The History of PSX Emulators - Part 3

Virtual Game Station (1999)

VGS

Virtual Game Station, or simply VGS, was released in January 1999 by the company Connectix for MacOS, as version 1.1. Connectix was responsible for creating software and hardware for Apple computers, mainly in the field of RAM memory. It also produced emulators for PowerPCs for the company. Connectix was founded by Aaron Giles and chaired by Roy McDonald. The emulator was created by Eric Traut. In the same month that the emulator was released, it received a lawsuit from Sony for copyright. In February, Connectix managed to win the lawsuit and continue developing its emulator. Version 1.2 was released in March, also for Mac. The emulator was the first to run games at full speed, and it had the most compatible games, around 377 by March 1999.

VGS (C: The Contra Adventure)

It could also be run with a 200Mhz processor and 32 MB of RAM. It also had a memory card function. But all this came at a price, $49. Despite all this success, from April onwards Connectix was unable to release any more versions of the emulator, nor additional copies of the versions already released, because despite having won the lawsuit against Sony, the latter managed to obtain an injunction to prevent the continuation of the project until the year 2000. A new update only occurred in March/April 2000, with version 1.3, now also for Windows. This version was created in September 1999, but only released the following year, following the orders of Sony's injunction, apparently.

VGS (Loading/Pause/Insert Game/Settings/Controls)

The latest and most well-known version of the emulator was released in April 2000, as version 1.4. Initially, the emulator was restricted to running only NTSC games, but later it also included PAL games (PAL-M in Brazil). There was also a region lock, as on the console, but this was later changed by hackers who managed to bypass this lock. And speaking of hackers, this was undoubtedly the emulator that received the most modifications, such as a large number of patches, which are nothing more than programs that add functions to third-party products. The main ones were VGS Autorun, which made the game work when it was placed in the optical drive, VGSJoy, which allowed configuring a joypad in the emulator, CVGS, which allowed running the emulator with resolutions of 800x600 and 1024x768, VGS Video, which allowed loading games at any resolution, VGS Video Patch XP, which in addition to supporting several resolutions, also allowed running the emulator on Windows 2000 and XP and Memory Card Manager, which allowed converting the various game save extensions to run on the emulator, all made by Aldo Vargas, among others.

CVGS Video Patch XP

After the last release in April 2000, Sony purchased the VGS from Connectix and discontinued it. Purchasers of the emulator were supported by Connectix until December 2001. The last count of the emulator's game compatibility list, which was made in January 2001, counted 3,331 games in total working and 203 untested. In 2003, the Connectix engineering team was hired by Microsoft. In February 2018, Dr. Emuler converted the emulator to run on Windows 10 and translated it into Spanish, naming this version 1.4.2 of the emulator.

ePSXe (2000)

ePSXe

The Enhanced PSX Emulator, or simply ePSXe, was one of the last emulators to be created in the golden age of PSX emulation, and later considered the best Playstation emulator in history. The project began in early 2000 by the ePSXe Team, composed of Calb, Galtor and _Demo_, creating an emulator based on plug-ins, similar to PSEmu Pro, emulating CPU, GPU and SPU, which are all processing units (from the original processing unit), in this case central, graphic and sound, as well as CD-ROM plug-ins. Several plug-ins were made for the emulator itself, and others created by users, and even used from PSEmu Pro. The plug-ins' functions include support for Direct3D and OpenGL, effects and music enhancements, and reading the seven types of ROM extensions for the console. The plug-ins used were the same ones created for PSEmu Pro, authored by Kazzuya, Tratax, Duddie, Nik, Lewpy, Foxfire and Pete Bernert. Over time these plug-ins were updated and new plug-ins were also created by some of these creators, as well as by other creators.

ePSXe (Bushido Blade 2)

The emulator was also made in closed source and based on ATI, which works with the interaction of several software programs together. Its first version was released in October 2000 for Windows. In January 2002, it gained a version for Linux and in May 2016 a version for MacOS X, based on the Linux version. The emulator supported ISO files in addition to CD-ROMs. It is the emulator that runs the most game extensions, being the only one, or one of the few that runs the PBP extension, which is a compression of the size of PS1 games for CDs or ROM memory devices. There was also a function in the emulator to add patches in ppf format to fix bugs in some games, but they were created for only a few of them. Also similar to other emulators, ePSXe recommended a minimum of 200Mhz processor and 32MB of RAM to run the emulator. But for video, I recommend at least a Voodoo 2, which came with the 3Dfx function and at least 8MB of RAM. Regarding the emulator's bios, it was used from its inception until January 2015, when it was removed to avoid copyright issues with Sony, since the bios belongs to the company.

ePSXe (Settings)

This resulted in the HLE Bios function being introduced from this version onwards, which allows unofficial bios to be used in the emulator. Over the years, the emulator has had interesting updates. Among them, the March 2001 update gave support to SaveState, the August 2003 update improved CD-ROM emulation, the November 2012 update gave support to Gameshark, the January 2015 update included HLE Bios and the April 2016 update increased the PSX processor performance for better game execution. Regarding other updates, the background of its front-end is changed with each new update, containing the updated version number. About its icon in the executable and at the top of the front, it changes in January 2002 and August 2003. Regarding the emulator's compatibility list, of the 3,166 games tested, 2,811 ran perfectly, 259 ran moderately or with some defects and 96 did not run. The games that did not run or ran with some bug were recommended to run on emulators such as Xebra, SSSPSX and PCSX. The list was created by Alex Litfiba. The emulator also had the direct and indirect support of many people.

