Sony's attempt at making a miniature version of one of its old school systems, the PlayStation Classic, has received mixed reviews. Major criticisms have stemmed from the hardware simply using an open source emulator, to the PlayStation Classic randomly having a mix of PAL and NTSC games. Now that the little throwback system has released, users have been tinkering with the software and trying to find secrets. YouTube channel Retro Gaming Arts has discovered that if you plug in a USB keyboard (not all keyboards appear to work, however) into the PlayStation Classic and hit the Escape key, the PCSX ReARMed emulator settings will appear that normally cannot be accessed. From here, you can change certain options, such as showing current framerate, changing the frameskip amount, loading savestates, forcing games to run at PAL or NTSC standards, adding filters like scanlines, and perhaps most interestingly, an ability to "Load CD Image". Multiple attempts have been made to get the PlayStation Classic to utilize this option to boot normally unsupported backups, though no breakthroughs have been made yet. It's only a matter of time until the community finds even more interesting details.

 

[Noctosphere]

One of the best psx.game i played was
The Granstream Saga
Anyone else played it?

 

[kuwanger]

Wow this happened way soon than with either the SNES or NES Mini, but I guess that's what happens when you use an open-source emulator instead of something in-house.

I'd point out that this may or may not be a useful vector for anything. I'd suggest someone with a PS Classic try building a USB stick with Yocto (apparently what Sony used from what ETA Prime found) or taking something prebuilt that matches enough of the specs of the PS Classic to see if you can boot off that. ETA Prime also mentioned finding some large bridgeable pads that seem to open a USB serial connection for a few seconds. Honestly, I'd imagine including the Esc/Menu function was used as part of debugging and someone didn't think to take it out or they did a poor job which would explain why some keyboards work and some don't.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if the PS Classic ends up being faster to hack given putting in protections of any kind tends to take time and consideration, and that's one thing Sony clearly wasn't focused on.

 

[BossRoss93]

Jesus these devs were lazy.

 

[SoCALCat]

Since Sony decided to do an open-source emulator on the mini. Who is to say that Sony didn't give a Sh*t on what games were installed along on how they play.

They probably figured to just leave it up to the hackers to see what creations they could come up with since it's more than likely the console is going to be hacked a lot sooner than later...

 

[Jayro]

So is the Hakchi2 guy gonna hack this or what?

 

[raxadian]

Thing is, a hacked PS3 is a better option in a lot of ways to play PS1 games.

I am sure we will end with some fans making this crappy thing work after some hacking and or modifications to the emulator, but why pay money for something that comes broken by default?

*Remembers his PSP200 only bought because it was easy to hack and had better hardware that the PSP100.

Nevermind, go and have fun!

 

[Skittyusedcovet]

Jesus these devs were lazy.

Well there’s that and they probably wanted to get it out in time for the holidays. Sony wanted to steal the show from Nintendo, but failed miserably.

 

[raxadian]

Well there’s that and they probably wanted to get it out in time for the holidays. Sony wanted to steal the show from Nintendo, but failed miserably.

Sony thing has never been having good security when it comes to videogames and their videogame consoles.

Plus they probably paid the guys doing this as little as possible.

 

[H1B1Esquire]

an ability to "Load CD Image".

Look at you, swinging your textual hips; you're going to cause something to happen....I couldn't decide how to make it more "creepy uncle"....your refund is good for 15 minutes.

The Granstream Saga

You mean, Grandia, right?

For the *____* (ya tu sabe, puto), SONY could have been testing the waters, seeing what would kill the PS2 Classic, what naysayers would accuse SONY of doing wrong, finding the "sweet spot" for games, etc,.

Basically, spend 3M to make 800K for data to spend 5M to make 50M.

 

[the_randomizer]

I though you had already learned to not halfass your answers and investigate properly.
View attachment 151130

now, don't misunderstand me. we all agree that the psclassic isn't good, but is not because of pcsx-rearmed.

Yeah, whatever, I don't even give a rat's ass about the PSX Classic or PCSX ReARMed, all the videos I see on YT that show this with a Raspberry Pi 3 always have point sampled audio.

 

[Hells Malice]

Great job $ony, this is yet another evidence that you made this product just to do a quick cash-grab and jump on the classic mini trend ninty just started

A company trying to make money?

