Basilisk II for the PSVita/PSTV properly released! – Play SimCity 2000 and other games with touch controls on the go!
The day has finally come, one of my favourite homebrew on the PSP, Basilisk II got properly released on the PSVita! This means that the game library on the Vita now got much larger since you can play computer (Mac) games on it!
What’s Basilisk II and why did it only get properly released now?
Basilisk II is a 68k Macintosh emulator that’s available on various platforms and systems such as the PSP, Windows, Linux and MacOS computers among others. With Basilisk II, you can run Mac OS (System) 7.0 – 8.1 on a 68000-series machine as Basilisk II emulates a Macintosh II or Quadra 900 with a 68020/30/40 processor.
The PSVita port was originally released by ‘
What are its features and how do I get it up and running?
The Vita’s port has the following features:
- Ability to use the touchscreen as a normal touchscreen. This means when you press on something, the cursor automatically gets moved there and a click is registered. No dragging on the screen is needed to change the cursor position, just point and click (well touch)! Pointing may still be done with the analogue stick. This may be a good homebrew to use with a stylus.
- Sound support.
- An elegant UI preferences editor.
- Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support
- Some other features and hopefully, more to be added soon! (hopefully, an on screen keyboard gets implemented but you could always use Key Caps (Mac OS’s On-screen keyboard) for text entry / A way to map keys to the front buttons would also be great!)
The files needed are a classic Macintosh ROM file (it can’t be legally obtained unless you have a classic Mac but that’s up to you) and a hard drive image containing a bootable version of Mac OS 7.0 – 8.1.
I personally recommend ramping up the Vita’s CPU to 444MHz (max frequency) and running System 7.5.3/5 for the best performance and application compatibility. Mac OS 8.1 does slow down the system quite a bit so you should avoid it (use
Appearance Manager with System 7.5.3/5 if you really want the Platinum UI)
Conclusion
I hope that you have fun playing late 80s and early/mid 90s games on your PSVita and games that only require the mouse (such as SimCity and SimEarth) work really well! This is the best way to experience computer games of that era on the go on the PSVita as the MS-DOS core of RetroArch is still in its infancy.
If you have any problems, report them to ‘meetpatty’ on GitHub in the Issues tab.
Basilisk II 0.3 for the Vita download: https://github.com/meetpatty/basiliskii-vita/releases/tag/v0.3
Setup guide for Windows (good place to start and copy the files to your Vita afterwards): http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/basilisk_ii_setup
Sweet! I need to play some Spin Doctor and Crystal Quest.
i cant figure out how to choose FILE under Volumes…… any tips?
figured it out! its cool!
How did you figure it out? I’m still trying to figure out how to tell it where to find the OS file
Ok, so I figured out that you have to make a ux0:/data/BasiliskII directory first. Now to figure out how to create a bootable and installable volume…
Alright, I created a virtual hard drive/volume by using the Basilisk GUI for PC, and I was able to copy it over to my Vita (where it reformatted it, but it’s usable). I installed system 7.5.3 and it actually boots to it now.
How do I install any games/applications on there?
Is it possible to Remap the Controls? For example:
DPad / LJoystick: Directional Buttons
Keyboard Letters or Numbers Mapped to the X, O, [], /\
Space or 1 Mapped to the Start/Select
Got a Game I have been wanting to try and run on Basilisk II on the Vita 😀 . Problem is, it came out in the Mid-Late 90s. Pong Kombat 3 😀
As for remapping controls, we have to pray that meetpatty will implement it.
Pong Kombat 3 should work as it requires a 68k Macintosh 🙂
Awesome! Thank you for answering that. Shame PK3 and Blood Pong never got continued. Also, only Demos can be found. I contacted the Devs of BP and PK3 to inquire if there would be a way to re-release it for later Systems/OS, but they did not keep a Archive of the Games. So if you find a Demo, that is as good as it will be unless you find a Unlock Code :'(
Well I got PK3 working, and I got the Keys mapped…….just 1 tiny problem: No Space Bar (Start) 🙁
Will implement as part of v0.4!
Age Of Empires II ?
Escape Velocity and Harry the handsome executive on the vita 🙂 awesome
Can you play Age of Empires with this?
Just an FYI for new users (or those who haven’t thought of it): Move the mouse to a blank area on the desktop and hit R+X then choose new folder. Then inside the hard drive go to System – Extensions and drag-drop anything to do with Open Transport, PPP, sharing and printers into the new folder on the desktop. This will save some room in RAM on your next boot and make it faster. Other things can be removed as well depending on what games you are wanting to run.
It sounds like there are no keyboard mappings whatsoever. Sadly, playing Escape Velocity would require directional arrows.
I’m going to have to give Civilization, Colonization, and Master of Orion a try on this.
The d-pad is mapped to the arrow keys.
Only works for firmware 3.60?
Anyone have luck getting the Android version working? SimCity 2000 on my IPS tablet please 🙂
When do we get GPU-acceleration for emulators?
The emulator runs VERY smooth if you change refresh rate to 60 Hz in the menu.
I got it to run Oxyd, Peroxyd, Oxyd Magnum, Oxyd Extra Dongleware Bolo and Sim City 2000. Sim City 2000 is a little slow but the other games run silky smooth! AMAZING!
Updated to 0.31
Vita buttons can now be mapped to mac input events.
Access menu using select key during emulation, Can be used to mount floppy/cdrom images and change button mapping.
Tried getting the Controls changed, but it still Functions the same no matter what I put in place in the Default Key Mapping.
I made a key mapping with many more keys:
https://github.com/rsn8887/basiliskii-vita-imap-files/releases
would be awesome if you could add support for uma0:// in addition to ux0://