Emulators on PSP - your experiences please.

[tmc]

Hi, Hope someone can help.

as i get older and my lifestyle changes i've found that portable gaming is the easiest way for me to get me gaming fix these days.

However, my heart lies with retro games from 8bit and 16bit era.

SO for xmas i've decided to get a portable that can handle emulation.
I've narrowed it down to a PSP and wondered if you could tell me your experiences with it as an emulation platform.

i.e.

Is it an easy process to downgrade from a 2.0 firmware to 1.5?

Are the emulators running at good speed/ compatibility?

Do they look any good on psp screen at their original ratio?

Any other info that might be of help?

many thanks for your thoughts.

ps. i don't mind not being able to play PSP games - just want thoughts on your general thoughts with the PSP as a portable emulation system.

[zektor]

Not sure about downgrading from 2.0 to 1.5 (never had to do it), but the emulation for most systems (TG16, NES, Genesis, SMS) was perfect pretty much on the initial emulator releases. I no longer have the PSP, but I can imagine the emulators are even better now. The aspect ratios were perfect too. Yeah, I would say that the PSP is probably the best portable emulation system I have ever seen... next to the GP32.

[tmc]

by the way - if i buy a psp in the uk now then what version firmware is likely to be installed on it? how can i tell when buying?

thanks.

[Satac]

Is it an easy process to downgrade from a 2.0 firmware to 1.5?

Are the emulators running at good speed/ compatibility?

Do they look any good on psp screen at their original ratio?

Any other info that might be of help?

The downgrading is easy. If you are able to place some files in the correct directory and follow some easy instructions, you'll have your 1.50 in 5 minutes.
The emulators are great, but there is one big problem: The PSP D-Pad sucks. Playing RPGs is ok, but you wont be able to beat action games or some of the harder plattformers.
If you only want to play retro games, you should take a look at the GP2X. It's the successor of the GP32 and it's designed for emus & homebrew. And its cheaper

[tmc]

thanks for reply.

yeah i'm looking at gp2x also, only thing is that it's only just come out and has no working emulators on it at the moment. I really wanted to be up and running on christmas day!

so whats the PSP d-pad like for your run of the mill games like sonic, mario, mario kart, r-type etc. is it really that unplayable?

[poloplayr]

i'm in your situation, tmc. living in great britain and looking for a psp or gp2x for emu use. really interested in the gp2x especially since it has tv-out...imagine the possiblities!!!

[tmc]

well i've looked about and it seems the psp d-pad is a bit of a bitch to hit diagnals on. apparently though the ceramic white one has raised it's d-pad a bit to make it easier to hit those diagnals. anyone confirm??

The GP2X tv-out dosn't really swing it for me as my xbox can play all the emulators i want on my tv anyway!

It does look to have promise though - just hope some playable emulators with decent speed come before christmas. also early reports show the battery life is terrible.

all in all i just don't know which way to go between these two!

[poloplayr]

what sort of battery life (can't believe it's only 2 AAs in it!) have you heard reported?

[davidbrit2]

well i've looked about and it seems the psp d-pad is a bit of a bitch to hit diagnals on. apparently though the ceramic white one has raised it's d-pad a bit to make it easier to hit those diagnals. anyone confirm??

I thought I remember hearing the white one comes with firmware newer than 2.0, i.e. you can't downgrade it. See if you can find more info about that before you go buying one.

I'm tempted to pop my PSP open and see if I can do something about the d-pad being so damned awful.

[s1lence]

Is it an easy process to downgrade from a 2.0 firmware to 1.5?

Yes, very easy though the screens that come up when you are doing it are a little bit strange.

Are the emulators running at good speed/ compatibility?

NES, Genesis both run very smooth. SNES does have a little bit of slow down in the more complex games, even after you set the PSP cpu speed at 333.

Do they look any good on psp screen at their original ratio?

Yes, they look just fine. Actually the colors are really bright.

Any other info that might be of help?

Yes, try to buy a used system that has the 1.5 firmware. Most new ones in stores are not 2.0 firmware so you can't downgrade them. Also alot of the newer games aren't going to work unless you have 2.0 or newer firmware and there isnt a good version cheater avalible yet. Good Luck

[pr8cjb]

by the way - if i buy a psp in the uk now then what version firmware is likely to be installed on it? how can i tell when buying?

thanks.

You won't get V1.50, that's for certain. I picked mine up at a local indy shop 2 days after release and it came with V1.52.

There was also a note inside that didn't say, but strongly hinted that to get your PSP to work "properly" you had to do an update using the supplied sampler UMD, which bumped you up to V2.00. Looks like Sony were trying to get all UK machines to 2.00 even back then, so that's what you'd probably get if you bought one now.