A look at PSVita wishlists after HENkaku’s 2nd year anniversary – Part I
Two years ago, the PSVita hacking scene was rocked to its core with the release of HENkaku. Many people wanted to see their own favourite homebrew running on the PSVita and so wishlists were created. In this article, we’ll be looking at what happened to the homebrew titles mentioned in wishlists posted on Wololo!
Introduction
Thanks to VHBB, most of the software mentioned here can be download directly on your PSVita/PSTV!
For the sake of not making this article extremely long, only 2 wishlists will be tackled in this part. In other articles, more of the wishlists featured on Wololo will be tackled! This includes 5 (one of which is a community edition) GekiHEN wishlists by Typhoon_Neon and one wishlist by myself.
If you don’t know what GekiHEN is, it was a PSVita/PSTV homebrew contest in which developers could write homebrew and have the chance of winning a monetary prize. This contest ran from September 2016 to March 2017 and it brought us some great stuff such as Vita Homebrew Browser, pfba, various fan-made Zelda game ports and UAE4ALL.
The following colour scheme will be used:
- Green – Software that got a working native port/release.
- Orange – Software that didn’t get a native port/release but that can still be played on the PSVita through Adrenaline or other means. It may also be applied to titles which saw a similar piece of software being ported to the Vita.
- Red – Software that didn’t get a native port and couldn’t be played through any of the currently available PSVita emulators
Part I of the GekiHEN wishlist
PSV VSH Menu allows you overclock your PSVita to get over FPS issues and do much more! It even works with legit games and those run via NoNpDrm.
This was the first HENkaku wishlist on this website and it featured some essential software that actually saw the light of day further on! Now, let’s look at the fate of the mentioned homebrew:
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Plugin Wrapper for Legit Games – Nowadays, plugins like OclockVita and PSV VSH Menu work just fine on legit games and games with encrypted EBOOTs run via NoNpDrm
- Exult for Vita – Unfortunately, Exult and none of the Ultima games with open-source ports ever got ported to the PSVita. However, you can enjoy ExultPSP on Adrenaline if you really want to play it!
- OpenTyrian – This one got ported quite quickly by Cpasjuste as the second GekiHEN entry!
- XBMC/Kodi – This didn’t see the light of day perhaps because of how difficult it is to implement. However, there is Vita Media Center if you wish to play videos on your PSVita without messing with QCMA!
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GemRB – GemRB never got ported to the PSVita/PSP so you’re stuck running Baldur’s Gate 2 and other games with this engine on your Android device or elsewhere.
Playing Prince of Persia on the PSVita!
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Prince of Persia – Like OpenTyrian, this one was ported quickly by Cpasjuste and was the third GekiHEN entry.
- However, you’re better off playing usineur’s superior SDLPoP port of the game! Make sure you get version 1.5.1 of the port tho!
Quite surprisingly, only one entry in this wishlist is currently not playable/usable in any way, shape or form on the Vita! Perhaps Typhoon_Neon had an insight in the future when he wrote this or he was really good at influencing developers with his articles 😉
Part II of the GekiHEN wishlist
Windows 95 on PSP via DosBox. You can even play Minesweeper! Unfortunately, the PSVita port didn’t see as much love.
The first wishlist did pretty well with around 90 comments to date so it was a no-brainer that Typhoon_Neon wrote yet another one to please the community. Without further ado, let’s look at what happened to this list:
- DosBox – Like Typhoon_Neon, DosBox is one of the first PSP homebrews that I messed around with. DosBox for the PSVita is available as a RetroArch core that allows for key mapping but is still in pretty rough shape. Sadly, performance is said not to be great but I have no idea if it performs better than the PSP port or not.
- Descent – No native PSVita port for this one but you can play the official PS1 port via Adrenaline right now!
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PCSX-R – We have Adrenaline and that allows you to run PSP/PS1 games via the PSVita’s native ePSP emulator. Quite interestingly, there was a RetroArch core of this before Adrenaline was released.
- That being said, there’s 0 reason to use PCSX-R today as the native PS1 emulator works much better!
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Bomberman – There is both an official PSP game called ‘Bomberman Legacy’ and a homebrew port by Rinnegatamante of a game called Dstroy which is a Bomberman-esque game. The latter even supports 4-way splitscreen multiplayer on the PSTV!
The split-screen mode in Dstroy works pretty well and it’s great if you have a PSTV. There are many different themed grids in which you can blow your friend/s up!
- T.O.M.E – If you want to play Troubles of Maj’Eyal, look elsewhere as there was never any talk of a port for this.
- XL Engine – This never got ported either but perhaps a port would be possible with Rinnegatamante’s VitaGL which brought us Half Life 1. That being said, some games, such as Star Wars: Dark Forces, which use this engine are available on the PS1 and as a result, can be played via Adrenaline.
Like the one above, the entries in this wishlist fared quite well with only 2 software titles not being available on the PSVita in any way!
