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Homebrew Releases: Musou Stars English Patch, Pool [Of Doom!] ported to the Vita and ReiNX 2.4 with Switch FW 8.1.0 support

June 22, 2019, 10:11 am
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This week was full of Nintendo Switch news as FW 8.1.0 was released, its keys retrieved and fully hacked in just a few days. Now, things in that scene have mostly calmed down so in this article, we’ll be looking at two PSVita releases and an update to ReiNX which is one of the major CFWs available for the Switch.

PSVita Release: Musou Stars English Patch

For one reason or another, some games don’t make it outside Japan but Musou Stars (Warriors All-Stars) is a bit of a peculiar case since it got an English translation a few months after its initial release for the PS4 and PC but the PSVita port was left behind.

This game is a hack ‘n slash title developed by Omega Force, published by Koei Tecmo and is a cross-over based on the Warriors series of games. The game takes place in a kingdom that relies on a magical spring for its survival but after the king dies, the spring begins the wither and you have to find a way to save the spring and the kingdom. When it comes to characters, the game features 30 playable ones that come from a wide range of game series including Dead Or Alive, Nioh, Ninja Gaiden and more.

If Hack ‘n Slash games are your thing, then Musou Warriors on the Vita may be worth checking out since it’s now playable in English! (Source)

 

Back to the homebrew-related stuff, the English patch was initially released about 3 days by froid_san on Reddit in the form of rePatch files. As distributing the patched files themselves is illegal, a Windows patcher was released (also on Reddit) which is the legal way to go about installing patch.

Currently, the patch includes the most important things namely translations for text/images from the PC version although the game’s credits and title on the Vita’s save pop-up window are still in Japanese. Froid_san also notes that some text may appear squashed and dialogue windows have a word wrapping issue but from this video demonstrating the patch in action, it seems to work pretty well and the game is perfectly playable.

To grab and install the English patch for Musou Stars, check out this link and follow the instructions! Froid_san has also just released an English patch for The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince but there’s no installer for it yet so no links will be provided.

Pool Of Doom ported to the PSVita and ReiNX 2.4 released with FW 8.1.0 support

Pool and DOOM are an odd combination but Pool [of Doom!] is an oddly fun game. )

Do you like Pool and DOOM? Well, apparently YellowAfterLife does and he’s created a cross-over game featuring elements from both games called Pool [Of Doom!]. This game is a simple title written in GameMaker which can actually be a pretty fun way to pass a few minutes.

In Pool [of Doom!], you’re dropped into a pool table with a cue stick as a ‘weapon’ and billiard/pool balls as your enemies. However, rather than shooting them to bits in order to eliminate them, you have to push them into pool table holes to get rid of them and score points! Unfortunately, it doesn’t contain any sound but perhaps someone will add the DOOM soundtrack which will make it 100 times better 😉

The PSVita port was done by Tijesef who’s ported numerous GameMaker games to the console and from my short testing experience, it seems to work pretty well and maintains a pretty good framerate. Furthermore, the controls are nicely mapped so you’ll have no problem enjoying it.

To start banishing some pool balls into oblivion, check out this Reddit thread and grab the VPK.

If you don’t fancy Atmosphere or SX OS, you can now install ReiNX on FW 8.1.0

Continuing the week’s trend, another Switch CFW got updated to support the recently-released FW 8.1.0. This CFW is ReiNX which has been updated to version 2.4 whose sole feature is support for this firmware thanks to work by EliseZeroTwo.

To grab ReiNX 2.4, check out this link and report any issues to the Issues Tab.

 

Conclusion

If you want to check out more cool stuff about the Switch, make sure to check out XDA-Developer’s article testing a development build of Android on the Switch and describing what runs and how well it runs along with a lot of pictures. On the other hand, if you only have a Vita, tijesef’s version of the Wasteland Kings port may be of note as he claims that it performs better than the one that’s already out there.

Android on the Switch seems to be getting closer and if you want to see how it performs, check out XDA-Developer’s article above

The post Homebrew Releases: Musou Stars English Patch, Pool [Of Doom!] ported to the Vita and ReiNX 2.4 with Switch FW 8.1.0 support appeared first on Wololo.net.

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A look at the last sliver of hope for Nintendo 64, high-res PS1 and emulator shaders on the PSVita – The GXM Driver (GPU Acceleration) Bounty that’s gaining traction with over $500 raised and frangar is working on

July 8, 2019, 4:36 am
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Without a doubt, releases in the PSVita homebrew & hacking scene have slowed down drastically in the last few months especially after the release of TheFlow’s Trinity Exploit. However, there’s still a final sliver of hope for Nintendo 64 emulation which has been requested since native PSVita hacks became a thing with HENkaku!

A look at the GXM Driver bounty

2 weeks ago, on June 24th, kwyxz opened a feature request issue on RetroArch’s GitHub labelled “GXM driver for hardware acceleration on PS Vita” along with a bounty on BountySource. Fast forwarding to today, the bounty has risen up to $505, frangar has taken it on and some changes have been made to it.

GPU acceleration in emulators on the PSVita and Mupen64Plus’ ARMv7 JIT could lead to a Nintendo 64 emulator for the device

In layman’s terms, a GXM driver would allow GPU acceleration on RetroArch cores (emulators) running on hacked PlayStation Vita and PSTV devices. Through GPU acceleration, cores such as PCSX-ReARMed/Mupen64 can provide better 3D performance and cores for systems with predominantly 2D games can get enhancements such as shaders (Anti-Aliasing & more) and other post-processing effects.

Originally, the bounty/issue was more geared towards GPU acceleration in PS1/Nintendo 64 emulators with the aim of improving 3D performance in them. However, when frangar took it on, the bounty was split in two phases namely:

  1. GXM Drivers for RetroArch which would allow for a smoother UI, shader support and HW context available for cores
    • Both a native GXM and VitaGL driver may be included for this phase
  2. Work on implementing 3D support in cores like PCSX-ReARMed, Mupen64 and perhaps melonDS in the future
    • Frangar notes that phase 1 must be done before work on phase 2 can start.
    • Mupen64 (Nintendo 64 emulator) currently doesn’t have an ARMv7 dynarec so performance will still not be great. UPDATE: Mupen64Plus has an ARMv7 dynarec so there might be some hope there! Mupen64 (non plus) is not a RetroArch core.

As things stand right now, current bounty money has been devoted to the first phase but it is unclear whether the bounty will be considered finished when phase 1 is over and a new bounty is created for phase 2 OR if the bounty will be considered finished and paid out when both phases are done.

What will a GXM driver achieve in regards to emulation on the PSVita?

From what’s been discussed above, it seems that a GXM driver will achieve the following if/when both phases of the bounty are done:

  • A smoother RetroArch user interface which will reduce lag when navigating through UI elements such as large screenshot playlists (Phase 1)
  • Improvements to 2D emulation on emulators for consoles like the SNES/GBA with the ability to use shaders like Advanced AA, FX AA, CRT filters, DDT, resolution scaling filters and more (Phase 1)

    With a GXM driver, retro games can be played with shaders like Advanced AA on the PSVita! Currently, this can be done by using PSP emulators in Adrenaline then applying screen filters. (Source)

  • Better PS1 emulation in RetroArch which could allow resolution scaling to 2x or perhaps even higher in some games (Phase 2)
    • It is important to note that Adrenaline (ePSP hack) can already do very good PS1 emulation with screen filters thanks to the PSP hardware found in the PSVita
  • Improved SNES (including SuperFX) and Sega 32X emulation through GPU acceleration (probably Phase 2)
  • Potential Nintendo 64 emulation although Mupen64 doesn’t have an ARMv7 dyanrec (although there’s an ARMv8 dynarec for the Nintendo Switch; UPDATE: Mupen64Plus has an ARMv7 dynarec; Mupen64 (non plus) is not a RetroArch core) (Phase 2)
  • Maybe, the ability to play some less-demanding Nintendo DS games at 20-30FPS via melonDS (Phase 2)
  • Perhaps better performance in Sega Saturn emulation and a proof-of-concept Dreamcast emulation core (Reicast) but don’t expect much from these two

Conclusion

What’s discussed above is undoubtedly very appealing to the majority of Vita users as many people, myself included, who own a hacked console regularly emulate retro titles on it thanks to its physical buttons and pretty nice screen among other things. If you wish to contribute to the bounty, check out the link below and make sure you read BountySource’s FAQ before doing so.

GXM Driver Bounty: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/75980019-feature-request-gxm-driver-for-hardware-acceleration-on-ps-vita

BountySource’s FAQ (you should read it before contributing): https://github.com/bountysource/core/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

Disclaimer: Neither I or Wololo.net are affiliated with the bounty or BountySource. As a result, we bear no responsibility as to what happens to the bounty’s money. This article is simply here to bring attention to an exciting prospect.

Updates about Mupen64Plus and its dynarec thanks to m4xw.

The post A look at the last sliver of hope for Nintendo 64, high-res PS1 and emulator shaders on the PSVita – The GXM Driver (GPU Acceleration) Bounty that’s gaining traction with over $500 raised and frangar is working on appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita Release: USB Streaming plugin, udcd_uvc, updated to version 1.3; now lets you use system apps – You can finally use the Settings app when streaming!

July 14, 2019, 4:17 am
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Thanks to Xerpi‘s awesome work, you can stream your PSVita’s screen to a computer via USB giving you a similar experience to the Switch’s TV mode. However, Xerpi didn’t just stop supporting it when it worked well enough but kept on releasing updates to fix bits and pieces. Now, version 1.3 has been released with one major improvement!

What is this plugin?

Xerpi’s UDCD_UVC is a kernel plugin for hacked PlayStation Vita consoles that lets you stream your console’s screen to a computer over USB.

With udcd_uvc, you can start playing great PSVita titles like Persona 4 Golden in handheld mode then pick them up on PC when you’re at home!

This means that you can start playing a game in handheld mode (like you’d normally do on the PSVita) and then continue playing it on a bigger screen through this plugin when you’re around your computer.

As a result, this grants the PSVita a major feature of the Nintendo Switch without even requiring a dock although some individuals have built their own docks with a Raspberry Pi to have a more streamlined solution when connecting their PSVita to a TV.

