Do These Emulators Exsist...

[o2byzst]

Atari 2600?
Gameboy Advance?
N64?
Sega Saturn?

All of these should be able to run on the PSP, with it's technology that is, but I've seen no talk of any of these emulators. I did hear talk of a Gameboy emulator but I didn't see if it related to the GBA.

Any news?

[shizzle]

gba is the only one of those that is available, although sadly it was never devloped enough to be playable

[PSP_Newbie]

well, with its technology its capable of running almost any system, the real problem is coding it, the newer systems would be very, very, VERY difficult to code to run at a playable speed from what i hear, as for a gba, it looked promising at first, but there havent been any updates for several weeks now and i fear there's a possibility it might have been abandoned for now, or maybe temporarily at least

[o2byzst]

That's kind of weak if you think about it. I mean the GBA would seem to be quite an easy emulator to create since it is very similar in design to the Snes. If you look at the lineup of games available for the system almost half of them are simple ports from old SNES games. Not to mention the new series they have of old NES titles emulated on the GBA itself.

Is the VBA the only emulator around for the GBA on the PSP? Atari too seems kinda funny not to have an emulator for since it would seem to be the most simple to create. It would take very little of the systems power - in fact it would probably be able to run on less than 222mhz.

Oh well, really though, is the VBA emulator the only GBA emulator for the PSP?

[quzar]

That's kind of weak if you think about it. I mean the GBA would seem to be quite an easy emulator to create since it is very similar in design to the Snes. If you look at the lineup of games available for the system almost half of them are simple ports from old SNES games. Not to mention the new series they have of old NES titles emulated on the GBA itself.

Yea, it has nothing to do with the fact that NINTENDO MADE THE GAMES TO BEGIN WITH. The hardware is in absolutely no way similar, nintendo simply has access to actual source codes so they can simply port the games with ease to the gba, and have most likely created an easy setup to do so.

[o2byzst]

Okay, Quzar point taken. I agree that since Nintendo made the games then it would be much easier to port them over. However, since we've been able to emulate old SNES, NES & even Genesis titles on the PSP it should'nt be that hard to create some type of emulation to do it. Although, if we go by your line of reasoning (and it's a good one) we should be able to at the very least emulate old PS1 titles to run on the PSP.

Then again, coders are focusing more on perfecting the other Emulators (NES, SNES, Genesis) than to put attention over to creating other emulators. They've got plenty of time since the PSP doesn't really have anything major to offer, game wise that is. Later this year, September I think, Medievil Resurrection is being released. Resurrection is basically a port of the old Medievil from the PS1 with some fancy new graphics and a couple new addins. Then you've got Burnout legends, a scaled down version of the regular burnout games - kinda like combining Burnout 3 with Burnout Takedown.

It seems like someone should be reverse engineering some of these types of things to give us a good starting point to work with. Just my point view anyhow. I would still like to see a quality GBA emulator though.

[Herbster]

Atari 2600?
Will come.

Gameboy Advance?
Will come but I wouldn't expect it to run better than the snes emulators.

N64?
Will struggle. Existing emulators running on the PC do perform a lot better when set to a low resolution so this will help with speed on a psp.

Sega Saturn?
No chance. Top of the range PCs struggle with the existing emulators due to the multiple processors used in the original console.

[parabolee]

Atari 2600 - This will be easy, expect one within the next 2 months.

Gameboy Advance - They'll get it running at decent speeds eventually. if it runs as good as the snes 9xy27 emu then it'll be awesome.

N64 - Doubt anyone will bother as it would be very hard, look at the xbox N64 Emu's, they still arn't very good. A lot of games don't work and many are buggy. And that has 3 different EMU's that have been combined.

Sega Saturn - This will never happen, far too complex architecture. :(

[nexis2600]

That's kind of weak if you think about it. I mean the GBA would seem to be quite an easy emulator to create since it is very similar in design to the Snes. If you look at the lineup of games available for the system almost half of them are simple ports from old SNES games. Not to mention the new series they have of old NES titles emulated on the GBA itself.

Is the VBA the only emulator around for the GBA on the PSP? Atari too seems kinda funny not to have an emulator for since it would seem to be the most simple to create. It would take very little of the systems power - in fact it would probably be able to run on less than 222mhz.

Oh well, really though, is the VBA emulator the only GBA emulator for the PSP?