Conclusion
Stay tuned for Part II of this wishlist throwback as it will be available shortly 🙂 If you want me to analyse other wishlists, simply leave a comment here or on Twitter!
i want to see an android or ios emulator to play mobile games on vita like hearthstone and etc.
there is no epub reader on vita, it is a must have app due to vitas large lcd.
and there is a way to port amazing ps2 games like shadow of colosus ,gta san andreas, devil may cry,black ,onimusha, resident evil 4, okami, ico, bully,…on vita
or maybe you could a mid to high-range android phone that could easily play android games.
And for ps2 games, the vita can’t emulate the ps2 hardware due to vita’s hardware limitations. Just get an effin ps2 and freemcboot the *** out of it, It’s much cheaper and you get to play ps2 games on the Playstation 2 console itself.
Port PS2 games? Yeah, sure. What else? Make it transform into an airplane?
Bookr reads epubs. https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-bookr-mod-vita-0-2-0.496911/
145
First of the east quasar
dang failed
totally 😀
PFBA no sfiii3 strike archives zip 10,20,30 etc .Now archives zip simm.1.0 , simm.2.0 yes
Psp FBA play zip archive 10,20,30
Cpajustes help
Sfiii 3 strike boss hack no simm.1.0 ,simm.2.0
Sfiii 3 strike boss hack yes 10,20,30
Sorry my inglish.
wonderful work by the scene. kudos!
The N64 emulator is still #1 on my wishlist, followed by Jedi Outcast Ave Academy!
A Dreamcast emulator would be a dream come true!
Maybe this would be the ideal time to hold a new psvita homebrew contest, which along with TheFlow’s new hack would surely revitalize the scene, incidentally promoting new creations or improving many of the already existing ones.
For me N#1 on wishlist are the much desired N64 emulator and a good native port of DOSbox with a proper interface for the vita. Also would like ports of other windows/DOS games and open source tools, a better web browser and better native emulators etc etc … maybe we can collectively fund the contest so that there are prizes in different categories.
I think the work of TheFlow has been something like an extra life for our psvitas … with this new hack and the abandonment by Sony perhaps the last but one that reopens the roads for the community. What do you think ??
If Kodi isn’t happening can we get Plex?
My wishlist for Vita all moved to the Switch. The Vita, when it came out, was ahead of cheap phones and gave top tier phones a run for their money in display and games. Now…none of that stands true. Still has decent controls but that’s about it.
For portable gaming I’d rather have the Switch Be All and End All for now. Much more powerful, much easier chipset to deal with, nice display, good controls with great expandibility… Yep. Switch scene is where it’s at now for portable.
I’d rather have a Vita emulator for phones at this point, really. I still have a special place in my jaded heart for the Vita, particularly for being the best portable for PS1, PSP and Vita games, but its homebrew scene is pretty much dead for any hopes and dreams.
No OpenMW for Vita is the definition of suffering.
Goodness, that was certainly a long-winded post about nothing.
Oh and the vita homebrew scene is definitely not dead. You may want to have a look.
what we need is a equivalent to Remotejoy. USB transfer to a big screen without picture loss and without lag and without the need for wireless streaming. Combined with a Joypad this would really rock and bring the function of the PSTV to the regular Vita.
The title should be “2nd Anniversary” only, “2nd year anniversary” is redundant.
still waiting on a good vita gba emulator
What we need is another competition, plenty of devs around, allot of new hackable vitas. It’s the perfect time for a last injection of life through homebrew!
Honestly I just want work done to make near perfect native SNES (inc. Super FX 1 and 2 games) and GBA retroarch cores. There is a lot of work there. N64 comes after those base systems. Without reliable GBA and SNES emulation the PS Vita doesn’t quite earn its place as a valid retro handheld. With it it becomes the best option.
Can’t believe you marked Dosbox in GREEN. I mean come on, it has been defiled by the filth of Retroarch. I know there are people who hate Retroarch a bit less than me, clearly we who know better must bestow much pity upon these fools! Anyway standalone + keyboard support is what the world needs. Performance wise there is some hope as Frangar has recently begun work on bringing some ARM optimisations to the core. Now if only somebody would free DB from the shackles of libretro/retroarch and implement a working keyboard and mouse/joystick button I would donate no less than 50 EU to the cause. Like, for real. BTW your comment section mostly does not work.
A decent gba/snes/n64 emulator
Well.. It’s not like Vita Media Center any better than normal video player, since ArkSource abandoned everything
https://www.reddit.com/r/vitahacks/comments/88ot6g/what_happened_to_arkanitearksource/
So, we basically don’t have any alternative to XMBC\KODI, except normal video player
For you here we are having one of the best platform http://fixwindows10connections.com which will help you to know about how do i fix connections to bluetooth audio devices and wireless displays in windows 10 as this feature is an upgraded feature and somehow you may face errors.