Hacking State of SNES emulation in 2017

[daphnis]

As someone who is not familiar with the PSP and emulation/homebrew on that platform, I've done a fair amount of reading of websites, forum threads, and reviews when it comes to SNES emulation. The problem is, most of these are really old; a lot of the material from emulators comes from various forks; and much of the material is sketchy at best. Most of the things I've read state SNES emulation can be "iffy" depending on the game with settings sometimes scattered here and there. What I want to know before deciding to buy a PSP for SNES emulation is...what is the actual consensus now, in 2017? Here are some questions in particular:

1. What is/are the most compatible SNES emulators for the PSP today?
2. Some games have been reported to be difficult to emulate on the PSP, for example Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, with users forcing to choose between glitches, slow-downs, or both. Is this a short list of games, or a fairly extensive one? If short, can people list some of the main offenders? I have never found a compatibility list out there.
3. What combination of hardware, custom firmware, etc. will provide the best chance for accurate SNES emulation on a PSP with the greatest chance of game compatibility?

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Try snes9x euphoria or snes9x tyl HMM (High memory mod, NOT FOR PSP 1000 MODEL)

Also being honest, it still as bad anyway worst than sega genesis.

 

[Daeru]

I enjoy snes games a lot on my psp. Almost all games run flawlessly, but you have to use the right version. Mine even runs Donkey Kong Country smoothly. There is a level much later in the game where I set frame skip to 1 but that's it. SMW2 Yoshi's island is problematic though. You don't have to use frameskip but you do have to deal with slowdown during many parts of the game. You can alternatively play the GBA version on the psp. I just play the game on a modded Wii with a snes controller.
I dont know about any other games that dont run well but I am sure there are a few more.

I couldnt find my snes emulator version anywhere so I sent it to Nico (nico blog) who added it as option 2 on his website. I dont think there is a better version out there for the psp.

I would go for the psp 3000. It has a beautiful, very vivid lcd screen and you can finally install permanent cfw (6.61 pro c2 infinity).

 

[daphnis]

Do titles like Tales of Fantasia and Star Ocean work without graphical glitches or significant slow downs?

 

[Daeru]

I havent really played them, but I just tried them out and there dont seem to be any problems.

 

[Meteor7]

Do titles like Tales of Fantasia and Star Ocean work without graphical glitches or significant slow downs?

Phantasia had a greaty enhanced PSX release which has a full fan translation patch and can be run natively on the PSP, and Star Ocean had a PSP remake, so I recommend playing those rather than emulating SNES for them. To address your question directly, I haven't tried either of those games on the PSP's SNES emulators, but I can definitely say that the PSP SNES emulation has a noticable amount of input lag, which leads me to not recommend it in general.

 

[Daeru]

Phantasia had a greaty enhanced PSX release which has a full fan translation patch and can be run natively on the PSP, and Star Ocean had a PSP remake, so I recommend playing those rather than emulating SNES for them. To address your question directly, I haven't tried either of those games on the PSP's SNES emulators, but I can definitely say that the PSP SNES emulation has a noticable amount of input lag, which leads me to not recommend it in general.

I agree on the ps1/psp remakes.
But I don't notice any input lag at all on my snes emulator. I tried Street fighter 2 turbo and the punches and kicks show instantly. Also I can finish the mine cart section of DKC which requires not just quick reflexes but also zero noticable input lag.

 

[daphnis]

I'm aware of the remakes of both of those titles (played and completed the PS1 remake of ToP), I was just interested to see how the SNES (SFC) versions fared being emulated on a PSP if other titles such as DKC and SMWII had issues. Are there other problematic titles to emulate? How about Mega Man X2 and X3 since they used special hardware? Any others?

 

[Clydefrosch]

most games run very much fine and playable, however, games like yoshis island and kirby 3, those that had extra chips in their carts, run slow without lots of frameskipping.
also, if you ask me, the psp has some issues as far as controls go. the dpad is mushy and the buttons often come with various levels of resistance (my x button basically only needs to be looked at to input something, the o one feels like it wants to crawl inside the psp while the triangle one is really hard to push.
the go has better inputs, the clicky ones with identical pressure points, but its smaller and not comfortable for everyone.

overall, at this point, i'd say you're better of with even an old 3ds to play snes games (new is obviously better though), both as far as performance is concerned, as well as input quality

 

[Daeru]

I'm aware of the remakes of both of those titles (played and completed the PS1 remake of ToP), I was just interested to see how the SNES (SFC) versions fared being emulated on a PSP if other titles such as DKC and SMWII had issues. Are there other problematic titles to emulate? How about Mega Man X2 and X3 since they used special hardware? Any others?

X2 and X3 both run great without any issues.
For me the psp still is the best retro game handheld. Gamewise my youth consisted of gameboy, gamegear, nes, snes and ps1 which all run great on the psp.

 

[zeello]

I've been playing PSP for years but I never tried cfw.. UNTIL TODAY. (About time, huh?) And I am surprised and disappointed at the SNES emulation because I assumed that, seeing as PSP can run PS1 games, and SNES being not only a gen older but also the most popular system to emulate, it would of course run flawlessly, but that could hardly be more true. I can't even run Super Mario World correctly, of all things. When I got to the first boss the screen is all black and I can't see anything but I know the game is still running since there is still sound. Fortunately for me the emulator says right within the menu that of you experience graphical issues to try doing _______, so I did that and reset the game and the boss fight worked that time, but as soon as Iggy died, my PSP froze.

