While you've likely been enjoying GBA emulation for years, on various platforms, the PlayStation Vita hasn't always had an easy time of it. Despite being a very similar form factor to the original GBA, and still relatively portable, the handheld never made for an ideal platform to emulate Game Boy Advance games on. mGBA is still making progress on improving GBA emulation on the Vita, while gpsp has been dealing with a major bug, which causes noticeable stuttering ingame. That's not the case anymore, though, as Frangar, developer of gpsp, has made a significant update to the emulator which fixes the broken dynarec that has been plaguing it for the past three years. The bugfix, which allows for "a big increase in performance", has been merged into Libretro's master branch, and should be available to try out in the next nightly version of RetroArch.

Source

 

[Fugelmir]

Meanwhile the snes cores still can't run ff6 or 7th saga properly on the vita.

 

[raxadian]

This is awesome, if only I would get to hack my Vita already...

 

[u-u]

oh woah!!! thats really cool :0

 

[leonmagnus99]

guys, i use gpsp kai gbatemp version, has a cat logo on it (i think that's the name) of the one i use on my vita.

is this newly updated gpsp better than that ?
and I'm guessing since it's a core from retroarch, i could just use that (if it's better than psp adrenaline way of playing gba roms..)

 

[Fugelmir]

guys, i use gpsp kai gbatemp version, has a cat logo on it (i think that's the name) of the one i use on my vita.

is this newly updated gpsp better than that ?
and I'm guessing since it's a core from retroarch, i could just use that (if it's better than psp adrenaline way of playing gba roms..)

I just tried Golden Sun 2, it worked 100% speed but randomly restarted while I was testing it out at a certain point -- so new bugs were introduced in this release. Wait a few days and it'll be better than any psp emu.

 

[AutumnWolf]

Why use this over mgba for example?

 

[Rahkeesh]

MGBA has no dynarec at all for one, runs many games slow and with choppy sound.

 

[AutumnWolf]

MGBA has no dynarec at all for one, runs many games slow and with choppy sound.

Does the 3DS version have dynarec?
Cause it runs perfectly there

 

[Rahkeesh]

MGBA has no dynarec on any system, and while it can run a good number of games perfectly on New 3DS, others it really does less so. Try tactics ogre for a slideshow.

New 3DS also have much faster CPU clocks, MGBA is much more of a struggle on Vita and the dynarec is badly needed. Watch a video of how metroid zero mission runs there.

 

[AutumnWolf]

MGBA has no dynarec on any system, and while it can run a good number of games perfectly on New 3DS, others it really does less so. Try tactics ogre for a slideshow.

New 3DS also have much faster CPU clocks, MGBA is much more of a struggle on Vita and the dynarec is badly needed. Watch a video of how metroid zero mission runs there.

YT basically have me the middle finger, couldn't find any video of Zero Mission running on the Vita (mgba)

Could you describe how it runs instead?

 

[ertaboy356b]

Already out.

https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/playstation/vita/2019-11-10_RetroArch.vpk

Golden Sun FULL SPEED.

Overclocking needed?

 

[Jayro]

Cool, now can they backport it to the PSP? The PSP's version hasn't seen an update in YEARS.

 

[raxadian]

Does the 3DS version have dynarec?
Cause it runs perfectly there

The 3DS was actually designed to be somewhat compatible with GBA games, sadly they never did that with that save the Ambassadors 3DS. Probably because piracy would be even more rampant if they did.

So that's why is easier or something.

 

[leonmagnus99]

I just tried Golden Sun 2, it worked 100% speed but randomly restarted while I was testing it out at a certain point -- so new bugs were introduced in this release. Wait a few days and it'll be better than any psp emu.

sweet, and I'll have to use its core only if i don't want to launch retroarch etc. yes?
those single core vpks yes? so e.g it would be a gpsp core.vpk yes?

 

[Fugelmir]

sweet, and I'll have to use its core only if i don't want to launch retroarch etc. yes?
those single core vpks yes? so e.g it would be a gpsp core.vpk yes?

Yeah. I guess. Ive never used individual cores before, so I cant be sure.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Here's a comparison of FFVI run on mGBA versus gpsp via Adrenaline. The crappy sound performance on mGBA is simply because the game is running too slowly as you can see from the FPS counter. You can also see how even at the lower PSP level clocks, performance on adrenaline gpsp is vastly superior thanks to a dynarec plus some hacks.

This release is a big deal because now you don't have to boot into adrenaline to enjoy GBA games at fullspeed and can take advantage of the Vita's full resolution for better scaling. Hopefully you can also play most of the library at fullspeed without needing to mess with various hack tweaks and forks as with adrenaline gpsp.

 

[Graxer]

I'm mean every other cores work fine on other consoles such and GB/C, NES, SNES, Sega stuff and what not

I'm sure they fix it in the coming days....... hopefully.

I added the GBA Bios to Retroarch. Then I loaded a rom from the "load content" option on the main menu (not my library as that crashed even with the bios at first) and everything seems to be working now... Besides saving despite the fact Retroarch is set to save sram every second.

 

[tatumanu]

The Vita deserves a perfect GBA emulator. The controls feel much better than GBA and 3DS + the OLED / IPS screen.
Although I only use GBA emulators on Vita for Tilt controls games ( WarioWare Twisted) this is really big news!

offtopic: I don't really understand why someone would use GBA emulators on 3DS... I guess its because of save states, RTC and tilt?

 

[Pickle_Rick]

i would assume no, because the 3ds never had an issue with stuttering and thus low performance. it always ran fullspeed and beyond, just with randomly crashing for unknown (though supposedly dynarec related) reasons



so the next nightly would be out tomorrow?

No offense, but considering the PS1 core doesn't crash and the gpSP core doesn't crash on any other platform, I'm going to call bs on that one. It's an issue with the 3DS build specifically. Also I'd like to point out that it used to work fine before.

The Vita deserves a perfect GBA emulator. The controls feel much better than GBA and 3DS + the OLED / IPS screen.
Although I only use GBA emulators on Vita for Tilt controls games ( WarioWare Twisted) this is really big news!

offtopic: I don't really understand why someone would use GBA emulators on 3DS... I guess its because of save states, RTC and tilt?

And sleep mode.

 

[Gaara4]

Did anyone get video filter to work?
I can apply any filter but after a couple of playtime every game freezes.