Hacking How do GBA games look on the PSP?

[Dkschrute]

I would like to purchase a PSP for emulating. Mainly for GBA, Genesis, (S)nes and Ps1. I have a DS lite myself, but I think the screen is rather small and I'm looking for something bigger. I can't seem to find the answer to this question. Looking at videos on Youtube don't give me a good idea about the quality.

Do GBA games look better on the PSP than the DS? Do the games look sharp or washed out? Will GBA games look better on a PS Vita? I'm still not sure if I should wait for the PS vita to play N64 games. That would be great.

Much appreciated.

 

[Kouen Hasuki]

GBA Games look fairly decent on PSP with a slight bit of edge blur due to blowing up the image to full screen but more than exceptable

 

[DinohScene]

The higher the resolution, the more pixelated GBA games will look.

Personally, I think GBA games look just about right on the PSP.

 

[Rydian]

Don't get the Vita, it only does PSP homebrew, and even then just a limited subset of it.

Games can be smaller bit pixel-perfect, or larger but scaled.

First is a physical pic (so you can see the scale since visual size is a concern), then a screenshot taken on the system.

 

[Dkschrute]

Thanks for responding. And thanks Rydian for taking the time to make pictures. It does look very nice. Would you recommend playing gba games on a psp over the Ds lite?

 

[Rydian]

Well you lose some compatibility and there's a few games that aren't fullspeed, but it's an emulator so you gain save states and easy cheats and all the PSP pros (music in-game with plugins, etc.).

 

[placebooooo]

All games i played on the gba emu for psp run flawlessly!

 

[Alcarajo]

Any list of the games not compatible on the emulator?

 

[Dkschrute]

The PS vita has twice as much pixels. So in other words, GBA games will never look good on the Vita? It's no problem for me to wait a while till emulation takes off on the Vita. But GBA games have to look great.

 

[mkdms14]

From what I can tell most games run fine on it you have a couple like both Golden Sun which have historically been an emulators nightmare especially Lost Age. Don't plan on those two. Metroid, Mario and Pokemon run perfectly on the gba. Any other ones you will want to look at the official compatibility list.

 

[VMM]

GBA emulation on PSP is outstanding, graphically speaking.
Playing GBA games on my laptop always was something disastrous, the games looked ugly as fuck.
With PSP, I could play fullscreen and the games still looked fine.

 

[Arm73]

Forget the PSP.
I have PSP 3000, and I love it, but it just can't compare to a DSL and a GBA flashcart when it comes to GBA games.
On the DSL you get perfect compatibility and smoothness because of the built in native hardware.
On the PSP you get an "accetable" result.
If you have low expectations and you don't know any better, I guess a PSP would do it.
But for me not even my modern Laptop and VBA can do justice to the real thing, some games still are a little jerky or suffer from screen tearing/glitches, so how can a PSP be satisfactory when not even my PC with all the filters, bells and whistles can do ?

Also,during the years and after a lot of testing with various emulators and several commercial retro game collections such as Capcom reloaded, Atari and SNK, I concluded that the PSP screen is absolutely terrible for ANY retro purposes.
With a weird native resolution of 480 x 272, most retro system look too small when displayed at 1:1 in their native resolution, and too blurry when streched to fill the screen in 4:3 mode, and absolutely terrible in full widescreen.

The only emulator that looks alright for my ( admittedly ) picky taste, is actually the GB/GBC, as the original resolution was so small that the PSP can actually do a clean 2:1 !!!

So really, as much as I love the hardware, I wouldn't recommend anybody to purchase one solely based on emulators capabilities, let alone the fact that the homebrew scene has been technically dead for years.
Unless you don't have any other options, then I guess it would have to do it...

But with better alternatives out there, the many android based tablets, phones and portable systems ( GCW Zero and the likes ) with much better processors and screens, and since the OP seem to have already a DSL, I'd stay away from the PSP, even if I'd get one for free.

 

[Xarsah16]

I turned to GBA emulation on psp when I couldn't see the game on my GBA due to lack of lighting and my bad eyes... as Rydian posted, the colors are nice and crisp as seen in his images and I have not had a compatibility issue except for a link to the past (remake) and the NES classics, but I could always use the NES ROMs instead on the NES emulator.

 

[GameWinner]

GBA games looks and runs great on a PSP.
Only one game I couldn't play due to anti-piracy checks (I guess?) which was a Hamtaro game.

 

[Xarsah16]

I forgot about sonic advance - running those games is lolworthy. They require a soft reset of the game within the emulator in order to run because of the grey boxes it runs perfectly fine after the soft reset.

 

[Rydian]

Forget the PSP.[/quote[Because SNES and PS1 run great on the Lite, right?

 

[Arm73]

Of course PSP has a built in PSX support and it's great, I just don't enjoy PSX games on the PSP for the very same reason I don't like other retro systems on it: The terrible ( for my taste ) upscaling, or live with black bars and tiny, tiny text in games that were meant to be played on a TV.

Really, I religiously followed your excellent guides and hacked every PSP for me and my family,and I tryed to bring myself to finally finish Vagrant Story and the original Silent Hill,but I just think that PSX games are better off ePSX on a PC monitor with my wired xbox360 controller or Dual Shock via USB adapter.
Even better, if there was a really good PSX emulator for my Wii ( because of the component output ), I'd rather play those games on my old fashioned CRT TV, like I play every retro system with a combination of emulators and VC up to the N64.
No hard feelings, the PSP is great, but that screen just has a really weird resolution.

I'd take the GCW Zero 320x240 ( or something like the JXD-7300 ) anytime for any purpose.
Sorry to go off topic guys..

 

[Xarsah16]

Did you mean to say something? I see nothing in your post...

 

[Bonny]

The ultimative GBA-Experience: A backlight-modded-GBA and a good GBA Flashcard! - http://www.wolfsoft.de/shop/product...ameboy-advance-(hintergrund-beleuchtung).html

I had a brand new japanese transparent-pink GBA Unit on the shelf for about 6 years, i sended it to the shop above mentioned for the mod 2 days ago.

 

[LouAllet]

i'm a DS lite user as well playing GBA games before via the EZ flash 3in1.. i then switched over to the PSP for GBA games as i got tired of my saves getting deleted whenever the battery of my EZ Flash 3in1 dies.. and changing its battery has always been a nightmare for me.. from what i can tell, the GBA games look fairly decent on the PSP.. the only downside that i could think of is that the battery of my PSP gets drained quicker whenever i play GBA games on it.. since i guess the emulator needs more power to do just that..