The History of PSX Emulators - Part 4

PCSX (2000)

PCSX

PCSX had an interesting upbringing. The project began in mid-December 1999, and the original group consisted of NoComp, who created the project and also coded it, Shadow, the emulator's coder, Jum, who worked on the sound part, Barubary, who worked on the CD-ROM part, Pete Bernert, who created the video plug-ins, the GUI, and others, and Roor as leader, coder, and collaborator. We can say that the project is a fusion of several influencers in Playstation emulation, such as Shado from Jackal, Roor from AdriPSX, and Pete Bernert, who indirectly helped PSEmu Pro with its plug-ins. In addition, Duddie, Tratax, and Moonshado from PSEmu Pro also helped, as well as Lewpy, who created plug-ins for PSEmu. At that time, Shadow had already finished his project with Jackal, and AdriPSX was still in its early releases. The source code for the emulator was written by the trio NoComp, Shadow, and Roor. By March 2000, NoComp had abandoned the project and Geoge Moralis, known as Shadow, had taken over leadership of the project.

PCSX (Bomberman World)

The emulator was released in September 2000 for Windows, already running the BIOS, images in .BIN and .ISO formats and CD-ROM. Shortly after, support for the joypad was added. Right from the start, there was a controversy. The source for the emulator's CD-ROM support was taken from the FPSE emulator by NoComp. The creators of FPSE discovered this and accused them of copying. Shadow, who was taking care of the emulator at the time, threatened to leave the project. Because of all this, NoComp had to speak out and explained what happened, that they made fixes to make the support work on PCSX, and that Roor reworked the support code, including removing traces of FPSE, back in December 1999, and that if these traces had remained, he would have credited its creators. After this problem, the emulator continued its updates, and Shadow did not leave the team. At the end of 2000, Barubary and Jum left the project, and AkumaX entered, taking care of the emulator website.

PCSX (About/Menus)

The Linux port was released in February 2001 by Linuzappz, who also created plug-ins for the port. In March 2001, Nik3D joined, who also wrote plug-ins for PSEmu Pro, working in technical roles. In early 2002, Linuzappz became the emulator's main developer and coder, with Shadow taking over as co-coder. The latest version of the emulator was released in May 2003, and after that, Linuzappz and Shadow dedicated themselves exclusively to the PCSX2 emulator for Playstation 2, which they had been developing since 2001. Despite having made good progress, it was only able to emulate 40% of the CPU, and never emulated the memory card, but 90% of the console's RAM was emulated, 60% of the CD-ROM and 95% of the GPU. The emulator has had some ports, such as for the Dreamcast consoles in August 2002, Xbox in May 2003, GameCube and Nintendo Wii in June 2009, for the PSP handheld in 2013, for JavaScript in October 2017, and for MacOS X systems in January 2005, Android in 2012 and ReactOS in August 2019.

PCSX-df

After its completion, some interested parties came forward to create forks of the emulator. Among them, PCSX-df for Linux was created in 2006 by Andrew Burton, Stefan Sikora, Marcus Comstedt, Ryan Schultz and Stephen Chao. One of its first versions was released in January 2008. The improvements were in the interface, in the support for virtual memory (AMD64) and correction of some bugs. The emulator ran the .ISO, .CUE and .BIN formats. Its latest version was released in March 2009. 

PCSX-Reloaded (Interface/Sound/Settings/Iron Man and XO Manowar in Heavy Metal)

In mid-2009, a fork of PCSX-df was created, called PCSX-Reloaded, by Edgbla, Shalma, Firnis, Gabriele Gorla, Peter Collingbourne, Dario and Wei Mingzhi. It was released in December 2009 with versions for Linux (Fedora and Mandiva), MacOS X and Windows, and its main improvements were the possibility of using ePSXe plug-ins, and several other plug-ins. Its last version was released in August 2013. This fork was the one that had the most forks and ports. It had the GTK2, Again, HDBG and Redux for Windows, Reloaded-Plus, Codeplex-Mirror, NG and Optimized for MacOS and also Windows, and Flatpak for Linux. The Optimized version was also for Debian.