When it comes to performance, the plugin works very well although there are some occasional frame drops so you won’t be getting a full 60FPS all the time. That being said, games are still perfectly playable when streaming with this plugin so you should certainly give it a go!

IMPORTANT NOTE: UDCD_UVC only streams video and not audio so you need to use a 3.5mm jack to jack adapter to get audio out of your PSVita.

What does version 1.3 bring along?

UDCD_UVC 1.3 released with support for opening system apps!

With udcd_uvc, you can now use applications like Settings and the Browser through the USB stream!

The latest update to the UDCD_UVC plugin brings the following to the table:

  • A fix, by u3sh*t, relating to System App detection which means that you can now run applications like Settings and the Browser while you’re streaming your PSVita’s screen over USB!
    • From some testing that I’ve done, I noticed that the Settings, Browser, Calendar and Photos apps have been fixed
  • Some minor improvements which can be found in the commit history including an improved debug console, better SET_INTERFACE and more

Without a doubt, it’s recommended you update to the latest version of this plugin by downloading it from its official link found below as it brings a pretty important improvement.

Conclusion

For a tutorial on how to set up UDCD_UVC, follow this link to get streaming fairly quickly. On the other hand, if you want to tinker with your PSVita, you can check out SilicaAndPina’s recently released CEX2REX homebrew that lets you turn your PSVita to a Testkit at your own risk as I haven’t tried it myself.

UDCD_UVC 1.3 Download Link: https://github.com/xerpi/vita-udcd-uvc/releases

UDCD_UVC’s Readme: https://github.com/xerpi/vita-udcd-uvc/blob/master/README.md

The post PSVita Release: USB Streaming plugin, udcd_uvc, updated to version 1.3; now lets you use system apps – You can finally use the Settings app when streaming! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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Amazon Prime Day, Day 2 – new and remaining gaming deals list

July 16, 2019, 2:13 am
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First of all I want to apologize to all of you who prefer to see hacking content on this blog. Two posts in a row of commercial stuff is not great, but I do feel this is one of the few days in the year where we get to snatch good gaming stuff for cheap, so bear with me.

Yesterday I posted a list of Amazon’s prime day deals, and although most of them remain true today, a lot of them already sold out, and we have found a few new ones going on. Also, it seems a few competitors are getting better deals on some items, and it might be worth checking them out too.

There’s a bit less than 24h remaining to get some good deals on games, below’s what we found for Prime Day, Day 2. Although remember that Amazon post new deals throughout the whole day on their deals page.

And as a reminder, you need to be a prime member to get those deals, and you still have time to get a prime free trial.

Playstation Plus

Playstation Plus 12 month is still $39.99 (33% off), on a deal that usually runs out pretty fast. Other retailers online are offering discounts at $49.99 but can’t seem to compete with this deal.

PS4 Pro

The best PS4 Pro Deal we’ve found on Prime Day is not necessarily on Amazon though. You can get a PS4 Pro for $319.99 on eBay (via a trusted seller). That’s a better choice if you only want the console.

PC Gaming

For all of you in the master race closet who secretly visit this console site:

Consoles/Hardware

Accessories

Amazon’s devices

This is non gaming stuff but Amazon are heavily discounting their own devices, and those are popular:

PS4 Games

Less than $10:

Nintendo Switch Games

Suddenly, Vita Deals, thousands of them!

Just one, actually.

Disclaimer: Wololo.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

The post Amazon Prime Day, Day 2 – new and remaining gaming deals list appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita News: Frangar making progress on RetroArch GPU Acceleration Bounty as a runtime shader compiler has been implemented – Bounty has now risen to $1067!

July 16, 2019, 5:10 am
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Following an article on the bounty for GPU acceleration in RetroArch and its cores on the PlayStation Vita, various individuals pledged some money to it in a last attempt to strengthen the Vita’s emulation capabilities. Now, the bounty’s value has increased by over $560 and Frangar has just made some significant progress that we’ll look at in this article!

What’s the bounty about? Why is it so important?

Initially, the bounty was mostly about getting 3D hardware acceleration in RetroArch cores namely for platforms such as the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 with improvements to 2D emulation, such as shader support, also being mentioned.

Thanks to Mupen64Plus’ ARMv7 dynarec and the work being done on getting GPU hardware acceleration on the emulators for the PSVita, a native Nintendo 64 emulator for the PSVita capable of running some games may be possible! (Source)

Later on, when Frangar took the feature request on, the bounty was split into two phases namely:

  1. GXM Drivers for RetroArch which would allow for a smoother UI, shader support and HW context available for cores
    • Both a native GXM and VitaGL driver may be included for this phase
  2. Work on implementing 3D support in cores like PCSX-ReARMed, Mupen64Plus and perhaps melonDS in the future
    • Frangar notes that phase 1 must be done before work on phase 2 can start.
    • Mupen64Plus, a Nintendo 64 emulator, has an ARMv7 dynarec which increases the chance that we’ll see a functional native Nintendo 64 emulator for the PSVita which could emulate some titles. Currently, DaedalusX64 can be used for N64 emulation via Adrenaline but only a handful of games work well enough to be enjoyable

Currently, there is still no word on whether the $1067 bounty will be granted after phase 1 is completed or after both phases are completed. Frangar believes that the best way forward is to create another bounty for the hardware accelerated cores (Phase 2) but there’s still no official word on that.

What about recent progress?

In the last 8 days, there’s been an uptick in interest in the bounty and the following developments have arisen:

  • Frangar is thinking about writing a GXM specific HW rendering driver for PCSX-ReARMed allowing for rendering of some PS1 games at higher resolutions for a better quality image

    Shaders in 2D emulators on the PSVita are closer than ever thanks to Frangar’s recent work! (Source)

  • A status update, published a short while ago, in which Frangar discuss the progress he’s already done. This includes:
    • Getting Runtime Shader Compilation to work which is instrumental in allowing cores, such as ones for the SNES/GBA, to make use of filters and shaders on the PSVita thus making games look better in some instances.
    • The Vita2D driver has been updated to the latest version
    • Scissoring support for the menu driver is being implemented. This is used for rendering the Ozone driver (Switch-esque UI) and menu widgets
    • A promise to take a look at the Ozone driver and menu widgets presumably after finishing the scissoring support mentioned above
    • Apparently, the final RetroArch driver will be based on Vita2D not GXM/VitaGL as was initially stated. An HW context for cores and shader pipelines will be implemented to it as well

The status update above demonstrates that a good chunk of phase 1 has already been finished indicating that some form of release to improve the RetroArch experience while allowing shaders to be used in cores may not be too far off.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in future updates as they happen, it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on the bounty’s Issue page on GitHub as that’s where Frangar is posting updates. Furthermore, if you wish to pledge some money to the bounty to encourage further development relating to emulation on the PSVita, check out the BountySource link below and read the FAQ!

GXM Driver Bounty: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/75980019-feature-request-gxm-driver-for-hardware-acceleration-on-ps-vita

BountySource’s FAQ (you should read it before contributing): https://github.com/bountysource/core/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

Disclaimer: Neither I or Wololo.net are affiliated with the bounty or BountySource. As a result, we bear no responsibility as to what happens to the bounty’s money.

The post PSVita News: Frangar making progress on RetroArch GPU Acceleration Bounty as a runtime shader compiler has been implemented – Bounty has now risen to $1067! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PlayStation 4 and PSVita Releases: PCSX-R port for the PS4 has been released allowing you to emulate PS1 games and ElevenMPV 2.1.0 released with many fixes!

July 18, 2019, 4:26 am
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Homebrew releases for the PlayStation 4 are far and few between but this time, we got something pretty cool which is a PlayStation 1 emulator thanks to Znullptr. Other than that, we’ll also be looking at an update to ElevenMPV which is the best way to enjoy music on the PSVita!

PS4 Release: PCSX-R port released for hacked PS4 consoles letting you play PS1 games!

In May, Znullptr (David Miller) was working on porting various emulators to the PlayStation 4 thus beefing up its homebrew lineup which makes hacking the console more appealing.

Thanks to this PCSX-R port, you can play many PS1 games on your PS4 but unfortunately, you can’t save until someone fixes it… (Image Source)

Among emulators that were being worked on, we find PCSX-R (PS1), Yabause (Saturn), Blast-Em (Genesis), Reicast (Dreamcast) and mGBA (GB/GBC/GBA). Unfortunately, he stopped working on these emulators earlier this month as he switched focus to developing a usermode virtualizer for the PlayStation 4 but PKGs for Yabuase, Reicast and mGBA eventually surfaced online.

Now, a PKG of PCSX-R for the PS4 has surfaced thanks to Markus95 which means that you can finally emulate PlayStation 1 games on a hacked PlayStation 4 without booting into Linux. However, the emulator isn’t 100% finished and has some bugs such as broken save functionality, cutscenes lagging and sound not functioning properly. Furthermore, you can only load a single ROM at a time so you have to rename the “game.bin” file that the emulator uses in order to play different games.

Instructions for using it are as follows:

  • Install PSX.pkg
  • Copy your ROM, which must be in BIN format, to a pendrive and name it “game.bin”
  • Copy memcard.mcr to data/pcsxr/ via FTP although this isn’t really needed as saving doesn’t work
  • Open the PCSX-R application from the PS4’s menu and enjoy!

To grab the emulator’s PKG, check out this link to Logic-Sunrise’s article about it and scroll to the bottom. A video of the emulator in action can be accessed here.

Thanks to Games And Consoles for providing an Italian translation of Logic-Sunrise’s article (original release article) was in French

PSVita Release: ElevenMPV 2.1.0 released with various fixes and access to all directories

If you have a PSVita, like listening to music, want to use a dedicated music playing app and don’t fancy using QCMA to use the stock music player then your best choice is Joel16’s ElevenMPV.

This CyanogenMod/LineageOS-inspired homebrew music player supports playing a whole variety of music formats (MP3/WAV/FLAC/OGG and more) from any directory in storage and also comes with a whole slew of features including metadata support, a shuffle function and more!

