Playstation Emulators
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last twelve years, you recognise those four symbols. Sony sold over 100 million little grey Playstation boxes, and kick-started a huge revolution in the way the world wastes it's spare time. But the lifespan of a console is short, and the PSX is now obsolete. Read on to learn how you can breathe life into your dusty old Playstation games by using PSX emulator software on your PC.
The Playstation was an icon. All of a sudden consoles weren't toys for children, they were hip and sexy. I saw my first Playstation being demonstrated at a warehouse rave, and was bowled over by Wipeout running at full tilt on a video wall. PCs at the time didn't even come close. This thing was fast, it was affordable, and the games were stunning. Plus it had funky controllers. We were hooked.
So if you're like me and you occasionally bump into your old games down the back of a cupboard, then you probably also feel a pang of nostalgia for them. What you need is something that you can play them on (your old grey console having long since sold off for a handful of beans)
Luckily modern PCs are more than up for the job. With CPUs running at gigahertz speeds and dedicated graphics cards your regular desktop makes an old Playstation look like clockwork. Emulator software can completely mimic the innards of your old console, even allowing you to play the original discs in your PC's CD or DVD drive.
For the full experience you'll also want to get yourself a USB game pad. I like this one, because it's cheap and it looks like a real Playstation controller.
The Emulators
There are several emulators available for free. The most common are ePSXe, PSXeven, and pSX.
The core emulator will require plugins to deal with the specific hardware you have installed in your PC. Different graphics cards, for example, might require different graphics plugins. These are easily installed, simply being copied into the "plugins" folder of the emulator.
A slightly bigger issue is the requirement to have a Playstation BIOS. Technically, this BIOS is the property of Sony, which means that the only way you can legally own one is to own a Playstation and squeeze the BIOS out of it. Luckily it's not too hard to find copies out there on the internet. In fact, I happen to know a place where you can get the correct PAL (European) and NTSC (American) BIOS from. Of course, you're a badass lawbreaking mofo if you download it.
ePSXe
This is by far the most reliable of the emulators, although it also takes the most fiddling about to set up. You'll need to track down graphics and sound plugins before it will work, and I had to download a different CD plugin. However, after that it worked flawlessly, and recognised my gamepad no problems. After a little bit of setting up controls and GPU framerates I was playing Wipeout 2097, WarGames and FFVII just like the old days. If only I still had Parrapa the Rapper...
PSXeven
Comes with a full set of plugins, which might allow you to get cracking straight away, although I did have to install a plugin before it would talk to my gamepad.
The interface is slicker than ePSXe, but I found the emulator to be unstable and very picky about what games it would play.
pSX
Plugin-wise, this one came with all the bits, but performance was pretty patchy. The best thing it seemed to have going for it is that it emulates the fantastic Playstation startup sound. If you can get it to run properly that would be reason enough on its own to use it instead of the others. Playing a Playstation game without hearing that sound just feels wrong. Is it weird that that noise can still make the hair on the back of my neck stand up?
Bookmark this page with:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
Or e-mail it the old-fashioned way
Comments
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: ssi_showthread() in /home/sp0rk2/public_html/Archive/Issue5/stayingin_psx_emus.php on line 117