The History of PSX Emulators - Part 2

FPse (Free/Final PlayStation Emulator) (1999)

FPse

FPse, Free PlayStation Emulator, was created by Japanese developer Bero in 1999. It was first released in May 1999 for Windows. It did not have its own GUI, so it was run via the command line. Bero released six versions, the last one in December 1999. The emulator never ran commercial games in image or CD-ROM, but it partially ran the BIOS, ran demos and executable files from the CD-ROM (which contained clips, for example). The CPU was emulated, but the GPU had slow emulation and the GTE (console coprocessor) was partially implemented. The emulator was ported to Linux by Iceh around February/March 2000 and to Amiga by AmiDog in August 2000 (the latter on top of version 4.0). The BeOS version, announced in November 2000 by lu_zero, was never released. Also around February/March 2000, Bero formed a partnership with Italian LDChen, who had already participated in the world of emulation by trying to emulate the Commodore 64. In 1998, LD learned about the PSEmu project, which he tried to join without success. After some time away due to military service, he returned and the project was already dead. It was then that he learned about Bero's project, which was open source, and helped him write the emulator, learning from him how the console's coding worked. His initial intention of emulating the PSX was always due to the fact that there were games for the console with full motion video, much better than games released for a PC. Knowing the hidden potential of computers, he thought it was possible to run these same PSX games on the PC. In June 2000, they released their first version together, 0.7, as a continuation of Bero's solo project. This version brought initial SPU emulation, providing sound support to the emulator, new GPU software, more support for GTE, a BIOS that runs demos, screenshots, frameskip, full support for gamepads (including dual-shock) and memory cards, and the long-awaited CD-ROM support. The emulator only supported games via CD-ROM. Version 0.8 was released in July 2000. This version included bug fixes and general changes to GTE, reading and loading console memory, and fixes to plug-in functionality. We do not know in which version it started supporting plug-ins, but in 0.8 it started supporting the Psemu Pro CD and GPU plug-ins. Later on, several third-party plug-ins were loaded into the emulator, such as Eternal SPU for sound from late 2001 and Harakiri for joypad from February 2002, as well as plug-ins specifically for the emulator, such as Darko Matesic's Joydemo from June 2001 and Alex7's Burutter from November 2001, both for joypad, SaPu CD-ROM Plug-in for SaPu from March 2002 (later used in other emulators), as well as plug-ins developed by LDChen himself. Version 0.8 received a port for the Pocket PC, Motorola-E680 models I and G in April 2007. In September 2000 the project ended, and in 2001, LDChen took it up again alone, releasing a version of the emulator in June of that year, 0.9.being the last of the emulator for Windows. This version of LDChen was ported to several different systems, such as BeOS in November 2000, Amiga (by AmiDog) in October 2001 (which had already made four ports of the project) and Pocket PC's such as IPAQ, called FPse ARM (by Schtruck) and Linux (by lu_zero) both in June 2002.

FPSEce (Interface/Menus/Settings)

In 2001, LDChen created the FPSEce project. Led by Ludovic Olivencia, Schtruck, who was the programmer of the project together with LDChen, the aim was to develop the emulator only for the Windows CE system, a system developed in 1996 to run on old cell phones, Pocket PCs, as well as on microcomputers, Windows Mobile and the Dreamcast console. Schtruck became known for helping Duddie in the PSEmu Pro project in 1998 for PC, when he used the pseudonym Kovax. In addition, in January 2003, he released CastCE, a port for PocketPC of the Castaway PC emulator for Atari ST. It was with CastCE that he had his first experience in coding emulators. The first version of FPSEce was released for the Pocket PC 2002 and 2003 systems in October 2003, being a port of version 0.9 of FPse. In its first version, it already supported CD images in .ISO, .IMG, .BIN formats, and images generated by a tool called PocketISO. It also ran PSX executables, such as homebrews, demos, intros and clips in PSX format. The first version did not have the FPse core. This core was only added in the second version. In the second version of February 2004, it began to run executables in .EXE, .ELF and .CPE formats, in addition to the possibility of loading save states from other emulators such as PSEmu, Bleem! and VGS, as well as other formats, such as .RAW, .GME and .DDF.