ElevenMPV is an indirect port of the CyanogenMod/LineageOS Eleven Music Player which is the main theme with Joel16’s work

Now, ElevenMPV 2.1.0 has been released and this brings along:

  • The ability to access any directory on the PSVita thus making it an unsafe homebrew
    • This means you need to have Unsafe Homebrew enabled in HENkaku Settings and VitaShell will warn you about it being unsafe before letting you install it; it poses no risk to your device’s well-being!
  • Lastdir.txt is removed after switching to another device to fix a bug that caused the homebrew to crash
  • Some UI fixes including a tidying up of the menu title in device settings and a fix to the cancel button of the settings menu not being used
  • Playing speed on down-sampled MP3 files has been fixed, dr_libs was updated to the latest version and decoder functions got a minor cleanup

To grab ElevenMPV 2.1.0, check out its GitHub release page to download the VPK. It’s currently not available on VitaDB (and VHBB by extension) but will soon be.

Conclusion

Other than noteworthy releases for the PS4 and PSVita, there’s also some news in the Nintendo Switch scene as Nintendo has quietly released a new model of the original Nintendo Switch with improved battery life. This brings its battery life up to 4.5-9 hours (5.5 hours playing Zelda BotW which is a somewhat demanding game) from 2.5-6.5 hours.

Models that come with better battery life have a serial number starting with XKW and are most likely Mariko units which contain a die-shrunken SoC. For more information on this, check out Extreme Tech’s detailed article about it!

The featured image was grabbed from this video demonstrating Crash Bandicoot running on a FW 5.05 PS4 on Hyndrid’s channel which also contains some other PS4 emulation videos.

The post PlayStation 4 and PSVita Releases: PCSX-R port for the PS4 has been released allowing you to emulate PS1 games and ElevenMPV 2.1.0 released with many fixes! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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3 Great PSVita Games You Should Really Play This Summer – The PSVita’s Game Library Isn’t As Bad As You May Think!

July 20, 2019, 5:07 am
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One of the main reasons why the PSVita failed in the West was the lack of worthy games for the systems. As a result, many of those who own a PSVita, myself included, resort to playing emulated games as the system shines in emulating most consoles up to the PSP. However, there are some great titles for the device and in this article, we’ll be looking at 3 that are surely worth playing!

1. God Of War Collection

Do you like Hack and Slash titles but never got around to playing the God Of War series? Or have you played the God Of War series but didn’t bother with the older games?

God Of War I and II are pretty good games which you should play if you like hack and slash titles (Image Source)

If so, God Of War Collection for the PlayStation Vita is surely the right title for you. This collection includes God Of War I and II, both of which are highly acclaimed PlayStation 2 games which received very high ratings in the 9-9.75/10 range when they were released in the mid-to-late 2000s.

Both games are fully intact although some controls, such as for switching to your secondary blade or to invoke the Rage Of The Titans/Gods, are mapped to the touchscreen as the PSVita doesn’t have L3/R3 buttons. When it comes to performance, they run pretty decently at around 30FPS although I personally found God Of War II to be a tad laggy in places but it’s nothing that renders the game unplayable. Furthermore, you can also increase the game’s resolution to 960×544 (from 720×408) with VitaGrafix although the performance will suffer quite a bit.

If you’ve already played both games and want more God Of War, the PSVita can also play God Of War Ghost Of Sparta and God Of War Chains Of Olympus through Adrenaline as they’re both PSP games.

2. Wipeout 2048

When it comes to racing games, the PSVita’s library is quite medicore with only one Need For Speed game (of which I’m not a huge fan), a badly-received Asphalt title and a few others. Thankfully, one of these few others is actually pretty good and that one is Wipeout 2048, a PSVita launch title.

There aren’t many racing games for the PSVita but at least you can play most of the WipeOut series on it! (Image Source)

Like other Wipeout games, you don’t race with cars but with anti-gravity ships on futuristic tracks. Similar to other racing games, this title has many pick-ups that can be collected while racing and they include boosts, shields and a variety of weapons so that you can spice things up while racing. Furthermore, the game also includes a large variety of ships you can choose from that are divided into separate classes which include speed, agility, fighters and prototypes; all of which handle quite differently and aren’t suitable for all tracks. When it comes to graphics, the game looks pretty nice and is probably somewhere between PS2 and PS3 quality.

After you’re done with this one, you can also pick up WipeOut Pure, WipeOut Pulse, WipeOut 3, WipeOut 2097 and the original WipeOut to play on your PSVita via Adrenaline. Now, you can’t say that the PSVita doesn’t have any good racing games available 😉

3. Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas

Unlike the other two titles, this one isn’t a console exclusive and it was released pretty late in the PSVita’s life landing on May 17, 2017. This title is an action-adventure game with RPG elements that was originally released in 2013 for iOS devices but was later ported to Android, Windows,PS4, XBOX One, macOS, PSVita and most recently the Nintendo Switch. In this game, your character is that of a young boy trying to find his lost father and defeat Oceanhorn.

Oceanhorn may not initially seem like your cup of tea but it’s a TLZ-like game with very nicely drawn graphics!

The game has you visiting a variety of islands that you travel to by a boat that you navigate yourself in order to complete your quest. On these islands, you’ll find numerous monsters you have to send to oblivion, a lot of treasure and many puzzles that you have to solve but they aren’t too difficult or tedious so playing through them should be a breeze. Furthermore, the game has nicely-drawn colourful graphics and a smooth framerate on most devices you play it on (it even runs well on an iPod Touch 4th generation from 2010) so the PSVita port plays without issue.

Finally, this game is also tiny compared to other PSVita titles coming at just 195MB so it might be a good title to play if your Vita’s memory card is filled up with other games!

Conclusion

It is true that the PSVita’s game library doesn’t contain a lot of appealing games for Western audiences but if one looks around and even ventures into Indie titles, there are quite a few games worth playing. Other than these 3 games, I’d also like to give a shout-out to Persona 4 Golden (an excellent RPG) and Killzone Mercenary (FPS game), both of which are games worth playing if you like their respective genre.

If you know some more PSVita games that are worth playing, make sure you leave a comment below below or on Twitter 🙂

The post 3 Great PSVita Games You Should Really Play This Summer – The PSVita’s Game Library Isn’t As Bad As You May Think! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita FW 3.71 released which fixes every bug in the Trinity Exploit Chain – St4rkDev hints at exploit for it!

July 24, 2019, 9:53 am
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Sony never cease to amaze us and this time, they’ve released yet another exploit-breaking firmware update for the PSVita. In this article, we’ll be looking at the recently released FW 3.71 and why you really shouldn’t update!

Sony releases FW 3.71 – What does it bring along?

Surprsingly enough, Sony has released a new PSVita firmware with version number 3.71. According to Sony’s changelog, this update has nothing significant in it except the fact that it “improves system performance” (like FW 3.70 and many other FWs before it).

TheFlow confirms that the Trinity Exploit Chain is fully patched so FW 3.71 is unhackable.. for now

However, there’s a bit of a hidden-yet-expected surprise bundled within and that is the fact that it fixes every bug found in TheFlow’s Trinity Exploit Chain which allowed for native PSVita hacks on FW 3.69/3.70 through a 3 stage exploit starting from the PSVita’s ePSP mode.

This update got released a whopping 2.5 months after TheFlow released his Trinity Exploit Chain on May 6, similar to how FW 3.69 was released around 2.5 months after TheFlow released H-Encore which is a hack for FW 3.65-3.68.

While the release of FW 3.71 makes the latest PSVita FW unhackable again, this situation might not last too long as St4rkDev tweeted out a video showing a PSVita running FW 3.71 being hacked with an exploit chain written by himself, davee and pomfpomfpomf3 (‘me’ in the video). From the video, it seems that the exploit chain is very similar (or the same) to the one demonstrated in February which was intended to show that FW 3.70 was already hacked although the hashtag below reads #2051 not #2050

 Will this update affect me? Should I update?

If your PSVita is already hacked, you won’t have much to worry about although make sure to turn off Automatic System Updates if you have PlayStation Plus.

The exploit by Team XYZ that was demonstrated in February seems to be alive and well on FW 3.71!

Thankfully, according to PSSDude’s comparison with FW 3.70, npdrm and module keys are the same from FW 3.70 which are in turn identical to those found in FW 3.69/3.68; this means that you’ll still be able to play games that require FW 3.71 with reF00D.

It’s not recommended under any circumstances to upgrade to FW 3.71 because as mentioned above, it fully patches TheFlow’s Trinity Exploit Chain. Futhermore, there’s no word on if/when the exploit mentioned above will be released so it could be a while before FW 3.71 is hackable.

On the other hand, if your PSVita is still on FW 3.70 and you haven’t hacked it yet, you can still access PSN to grab a PSP game by following these instructions shared by Reddit User BombBloke. For those on FW 3.69/3.70 that rely on the Trinity exploit, it’s highly recommended to downgrade to a lower firmware (FW 3.68 or below) that doesn’t need a PSP game (and thus PSN access) to be hacked via Modoru.

 

Conclusion

If you want to access PSN on your hacked PSVita, make sure you change your spoofed version in Settings->HENkaku Settings to FW 3.71 or else you won’t be able to connect to PSN on any currently hacked FW. It’s also important to note that if you have a FW 3.70 PSVita, get a move on and hack it before that firmware is fully barred from accessing PSN!

Full PasteBin Comparison between FW 3.71 and 3.70: http://pastebin.com/raw/HXDvHU7w

The post PSVita FW 3.71 released which fixes every bug in the Trinity Exploit Chain – St4rkDev hints at exploit for it! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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News: Android For The Nintendo Switch Coming Within 5 Days And Vita3K Seeing Good Progress With Persona 4 Golden To Show Graphics Soon!

July 25, 2019, 3:42 am
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Exciting times for the Nintendo Switch, and to a lesser extent PSVita emulation, are back with us again thanks to the devotion of their communities. This time with awesome news regarding the Switch’s Android port and some great progress in Vita3K!

Android For The Switch Coming In 5 Days!

Android for Nintendo’s latest console was originally in center stage during February of this year with Max Keller posting a video of a hacked Switch running a development build Android Q (10.0).

Android for the Switch is coming a few days so you’ll be able to use your Switch as a real tablet if you’d like! (Tweet)

This port was nowhere near finished and had some glaring issues such as no GPU acceleration but the community still got pretty hyped up about it. However, the port seemed to have hibernated for a few months until June came by when ByLaws (Billy Laws) rekindled interest in it when he got GPU acceleration working! Ever since then, there have been staggered tweets and Reddit threads about more progress being made but no ETA was given although November was mentioned in some places as a probable release timeframe.