Meanwhile PSP games run perfectly.

Now i wasn't sure what to do with SNES at this point, I was inclined to give up on it but afterwards someone told me that SNES emulation on PSP is known to be generally poor. Well okie dokie, in that case I know not to bother trying!

However I am still considering giving NES and GBC a chance, will I have better luck you think? Anyone know? To be honest I really just want to revisit Pokemon Trading Card Game.

 

[Daeru]

I've been playing PSP for years but I never tried cfw.. UNTIL TODAY. (About time, huh?) And I am surprised and disappointed at the SNES emulation because I assumed that, seeing as PSP can run PS1 games, and SNES being not only a gen older but also the most popular system to emulate, it would of course run flawlessly, but that could hardly be more true. I can't even run Super Mario World correctly, of all things. When I got to the first boss the screen is all black and I can't see anything but I know the game is still running since there is still sound. Fortunately for me the emulator says right within the menu that of you experience graphical issues to try doing _______, so I did that and reset the game and the boss fight worked that time, but as soon as Iggy died, my PSP froze.

Meanwhile PSP games run perfectly.

Now i wasn't sure what to do with SNES at this point, I was inclined to give up on it but afterwards someone told me that SNES emulation on PSP is known to be generally poor. Well okie dokie, in that case I know not to bother trying!

However I am still considering giving NES and GBC a chance, will I have better luck you think? Anyone know? To be honest I really just want to revisit Pokemon Trading Card Game.

I don't know of any gbc or nes games that don't work 100%.
I guess you're right snes emulation is not always perfect (right away). For example the psp 1000 has less ram so probably snes roms will run worse than on the 2000 and 3000. Also there are so many snes emulators and versions out there. Most of them have a lot of issues, whereas only a few run great. And then there are of course the settings in the emulator itself to fiddle around with and the quality of the rom (the ones with a (!) are the good, clean dumps).
But to say snes emulation on psp is poor is a ridiculous statement. The psp is perfectly capable of running lots of snes games flawlessly, including super mario world. Only a small handful are known to have issues.

In fact snes emulation has gotten so good (up till 2011/2012 when I think they stopped working on them) that for almost all games I play on it I set frameskip to zero (default is an awful looking 3), v-sync enabled and smoothing on.

 

[zeello]

Yeah I should clarify some things. I'm using a PSP-3000. Emulator is listed as "snes9x-euphoria [R5 Beta 3]". At least that's what the download page says. Anyway seeing as it wasn't up to snuff I might try a different one from here: http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Emulation_on_PSP

The exact wording of what I was told about PSP emulation sucking: "SNES emulation on PSP is terrible, unfortunately. GBA isn't all that great, either. You're better off just sticking to PS1 and PSP. However, if you have a Vita, it runs those systems flawlessly."

 

[Daeru]

I have a 3000 as well.
Try this one instead:
https://nicoblog.org/psp/on-emulator-roms
Not the first one, but the one under 'option 2'. It works better than euphoria (and also better than any other on the gbatemp wiki).

GBA can be great also by the way, but again it depends on the emulator you are using. I think the popular conception is that gpSP kai 3.4 test 3 build 152 or test 4 build 225 are the best ones to use. But I mainly want to use the GBA emulator for SMW2 Yoshi's island and on both those emulators the sound sucks. I hear a lot of plops and the sound constantly switches between the left and right speaker.
But then if you try the much older gpsp v0.9 you will notice the sound emulation is near perfect.
It's all trial and error but with a bit of effort you can play both snes and gba just fine on psp.

 

[zeello]

By the way the GBA emulator I got required a GBA bios. How am I supposed to know whether an emulator requires a bios or not?
That is something which should really be told in advance. Instead of me leaving the PC, going upstairs, turning on the PSP eager to play something only to be told "no, see, you were supposed to download more things". There's just no sense...

 

[daphnis]

Somewhat unrelated: Largest memory stick duo that the PSP can read is 16 GB, correct? Is one that size the best choice, or will a MSD adapter that accepts SDHC cards allow that capacity to be even bigger? What is the community using for data storage on the PSP for PS1 images, emulators, etc?

 

[Daeru]

Somewhat unrelated: Largest memory stick duo that the PSP can read is 16 GB, correct? Is one that size the best choice, or will a MSD adapter that accepts SDHC cards allow that capacity to be even bigger? What is the community using for data storage on the PSP for PS1 images, emulators, etc?

I am only using official Sandisk and Sony pro duo cards. They are expensive, but will probably last a lifetime...unlike those flimsy microsd to pro duo adapters.
Mine are 32 gb and work just fine. Some even use 2 64gb micro sd cards in 1 adapter for 128 gb of storage. I dont know why anyone would want that much gb's. I have 50 of the best ps1 games on mine and a ton of retro roms and still room for more.

 

[daphnis]

Then the PSP can address a 32GB memory stick duo card? I read it was only 16 GB.

 

[Daeru]

32 gb is no problem. But you should use categories lite plugin so you can sort your stuff in folders on your psp (also to reduce loading times).

 

[Deleted User]

I've got a PSP-3000, I use SNES9XtylMECM 0.4.2 r27 to emulate SNES games and the titles I primarily use it for mostly work fine with a frame skip of 1, even supposedly intensive games like Donkey Kong Country work, which is pretty cool. It's great to take my childhood on the go