FPSEce (Settings)

It also fixes bugs in games, GTE, GPU and GUI, frame skips for 3D graphics processes and frameskip. In the third version of ..., the emulator becomes compatible with IPAQ 38 Series Pocket PCs. Only in the fourth version of ..., sound is implemented, but not 100%. The fifth version has some fixes and the sixth has many optimizations for Pocket PCs, a major modification in frameskip and improvement in sound quality, making it smoother. Its last version was released in December 2006, being the seventh version released, 0.09.6, and also the first beta of the project. After a hiatus of almost five years, the project returns and releases two more versions, 0.10 in July 2009 and 0.11 in September 2010. Version 0.10 brought the possibility of running most games without bios, thanks to the HLE technology that simulated this in the emulator. However, some games still require the BIOS and others conflict with this BIOS simulation, and end up not being able to save the games. It was also a version rewritten almost entirely from scratch, bringing greater speed, as well as greater compatibility. The possibility of changing plug-ins without having to restart the emulator was also considered, but it is not known if this was actually implemented.

FPse (Android)

After these releases, the project changed its name to FPse, releasing versions for Windows Phone and Android in February 2011. When it was launched, it was sold for €10, the equivalent of 64 reais. In January 2015, it began to be released only for Android. In July 2020, the 64-bit version, called FPse64 for Android, was released. This version was completely remodeled, with greater speed, smoothness, better design and compatibility. Despite this release, the common version continues to be released. Some curiosities about these versions for Android. They support games in .IMG, .ISO, .BIN, .CUE, .NRG, .MDF, .PBP and .Z extensions, as well as games compressed in .ZIP, .RAR, .7Z, .ECM and .APE. One of the biggest curiosities is the LAN mode, which allows games between two people and the multiplayer mode, which allows up to 4 devices to be used as controls to run on the device.

FPse64 (Android)

And speaking of controls, it supports PS4 and XBOX One controls and all Android-compatible controls, and those with vibration mode also work. Finally, it provides preliminary support for VR headsets and uses OpenGL 2.0 for game graphics. In late 2022, FPse64 changed its name to FPseNG, due to misunderstandings relating the PSX emulator to the N64 emulator. The latest versions of both emulators came out in September 2023, for $2.99 ​​each, around 17 reais. Other important people were also part of this project, such as AmiDog, with his versions for Amiga, from the Bero versions to the FPSEce ones, with ports created in the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2015. Lu_zero, also since the Bero era, with his unfinished BeOS version in 2000, his Linux version in 2002 and as a tester of the FPSEce project. MrFog also as a tester of FPse, FPSEce and collaborator in the emulator and webmaster of FPse. And SaPu, who helped in the FPSEce core and also created a CD plug-in for FPSEce.

Bleem! (1999)

Bleem!

The Bleem emulator, one of the most sought-after emulators at the time, was started in 1998 by the Bleem Company, led by David Herpolsheimer, the company's president, and Randy Linden, the emulator's programmer. In October 1998, registration for a free beta test of the first version of the emulator was opened. I'm not sure if this actually happened, but the first version of the emulator was released in March 1999 for Windows and was sold for around $30. Over time, other members joined the development team, such as Will Kempe, Scott Karol, Sean Kauppinen, Bryan Stokes, James Sinclair, Paul Chen, and later Rovio Entertainment. The emulator was the first to be released commercially, and had its own characteristics. Among them was the emulator's coding in assembly language, a simple programming that allowed it to run on simple computers, but with the full speed of the console's hardware.

Bleem! (Vangrant Story)

Another of its features was the requirement for 3D video hardware to run games with enhanced resolution and filtered textures, which was not possible on common hardware, as used by its competitor, the Virtual Game Station emulator. All of this allowed for good game execution and a graphical leap in relation to other Playstation emulators. In addition, the emulator has full music and effects loading, as well as stereo sound, 16-bit and 44,100 Hz, support for memory cards, processors enhanced with MMX and 3DNow! technologies and configuration for two joypads. A Pentium 166MHz or higher processor, DirectX 6 and 32MB of RAM were recommended to run it. Most people had access to Bleem! through its demo, but its full version was never able to be copied and made available for free download, thanks to the protection that the CD that came with this version had against copies.