 

Now, it seems that the ETA is closer than ever before as switchroot (a Switch open-source development group that includes folks who ported Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to console with L4T Ubuntu) published a tweet giving an ETA of 5 days yesterday. This means that in 4-5 days, you’ll finally be able to run LineageOS (ex-Cyanogen Mod) 15.1 on your Switch which is based on Android 8.1.

Android for the Switch will probably let you play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (and GTA III, LCS, VCS)! (Image Source)

According to its currently-locked XDA thread, the port is in the following stage:

  • The vast majority of the Nintendo Switch hardware including the GPU, Wi-Fi, Audio, Overclocking, Joycons and others work
  • Both Handheld and Docked Mode work
  • TWRP comes pre-installed so you’ll have an easier time managing your Android installation and installing GApps
  • A few things don’t work which include deep sleep (don’t expect awesome battery life), auto-rotation and the charging indicator (the device still charges).
  • There are a few minor issues like some apps not handling joycon inputs correctly and the touchscreen sometimes detecting touches when your finger is floating over the screen

When it gets released, you’ll be able to grab it from this XDA thread and make sure you follow installation instructions! Nvidia Tegra-only games are supported so you’ll be able to play Half-Life 2, Portal and Borderlands among many other titles on your Switch 😉

Vita3K seeing some good progress with Persona 4 Golden close to showing graphics!

In contrast to the Nintendo Switch, work on emulating the PlayStation Vita started years after the console was released and this was due to numerous difficulties such as the console only getting a full native hack in 2017 with HENkaku, a staggering 5 years after its release. That being said, progress is picking up and a few games are already In-Game to varying degrees.

Vita3K is seeing some decent progress so perhaps, in a few years, a sizeable chunk of the Vita’s game library will be playable! (Video)

A few hours ago, the folks behind Vita3K had something interesting to share with us and that is the fact that Persona 4 Golden is close to showing some graphics. This was achieved through significant progress in the shader translation part of the emulator which shows that some developers are indeed interested in making the PSVita fully emultable, like the PSP, one day.

Taking a look at its Compatibility list, things are slowly getting better with figures presently being:

  • 10 games are in the In-Game+ category and 1 game is In-Game- category
    • This means that you can get past the menus into the game but there are issues which render it unplayable
  • 9 games get to their Intro screen
  • 36 games are bootable but show nothing on screen
  • 118 games are unbootable

To be immediately informed on developments relating to emulating the PSVita, you should follow Vita3K’s Twitter account. You may also donate a few bucks through their Patreon

Conclusion

As the PSVita is a long way off from being fully emulatable, the only way to enjoy PSVita games right now is by getting a PSVita console. If you go down that route, make sure it’s running FW 3.68 or below (if it’s running FW 3.69/3.70, it’ll need to have a PSP game installed on it) since Sony’s newly released FW 3.71 makes the latest version of PSVita firmware unhackable! On the other hand, if you want some game ideas, check out this article which takes a look at 3 great ones 😉

The post News: Android For The Nintendo Switch Coming Within 5 Days And Vita3K Seeing Good Progress With Persona 4 Golden To Show Graphics Soon! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita News: Deltarune Chapter One Port Released, Yifan Lu publishes write-up on The First F00D Exploit and Xerpi posts PSVita Linux build instructions

July 29, 2019, 11:05 am
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Today is the third year anniversary of HENkaku’s release for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV. This fully-fledged native hack, the first of its kind for the device, spawned a very active homebrew scene that’s only been really slowing down in the last few months. That being said, there’s still stuff to talk about and we’ll be looking at a Deltarune port, Yifan’s Lu write-up on the first F00D exploit and Xerpi’s sharing of his Vita Linux build instructions!

Release: Deltarune Chapter One ported to the PSVita

It is only appropriate that the PSVita gets a birthday present for the 3rd year of having to endure HENkaku and this present is a port of Deltarune Chapter One.

Make sure you don’t waste too much time on creating the perfect character in Delatrune 😉

This massively popular and highly-rated Indie game is written in GameMaker Studio by Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale which was officially ported to the PSVita. Sadly, Deltarune didn’t find its way to the console but Tijesef, who’s ported numerous GameMaker games to the console thanks to Silica’s G*Maker, decided to rectify the situation and create a homebrew port instead!

If you’ve never heard of Delatrune before, it’s an RPG game in which you end up in an unknown place called the ‘Dark World’ where you and a classmate named Suzie are hereos that have to restore balance. This is done by defeating creatures and their bullet heck attacks either peacefully or through violence. From a short period of testing, I can confirm the PSVita port works pretty well and has good performance along with a nicely mapped control scheme. According to tijesef, there are only two minor issues with the port namely long waiting times when saving (around 5 seconds) and that you can’t remap controls

To get Deltarune Chapter One (which is free), check out Tijesef’s Reddit Thread about it and grab the VPK to install on your PSVita.

Other News: Yifan Lu publishes write up on The First F00D Exploit and Xerpi posts Vita Linux build instructions

For HENkaku’s 3 year anniversary, Yifan Lu has something in store as well although it isn’t in the form of some massive release but of an interesting write-up. This write-up, which was originally written in January 2019 was intended to be published when somebody found the same vulnerability in 0x50002 service that it discuses.

If you want some interesting reading material, then make sure to read Yifan Lu’s write up on the first F00D exploit!

Unfortunately, this didn’t happen even though there were various hints on the HENkaku Wiki that the service buggy probably due to lack of interest in hacking the obscure F00D processor. As usual with Yifan Lu’s blog posts, it’s pretty well written and the gist of it can be grasped by anyone with limited knowledge of computer security so if you’re into learning how vulnerabilities/exploit work, you should surely give it a read when you don’t have much on your hands! Yifan notes that the work in the article is from early 2017 and doesn’t open any new doors; the write-up was purely written for entertainment/learning purposes.

On the other hand, Xerpi has recently posted build instructions for generating a Linux kernel to boot with his PSVita Linux Loader software. Unfortunately, Vita Linux hasn’t seen much progress after the initial groundwork done in December of last year but Xerpi’s known for making the seemingly impossible possible, which was the case with udcd_uvc so work on Vita Linux might continue someday. The main purpose of these build instructions is probably to help more experienced developers to get working on improving the PSVita more quickly but aren’t very useful for regular users as a precompiled Linux kernel can already be downloaded. It’s important to note that Vita Linux doesn’t support the PSVita’s display so if you boot it, you’ll just see a black screen; output is currently available via UART0 which is a debug interface that requires soldering to use. Thanks for the heads-up on this @TheheroGAC

Conclusion

While the PSVita scene has slowed down significantly, the Nintendo Switch scene is still full of life especially with the recent release of an Android port. Users have reported that DraStic (Nintendo DS emulator for Android) works perfectly and games like PUBG are also working pretty well. Furthermore, L4T Lakka which is an emulation-focused Linux distro for the Switch received an update with many new cores (including Play!, a PS2 emulator) and some Quality Of Life Improvements!

If you’re not really interested in the Switch, there’s also other news relating to the PSVita with Rinnegatamante just releasing a Vita Nuova which is an updated version of VitaDB that has a bounty section and a Discord channel.

The post PSVita News: Deltarune Chapter One Port Released, Yifan Lu publishes write-up on The First F00D Exploit and Xerpi posts PSVita Linux build instructions appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita: udcd_uvc 1.4 released with the ability to turn off the PSVita’s Screen and a look at VitaNuova’s Bounties!

July 31, 2019, 3:08 pm
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In every homebrew community, there are numerous developers that give their own great contributions to the platform. However, some of these manage to do things that are seemingly impossible and xerpi’s one of these with his udcd_uvc plugin that he’s made even better by adding a very useful feature! We’ll also be looking at Rinnegatamante’s Vita Nuova which is a community for users/developers to work together on creating/funding bounties.

Release: UDCD_UVC Plugin updated to version 1.4

Udcd_uvc is a kernel plugin, by xerpi, that lets you stream your PSVita’s screen to a computer through a wired connection. In other words, this means that the plugin gives the PSVita a feature similar to the Nintendo Switch’s Docked Mode which is a major selling point of the console as you can start playing games on the go and continue them on a big screen at home.

The plugin works well enough so that you can even play time sensitive games like Project Diva with good results!

When it comes to performance, it’s pretty good as it can sustain a very playable framerate almost all the time although it may struggle with keeping up a 60 FPS stream so you’ll have to live with the occasional framedrop but it shouldn’t affect playability at all.

Now, this plugin has been updated to version 1.4 and this brings along a highly requested feature. The full list of changes includes:

  • The plugin now supports turning the screen off when the it is enabled and a USB cable is plugged into the console
    • This allows you to save some battery life while also making the experience a tad better if you’re using the PSVita as the controller
  • There are 3 separate versions now namely:
    • udcd_uvc.skprx – Doesn’t turn the screen off
    • udcd_uvc_oled_off.skprx – Turns the screen off on OLED (Phat) models
    • udcd_uvc_lcd_off.skprx – Turns the screen off on LCD (Slim) models

To grab this updated version of udcd_uvc and put your Vita’s screen to sleep when streaming, check out this link. You can also follow this tutorial to get streaming to your PC in a few minutes if you haven’t done it before!

News: Rinnegatamante launches Vita Nuova making it easier for bounties to materialise

Without a doubt, Rinnegatamante is one of the most active PSVita scene members, so much so that he even wrote his thesis about porting Quake III to the console!

Vita Nuova’s bounty tracker lets one easily create and publicise bounties so that the Vita could get a few more homebrew before it’s really lights out for it

2 days ago, he came up with yet another contribution to the scene and that’s the creation of Vita Nuova, a Vita community that focuses on bridging the gap between developers and end-users while also focusing on promoting bounties for the platform.

As of right now, Vita Nuova consists of a slightly updated VitaDB, a Discord server where users/developers can discuss things related to Vita development and a bounty tracker with a few bounties that Rinnegatamante himself started. The bounty tracker includes bounties for:

  • GPU acceleration in RetroArch for the Vita which has raised a staggering $1172
  • A Reicast port for the Vita which has raised $50 but is most likely just a pipedream.
  • A port of the GemRB engine which would allow you to play Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment on the Vita. This has raised a modest $30 at the moment
  • A VCMI port for the Vita that lets you play Heroes of Might and Magic III. This too has raised $30
  • A VitaGL-based port of Vita2D which would let all homebrew making use of Vita2D to also use Dear ImGUI and other VitaGL benefits. This raised $40

If you wish to start another bounty and add it to the bounty tracker, you can follow the steps found on the bounty tracker itself which more or less instruct you to create a bounty on BountySource and create an issue on the Vita Nuova bounties repo.