ePSXe v.1.0.1/ 1.2.0/1.5.0/1.5.2/1.6.0

ePSXe 1.7.0/1.8.0/1.9.0/1.9.25/2.0/2.0.2

In addition to plug-in creators such as Lewpy, Pete, Kazzuya, Duddie and Tratax, who also helped with audio, video and even programming support, they also had the help of Bobbi, from the PSXEmu website, who helped with the AdriPSX project, as well as the project's creator, Roor, who helped with documents, graphics and good ideas, George Moralis from the Jackal project, who helped with information, as well as Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler for the ZLib data compression library, among others. After version 1.6.0 in August 2003, the emulator had a four-year hiatus, when the team, driven by fans, decided to update it again in July 2007, with the release in May 2008 with version 1.7.0. Another hiatus occurred and the team returned in August 2012 with the release of the Android version of the emulator, and updated the PC version in November 2012, with version 1.8.0. This last version was undoubtedly one of the most worked on and best compatible that existed up to that point. After that, they updated the emulator more frequently, with versions in 2013, 2015, and four versions in 2016, with the June 2016 release being the last, version 2.0.5, ending a 16-year history of PSX emulation on computers. The last version for Android came out in March 2024. 

AdriPSX (2000)

AdriPSX

AdriPSX was created by Argentinian Hector San Martin, known as Roor Makurosu, back in 1999. Its name (believe it or not) came from a girlfriend he had at the time named Adriana, and he combined it with the acronym PSX. A little before December 1999, the emulator for MS-DOS was released, followed by the Windows version in December. From the beginning, it had the help of Bobbi, owner of the website PSXEmu, which hosted the AdriPSX website and made updates to the site.

AdriPSX (Interface/Debbuger/Bios)

The emulator followed the model imposed by PSEmu Pro and ePSXe, of functionality through plug-ins. In addition to running games on CD-ROM, it also executed .iso files (only in .bin format). The recommendation for good game execution was a computer with a DirectX-compatible sound card, a Pentium or Celeron processor with 300Mhz or more, 32MB of RAM, a 16-bit graphics card and a 16x-speed CD-ROM drive.

Neo AdriPSX (Menus/About)

In November 2000, Roor stopped releasing the emulator in DOS mode, but returned in May 2001 due to fan requests, since at the time it was still very common to run games this way, as it used more computer performance than with Windows loaded, especially RAM. I believe this was the last DOS version of the emulator. The versions of the emulator released around 2001 for Windows were known as Neo AdriPSX. In June 2001, he released the last version of the emulator, releasing its source code in February 2002. In 2002, Juan Fazzini joined the project, having already been helping since early 2001 with information related to TCP/IP for connection via NetPlay. In the project, he helped as an auxiliary coder and GUI (interface) designer.

AdriPSX ILE Edition (Settings)

In this phase, the emulator's name was changed to AdriPSX ILE Edition. Similar to the way the emulator's name was born, the ILE added to the name comes from the name Ileana, a second girlfriend he had at the time (he likes to pay homage to his girlfriends, huh? LOL). The first release with ILE Edition was in March 2002. The last version came out in April 2002, adding, among others, support for 17 languages ​​in total, including Portuguese, partial memory card support, compatibility with more games and fixing several bugs. It also brought the possibility of running plug-ins previously run in PSEmu Pro (and I believe also those from ePSXe). This phase had six releases in total.

AdriPSX ILE Edition (Tomb Raider III)

He worked on the emulator until 2003 and promised to release version 1.6 in June, but this never happened. Some time later, he helped found Kaze Networking And Automation (you've noticed that he likes to use Japanese words, right?), a company that creates software for network management. In 2005, he was approached by GameTap to use their emulator. With this, Hector made improvements to it, such as not requiring a BIOS to run the emulator, pre-established configuration for low-configuration machines and compatibility with 90% of the console's games. His company Kaze participates as owner and licensor of the emulator.

New AdriPSX (Interface/Auto Destruct/Controls)

Hector publicly released this version under the name New AdriPSX (Could it be that he was now dating a new Adriana? Those who know will understand lol) in June 2009. The emulator interface was also quite different, and now it no longer had the possibility of running ISOs, only CDs of the games in the physical CD-ROM drive. Around 2010/11, he ended his work with Kaze and founded the company Torum, which worked with the creation of websites. In 2011, he returned to the world of emulation. At that time, he had a project to make an emulator for Nintendo Wii, and an emulator for old PCs to run on smartphones, tablets and desktop applications, encouraged by the knowledge he acquired working for GameTap. However, the projects did not go ahead. In 2012, he released the emulator for Nintendo DS, Duos DSEMU.

AdriPSX

In the same year he also returned with the AdriPSX project, and released its latest version in August 2012. At the end of 2013 he abandoned all emulation projects. After that he continued working as chief technology officer (CTO).