Very wrong. The GBA is many times more powerful then the snes. You have to remember the gba is a 32bit arm7 processor at 17Mhz. The snes was only a 16bit 65816 processor at at 3.58 Mhz.

The problem with all emulators right now is we are porting pc emulators that have much higher specs, So less is optimised. As well VBA is one of the few gba emulators where accuracy is more important then speed. With a lot of solid work the speed can be increased or better yet if a real gba emulator was writen from scrach using the psp's gpu to accelerate the 2d rendering, you could see an emulator running at much better speed.

[JIMMYJOE]

that really sucks that its impossible to make a good saturn emulator :(
I would love to be able to play the original guardian heroes, panzer saga, shining force III, shinning the holy ark and dragon force on my pretty little handheld PSP.....sigh :(

[quzar]

Okay, Quzar point taken. I agree that since Nintendo made the games then it would be much easier to port them over. However, since we've been able to emulate old SNES, NES & even Genesis titles on the PSP it should'nt be that hard to create some type of emulation to do it. Although, if we go by your line of reasoning (and it's a good one) we should be able to at the very least emulate old PS1 titles to run on the PSP.

Then again, coders are focusing more on perfecting the other Emulators (NES, SNES, Genesis) than to put attention over to creating other emulators. They've got plenty of time since the PSP doesn't really have anything major to offer, game wise that is. Later this year, September I think, Medievil Resurrection is being released. Resurrection is basically a port of the old Medievil from the PS1 with some fancy new graphics and a couple new addins. Then you've got Burnout legends, a scaled down version of the regular burnout games - kinda like combining Burnout 3 with Burnout Takedown.

It seems like someone should be reverse engineering some of these types of things to give us a good starting point to work with. Just my point view anyhow. I would still like to see a quality GBA emulator though.

You miss my point. Porting code has nothing to do at all with emulation. Emulation requires many times the speed whereas porting require, well, only exactly the same speed, and in many cases, less speed because you can modify it to take advantage of whatever particular hardware you are using.

[quzar]

The problem with all emulators right now is we are porting pc emulators that have much higher specs, So less is optimised. As well VBA is one of the few gba emulators where accuracy is more important then speed. With a lot of solid work the speed can be increased or better yet if a real gba emulator was writen from scrach using the psp's gpu to accelerate the 2d rendering, you could see an emulator running at much better speed.

One of the main issues with emulator porting that I seem to have found over time is that usually the fast emulators are not open source, and the accurate ones are. It seems to reflect 100% on the nature of the four things, but it simply leaves a more complete emulator from which to optimize. (the exception to the observation is of course the emulators which are fast because the author dropped them before being able to become that accurate, such as NeoCD).

[Bus1nessboy]

How can a sega saturn emulator be so impossible to make if people have been able to get even a playstation emulator running (at 4-5fps at the moment, but still running none the less) on PSP.

You would think that the newer systems would be even more impossible to run but the saturn (A very old system) is impossible that just does'nt make any sense to me.

By the way if you have'nt heard about the ps1 emulator just check pspupdates.com it is brand new news(as of july 14), you can't download it yet but hopefully soon.

[Cross]

that really sucks that its impossible to make a good saturn emulator :(
I would love to be able to play the original guardian heroes, panzer saga, shining force III, shinning the holy ark and dragon force on my pretty little handheld PSP.....sigh :(

Theres not even a very good Saturn EMU for Computer which I would have been happy with even... I hate my Saturns internal Battery....seems evrytime I boot it up the battery I just replaced has died....but then I am not sure of the time in between bootups...lol months :p many months

[quzar]

How can a sega saturn emulator be so impossible to make if people have been able to get even a playstation emulator running (at 4-5fps at the moment, but still running none the less) on PSP.

You would think that the newer systems would be even more impossible to run but the saturn (A very old system) is impossible that just does'nt make any sense to me.

By the way if you have'nt heard about the ps1 emulator just check pspupdates.com it is brand new news(as of july 14), you can't download it yet but hopefully soon.

um... the saturn is many times more powerful than the playstation, especially in terms of power required to emulate. Currently the best (open source) saturn emulator barely runs on 2ghz machines and can't play all to many games.