Conclusion

For more PSVita-related stuff, make sure to check out this article written on HENkaku 3rd anniversary which speaks about a Deltarune port and some cool stuff from Yifan Lu and xerpi. If you want something different, you may be interested in RPCS3’s recent progress with NieR Replicant and Gestalt which can now break the 30 FPS limit thanks to a patch by Whatcookie!

The post PSVita: udcd_uvc 1.4 released with the ability to turn off the PSVita’s Screen and a look at VitaNuova’s Bounties! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita & 3DS News: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Holomatch port for the Vita; TWiLight Menu++ 9.0 released with widescreen mode and Rocket Slime 3 gets an English Translation!

August 2, 2019, 2:33 am
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8th generation portable consoles had a good ride but now, their commercial & homebrew life is coming to a close. However, homebrew releases are still trickling out for the PlayStation Vita/Nintendo 3DS and in this article, we’ll be looking at 3 that got published in the last 2 days!

PSVita Release: vitaVoyager, a port of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force’s Holomatch mode, by Rinnegatamante

It’s no secret that the PlayStation Vita’s game library is pretty lacking in the FPS genre, but thanks to efforts from the homebrew scene, it managed to get quite a few great titles in the genre including DOOM I/II, Quake I-III, Counter Strike, Return To Castle Wolfenstein and many others.

vitaVoyager is yet another addition to the PSVita’s homebrew FPS lineup!

Now, Rinnegatamante has dropped yet another port for the console and that is vitaVoyager, a port of lilium-voyager which is an ioquake3 fork (the Vita has an ioquake3 port in the form of VitaQuake III) that’s compatible with Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force’s Holomatch mode which is its multiplayer mode. From its Wololo /talk thread, the following should be kept in mind when using it:

  • By default, the game runs at 480×272 (the PSP’s resolution) as opposed to the PSVita’s native 960×544 resolution
    • Obviously, this is done for performance reasons but you can increase the resolution if you wish at the cost of the game’s framerate
  • Both local and online multiplayer are supported.
    • Bots are supported as well so you can have a botmatch if you’re out and about without an internet connection but still want to play the game
  • There is a dynarec (dynamic recompiler) for QVMs which grants a 10/15FPS boost but this causes the game to crash when a match ends so it’s disabled by default

To grab vitaVoyager, check out its page on VitaDB and put your data files and efq3.key (CD Key) in ux0:data/voyager/baseEF. It must be noted that demo files are not supported so you must own the full game to play it!

You may donate to Rinnegatamante and give thanks for his efforts related to the PSVita by following this link to his Patreon page.

3DS Releases: TwiLight Menu++ Ultimate and Rocket Slime 3 English Translation

TwiLight Menu++ is a staple for hacked Nintendo 3DS consoles as it’s a piece of software that allows you to play dumped Nintendo DS/DSi/GBA games while also coming with a plethora of emulators including ones for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System and GameBoy (Colour).

Not a big fan of the black bars in DS games when playing them on a 3DS? Soon, you’ll be able to nuke them thanks to TwiLight Menu++’s widescreen mode! (Image Source)

Other than allowing you to play hundreds of games, it also comes with the DSi Menu for an authentic experience and supports every DS console from the first Nintendo DS to New Nintendo 2/3DS XL!

Now, it has been updated to version 9.0.0 which comes with one major feature and some other minor ones namely:

  • Widescreen (16:10) mode for Nintendo 2/3DS consoles which lets you play supported DS games in 16:10 mode on the upper screen!
    • This requires you to have Luma3DS installed and Sono’s 2nd (or later) release of TWLPatcher installed which isn’t available as of this article so you’ll have to wait a bit to use the feature
    • Currently, there are 89 supported games which include Mario Kart DS, Super Mario 64 DS and Okamiden among others
  • A new retro theme inspired by the Sega Saturn has been added
  • If games are loaded from a flash cart, cheat files can now be saved on the flash cart as well
  • Updating the Recently Played list is now optional
  • Numerous bug fixes including the DSi boot sound being high quality again among others

    Learning Japanese is a massive undertaking so Team Rocket decided to make an English translation for Rocket Slime 3 to make it available to Western audiences!

To grab TwiLight Menu++ Ultimate and unleash your 3DS’ potential, follow this link to grab the CIA file or use TwiLight Menu ++ Updater to have the work done for you 😉

For the final item in this article, we’ll be looking at a just-released fan-made English translation for Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3. This 3DS exclusive game was released in Japan on November 2, 2011 and it remained playable only to Japanese audiences until yesterday when Team Rocket released Beta 1 of their English patch.

This patch, which makes the game fully playable in English, includes a translation for all images, NPC text and menus although there may be some bugs lurking around so make sure you report them on the GitHub Issues Tracker for the project!

If your 2/3DS is running Luma3DS, you can check out this link to grab the translation and start understanding what’s going on in the game 🙂

Conclusion

Other than these 3 releases, the last 2 days also brought about other noteworthy stuff in the console hacking community namely the creation of a bounty for “Native Resolution for PSP games on PSVita“ through a PPSSPP port accelerated by the PSP hardware found in the Vita and SphereSolid’s Anniversary Edition PSVSD units which come with a slightly different colour.

The post PSVita & 3DS News: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Holomatch port for the Vita; TWiLight Menu++ 9.0 released with widescreen mode and Rocket Slime 3 gets an English Translation! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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Emulation News: Dolphin June/July Progress Report, MAME 0.212, ZXVita 1.1 and Cemu 1.15.11 – Various improvements all over and Windows 7 support in Dolphin on its way out!

August 4, 2019, 7:43 am
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As many know, the emulation scene is one of those that almost always has something to offer and this time is no different. In this article, we’ll be looking at Dolphin’s June/July progress report and updates to MAME, ZXVita and Cemu.

Main News: Dolphin’s June/July progress report and MAME 0.212

The Dolphin folks are always eager to publish a nicely-written progress every month or two and these are a great read if you’re interested in the curiosities and (simplified) technicalities surrounding console emulation.

Apparently, cheat code users love having full control over organising their codes 😉

However, they’re a tad long for the regular retro gamer and due to this, the main points of the June/July 2019 one will be summarised here:

 

  • The first improvement is to Action Replay/Gecko cheat code management because now, you can sort them alphabetically with a simple right-click or do the sorting manually to place the codes you care about most at the top
    • Apparently, users of these codes got a tad annoyed when alphabetic sorting was forced into the management dialogue so manual ordering was reintroduced in an improved form since now, you don’t need to mess with INI files to order them but just drag ‘n drop!
  • The Crop Aspect Ratio Option was fixed and it properly does slight zooming-in rather than stretching
    • This feature is needed because the GameCube/Wii don’t output proper 4:3/16:9 video in all games. As a result, some titles have little black bars on the edges of the screen when emulated and this could be handled by a slight zoom-in or stretching.
  • Support for reinterpreting formats in VRAM Textures
    • This fixes rendering issues in Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions & The Simpsons Game as these two games created textures in one format and sampled it in another which caused Dolphin to get confused!

      Stretching a game’s video output doesn’t always give good results and now, the alternative (zooming-in) is working again!

  • EFB/XFB copies are now saved in save states and this makes them a tad bigger when it’s enabled
    • This eliminates purple/black screens and missing objects when loading save states in certain games
  • A nicer LogicOps hack which is required for certain games to render properly on Windows 7 (D3D11 rendering) and most Android devices
    • Not many games use LogicOps but Star Fox Adventures is one that uses it
  • A rendering issue in Dekotora National Festival was fixed thanks to a one-line code change – A sizeable chunk of the PR is dedicated to this as it’s quite a curious case that took 3 years to fix so read that if you want some leisure reading
  • Finally, it’s been hinted that support for Windows 7 is on its way out as none of the major developers use Windows 7 as their primary OS. It’s still supported in current Dolphin builds but it may miss out on certain features going forward or even be completely dropped even though it still has around 1/3 of total Desktop OS market share

On the other hand, MAME received a sizeable update to version 0.212 which will further satisfy your multi-system emulation needs. Among the things that the updates brings along, we find:

  • Beefed-up software lists with hundreds more clean cracks for the Apple II, the Rainbow on Disk collection for Tandy Color Computers and all recent GBA dumps not to mention thousands more ZX Spectrum cassette images
  • Chess computers can now use built-in artwork for chess piece simulation
  • Security chips for numerous arcade machines, including Choplifter and Bionic Commando, have been implemented which means that original non-tampered dumps of these games can be played
  • Audio improvements with FM Towns CD, Konami System 573 and PortAudio sound module all seeing fixes or new features
  • Lua scripts and plugins can now do more as the layout file format has been improved which facilitates creative use of LEDs and LCDs.

To grab MAME 0.212, check out its download link and if you want to see the whole list of what’s changed, you can view its full changelog.

Minor News: Cemu 1.15.11 released to the public and ZXVita 1.1 released

If you want to a play a few Nintendo games like Mario Kart 8 but can’t justify buying a Wii U/Switch, then it may be a good idea to check out Cemu! (Image Source)

In this section, we’ll be looking at a minor update to popular emulators and a sizeable update to a PSVita-only emulator. The first is Cemu 1.15.11 which is an update to the go-to Wii U emulator for PCs. Releases for this closed-source Patreon funded emulator are made available to non-Patreon supporters a week after initial release and version 1.15.11 comes with improved Update/DLC handling with more faithful file organisation, improved detection of content type, an improved debugger and tweaks to GX2 (Wii U’s GPU) emulation in preparation to the upcoming Vulkan renderer. For the full changelog, follow this link and to download the publicly available builds, go here; you can also donate to the Cemu folks on Patreon if you want early access to their builds and to support their great efforts!