PCSX-Reloaded (Interface/Sound/Settings/Dance Dance Revolution)

It has had ports for handhelds such as GamePark Wiz and Caanoo and Nintendo GameCube, for the Wii, Wii U, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles, and for the BlackBerry QNX, Maemo and Debian Maemo handheld operating systems. One of these forks, PCSX4ALL for the GamePark Wiz and GamePark Caanoo handhelds, created in July 2010 by Franxis and Chui, who left the PS1 emulator project PSX4ALL started in 2006, became quite well known, and even had ports, such as PCSX4nspire for the TI-Nspire Calculator and PCSX4ALL-GLES, an improvement of the emulator with some innovations brought by PCSX ReARMed, a fork of PCSX-Reloaded. The PCSX4ALL project featured the Una-i GPU that originated in PSX4ALL. The emulator ran image formats in .ISO, .CUE, .MDF, .IMG, .BIN, .TOC, .CBN and .PBP, as well as running games on CD-ROM. Its latest version was released in May 2012.

PCSX ReARMed

Still talking about PCSX-Reloaded, besides the forks already mentioned, the most relevant was PCSX ReARMed (rearmed), mentioned a few times ago, and which appeared while PCSX-Reloaded was still being updated, with its release in December 2010, initially for the first Pandora handheld. Created by Notaz and Exophase, it was a version developed for portable systems, such as portable video games and smartphones. Its creators were already working with ports of emulators for portable devices, and had their creations and ports of emulators from other consoles ported to the iPhone by the PSX4ALL project. One of the differences of ReARMed is the special optimization in ARM processors (technology initially developed by the PSX4ALL project), which is a more modern work architecture.

PCSX ReARMed (Grand Turismo 2)

The emulator features the pixel-perfect ARM NEON GPU plugins by Exophase, the Una-i emulator for PSX4ALL and the Gamepark Holdings port of PCSX-Reloaded called PCSX4ALL, and the PEop.S plugin by notable PSX plugin creator Pete Bernert. The emulator is also based on the original PCSX, PCSX-df, and the 2009 GameCube and Nintendo Wii port of PCSX-Reloaded called PCSX-Revolution. Its last update was in February 2015. PCSX ReARMed can play games in .BIN, .CUE, .TOC, .IMG, .CCD, .SUB, .MDF, .MDS, .Z, .BZ, .ZNX, and .PBP formats. The emulator also had a fork, the Switch, also for Windows, bringing some improvements. As for ports, it was the second fork of PCSX that had the most ports, such as for the portable operating systems BlackBerry, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry QNX, Maemo, Debian Maemo and Maemo East, the Kodi and RetroArch systems, in addition to the portable GameShell and the RetroArch emulator for the portable Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita.

PlayStation Classic/PCSX ReARMed

Due to its technology, most of the ports were for portable devices and smartphones, which caught the attention of Sony, which wanted to launch its mini Playstation, the Playstation Classic, which was made based on the technology of portable devices. Sony ended up partnering with ReARMed and launching the emulator as the main system for its console. This happened in December 2018.

PCSX-RR (Interface/About/Menus)

Another fork emerged from PCSX. While PCSX-df was being developed, PCSX ReRecording, or just PCSX-RR, was released in August 2008 for Windows, derived from the original version of the emulator. Its purpose was to record gameplay from the PCSX emulator. It was developed until April 2010, and supported MacOS X, Linux and also the Dreamcast console.

PCSX-RR (Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling 2)

Among the dozens, if not hundreds of changes in this port, is its code written from scratch, and much of it written was taken from several open source emulators existing at the time, such as Dega, Final Burn Alpha, FCEU, Gens, Snes9x and Visual Boy Advance. In addition, it also added support for cheats, as well as RAM search and clock, among others. The emulator opened games in .BIN, .CUE and .ISO format, as well as games on CD-ROM. Around January 2022, it began to be part of the multisystem emulator, BizHawk.

PSXjin (Jumping Flash! 2/Options/About)

In February 2011, a continuation of PCSX-RR called PSXJin for Windows was released, created by Zeromus, Adelikat and Darkkobold among others, which applies only one input plug-in to the emulator, creates a simple interface and uses a new sound processor core (SPU). PSXjin has some differences from its predecessors. Among them, the emulation of Dual Shock, which is the vibration mode on the Playstation controllers of the same name, in addition to 4 window modes. The emulator runs games in .ISO, .CUE, .IMG and .BIN formats. The project lasted a few months, and in May 2011 it had its last update.

