendo's moronic pricing ($20 for a repackaged NES game on GBA? For that price, they should be 4-in-1 packs).


          I'd like to believe that Nintendo will price this functionality reasonably, but I've stopped expecting anything "reasonable" from Nintendo, when it comes to the re-selling of their old games.



  • You forgot the ZX! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spacejock ( 727523 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @10:33AM (#12694657)
    Never mind emulating all those trashy modern toys, I want to know when I can run Sinclair Spectrum games on it!
  • People have of course pointed out that none of this works with the 1.5 PSP firmware (which is what the US PSPs use).

    Well, Team Xecuter has some good progress news for you:

    "Our current work involves busting the firmware - the firmware dumper is already working and there has good progress been made in booting games and also homebrew on different firmware versions (v1.5 etc). We are giving support and advice to other underground teams as well as receiving help ourelves - its an excellent "group" effort wi

  • I bought a PSP recently... imported it from Japan to the UK. The only downer is that my game selection is not exactly huge. I'd love to get my hands on Hot Shots golf and Mercury, but places like Amazon.com won't ship to the UK.

    I personally think that Sony has screwed the UK games retailers pretty bad. I know that Game Ltd was counting on sales of the PSP to make up a significant portion of this years budget. Because of the silly Sony delay, when the PSP finally launches here, both people who don't have on

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