PSEmu Review 97.10.11 v0.01.26

Recently I have been very excited by the new developments in emulators. We are now seeing BETA/Test/evaluation versions of emulators which attempt to emulate the so-called 'Next Generation' consoles. Sega Saturn, N64 and Sony Playstation. PSEmu attempts to emulate the latter of the three. Why am I so excited? I want to be able to sell my PSX but still play the games.

When un-packed you are presented with 3 icons and 3 directories. The directories DOC, BIOS and PSXDEV hold PSEmu's documentation, the PSX BIOS which is requiered to run PSEmu and various bits of code. To run PSEmu you simply click on the provided icon. Incidently the three icons are PSE.exe (PSEmu), PSE.ico (The Icon) and PSE (The Icon (PSE.ico) representing PSE.exe!!).

The game requires a BIOS from a real PSX. This is available on the net but you have to own a Playstation to download it legally. Also you need a VESA 2 compliant video card. Or you can use UNIVBE (VESA 2 driver) BUT YOU NEED TO USE THIS COMMAND FOR IT TO WORK WITH PSEmu:-

UNIVBE OFF DX2

This turns off Direct X 2 Compatibility.

Then you get a screen with the authors name, e-mail address and web url. To 'play' a PSX game you insert it into you PC's CD-ROM and press F1. The screen goes black and away you go. I say 'play' as I am yet to see a game load and be able to play the main game. I have got screen shots of some games working. Worms for example works but I don't know how playable it is. Also I have a shot of Cool Boarders working up to the UEP Systems logo. If you look at my compatibility table you will see I got this far. But this guy has got a clearer and different colour screen?? I think he has a different BIOS to me?

Whilst testing I noticed some things. For example, if a game tries to load the SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) logo, it would not complete it and then stay on this and lock up the PC. About 8 or 9 games did this.

The most promising games were NBA Jam T.E., Cool Boarders and Actua Soccer. NBA Jam T.E. went through 4 or 5 screens with info about the game and publisher logos, then it comes up with a 3D logo of NBA Jam and asks you to press start. Start is mapped to 1 on the keyboard. This I pressed and it started to load a game. I can go into the options etc... But when trying to start a game - Nothing. Cool Boarders as I have already said gets to the UEP Systems logo then stops. Actua Soccer gets to the language select screen (English or French). No matter what I press nothing happens.

I would like to say a big WELL DONE to Marcin Dudar (Duddie) for undertaking this MAMMOTH task!! I thought emulating an Amiga was a difficult task for Bernd Schmidt, but lets hope Marcin can achieve his task. Keep up the good work!! As you can see from the list, one thing is sure. I wont be selling my Playstation just yet!!

Here is the list:-

Game

Publisher

Development Team

Crash*

Nothing**

Gave up***

SCE****

Details

Actua Soccer

Gremlin

In-house

X

Language select screen came up but nothing happened after that.

Air Combat

Namco

In-house

X

Nothing

Alien Trilogy

Akklaim

Probe

X

Nothing

Cool Boarders

SCE

UEP Systems

X

Piracy screen, SCEE presents then UEP Systems logo. Stopped.

Destruction Derby

Psygnosis

Reflections

X

Destruction Derby 2

Psygnosis

Reflections

X

Piracy- Stopped

Demo 1

Sony

Sony

X

Piracy- Crash

Demo Discs

Official UK PSX Mag.

Sony

X

Piracy- Crash

FIFA 96

X

X

Nothing

FIFA 97

X

X

Nothing

Mortal Kombat 3

Williams

Midway

X

NBA Jam T.E.

Akklaim

Midway

X

The furthest I have got. It asks me to press start and then locks up.

NHL Face Off

SCE

In-house

X

Nothing

Porsche Challenge

SCE

In-house

X

Nothing

Ridge Racer

Namco

In-house

X

Ridge Racer Revolution

Namco

In-house

X

Piracy - gave up

Sim City 2000

Maxis

In-house

Brought up the debugger??

Star Wars - Rebel Assault II

Virgin

Lucas Arts

X

Nothing

Tekken 2

Namco

In-house

X

Piracy - Crash

Theme park

EA

Bullfrog

X

X

Total NBA 96

SCE

In-house

X

Twisted Metal

SCE

In-house

X

V-Rally

Ocean

Infogrames

X

Nothing

WipEout 2097

Psygnosis

In-house

X

WipEout 2097 started with a funny triangle type shape. Then I gave up.

Key:

* The computer crashed to a blue screen
** Nothing occurred at all i.e. Black screen
*** Gave up after 5-10 min of waiting
**** The SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) screen was attempted to be drawn and it seemed all games stopped after this point.
Piracy - When a PSX game loads it has this note about Piracy etc.... Some games didn't even get to this point.