- PCSX (Ports): PCSX-DC for Dreamcast in 2002, PCSX WIP for Dreamcast in 2003, PCSXBOX for Xbox in 2003, WiiSX/CubeSX/PCSXgc for Gamecube and Nintendo Wii in 2009, pcsx-android for Android in 2012, PSXP for PSP in 2013, PCSX-JS for JavaScript in 2017, PCSX-Forros for ReactOS system in 2019.

- PCSX-Reloaded (Forks): PCSX4ALL for GamePark Wiz and Caanoo in 2010, PCSX-Reloaded-Plus for MacOS X and Windows in 2014, PCSX-Reloaded-GTK2 for Windows in 2015, PCSXR-Codeplex-Mirror for MacOS X and Windows in 2017, PCSX-NG for Windows and MacOS in 2017, PCSX-Reloaded-Again for Windows in 2018, PCSX-R-Flatpak for Linux in 2019, CPCSX-HDBG for Windows in 2019, PCSX-Reloaded-Optimized for Debian, MacOS and Windows in 2020, PCSX Redux for Windows in 2020.

- PCSX-Reloaded (Ports): PCSX-Revolution for Gamecube and Nintendo Wii in 2009, PCSXWii for Nintendo Gamecube and Wii, PCSX-R-Xenon for Xbox 360 in 2011, PCSX-R-360 for Xbox 360 in 2013, PS3SX for PS3 in 2013, PCSX-Piplay for BlackBerry QNX, and Debian Maemo (meimou) handheld systems in 2015, PCSX-R360 for Xbox 360 in 2016, WiiSXR for Nintendo Gamecube, Wii and Wii U in 2016, PCSX-ReloadedX for Xbox in 2018, WiiSXRX for Nintendo Gamecube, Wii and Wii U in 2020.

- PCSX4ALL (Ports): PCSX4nspire in 2016, and PCSX4ALL-GLES in 2019.

- PCSX-ReARMed (Forks): PCSX-ReARMed-Switch in 2020.

- PCSX-ReARMed (Ports): PCSX-ReARMed-PB for the BlackBerry PlayBook smartphone in 2012, PCSX-Rearmed-Cascades for BlackBerry 10 in 2013, PCSX-ReARMed XBMC for the Kodi system in 2015, PCSX-Rearmed (inside RetroArch) in 2016, PCSX-Rearmed-Debian for the Debian operating system in 2017, PCSX-ReARMed for the RetroArch system in 2018, PCSX-ReARMed-Sony for BlackBerry QNX, Maemo and Debian Maemo in 2018, PCSX for the GameShell handheld in 2018, PCSX for RetroArch for the Nintendo 3DS in 2019, PCSX-Readmed for the Blackberry and Maemo operating systems in 2019, PCSX-ReARMed-Custom for BlackBerry QNX, Maemo and Debian Maemo in 2019, PCSX-Rearmed-MLD4 for Maemo East (Debian based) for Smartphones such as Motorola 4droid in 2020.

Xebra (2003)

Xebra

The Xebra emulator (zebra in English) was developed for Windows in 2002 by Japanese Dr. Hell. Hell was already known for creating plug-ins for PSEmu Pro, such as Dr.Hell's GDI GPU Plug-in for video in 2001 and Dr.Hell's Action Replay GPU Whapper for video and Dr.Hell WinMM Pad Plug-in for joypad in 2003. The emulator was released in January 2003 for Windows. In the August 2007 version, Hell said that the emulator already emulated almost 100% of the games.

Xebra (Gex: Enter The Gecko)

Xebra (Xebra-OS/Bios/GTA)

One interesting fact is that starting with the March 2005 version, Xebra came with another emulator called Arbex (Xebra backwards), which, apart from the icon, is the same as Xebra. The only difference is that it doesn't require a BIOS to run the games. This is just a difference for those who don't mind not seeing the PS1 logo on the screen. The emulator runs games from both CD-ROMs and images, in .BIN, .CUE, .IMG and .CCD formats.

Xebra (Menus/About)

Around February 2015, it launched its emulator for Android on the Play Store. The following year, it launched two more emulators for Android, PK201, emulating the PSX accessory, PocketStation (which was used to unlock items and minigames within games, as well as a memory card) and MCIM, which emulates the device's memory card. The latest update of the emulator is dated November 2022 for Windows and August 2024 for Android.