Finally, ZXVita 1.1 has been released and after some looking around a changelog was found. This update brings along emulation of the floating bus, instant *.tap file loading, faster GUI navigation, more accurate CPU emulation and improvements to the touch keyboard among other fixes. To install it, grab it from VHBB or download the VPK from VitaDB.

Conclusion

Other than these releases, the last two days also some more stuff in the hacking/emulation scene including the publishing of internal photos of the Switch Lite (+ Reddit commentary), Goldleaf 0.6/Kosmos 13.1 being released, a switchroot subreddit being created for stuff relating to Android on the Switch and Capcom vs SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 being playable on the Play! (PS2) emulator with promising performance on the Samsung Galaxy S9 according to a Reddit user.

The post Emulation News: Dolphin June/July Progress Report, MAME 0.212, ZXVita 1.1 and Cemu 1.15.11 – Various improvements all over and Windows 7 support in Dolphin on its way out! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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PSVita: A look at Easy Plugin, the plugin manager/installer rarely spoken about – Now updated to version 1.1 with the ability to remove plugins and numerous fixes

August 6, 2019, 12:07 pm
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Like the PSP, plugins are an important thing in the PSVita’s homebrew scene as they allow you to add a great deal of functionality to the system. However, numerous people have complained that managing them is a bit tedious since you need to directly modify taiHEN’s ‘config.txt’ but apparently, there’s a great plugin manager & installer called Easy Plugin which we’ll be looking at in this article alongside its 1.1 update released hours ago!

What is Easy Plugin?

As its name suggests, Easy Plugin is a homebrew application that lets you install, remove and manage plugins on your hacked PSVita or PSTV console. This application is developed by GBATemp user ‘THEN00P‘ and was originally released in March 5, 2019 although it didn’t receive much attention back then so we’ll be taking an in-depth look at it.

With Easy Plugin, you can install plugins without having to modify any configuration files directly on device!

Among the features it comes with, we find:

  • The ability to install plugins from VitaDB so you have a pretty significant choice of 87 to choose from
    • You’re allowed to install any user plugin of your choice for either a specific application(s) or for all applications
    • Obviously, kernel plugins are installed under the *KERNEL section so they’re available regardless of the application that’s running
  • A search function so you can find the plugin you’re looking for more easily
  • Functionality for removing installed plugins although it doesn’t seem to find any of the plugins I already had in my “config.txt” file
  • It supports installing plugins that have data folders or config files so the vast majority of plugins can be installed without any extra effort
  • A nicely-made GUI controlled with face buttons which describes the action that each button does for easy navigation

From a short testing session, I can confirm that Easy Plugin works pretty well and comes with enough features to satisfy the plugin-management needs of the vast majority of hacked PSVita users! That being said, I’d personally like to see the plugin list be sorted alphabetically and for the application to have a section in which you can manage your ‘config.txt’ file without having to look for every plugin individually.

What does Easy Plugin 1.1 bring along?

With Easy Plugin 1.1, you can easily remove plugins installed with the application!

Easy Plugin 1.1 is a somewhat substantial update and comes with the following changes/additions:

  • You can now remove installed plugins by navigating to them and marking the red box that appears next to them then pressing START to ‘install’ the changes
  • The preview image for plugins that have it is now scaled correctly
  • A scrollbar thumb was added to the alphabetically sorted app selector
  • Numerous bug fixes

Without a doubt, Easy Plugin 1.1 is a pretty significant update which you should surely get if managing plugins by modifying taiHEN’s config.txt isn’t your thing. To grab it, you can either install via VHBB as it’s available on VHBB or get the VPK from the GitHub link below. As usual, bugs should be reported to the Issues Tab on the application’s GitHub page.

Conclusion

Obviously, it’s no good to have a great plugin manager without knowing which plugins to install so make sure to check out this article about some of the best plugins available for the PSVita. As the article is a tad old, it doesn’t include Xerpi’s UDCD_UVC plugin so make sure to check that out

GitHub Release Page: https://github.com/THEN00P/EasyPlugin/releases/latest
VitaDB Download Link: http://vitadb.rinnegatamante.it/#/info/440

The post PSVita: A look at Easy Plugin, the plugin manager/installer rarely spoken about – Now updated to version 1.1 with the ability to remove plugins and numerous fixes appeared first on Wololo.net.

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A look at the bounty for native resolution PSP emulation on the PSVita through its built-in PSP hardware – ColdBird says it’s possible to do and not just a pipe dream!

August 7, 2019, 10:52 am
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If one looks at the PSVita and its hacking scene, numerous parallels can be drawn with its predecessor the PSP. As a result, saying that the PSVita is a “PSP On Steroids” is pretty close to the truth since you can even play PSP games on it with some added enhancements like dual analoge stick support and native resolution in its GTA games. However, all other games still run at 480×272 (the PSP’s native resolution) rather than 960×544 (the Vita’s native resolution) but a recently posted bounty may just change that!

A look at the bounty for native resolution in PSP games on the PSVita

The vast majority of PSP games can be rendered at higher resolutions very well and would look awesome on the PSVita! (Image Source)

6 days ago, on the 1st of August, Reddit User “EpicEpsilon1033” started a bounty on BountySource titled “Native Resolution for PSP games on PSVITA” as part of Rinnegatamante’s recently launched VitaNuova, a community focusing on promoting bounties for the PSVita. This bounty, which has currently raised $75, revolves around the creation of a PPSSPP port/renderer for the PlayStation Vita which makes use of the PSP CPU (MIPS) found inside it for processor-based calculations while using the PSVita’s GPU to execute graphics-related calls.

While this may sound like a bit of a pipe dream, scene veteran Coldbird confirmed on Reddit that it is indeed possible for such software to be created. He suggested that it could be done by letting the MIPS processor found inside the Vita execute all PSP MIPS instructions and then tunnel the GE render chain into VitaOS through Kermit (the Vita’s main SoC), usage of which is adequately documented online. Furthermore, a trusted PSVita scene member/developer revealed that some developers are interested in taking on the bounty especially if the amount of money increases drastically as this project requires a tremendous amount of work.

 

What will this bounty achieve for the regular end-user?

Native resolution PSP games on PSVita Bounty launched!

The PSVita is already great at being an enhanced PSP but if this bounty comes to fruition, it will probably become the best way to enjoy PSP games on the go!

Other than being a feat and a hacking marvel, this bounty has long-reaching benefits for regular PSVita users including:

  • The ability to render the vast majority of games at the PSVita’s native resolution with a good framerate
    • This will make them look much better and closer to how many PS2 and even early PS3 games look like
  • Better texture filtering in PSP games to make them look even better among other improvements
    • The ePSP software that comes with the PSVita can already do Bilinear Filtering
  • Potentially the ability to make use of some post-processing shaders when playing PSP games to make them look nicer
    • Some shaders can already be used with Adrenaline

Conclusion

Without a doubt, this bounty will interest the vast majority of hacked PSVita users as numerous folks, myself included, use their Vita mainly as a PSP since the PSP has a much better game library than the Vita. If you wish to contribute some money to the bounty in order to really turn the PSVita into a ‘PSP On Steroids’, check out the link below and make sure to read BountySource’s FAQ before shelling out any money!

Finally, you might also be interested in reading about a bounty for getting GPU Acceleration on RetroArch for the PSVita and recent progress done on it by Frangar by viewing this article. That bounty raised $1205 to date with a total of 38 backers!

Native Resolution for PSP games on PSVITA Bounty: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/78071014-native-resolution-for-psp-games-on-psvita

BountySource’s FAQ: https://github.com/bountysource/core/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

Disclaimer: Neither I or Wololo.net are affiliated with the bounty or BountySource. As a result, we bear no responsibility as to what happens to the bounty’s money. This article is simply here to bring attention to another exciting prospect.

The post A look at the bounty for native resolution PSP emulation on the PSVita through its built-in PSP hardware – ColdBird says it’s possible to do and not just a pipe dream! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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Releases: Atmosphère 0.9.3 with much faster boot times & vitaRTCW 0.2 letting you play Return To Castle Wolfenstein with Cinematics, Multiplayer and better visuals!

August 9, 2019, 4:22 am
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For the last 2 weeks, the spotlight in the Nintendo Switch scene was mostly on its newly released Android port. Now, the hype has cooled down a bit and regular homebrew/CFW releases for the console have resumed. In this article, we’ll be looking at Atmosphère 0.9.3 which comes with faster boot times and the just-released vitaRTCW 0.2 update!

Switch Release: Atmosphère 0.9.3 with much faster boot times, automatic BIS key backups and more re-written system modules!

Atmosphère is a CFW for hackable Nintendo Switch consoles, which include fusee-gelee vulnerable units and ipatched units running FW 4.1.0 for now although support for Switch firmwares up to version 7.0.1 will almost certainly come in the future.

It’s June 15th again and this time, we have Atmosphere 0.9.3 which is the 21st official release of the CFW! (Tweet)

Similar to other CFWs, Atmosphère lets you do a wide variety of things on your Switch including running homebrew games/utilities, using custom modules (similar to plugins in PSP/PSVita jargon), overclocking your console and even running a secondary version of Horizon OS stored on your SDCard via emuMMC.

Other than being quite feature-packed, this CFW is also frequently updated and a few hours ago, Atmosphère 0.9.3 landed with:

  • Significant optimisations, by hexkyz, to fusee’s boot sequence which means that Atmosphère’s boot times have been greatly reduced and you’ll be spending less time staring at its splash screen!
  • Automatic backing up of your Switch’s BIS keys which are instrumental in fixing a corrupted NAND especially on ipatched units since they don’t have the RCM bug
  • The “pm” (Process Manager), “creport” (Crash Report) and “fatal” system modules were rewritten with numerous improvements
  • The version string in the Settings App now displays whether you’re using emuMMC or not and defaults pertaining to hbloader’s memory usage in applet mode were added to ‘system_settings.ini’
  • The bundled version of hbl has been updated to version 2.2 (from 2.1) and hbmenu got updated to version 3.1 (from 3.0.1)
  • Other fixes and minor updates which can be found by browsing through its commit history

To grab Atmosphère 0.9.3, check out this link and make sure you update fusee-primary when installing it.

PSVita Release: vitaRTCW 0.2 with fixed Cinematics, multiplayer and numerous fixes!

