PSVita and Grand Theft Auto fans rejoice because the day on which we have a GTA game running at native resolution on the PSVita is finally here! This means that TheFlow’s GTA native resolution patch is publicly released alongside a version of Adrenaline to support its resolution increasing techniques.

GTA Native Resolution Patch and Adrenaline 6.9 released!

Just a few days ago, TheFlow revealed more information about his efforts to get the PSP’s GTA games (Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories) to run at the PSVita’s native resolution which created a fair amount of hype around his work.

However, no ETA was given and the reason for this was probably because it wasn’t needed as TheFlow has already released his GTA Native Resolution to the public alongside an Adrenaline update to go along with it.

Before going forward and installing the native resolution patch (which many people are excited for), it’s important to note the following important bits of information about these two releases

• The GTA Native Resolution Patch works with both GTA Vice City Stories and GTA Liberty City Stories (PSP games) and it increases the games’ rendering resolution to 960×544 (the PSVita’s native resolution, with 4 times as much pixels as the PSP’s resolution)
  • Only version 3.0.0 (aka version 1.0.3) of the games is supported
• The colour depth has been changed from 32-bit to 16-bit so there may minimal dithering but this won’t greatly affect visual quality
  • This is because the PSP only has 2MB Video RAM which isn’t enough to maintain a 32-bit colour space when rendering at 4 times the pixels.
• Performance takes a bit of a hit as frame rates with this plugin are in the ~20 FPS range rather than the ~30 FPS range but this still leaves the games playable.
  • From my short playing experience, I noticed a bit of lag in Vice City Stories while driving but it’s nothing that greatly affects the gaming experience!
• IMPORTANT: You must upgrade to Adrenaline 6.9 before using this plugin!
• The plugin is available for FREE on GitHub and isn’t a Patreon supporter exclusive which means that everyone can download it!

How do I install this plugin?

Installing this plugin is pretty easy and can be done in a few simple steps:

• Firstly, you need to update Adrenaline to version 6.9 by grabbing the VPK from this link.
  • You can either replace the modules (found in ux0:/app/PSPEMUCFW/sce_module) or install the VPK (if you install the VPK, you need to provide the PSP’s FW 6.61 PBP to install the PSP’s FW again)
    

    The GTA Native Resolution Plugin for the Vita is pretty exciting but don’t forget to install Adrenaline 6.9 as it won’t work without it 😉

  • It comes without saying that you need a hacked PSVita/PSTV to use Adrenaline and this plugin
• Make sure the “Force high memory layout” option found in the Advanced->Advanced configuration section in the recovery menu is DISABLED (this isn’t enabled by default)
• Download the GTA Native Resolution patch from here
• Copy it (gta_native.prx) to ux0:/pspemu/seplugins via either USB or FTP (ux0 may be ur0 or uma0 depending on the memory stick location you’re using for Adrenaline)
• Add the following line “ms0:/seplugins/gta_native.prx 1” to the game.txt file in your SEPLUGINS folder.
• Enjoy playing the PSP GTA games on your PSVita at its native resolution!
  • You should also use GTA Remastered to get dual analogue stick support for the best playing experience

Conclusion

We can finally say that the PSVita has a quasi-native port of Grand Theft Auto thanks to efforts from the homebrew community as Rockstar decided to only do portable ports for iOS/Android which, in my opinion, provide an inferior gaming experience due to the lack of physical buttons on most smartphones/tablets.

In the future, more patches to increase the resolution of PSP games may be made but it must be noted that such patches are game-specific and require a great deal of work so don’t expect to be able to play all games at a higher resolution similar to what PPSSPP lets you do!

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TheFlow’s Patreon (for donating a few bucks as a token of appreciation for his excellent work): https://www.patreon.com/TheOfficialFloW

TheFlow’s Twitter (further updates about his work): https://twitter.com/theflow0

NOTE: In the course of writing this article, an updated version of the plugin (v0.2) was released which fixes an issue in which the savedata menu wasn’t being shown. Please update to that version if you’re using version 0.1 of the plugin