The absolute scandal

 

[Chary]

Look at you, swinging your textual hips; you're going to cause something to happen....I couldn't decide how to make it more "creepy uncle"....your refund is good for 15 minutes.

The classroom for proper english sentences is 4 doors down, my good man. Please come back when you can speak coherently.

 

[Skittyusedcovet]

Look at you, swinging your textual hips; you're going to cause something to happen....I couldn't decide how to make it more "creepy uncle"....your refund is good for 15 minutes.

You won the creepy award for tonight. I legit pictured a creepy old man swinging his hips while talking about that now. I feel very afraid and slighly uncomfortable now.

 

[Bladexdsl]

no surprise there it's just an emulator in a box

 

[the_randomizer]

A company trying to make money?

The absolute scandal

No no no, there's no wrong in a company making money. It's when a company half-asses it to the point of laughable status, with zero effort at all and when people are complacently sycophantic with it. Ergo, they think it's acceptable for Sony to pull such a stupid move, is what the real issue is. People enable them by buying their lazy crap.

People think Sony can do no wrong. Sony is life, hail Hy--, er, Sony.

 

[MaxiBash]

$100 for a console that contains PAL versions, a free open-source emulator that has HIDDEN DEBUG FEATURES, NOT HIDDEN AWAY FROM THE MAIN INTERFACE and a terrible game list?!

This console will soon drop to $40 in a no-time.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Wow. That's like if I sold an ODroid XU4, packaged it up as a N64 Classic, and people would notice pretty quickly that it's not a professionally done package at all!

Personally, I think taking a fat PS3, giving it better cooling, a better case, and a large 2.5" HDD is the best solution for all of your pre-PS4 gaming needs if you're not using a PC. I mean, at this point, unless if you're really doing stuff online that requires you to use a legitimate account, there's no real major games coming out for the system. I think the last hurrah was actually Persona 5...kind of like how Persona 4 was the last game in the PS2's lifecycle in the US, as the rest of the stuff from that point onward was just sad ports of PS3 and even games that released on PS4 that were cross generation with two previous gen consoles! (yes, I'm referring to whatever FIFA game came out on three generations of hardware) Because of how many ports the PS3 and PS2 got for various game franchises, and everything else in-between, it really is crazy how many generations of games the PS3 has access to. You have all of the Resident Evil games, including the ones that were originally exclusive to GC. Just about every non-DS Mega Man game can be played on this system. There's a lot of ports of various SEGA arcade games and even some DC-era arcade ports. Most of the Shin Megami Tensei series, especially now with the completion of SMT If...'s translation by Aeon Genesis can be played in someway on the PS3, and that number increases with a fat PS3 that can play PS2 games. Every Tekken game before 7 can be played...

I remember an old AlphaOmegaSin video where he was asked a question of what game system he would keep for the rest of his life if he had to choose one that wasn't PC since that's kind of cheating with the question, and he was actually pretty on point. Seeing as how the PS4 generation has played out with remasters and re-releases of old games, it's been pretty funny to me how much of the current generation of games you can play on a PS3. This is the reason why I hope the PS5 has better backwards compatibility with the PS4 and PS3 natively as opposed to hoping data caps will be able to handle streaming games.

 

[mario5555]

Great job $ony, this is yet another evidence that you made this product just to do a quick cash-grab and jump on the classic mini trend ninty just started

All of this was already known (for those of us who were paying attention that is) and talked about before the system launched, people making it out like it's some bloody conspiracy or something...

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Okay, there's using an open source emulator (btw, anyone who owns this thing -> mail Sony for the source code, you have both the right to get it and distribute it, the whole thing is under GPLv2) and there's using one but not even modifying it to your own needs.

So far it just seems like a single core RetroArch box with a UI Sony quickly slapped together.

 

[Alex4nder001]

Perhaps most interestingly, an ability to "Load CD Image". Multiple attempts have been made to get the PlayStation Classic to utilize this option to boot normally unsupported backups, though no breakthroughs have been made yet

Try plugging in a keyboard in one USB port, and a flash drive in the other. Or use a USB hub for the keyboard/flash drive.