It’s no secret that the PSVita’s FPS library is pretty thin and with a few exceptions such as Killzone Mercenary, not all that good.

vitaRTCW 0.2 comes with multiplayer support for extra enjoyment! (Image Source)

To remedy that, various homebrew developers ported classics such as DOOM, Quake and numerous others including Return To Castle Wolfenstein, the port of which was updated earlier today. This sizeable update, which bumps the version number to 0.2, brings along:

  • Multiplayer support which lets you play RTCW online on the few populated servers that remain!
    • Make sure to play the single player game first since it’s awesome in its own right 😉
  • Cinematics are now rendered properly so you can enjoy the fictional plot with Nazis dabbling in the supernatural a bit better
  • The memory available to the renderer was increased and memory usage for both it and the sound manager was reduced
  • Mipmaps can now be used and support for fog/portals got implemented
  • Numerous rendering issues were fixed including one that made the skybox not render properly in some instances

To download vitaRTCW 0.2 and nuke some Nazis, check out this link to get the port’s executables; the full changelog can be viewed here. You may donate to Rinnegatamante (the developer behind vitaRTCW) via his Patreon.

It’s important to note that you must supply Return To Castle Wolfenstein’s game files yourself as the game isn’t free!

Conclusion

If you want to check out more stuff relating to these two scenes, make sure to read about the bounty for native resolution PSP games on the Vita (which saw its value increase from $75 to $420 following the linked article) and the release of Goldleaf 0.6.1 which can handle files larger than 4GB properly by the USB system. On another note, RetroArch yesterday published a blog post about an upcoming text-to-speech feature for emulated games and the Yuzu folks released another Dev Interview which provides an interesting read if you have a couple of minutes to spare!

The post Releases: Atmosphère 0.9.3 with much faster boot times & vitaRTCW 0.2 letting you play Return To Castle Wolfenstein with Cinematics, Multiplayer and better visuals! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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News: Corgi3DS, an LLE 3DS emulator that can boot the Home Menu, revealed and Pingo 2.0 for the PSVita released with 30 new levels!

August 11, 2019, 11:09 am
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In the emulation scene, having one emulator per console to which everyone can contribute isn’t a thing for various reasons and as a result, some consoles have dozens of emulators. Recently, there’s been an uptick in Nintendo 3DS emulators and in this article, we’ll be looking at the recent unveiling of Corgi3DS alongside a quick look at a major update to one of the PSVita’s most polished original homebrew games!

Emulation News: Corgi3DS, a N3DS by the author of DobieStation, unveiled

It’s no secret that an emulator with decent compatibility (264 playable games as of today) for the Nintendo 3DS exists and that emulator is Citra, the creators of which are now mostly working on Yuzu which is a Nintendo Switch emulator seeing doing some great progress.

Corgi3DS is a Nintendo 3DS emulator that aims to emulate everything. For now, it can kinda run the Home Menu but playing games on it is impossible

However, Citra focuses more on getting games to work rather than emulating everything perfectly and until a couple of months ago, audio was emulated with code implemented on a per-game basis rather than emulating the actual audio chips.

On the other hand, Corgi3DS is an LLE emulator which focuses on emulating every last bit of the Nintendo 3DS to the point of starting execution from original Boot ROMs, loading the 3DS OS from a NAND dump and even booting to the 3DS’ Home Menu for a fully authentic experience. This emulator, from ‘PSISP‘ who authored DobieStation (a largely unfinished PS2 emulator for Android which can boot some games with inadequate performance), is currently in a pretty early stage since no games actually work, the emulated 3DS OS hangs after a while due to unfinished WiFi card emulation code and speed is horrible. As a result, there’s no way we’ll get the full 3DS experience in an emulator with excellent compatibility any time soon but the progress is pretty promising. If you want that, you might as well spend a few bucks and grab a cheap Nintendo 3DS off eBay or locally!

To learn more about Corgi3DS, check out this Reddit Thread which has lots of information about the emulator from its author and a couple of screenshots. You may also take a look at its GitHub page if you want to take a jab at compiling it. Donation to its author can be done through his Patreon. If you want to emulate the 3DS’ Home Menu on your PC, you should fish around for information on how to do it on Citra as it kind of works on some builds.

PSVita News: Pingo 2.0 released with 30 new levels, 3 new gameplay mechanics, touchscreen navigation and more!

The PlayStation Vita has a pretty good amount of homebrew and even some original homebrew games that are exclusive to the system created by numerous Indie developers.

Among these, we find Pingo by Grzybojad which is a puzzle game with the goal of painting a whole map with the least amount of steps as possible. While this may sound easy, it can get pretty challenging since many levels are designed in a clever ways that force you to think about your next move. Other than being a fun way to pass some time, it also has a high degree of polish and great artwork which was done by Jumbocube.

Pingo 2.0 comes with a whole new world and even more polish 😉

Now, it has been updated to version 2.0 and this brings along:

  • A new world that include 30 levels. These levels come with 3 new gameplay mechanics and a different colour scheme
  • Support for custom levels which can be created by robDev’s pingo-edit
  • Navigation with the touchscreen which kinda gives it Cut The Rope-esque vibes in the menus
  • The Options menu now works;
    • This menu can be used to set the volume, enable/disable touch controls and view your stats
  • Improved visuals, 4 new music tracks, an easter egg and a credits scene after you beat all the levels

To get Pingo 2.0 on your Vita (which you definitely should do), simply open VHBB and install it since it’s available on VitaDB. Alternatively, you can grab the VPK from this link (report bugs in the Issues tab) and install it via VitaShell. You may also donate to him via Patreon. Unfortunately, there’s no Android/iOS port since I personally think that it would make a great mobile game especially with the updated visuals in this version!

Conclusion

For more news on these scenes, make sure to check out ‘-_Winter_-‘s Play! (PS2 emulator also available on Android) compatibility report and our recent article on a major update to vitaRTCW (Return To Castle Woflenstein).

Pingo would probably translate very well to mobile but only time will tell whether we’ll see a port!

The post News: Corgi3DS, an LLE 3DS emulator that can boot the Home Menu, revealed and Pingo 2.0 for the PSVita released with 30 new levels! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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News: Developer starts to work on native resolution PSP games on PSVita and TwiLight Menu++’s widescreen mode for the 3DS finally available with 202 compatibile DS games!

August 13, 2019, 3:45 pm
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The last few weeks were pretty kind to the Nintendo 3DS & PlayStation Vita and the stream of exciting news is still flowing. In this article, we’ll be looking at some promising news regarding native resolution PSP games on the Vita and Widescreen DS games on the 3DS!

PSVita: Developer ‘robots’ takes on ‘Native Resolution PSP games for the PSVita’ bounty

In the beginning of this month, Reddit User ‘EpicEpsilon1033’ decided to create a bounty for native resolution PSP games on the PSVita. This bounty, which forms part of Rinnegatamante’s recently created VitaNuova community, aims to achieve native resolution (960×544) on PSP games when run on the PSVita by making clever use of the PSP hardware inside the Vita and the console’s own graphics hardware. Following this article, many people shared the bounty online and it’s currently valued at $500 which is a huge increase from the $75 it was at a week ago!

Native resolution for all PSP games on the PSVita is a pretty awesome proposal but only time will tell if we’ll actually get it!

Now, a developer called Michal (nickname: ‘robots‘) has started working on making the bounty come to life. He said that one shouldn’t expect quick progress and went on to provide a rough timeline for his work which includes:

  1. Figure out how to patch the PSP’s graphics module in order to make it redirect Texture/DrawList memory to the Vita’s shared memory rather than the GE’s memory space
  2. Port PPSSPP’s GE to the PSVita – scaling won’t be included at this point
  3. Add scaling capabilities to the above so that native PSVita resolution could be achieved
    • These steps are in chronological order. While they might sound simple, it’s important to keep in mind that they require a tremendous amount of work so don’t expect to see much any time soon unless he pulls a Xerpi 😉

Going through the guy’s GitHub repository list, it seems that he’s dabbled a bit with PSVita-related development in the past but hasn’t made an awful lot of work public. That being said, only time will tell if he manages to get anywhere and we at Wololo wish him the best of luck!

Nintendo 3DS: Widescreen mode finally usable & Twilight Menu++ 9.0.4 released!

Contrary to the PSVita, the 3DS’ homebrew haydays have been over for a pretty long time but noteworthy releases still drop from time to time. One of these releases was Twilight Menu++ 9.0.0 some days ago which came with Widescreen support (lets you play DS games in Widescreen (16:10) thus filling up the 3DS’ upper screen).

Unfortunately, this feature wasn’t useable since TWL Patcher was required and that wasn’t out then. That finally changed on Sunday as Sono released his patcher which can enable Widescreen mode by following a short tutorial on a 64-Bit Windows PC. You can grab TWLPatcher from this link and follow the instructions found here to use it on your console!

Many DS games are a lot of fun but playing them in Widescreen on your 3DS makes them even better!

On the other hand, TWiLight Menu++ received an update to version 9.0.4 yesterday and this brings along:

  • Support for 202 Widescreen Mode games
    • Combined with version 9.0.3, titles like Final Fantasy IV, Pokemon Platinum and Assassin’s Creed II – Discovery are now supported
  • Sanity checks relating to Widescreen mode have been added which make sure that a working copy of ‘TwlBg.cxi’ is present in “sd:/luma/sysmodule” and whether it’s backed up
  • Some small bug fixes having to do with file copying

To grab TWiLight Menu++ 9.0.4 and enjoy DS games in Widescreen, check out this link to grab and install it. Do note that updating via TWiLight Updater doesn’t work as of right now so you must update your binaries manually!

Conclusion

On a concluding note, you might be interested in checking out this article about a significant update to one of the best original PSVita homebrew games called Pingo. Furthermore, there’s also been some nice progress relating to RPCS3 with Demon’s Souls now being playable at 60FPS @ 4K provided you have powerful enough hardware.

The post News: Developer starts to work on native resolution PSP games on PSVita and TwiLight Menu++’s widescreen mode for the 3DS finally available with 202 compatibile DS games! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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A look at what Sony, Nintendo and Sega consoles the PSVita and PSTV can emulate and the emulators to use for the best experience!

August 15, 2019, 3:19 am
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If you’ve ever browsed through a PSVita forum or subreddit, then it’s almost certain that you’ve come across someone asking about the emulation capabilities of the console. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the Sony/Nintendo/Sega consoles that hacked PSVita and PSTV devices can emulate and the best emulators to use!

