Thinking about buying PSP for emulation (questions)

[Ultimate warrior]

Call me impatient if you want. I just don't feel like waiting for the DS to come up with an excellent emulator of the SNES. So I have a few questions.... (Also price isn't an issue I have a $100 gift certificate to Best Buy)

1. Will the PSP play the following games with no graphics problems, no lag, and perfect sound/ gameplay?

SNES: Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV (hard and easytype), Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda LTTP (and Parallel Worlds hack), Sparkster, Illusion of Gaia, ANY Super Mario World hack (including really large ones like demo world the legend continues)

NES: Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3, Super mario 1, 2 (see question below), and 3 ( plus Mario Adventure hack), and other Super Mario Hacks.

Genesis: Sparkster, Rocket Knight Adventures, Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, megamix, and sonic 3 and knuckles.

2. Can any of the PSP emulators support Famicom ROMs? I have two and was wondering if this was possible.

3. Do I need to buy anything extra in order to emulate?

4. I think the answer to this question is no but can you download PC emu's for PSP?

5. How exactly do I download them and to where in my PSP?

6. I heard you need to buy a memory card or something like that in order to store stuff, is this true?

Links to the best PSP emulators for SNES, NES, and Genesis would be nice also. The only reason I want this is for the emulation bit. I just don't feel like waiting for the DS. Need an answer ASAP.

[JKKDARK]

1_ SNES, NES and Genesis emulation, if it's not perfect it's excellent. I don't think you will notice any problem.

4_ I think there's a beta from a Windows 95 emulator but it's useless actually.

6_ Yes, get a memory stick. 2GB or 4GB would be good.

[Ultimate warrior]

1_ SNES, NES and Genesis emulation, if it's not perfect it's excellent. I don't think you will notice any problem.

4_ I think there's a beta from a Windows 95 emulator but it's useless actually.

So you can use PC emu's?

6_ Yes, get a memory stick. 2GB or 4GB would be good.

I'm assuming you can buy the mem stick from Best Buy? Also, just to make absolutely sure, the PSP emulation is FAR BETTER then DS right? Anyone wanna answer my other questions please? Thank you for your time everyone!

[JKKDARK]

Yes, emulation on PSP is better than emulation on DS

And there are memory sticks available on Best Buy

[Ultimate warrior]

Probably going to get a few more opinions until I make my decision but thanks for your input!

EDIT: what's all this I'm hearing about versions, and firmware, and down grading? Can I not go out and buy a regular PSP and play the games? I'm reading something about certain batteries I need to use? Desperately need Famicom question answered.

[Wally]

FINALLY someone who uses the proper word instead of normal. (regular)

I'd get a PSP Slim, its most likely going to have more developer focus, there is a certain battery you need to use to downgrade the PSP, you have a few options

a) buy a Datel Tool which is quite expensive
b) get an fat battery from Best Buy and clip the pin (google)
c) get a fat battery and send it to me and i'll mod it to send it back to you.

[dangee]

Never saw any exact facts & figures, but I believe that the raw
processing power of the PSP is superior to the DS, and this has
attracted high quality homebrew/emulator developers to the platform.
Unless you get lucky, its likely you'll need to buy,beg or borrow a
"pandoras battery" system to convert your PSP to enable emulation. This
probably voids any warranty.
I wouldn't trade a f/w version 1.5 (homebrew enabled) phat PSP for a DS + 5 games.

[dwacc]

Probably going to get a few more opinions until I make my decision but thanks for your input!

EDIT: what's all this I'm hearing about versions, and firmware, and down grading? Can I not go out and buy a regular PSP and play the games? I'm reading something about certain batteries I need to use? Desperately need Famicom question answered.

Ok since I was just as confused as you 1 month ago, and since I'm waiting for my pizza, I'll give some general answers before someone else says "google."

- Firmware

Firmware is the thing that always runs at the bottom of your PSP. Sort of like the Operating System on your PC. Sony keeps updating the PSP FIrmware over WiFi to newer versions, adding new tools, functionality, and security measures to keep bad people from running bad things on the PSP.

The bad news is, the official firmware (OFW) won't let you play roms on it. Or at least not PSX roms, (I never actually tried loading emulators onto the OFW.) What to do?

- Downgrading

Sony lets you upgrade your OFW through WiFi. For various reasons, people want to downgrade, i.e. switch to older versions of the firmware. Sometimes you can do this by simply loading a "downgrader" app to your memorystick and running it. But each downgrader is custom written for each firmware version, and I'm pretty sure there's no downgrader for OFW 3.90 (the one you'll be getting on your brand spankin' new PSP.)



Worried yet? Good.



- Custom firmware

Ok so how is it the kids are playing flashy SNES games on their PSP these days? That's because some people decided to take the official firmware apart, tamper with it so you can do all your fun stuff, and release it as custom firmware (CFW).

A well known type of CFW, is the "M33"-series. Pretty much every version of the OFW, has an M33-copy you can use instead.

- About that battery, then...

So... how do you replace your OFW with CFW? Here's the short version. First you use a program to make a memory stick into what we call a "Magic Memory Stick" (MSM) which basically is a bootable stick with your firmware of choice on it.

Second you need the infamous Pandora's Battery. A normal battery, when inserted, boots straight to the firmware on your PSP. The Pandora's Battery ignores what's on your PSP and boots straight to your MSM, letting you run your CFW installer.

Getting a Pandora's battery is the tricky part. You can:

- Buy one on eBay
- Buy a CERTAIN TYPE of battery, pry it open and modify it.
- Find a friend who already has a PSP with CFW on it, and have him turn a CERTAIN TYPE of battery into a Pandora's Battery without the need to pry it open.

Not all types of batteries work. If you try this on the wrong type, it'll break.

- Getting emus/stuff onto your memory stick

Your PSP comes with a USB cable. Once you insert a memory stick in your PSP and hook the PSP up to the PC, it'll show up as a "Removable Drive" in windows, and you can cut/copy/paste whatever you want on there. The emulators go in the ms0:/PSP/GAME folder.

-

Well... I'm sure others could've explained it better, but this should give you an idea. Good luck on your quest. Me and my friend bought our PSPs before we even had any idea on how to run emulators on them. We ended up buying a battery and modifying it with a safety pin. It's the closest I've ever been to doing brain surgery.

To start off, you should do what we did: Read and learn about the PSP Homebrew universe. Go to http://psp-hacks.com and http://google.com to look for tutorials on "psp homebrew", "psp custom firmware" and "pandora's battery". Also try going to http://youtube.com - there're a lot of decent videos there if text doesn't do it for ya.

Pizza's here!

EDIT: Damn, too late...

[Ultimate warrior]

Sweet but whats the best CFW for me to use? Also, I'm guessing by what you are saying I can use PC emu's like ZSNES, FceULTRA and such on PSP? Or do I need PSP specific emu's? LINK'S PLZ!!!!!

EDIT: well, I just watched one of the videos and says something about corrupted icons. Does that have anything to do with emu's and ROM's? Also, I have a Sandisk micro SD card that came with a bigger card that says microSD/ Transflash Adapter. Will that work? This all sounds VERY complicated.

[SoulReaver911]

Dwacc, really nice post.

Ok, emulator talk down here.

Snes - Snes 9X TYL ME (it runs the best but some of games *cough*mode7*cough* won't run very well at all.)

Genesis - DGEN. Period. It's awesome and has little problems. Runs games great.

Nes - NesterJ. Pretty awesome. An almost perfect emulator. (I think, though I'm not sure, this emulator will play Famicom roms.)

As many of the links support, QJ is a great website for PSP homebrew downloading, and it's all free.