Bleem! (Menus)

Some say that two weeks after the release of Bleem! full version on CD, some hackers managed to copy it, but for me, who was alive at the time, this never actually happened. Another milestone for Bleem! was the creation of Bleemcast! to run PSX on Dreamcast consoles. All of this was possible thanks to a flaw in the device's bios. Initially, they wanted to release Bleempak, an emulation disk compatible with 100 PSX games in each version released. The project didn't go ahead, and they only managed to release support for three games, Gran Turismo 2, Metal Gear Solid and Tekken 3, each with its own boot disk. The first game was released in May 2001 and the last two in October 2001. In addition to the games being compatible with most Dreamcast controls and steering wheels, there was also a project to adapt a Playstation control to the console, due to the lack of buttons on the Dreamcast control.

Bleem! (About/CD-ROM)

This project was never completed. Some interesting features of this version of Bleem! for Dreamcast were that the resolution was 640x480, different from the original resolution of the PS1, which was 320x240, and the anti-aliasing and bilinear filtering that helped enormously with the graphics, but also brought some graphical imperfections that were originally hidden in the lower resolution of the games. But not everything was rosy for Bleem! Two days after its release, it was sued by Sony, the company that created the Playstation, for running games from the console on hardware not produced by the company. They also filed a lawsuit against the screenshots of games from the console on the emulator's sales packaging. All lawsuits were lost, and Bleem! managed to continue its development. However, due to the high costs of the lawsuits, the company ended up closing.

Bleem! (Bomberman Wars)

Its last version was released in November 2001. At the end of the project, the company's website illustrated the page with an image of Sonic crying while holding a flower in front of a tombstone with the emulator's image. In order to avoid a new lawsuit, possibly from Sega, which owns the rights to the character, the company removed Sonic from the image. It would be quite ironic to end a project due to lawsuit issues and then be sued for the closing image, wouldn't it? Despite all the problems with Sony, some members went to work for the company after it ended, such as Randy Linden, who in 2005 went to work on the port of titles for the console at SCEA, or Sony Computer Entertainment of America, and Sean Kauppinen, who helped promote the games EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies for Sony Online Entertainment, an online game producer.

The History of PSX Emulators - Part 1

PSEmu (1997)

PSEmu Pro

PSEmu, or Playstation Emulator, was the first Playstation emulator to be developed. The project was started by Marcin Dudar, known only as Duddie, in March 1997. Duddie developed the emulator under the alias Vision Thing Group Software, a company (apparently) that he founded in 1994. Tratax, who took care of dynamic recompilation, and Kazzuya, who took care of plug-ins and 3D coprocessor, were hired the following year, the three becoming the heads of the project. The first release of the emulator was in June 1997 for MS-DOS, in the emulator's alpha phase. At first it was just a prototype, and could not run games. In June it was already emulating the BIOS and the GPU, and in August the CD-ROM. I believe that at this time it began to run commercial games for the console. The project worked with dynamic recompilation, known as Dynarec. It is a conversion of the hardware code into the native language of the CPU that executes it, in this case the PC.

PSEmu Pro (Breath of Fire)

This makes the creation process faster, instead of emulating all these codes. PSEmu was one of the first emulation projects to work on this system, which would become standard a few years later. In PSEmu, recompilation is used only for the PSX CPU. In October 1997, it changed its name to PSEmu Pro, as it became known worldwide. In the same month, Marcin also mentioned in an interview with the Archaic Ruins website that he had the idea of ​​developing a version of the emulator for Windows NT, a PC system focused on network development, and that it would be called PSEmuNT, but the project never came to fruition.

