Recent Emulation News: PlayStation Classic makes use of open-source PS1 emulator and is pretty lacking feature-wise with ONLY ONE SAVESTATE SLOT, SNES9x 1.57 released and Bottlenose emulator front-end just dropped
Recently, the emulation scene seems to have slowed down a bit but this week, there’s been some interesting stuff to check out. One of these is the revelation that Sony’s PlayStation Classic makes use of an open-source emulator and gives a no-frills experience and another is the release of a brand new emulator front-end!
A look at what we know about the PlayStation Classic
As previously mentioned on this website, Sony got on the retro bandwagon and decided to make a retro mini-console of its own. While it looks quite nice, its selection of games is, in my opinion, somewhat lacking and unfortunately, the bundled software/UI isn’t doing it any favours either.
According to Kotaku writer ‘Chris Kohler’, the PlayStation Classic’s software is pretty lacking and this observation is backed up by:
- The PlayStation Classic makes use of PCSX ReARMed to emulate PS1 games and not an emulator made by Sony themselves
- That being said, emulation is said to be accurate and performance is good. However, the usage of publicly available emulators in micro-consoles from tech giants does kind of hint at the fact that they didn’t put enough effort into it.
From the vibes of the Kotaku overview, the PlayStation Classic seems to be more or a less a quick cash grab that Sony didn’t put much effort into… (Look at that ugly selection screen :/)
- That being said, emulation is said to be accurate and performance is good. However, the usage of publicly available emulators in micro-consoles from tech giants does kind of hint at the fact that they didn’t put enough effort into it.
- There’s only one save state slot compared to the 4 on the NES/SNES Classic. Seriously, Sony?
- There are no screen borders or graphics options to customise.
- You can probably also forget about any upscaling capabilities
- The game selection screen looks pretty mediocre and doesn’t have any music or effects to go along with it.
On the bright side, the controllers make use of standard USB ports so this almost certainly means that you’ll be able to use PlayStation Classic controllers on your PC with no extra setting up needed! To read more about the PlayStation Classic’s software, check out Kotaku’s excellent overview of the PlayStation Classic experience.
Bottlenose emulator front-end and SNES9x 1.57 released
Bottlenose takes a different approach when it comes to selecting games and it looks pretty cool!
Emulator front-ends are nothing new and a couple, like RetroArch and OpenEmu, already exist. Now, another one with the name Bottlenose has been added to the mix which brings about some different design concepts. Quinton-Ashley’s Bottlenose aims to focus on box-art and makes use of images (game box fronts) as a means of game selection.
Through this, you get the feeling as if you’re browsing a physical game library which could be pretty nice if you have a lot of ROMs on your computer! To read more about Bottlenose and download it, check out this GitHub link.
SNES9x 1.57 comes with better Super FX emulation so you can play Star Fox and Yoshi’s Island with less issues!
On the other hand, SNES9x, a popular SNES emulator, was just updated to version 1.57. This update brings along:
- Emulation accuracy enhancements, including more accurate emulation of the SuperFX chip with fixes specific to Stunt Race FX and Yoshi’s Island. An issue with asteroid transparency in Star Fox has also been fixed
- DSP and PPU improvements.
- On Windows, SNES9x now saves window position when exited from the menu and the UI saw some improvements with improvements relating to the cheat dialogue box and custom ROM dialogue box.
- Substantial improvements to the libretro (RetroArch) port
- Many bug fixes including one that prevents a memory leak from occurring and save states variable saving
To get SNES9x 1.57, check out this link and get it for the platform of your choice
Conclusion
If you encounter any issues with the software above, report them in the Issues tab of the in-line GitHub links. Going back to the PlayStation Classic, remember that you can spend your money in a better way and you can always get a hacked PSTV instead which offers lots more functionality for less money 😉
“The PlayStation Classic makes use of PCSX ReARMed to emulate PS1 games and not an emulator made by Sony themselves”
I have to say that’s pretty disappointing, I would have loved to see what a proprietary ps1 emulator can do, not that what we have isn’t excellent already.
Not just that, but a giant like Sony using open-source code derived from their own 20 y/o code? That’s pretty weak.
You already saw what they can do. The PS2 and PS3 has PS1 emulation and it was, also, barebones even though it didn’t need to be, certainly not on the PS3. Sony sucks at emulation features.
The revelation that Sony could not even be bothered to program their own emulator is insane! Too rushed!
PSIO Master Race
I was actually fine with the PSX classic’s game list, and knew that no matter what was on there, people were going to complain about “missing games”.
My worry was substantiated, however, with how the thing would be emulated. Even I’m beginning to wonder whether this thing was outsourced. A Youtuber did make the comparison that the UI here isn’t as solid as any other previous Playstation product (even going as far as to bring up issues with irregular letter spacing and placement).
another piece of garbage
How about ps vita update
Sorry to say this but.. anybody who buys this piece of *** (and supports this consumer is stupid to buy anything we wave in their face ideology) instead of a hacked PSTV/Vita, Retropie, or prefers it over PC/Mobile Emulation etc.. is an idiot.
Thank you “lame brand owner”, you didn’t dissapointed me, because I wasn’t expecting great things from this try-on for getting on the “oldies memories” bandwagon.
That “lame brand owner” proves once again (as they did with the Vita), that they only care about their bank accounts and not about the customers.
And this, my friends, is precisely the “how-not-to-do-it” way.
Screw you sunny.
BTW. I love my Vita, but not thanks to sunny, but the scene devs.
No thnx, i’ll stick to my trusty PS TV with countless more features than a €99 PSX classic.