What can and cannot be emulated on psp.

Hi guys this is my first post,although I have been monitoring this forum for quite some time.It has been quite apparent that a high percentage of visitors to this site are reasonably new to emulation ''don't worry its okay to be a noob'' and I would like to be of some assistance as to what can and cannot be done on sony's little wonder box and hopefully prevent any flaming againt noobs.
I have been around the emulation scene since 98 and have emulated on most major platforms from an old 486dx66 through to xbox and psp.

when replying in this thread please beware of the following....

most emu's on the psp at this time are ports,meaning that the source code is freely available-no source code=no port

lets start with arcade emu ports.

cps1\2\3\neo geo. final burn is the only realistic chance at half decent emulation of these systems on the psp and even then I would not expect full speed cps2. however neo geo and cps1 should fare better.

system 16. The emu system 16 would run at over 300 frames per second on an old duron 850 so I think that it is safe to say that sega system 16 emulation is more than possible.Outrun here we come.

ultra 64. not to be confused with the n64 this platform was home to the killer instinct series and is currently emulated by the emu ultra on pc and xbox however the psp simply could not render this emu and its games without some serious frameskipping,rendering the games unplayable.

namco system 11\12\22 there are currently no open source emus for these systems and even if there was the psp would not be up to the task,just take a look at zinc by r belmont on pc,it needs beefy system requirements to run without sound on system 12,around 3.5ghz with sound.
So please dont ask''When Will Tekken be emulated'' because outside of a miracle the answer will always be a resounding no.sorry.

multi arcade. obviously mame has already been ported numerous times to the psp with varying degrees of success, however some people hsve been asking ''How come game ...x doesn't work''.
What people must understand is that even on a high spec pc a lot of games will not run at full speed.
an example would be cruis'n usa.On my pc,3ghz,512 ram,128 video.THe game can barely make it past 40 frames per second.Scud race by sega runs at 4 frames per second!
This is due to the fact that the authors of mame have one goal.To preserve and catalogue arcade hardware via emulation as close as possible.
Due to this mame uses no fancy video card effects and no high level emulation to run the games...just a hell of a lot of cpu load and a truckload of ram.
so to summarize..Yes you will see improvement on some games like maybe tmnt or the simpsons,But tekken or mortal kombat? In short...no.
Do not despair though as raine is another multi arcade emu with good speed and compatibility and fancy blitter effects that could pottentialy be ported to the psp quite well.hmmm horizontal mode on dodonpachi.
:ps. I have noticed that street fighter 1 needs an incredible amount of ram to run well on other formats through mame and I cannot imagine it ever being playable on the psp. sorry guys

laserdisc.. While I am sure daphne could be ported I just don't see the point in needing a two gig memory stick just for one rom. unless it could be ported to accept one of the psp video codecs.


Now onto the consoles.

nintendo 64. there is the possibility of ultrahle being ported as the cpu and graphic requirements are not that steep although compatibility will be limited to mario64, zelda, and few others. So it is possible as long as you dont expect perfect dark to run at any degree and are happy playing mario.

sony playstation. there is currently only one psx open source emu out there and that is pcsx which is far too slow to really consider porting to psp.
unless the bleem developers feel like getting back together and having a crack at it ,the idea of playing ff7 on psp will always be a delusion.

sega saturn. there is really no way that this will happen as the only good saturn emu on the pc is illegal and the only ones with source code are no where near good enough at this point.

sega dreamcast. this will not happen as the only working dreamcast emu chankast was ported to the xbox and then abandoned due to being too slow,so the idea of it being ported to the psp is laughable.

ps2\xbox\gc\ds. no way,no how,don't ask. simple

3do. freed0 the only 3d0 emu is not available in source code and needs a beefy system to run,so no

atari jauar.There are a couple of half decent jag emu's around with source code though once again the psp cpu would simply not be up to the taskof full speed emulation.

sega cd\32x gens is still the standard when it comes to genesis\sega cd and 32x emulation across the board and after a successful port to the xbox surely someone will take up the challenge,although full speed 32x emulation would be nigh on impossible on the psp sega cd should be at least half decent.

colecovision\intellivision. I can see no problems with full speed emulation being acheived on the psp of these retro consoles.

atari 5200\7800. as above

I have not included the consoles that have already been emulated on psp as you can see for yourself that most of them have already come a long way,the only real exception is the snes which will have problems emulating the custom chip games at full speed. ie starfox,mario rpg,sfalpha2.

now on to portables

gba. Ah everyones favourite. sorry guys but it looks very bleak.
I am sure I will be flamed for saying this but the gba through visual boy advance will never be playable on the psp..not even close.
The fact of the matter is that a psp does not have the cpu power to do the job. even on the pc you are still looking at 1ghz minimum on most games. Yes it is true that the xbox can emulate with vba the gba at a decent speed but remember that the xbox also has 64 megabytes of ram and all the page file access it could possibly need.Cpu power is of the most important need though and an intergrated r4000 mips chip is not up to the task.
sorry to rant and rave like that but these things had to be said.

virtual boy. currently the only really working vboy emu with source code is red dragon which I suppose could be ported with some degree of success but the controls may be quite tough to port.

wonderswan \neogeo pocket. both are currently emulated reasonably well and further developments may produce some near full speed results.fingers crossed.

So thats it I hope this helps somewhat and I would love to be proven wrong if somebody could do a vba or cps2 emu at full speed with no frameskipping on psp I just wont hold my breath.

please feel free too comment and ammend where needed as any feedback is greatly apprecciated.