PSEmu Pro (Dialog Records)

In January 1998, the last version for MS-DOS was released. In March 1998, it was announced that the MS-DOS version would be discontinued and a Windows version would be released in its place, with greater CPU speed, game compatibility, and support for Direct3D and DirectX. This version was released in August 1998 as the first beta version of the emulator. The emulator had its pioneering features. It was the first to use the plug-in system, which innovated the concept in the field, and was later applied to other console emulators, such as the Nintendo 64, Playstation 2, and even the NES. It was also, apparently, the first to emulate games from a console with CD-ROM support.

PSEmu Pro (About)

In the case of plug-ins, the idea arose due to the impossibility of recompiling the entire emulator to adapt to each new graphics card that appears on the market for PCs. Therefore, the plug-ins emulated the PSX GPU and connected to the PC graphics card through the corresponding API (DirectX, among others). Henk-Jan Ober, Tratax, and Davide Pasca, Kazzuy, also became known for creating plug-ins for the emulator, such as the video plug-ins, Tratax's GPUGlide and Kazzuya's gpuKazSoft. Others also created plug-ins for the emulator, such as Duddie with its GPU, FoxFire and Zen with their OpenGL, Lewpy with its 3DFX and Glide, Nik with its 3D, and Pete Bernert with his D3D, OpenGL and DX6 D3D.

PSEmu Pro (Cheats/Memory Card/Settings/GamePad)

Other people joined the project, such as Rasky and Moonshado, from November 1998 onwards. At the beginning, it could run on a 486 PC, with a Super VGA video card and 4MB of memory. By the end, they were recommending a Pentium 300MhZ or k6-2 350MhZ, with 32MB of memory and a 3D video card. Over time, several members left the team, including Tratax, who left in early February 1999. The last version of the emulator was released in March 1999, when it was discontinued. After its end, Duddie dedicated himself alongside Tratax to the Impact emulator, which emulated arcade games based on the PSX. This project later resulted in the Emuhype team, which developed emulators for other arcade boards.

Pex (1998)

Pex

The Pex emulator was created in 1997 by Geoffrey Wossum, known as Maxon. Its first and only release was in February 1998, with MS-DOS and open source versions to be used in future projects. Although it never ran any games, it was one of the pioneers in trying to emulate the Sony Playstation.

Psyke (1998)

Psyke

Psyke was an emulator developed by Fab4, composed of Italians Giovanni Bajo and Stefano Crosara, known as Rasky and Moonshado. The project began in February 1998, with its first release in June of the same year with a version for Windows and running with support for DirectX 5. Its release already included support for CD-ROM games, despite having several game compatibility issues. Although they were already part of a PSX emulation project, they developed their emulator from scratch based on Visual C++ and Nasm. The CD-ROM support was authored by Peter Barrett. Before the creation of the project, Rasky had worked on the SPC700 sound core for a SNES emulator of which he was part, but with the appearance of ZSNES, the project was closed.

Psyke (About/Menus/Loading)

Duddie's work with PSEmu Pro, such as its dynamic recompilation, caught the attention of Rasky, who was inspired by Psyke's creation. In July 1998, they released the CdTest application, which served to test whether their PC would run CD-ROM games in the next version, 0.15, which would be released in August. In September 1998, CdTest 2.0 was released to guide users to the version that would be released, and also served as feedback on the project's development. This promised version, 0.20, was not released and the project went on hiatus in October 1998. Also in October 1998, the emulator received an article in Playstation Magazine, which was very optimistic about the project. In November 1998, Rasky and Moon joined the PSX emulation project, PSEmu Pro, of which Rasky was a big fan. The following year, the Psyke team finally released the long-awaited version 0.20, in March 1999.

Psyke (Setting)

Despite being released on that date, it was created in September 1998, which is the official end date of the project. This version improves CPU speed by 30% and can run all frames of 2D games, such as Metal Slug, on its Pentium 166Mhz with 3DFX. This is thanks to its rewrite of the PSX coprocessor, the GTE. It also has improvements in CD emulation, both with SCSI and IDE communication, and in systems such as Windows 95, 98 and NT, thanks to improvements by Peter Barrett, and implements the execution of .XA audio, which is the audio format found in PSX games. This last version was posted on the Emu24x website by the site's webmaster, DeeJ. The emulator had a short life, but despite this it had good development. It managed to emulate 90% of the CPU, 100% of the memory, 75% of the CD-ROM, 95% of the GPU, 85% of the GUI, 80% of 3DFX drivers and 90% of the software driver, among others. In addition, it also had a good graphics part, with Gourand shading, textures and bilinear filtering.