Sony Consoles

The PSVita and PSP have a pretty strong relationship to the point that the PSVita has PSP hardware inside it. As a result, it can play all PSP and PS1 games!

As the PSVita is a Sony console, it is only proper to talking about emulation of Sony consoles, which is something that the PSVita can do natively! The current situation about these consoles is the following:

  • PlayStation Portable (PSP) emulation works perfectly and the best emulator (or ePSP solution in this case) to be used is TheFlow’s Adrenaline which effectively turns your PSVita into an enhanced PSP with the whole XMB experience, right analogue stick support and even native resolution (960×544) in the GTA games
    • PSP emulation works as well as it does because the PSVita has the PSP’s GPU and CPU baked into its own hardware
    • A bounty to get native resolution PSP games on the PSVita by combining the Vita’s GPU and the built-in PSP CPU is currently going on and has already raised $580. A developer with the nickname ‘robots’ is currently working on and you can found out more about it by following this link.
  • PlayStation 1 emulation also works perfectly with TheFlow’s Adrenaline
    • It makes use of ePSP’s POPS functionality and games must be in PBP format
  • Forget about PlayStation 2 emulation as the PSVita is nowhere near powerful enough to ever push out playable framerates in any PS2 games! (PS3 emulation is also out of the question in case you were thinking about that)

 

Nintendo Consoles

Nintendo consoles are plenty and the PSVita can do an excellent job at emulating some of the most popular.

3 fun GBA games to play on your PSVita/PSP

With the aid of screen filters, Zelda: The Minish Cap and many other Nintendo look really nice on the PSVita 1K thanks to its OLED screen and native PSP emulation functionality!

To play your favourite Super Mario Bros and Kirby titles, you’ll have to consult the following about the current situation in regards to emulating Nintendo’s consoles:

  • NES emulation works just fine and can be easily done through the FCEUmm core in RetroArch
    • The NES can be emulated with decent results on Series 40 J2ME phones so it’s no surprise the Vita can do it well 🙂
  • SNES emulation works pretty well although some games, especially ones that use SuperFX like Starfox, will struggle a bit and drop into the ~50FPS range. The best emulator is probably “Snes9x 2005” RetroArch core although I’ve personally had pretty good results with CATSFC-libretro-vita which I like a tad more since it’s a standalone application
  • GameBoy, GameBoy Colour and GameBoy Advance emulation works pretty well for the most part and can be done with mGBA or RetroArch’s VBA Next core, both of which work pretty well.
    • While it’s not the best way to emulate GBA games on the PSVita, I personally like using Uo gPSP Kai via Adrenaline to get the Advanced AA screen filter in GBA games which makes games like “The Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap” look much much better
    • It might be worthwhile to use LOLIcon to overclock your PSVita to 494/500MHz when emulating GBA games since it’s been proven that it makes some games run @ 60FPS rather than 50-something FPS

  • With LOLIcon, some emulators will work better and make some titles run at a perfect 60FPS!

    Nintendo 64 emulation is very limited and only a few games can attain playable speed on the PSVita. To play some Super Mario 64 or Mario Kart 64 on your PSVita, you can use z2442’s modified version of DaedalusX64 which has some performance improvements and better overall emulation than the original DeadalusX64.

    • For now, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get a native Nintendo 64 emulator since there are no hardware-accelerated emulators for the PSVita. However, this bounty may change things as it aims to get hardware accelerated RetroArch and RetroArch cores on the console. Frangar is currently working on it and doing some progress.
  • As for Nintendo DS emulation, there’s a bit of hope that some less-demanding games may be someday be playable if its GPU accelerated renderer gets ported to the Vita and an ARM32 dynarec is created.
    • You can try emulating the DS with DeSmuME-Vita but don’t expect playable framerates.
  • Forget about emulating other Nintendo consoles such as the GameCube, Wii or 3DS since the Vita obviously doesn’t have the power to emulate these in any capacity

Sega Consoles

The PSVita can take care of all your blast processing needs so if you want to play some retro Sega titles, you can go right ahead with no worries!

Sega consoles are also a pretty common target for emulation since there are numerous great titles like the Sonic games, Altered Beast for the Gensis and a multitude of Shinobi titles. Currently, the emulation situation is the following:

  • Master System & Game Gear emulation works pretty well and can be done with Genesis Plus GX RetroArch core
  • Mega Drive (Genesis) emulation also works well so you can enjoy the BLAST PROCESSING in its full glory. Like the above, the Genesis Plus GX RetroArch core is probably your best best.
    • However, I also enjoy using PicoDrive 1.5.1b (PSP emulator for Genesis/Sega CD/Master System) via Adrenaline as it works well and also lets you use Adrenaline’s screen filters. There’s an updated version of the PicoDrive, which also supports 32X emulation, which you can read about here and download from here.
  • Sega Saturn emulation will get you nowhere as there’s a Proof of Concept version of Yabause but that doesn’t really do anything other than output a slow slideshow
  • There’s been no word on Dreamcast emulation but Reicast is able to run on pretty low-specced Android tablets (ARM based) with decent results so perhaps a GPU accelerated renderer in the future might allow for basic Dreamcast emulation but you probably shouldn’t expect playable speeds.

Conclusion

To find out more information about what the PSVita can and cannot emulate, you should check out this GBATemp Thread on RetroArch since it does a good job at describing the performance of each and every RetroArch core available for the console. The PSVita can also emulate some computers like the Amiga series with UAE4ALL2 and 68k Macs through Basilisk II.

You can get RetroArch from this link.

The post A look at what Sony, Nintendo and Sega consoles the PSVita and PSTV can emulate and the emulators to use for the best experience! appeared first on Wololo.net.

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A look at what computers, arcade machines and non-Sony/Nintendo/Sega consoles the PSVita and PSTV can emulate along with the best emulators to use

August 20, 2019, 2:09 pm
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It’s no secret that the PlayStation Vita has found a niche within portable emulation circles and for good reason as it boasts a good physical button configuration, a touchscreen and has an excellent selection of homebrew. In this article, we’ll be looking at what computers, arcade machines and non-Sony/Nintendo/Sega consoles the PSVita/PSTV can emulate when hacked along with the best emulators to go with them! If you want to read about which Sony, Nintendo and Sega consoles the PSVita can emulate, check out this article.

Computers

Emulating computers on portable consoles isn’t anything new although the degree of usability depends on how powerful the device is and what input methods it offers.

Should you still get a PSVita in 2018?

The PSVita does a surprisingly good job at emulating 68k Macs so if you like older computer games like SimCity or SimEarth that require a mouse to play, it might be a good idea to grab a decent stylus and plop a System 7.5 image on your console 😉

To play your some SimCity 2000 or Dark Castle, check out this list to see the current emulation status of old computers:

  • 68k Macs can be emulated pretty well and as long as you stick with System 7.5/7.6, you’ll get good performance. To emulate these, you can use Basilisk II which has touch input support, Dvorak OSK and Bluetooth keyboard/mouse support.
  • Amiga 500/1200 computers can also be emulated quite well by using UAE4ALL2 which sees very frequent updates and has many console-specific features including mappable custom control sets.
  • MS-DOS PCs can be emulated with RetroArch’s DosBox core but this is fairly slow and requires you to follow these mapping instructions
  • Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum 48K can be emulated with ZXVita or RetroArch’s Fuse core
  • The PC-9801 can be emulated with RetroArch’s NP2K core but system fonts aren’t working as of yet which means there’s limited support for ZUN’s Touhou games (bullet heck shooters which are very popular on the computer)
  • The Commodore 64 can be emulated via Adrenaline using PSPVice 3.2 (released in December 2018 so it’s fairly recent) or RetroArch’s VICE core. A comparison between the two by rsn8887 can be found here
  • Some other computers, such as the Amstrad CPC and Atari ST, don’t have an emulator native to the PSVita so you have to use the PSP version via Adrenaline. You can check out this link for a comprehensive and up-to-date list of these

Arcade Machines & Other Consoles

Other than Nintendo/Sega/Sony consoles and a whole slew of retro computers, the PSVita can also emulate many other machines including arcade machines which really turns it into a somewhat well-priced emulation powerhouse.

Feeling nostalgic for some Pitfall or just want to give yourself a challenge? If so, the PSVita has got you covered (and it’s sturdy enough to withstand a small slam or two ;))

The current emulation status of these other machines is as follows:

  • Arcade Machines can be emulated through a wide variety of emulators including PFBA (Final Burn Alpha variant with an emphasis on better performance for ARM devices like the PSVita) and RetroArch’s cores for FBA/MAME 2000 (the MAME 2003 core doesn’t perform too well) so you can play Street Fighter II as it was meant to be enjoyed 😉
  • SNK’s Neo Geo (home console & arcade) can be emulated with PFBA or RetroArch’s FBA core
  • Atari 2600 and 7800 emulation can be done perfectly with Stella and ProSystem RetroArch cores respectively so you can go play Pitfall whenever you want
  • Atari Lynx emulation can be done with HandyVita or RetroArch’s Handy core.
  • The PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) can be emulated with MednaFen which supports both HuCard and Super CD-ROM games
  • Vectrex emulation can be done with the VecX RetroArch core
  • The CHIP-8 can be emulated well with MicroCHIP although don’t expect graphics that blow you away 😉
  • Various DOS-era adventure games like Monkey Island and the Leisure Suit Larry series can be emulated with ScummVM
  • WonderSwan and Neo Geo Pocket emulation can be done with Mednafen’s RetroArch core
  • RetroArch also has cores for the engines of DOOM, Quake, 2048 and some others if you want to give those a go even though they’re not consoles/arcade machines.

Conclusion

To find out even more information about what the PSVita can and cannot emulate, you should check out this GBATemp Thread on RetroArch since it does a good job at describing the performance of most RetroArch cores available for the console while also discussing issues/workarounds that exist in them. On a concluding note, you might also be interested in some of the homebrew retro game remakes that exist for the PSVita which include Duck Hunt Remake and Pong.

You can get RetroArch from this link.

The post A look at what computers, arcade machines and non-Sony/Nintendo/Sega consoles the PSVita and PSTV can emulate along with the best emulators to use appeared first on Wololo.net.

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