PSVita News: Rinnegatamante porting ReDream, a Dreamcast emulator, to the PlayStation Vita & TheFlow releases MiniVitaTV Beta 4 allowing one to use Vita’s buttons while a DS3/4 is connected!

In the PlayStation Vita scene, there are certain developers that make it a point to push the console’s boundaries and this time, Rinnegatamante is at it again by trying to port ReDream to the console! We’ll also be looking at the silent release of MiniVitaTV Beta 4 which can bring some interesting gaming opportunities on the Vita.

Rinnegatamante porting ReDream to the PlayStation Vita

While ReDream’s port to the Vita is still in early stages, Rinnegatamante and MasterFeizz are known to get work done fairly quickly so we may see Dreamcast emulation on the Vita and maybe even New 3DS in the foreseeable future!

For a considerable amount of time, it was though that a native Nintendo 64 emulator on the Vita was nothing more than a pipe dream but then, Rinnegatamante and MasterFeizz joined forces to bring a fully functional port of DaedalusX64 to both the Vita and New 3DS with a decent arsenal of games being playable.

With that emulator still receiving new updates including a recent performance boost in renderer code, Rinnegatamante seems to have embarked on yet another mission and that is to port the ReDream (or RetroDream) emulator to the PlayStation Vita. ReDream was chosen because like DaedalusX64, it prioritises performance over accuracy which allows lower-end devices to potentially attain playable performance in some titles.

As usual, updates have been shared via Twitter and a rough time line of what’s been going on is as follows:

• Yesterday, Rinnegatamante posted a screenshot of the RetroDream/ReDream core running on RetroArch 1.8.8 on the Vita which undoubtedly kindled the curiosity of many
• Later on, he stated that MasterFeizz is planning on writing an ARM dynarec for RetroDream as the latest build only comes with an x86 (PC) dynamic recompiler which is obviously not useful for the PlayStation Vita
  • Furthermore, Rinnegatamante also said that the goal is to make some Dreamcast games playable which indicates that there’s significant stuff in the pipeline for this project
• As things stand, Rinnegatamante said on the VitaNuova Discord that he wasn’t able to get any frame on screen even after letting the emulator run for around 20 minutes but obviously, work is still going on although there’s fear that ReDream’s interpreter may be broken which could be an issue till MasterFeizz writes an ARM dynarec

For the latest information on Dreamcast emulation on the Vita, you may follow Rinnegatamante’s Twitter and join the VitaNuova Discord channel! Obviously, no ETAs have been given so waiting patiently is the only way forward 😉 Rinnegatamante may be donated to via Patreon while MasterFeizz can be donated to through this link.

MiniVitaTV Beta 4 released with the ability to use physical buttons

Now, MiniVitaTV allows you to use physical buttons as well!

Moving over to a plugin by TheFlow, MiniVitaTV has just been updated to beta 4. For those in the dark about this plugin, it allows one to connect up to 4 DualShock 3 or DualShock 4 controllers to their PlayStation Vita which effectively turns it into a PlayStation TV since it allows one to play local multiplayer games. However, up till now, it was not possible to use the PSVita’s physical buttons while using the plugin which could’ve made navigating the console a little annoying.

With beta 4, this limitation has been removed thanks to work by cuevavirus thus allowing one to use DualShock controllers in conjunction with the Vita’s physical buttons. It is, however, not fully clear whether the physical buttons could be used as an extra controller in local multiplayer games which would be quite useful to those that only have one DualShock 3/4 controller lying around but would like some form of multiplayer.

You may get MiniVitaTV Beta 4 from TheFlow’s GitHub Repository and make sure to follow the instructions found here. TheFlow can be donated to via Patreon.

Conclusion

In other scenes, a clone of ‘Same Game’ or ‘Chain Shot’ has been released for the Nintendo Switch with the name Switch Shot.