[xuphorz]

N64 - look at the xbox N64 Emu's, they still arn't very good. A lot of games don't work and many are buggy.

i have surreal64 xbox, and it works just fine. no games have anything which causes them to be unplayable

but the psp only has a 4MB video card, and a very low amout of RAM, so i doubt any N64 game will ever even be playable on psp :(

[parabolee]

It's probably not impossible to get a saturn emu running, but the architecture was very complex and VERY hard to get a decent speed in emulation, like the above posters say even high end PC's can't run any Saturn games at decent speeds.

Don't be fooled by the PS1's superior looking games, the Saturn was a complex machine which had two large side effects -

1. It was hard for developers to create games for it.

2. Emulation of the machine is hard as hell.

Both suck hard for us, it was one of Sega's biggest mistakes mainly because they threw the 3d acceleration chips in at the last moment.

[parabolee]

Really? last time I tried I still couldn't get - Rouge Squadron or Shadows of the Empire to play at all on Sureal. Sure Goldeneye and Perfect Dark run but it's hard to play with the wierd control setup.

Only game I found playable (that I wanted to play) was Mario 64.

[nexis2600]

Saturn is harder to emulate because its not very well documented for emulation. As well due to the setup of the system's cores it makes it very difficult to reverse enginere.

Ps1 is much easier since its well documented and emulated. It used a very common mips core as well was much more commonly used comercialy so more developers out there knew the systems in and outs.



um... the saturn is many times more powerful than the playstation, especially in terms of power required to emulate. Currently the best (open source) saturn emulator barely runs on 2ghz machines and can't play all to many games.

I have to disagree on that. The saturn was not more powerful. It was a bit better at 2D then ps1 but the saturn's 3d chip was thrown in almost at the last min which broke a lot of the system.

[quzar]

i hate it when people say that. There is 0% evidence that the saturn's 3d chip was 'thrown in'.

And there is a great amount of documentation for each chip in the saturn, moreso that many systems, the problem is that many of the popular games used very different methods to do things, causing problems. It was overall just a very complex deal, both hardware and software.

also, i didn't mean that in performance or appearance it was many times more powerful, just that it was more powerful in those two, then many times more powerful in terms of ability to be emulated.

[Kaiser]

The point is we will not be playing Saturn games on our PSP end of story. As for PS1 and N64 the future looks bright. However I'm gonna wait until the Snes and Genesis emulators are perfected before I even look at the newer systems emulators. Until that day comes I'll sit here and wait for a Sega Genesis/CD/32x emulator.

[ashley_90]

I've got an idea! Hopw about we all go out and buy a PSP game and have excellent graphics!

....Nah, lets carry on emulating. ;P

[Cap'n 1time]

I've got an idea! Hopw about we all go out and buy a PSP game and have excellent graphics!

....Nah, lets carry on emulating. ;P

good thinking. games with good gameplay will always dominate games with good graphics... graphics are a gimmick

[xuphorz]

good thinking. games with good gameplay will always dominate games with good graphics... graphics are a gimmick

anyone, beside me, ever heard of
Warios's Woods, or Troddlers for SNES?
in my opinion, they have the worst graphics on SNES, but they are by far the best games in my opinion

(note: don't even try Troddlers on the psp snes emulator)

[Kaiser]

Graphics are a gimmick for sure. but as long as there's the people willing to buy first before looking into the game they will continue to sell.


(PSP game library is currently crap with maybe the exception of Wipeout Pure. Long live emu!)

[o2byzst]

Rock on Kaiser! Emu is the only cure for the current lack of games that the PSP has. Besides, who doesn't want to have a portable, NES, GB/GBC, SNES & Genesis all in one.

Emu Must Survive!!

[quzar]

This topic can go nowhere but flaming if the current discussion continues. This is an emulation site, so saying that games are the end all is ridiculous, it's like going to a mac site and telling them, "why are you doing that? use a pc instead".

Let's get back on track people.

[JIMMYJOE]

Well for all you coders out their, and I'm sure i speak for plenty of others as well....PLEASE.. PRETTY PLEASE... WITH SUGAR ON TOP... DONT GIVE UP ON TRYING TO MAKE A PLAYABLE SATURN EMULATOR!!!!...thanks...sorry for that outburst... :D

[gimpyjr]

Isn't it funny that the saturn had multiple cores, and it was hard to program for, and now we have the xbox 360 with it's multipe cores.

I hope it's not another sega saturn.

LOL :-)

[gimpyjr]

it's like going to a mac site and telling them, "why are you doing that? use a pc instead".


if only someone would tell them that

:-)