Homebrew PS Emulation

[jakeruston]

Hi,

Is it possible for PlayStation 1 games to be emulated to the NDS? Theres no point in asking about the PlayStation 2, as we all know the answer to that (Especially PlayStation 3). I was just wondering, its not as powerful as the N64 I don't think, so its questionable (I think).

Thanks,
Jake.

 

[Zalda]

No, and it will never happen.

 

[Rayder]

No. The DS is about on-par with the PS1 as far as graphics, so emulating the PS1 would be impossible.....way too much overhead for the DS weak CPU. The DS just doesn't have enough horsepower to run PS1 games in emulation. But I'm sure many, if not all, PS1 games could be ported (porting is different than emulating) to the DS fairly well in all but streaming content such as music. Look at Resident Evil DS, it's a perfect port of the PS1 game, plus bonus DS content.

Long story short, it's possible to port PS1 games, impossible to straight-up emulate them on the DS.

 

[jakeruston]

Okay, I'm guessing Porting a game is something that I couldn't do?

 

[onewing]

Commercial ports of games that appeared on the PSX will come across from time to time, but they will be essentially completely re-written for the DS platform. Also, you wont see N64 emulation either, just ports of n64 games (mario 64 DS).

 

[jakeruston]

Okay thanks.

Its just a shame, some games I wanted to play.

 

[deathfisaro]

Actually there are PS1 ports that perform better on DS such as Front Mission 1st. But as far as emulation goes, your best bet would be PSP. Maybe next gen non-Sony handheld will have buffed spec enough to emulate PS1.

I have to say Nintendo is being smarter than Sony. No N64 emulation, but N64 ports games on DS for $30+. PSP has PS1 emulation, which can be purchased on PSN via PS3 for ~$5.
Guess who's making more money.

 

[ZeWarrior]

Porting is extremely hard since the last PS1 games I'm positive are at least 500MB + and a DS cart can only fit like 128 mb or 256mb so I doubt porting is that easy. and PS1 Graphics are slightly better than DS graphics IMO

 

[squeakypants]

Well I couldn't find the PS GPU's specs, but the CPU is 33mhz. The Nintendo DS has 2 CPUs (also used as GPU): 66mhz and 33mhz. The PS has 2mb RAM, 1mb VRAM. The DS has 4mb shared memory.

So, the DS is actually more powerful than the PS (though not even close enough for emulation). However, you also need to take into account that the DS renders 2 screens, totaling 98304 noninterlaced pixels. The PS renders from 57344 to 307200 interlaced pixels. So really they could be considered the same when it comes to graphical capability.

Many of those PS games (like the FF titles) use prerendered sprites, which take up a lot of storage. The biggest NDS games so far are 128mb, though theoretically they could be as big as 4gb (flash memory right now), though that'd be ridiculously expensive since that memory itself goes for at least $40-$50.

 

[DanTheManMS]

It could happen though. Textures don't have to be remarkably high-resolution to look decent on the relatively small DS screen, so that saves space. Audio could be compressed to save space as well. The main killer would then be full motion video. Not sure how they'd work around that.

In addition, there doesn't appear to be a set "limit" for the amount of space a game can take up. We've only seen up to 128 MB at the moment because it's cheaper to make games that use less space.

 

[squeakypants]

Emulation can't happen. Ports can though.

 

[AMPonzi]

Pretty much the only reliable emulation you'll get on the NDS is systems from the SNES/Genesis era and earlier. And even then, SNES and Genesis are having a difficult time performing as well as say, an NES emulator in terms of compatibility and speed.

 

[chuckstudios]

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=55950

Possible, yes.
Playable, fuck no, you can read the opcodes as they go by.

 

[VVoltz]

Okay thanks.

Its just a shame, some games I wanted to play.

Get a PSP.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Hm, interesting link there Chuckstudios. I'm guessing it's just a demo and only runs that one program, right? I renamed a commercial PSX .bin file to MAIN.EXE and edited the first few bytes to say "PS-X EXE", which didn't work (went to SLL loop after a few seconds), though I highly doubted it would work in the first place anyway.

EDIT: Doing a bit more research, I see that the PS-X EXE header in general is used to designate homebrew files. That makes more sense. I got the one from http://psxdev.dragut.net/newbie_intro.html to boot at least, even if it doesn't do anything other than loop endlessly.

 

[BoneMonkey]

No. The DS is about on-par with the PS1 as far as graphics, so emulating the PS1 would be impossible.....way too much overhead for the DS weak CPU. The DS just doesn't have enough horsepower to run PS1 games in emulation. But I'm sure many, if not all, PS1 games could be ported (porting is different than emulating) to the DS fairly well in all but streaming content such as music. Look at Resident Evil DS, it's a perfect port of the PS1 game, plus bonus DS content.

Long story short, it's possible to port PS1 games, impossible to straight-up emulate them on the DS.

no the ps1 has better graphics

 

[suprneb]

what about a ps2?

lol jk

 

[Mangofett]

No. The DS is about on-par with the PS1 as far as graphics, so emulating the PS1 would be impossible.....way too much overhead for the DS weak CPU. The DS just doesn't have enough horsepower to run PS1 games in emulation. But I'm sure many, if not all, PS1 games could be ported (porting is different than emulating) to the DS fairly well in all but streaming content such as music. Look at Resident Evil DS, it's a perfect port of the PS1 game, plus bonus DS content.

Long story short, it's possible to port PS1 games, impossible to straight-up emulate them on the DS.



no the ps1 has better graphics

Slightly. about 256KM more VRAM, but the DS has 2MB more of general purpose RAM, and a 66MHZ ARM proccy which the PS doesn't... And it has to output in a higher resolution (640x480 vs 384x256 for the ds)

 

[iTech]

Hm, interesting link there Chuckstudios. I'm guessing it's just a demo and only runs that one program, right? I renamed a commercial PSX .bin file to MAIN.EXE and edited the first few bytes to say "PS-X EXE", which didn't work (went to SLL loop after a few seconds), though I highly doubted it would work in the first place anyway.

EDIT: Doing a bit more research, I see that the PS-X EXE header in general is used to designate homebrew files. That makes more sense. I got the one from http://psxdev.dragut.net/newbie_intro.html to boot at least, even if it doesn't do anything other than loop endlessly.

Hey hey! WTF? That shit is mine. I wrote it. I linked to it in the testing area once, you could look at my post history to find the thread, it was about me being an idiot (which I am). It was total crap, a pre-pre alpha of the interpretation engine. You should see the shit now, and unless I get banned or killed by junkies, you will soon enough.

[EDIT: Just realised Chuckstudios linked to that post. I thought the file was on the GBATemp servers when I saw the URL, hosted in the download section, but, why would it be?]