Virtual Yarouze (1998)

Virtual Yarouze

Virtual Yarouze, also known as Net Yaroze, or simply Yarouze (which means the expression: let's do this), was a project created in 1998 by Shawn McIntire, Xeon. The first and only version was released in June 1998, as an alpha version, released for Windows. The project had a whole plan. The alpha versions would be for audio and video development, and the release versions would be used to test the emulation of processors and joypads. There were plans for game emulation in the future. In addition, the emulator also planned ports for DOS, Amiga, Macintosh, Linux and other UNIX systems, and other Windows systems. The project had the help of many influencers in the scene, such as Sérgio Moreira, an expert in console programming, and the creators of PSX emulator projects, such as Jani Vaarala from PSMooSim, Duddie from PSEmuPro, Mario Rodriguez from Atlâant, Geofrey Wossum from pex, Nicolas Plourde from PSXEMU and Andrew Hogan from PSX '98. The emulator never got beyond just a prototype.

Several other emulator projects also started in 1998, such as Atlâant (started in 1997), PSmooSim, PSXEMU, Project Plasticity, PSX' 98, PSST! PlayStation Emulator, D-Lab, PLEMu Playstation Emulator, XMU, Psx2Pc, GMstation and PSMac (for MacOS). Some never got past the first alpha or demo version, and others were just future emulator projects that never came out. 1998 was undoubtedly the year of the boom in Playstation emulation worldwide.

Jackal (1999)

Jackal

Jackal was an emulator started in 1999 by George Moralis, Expert and Floating Point. Expert was the programmer of the emulator, and was the first Greek emulator programmer. His page was run within the emulation website, emualliance. The emulator was released around September 1999. Jackal emulated only the BIOS, the GPU, the DMA (direct memory access), the CPU core, and partial support, but not yet executable, of the CD-ROM functions.

Jackal (Interface)

It never ran any game, only the bios and demos. The emulator had help from some experts on the subject, such as Mario Rodrigez, author of the PSX emulator, Atlâant, among others. The project ended in October 1999 after the release of version 0.009 of the emulator. The emulator had 9 versions in total. In January 2000, it was announced that the project did not go ahead, because Expert had just joined the AdriPSX PSX project that year.

The History of PSX

Playstation

The Playstation (or PSX) was released in 1994 in Japan. It all started in 1990, when the SNES was released. The console came with Sony's SPC-700 sound chip, starting a partnership between the two companies. In 1992, the companies planned to release the Super Nintendo CD, which would have CD-ROM support fitted to the bottom of the console, but this project did not go ahead. After that, they planned to release an entirely new console with CD support called the Play Station (separate names), but Sony wanted the rights to the games and Nintendo did not agree, causing the partnership to be dissolved. Despite this, Sony went ahead with the project and released the console, but ended up being notified by Nintendo to change its name because it also owned the brand.

Play Station and Super Nintendo CD (Prototypes)

It was at this time that the name PSX began to be used, and it was soon changed to Playstation (all together), and it managed to return to its original name. Something similar happened to Nintendo in 1996 with the launch of the Ultra 64 (future Nintendo 64), when Konami, a partner of Sony, prohibited Nintendo from using the name Ultra, as it was a brand created by the company in the 1980s. We do not know if this interpellation had any participation from Sony. Another reason made Sony want to work on a new console with 3D graphics, the launches of Sega Rally, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter and other games for Sega's Model 1 for arcade.

PSX Hardware

The PSX hardware consists of a 32-bit Sony R3000 CPU, clocked at 33.86 MHz, with a GTE coprocessor embedded in the CPU for mathematical instructions for 3D graphics. It also has a system control coprocessor and a 32-bit Sony SCPH-9000 GPU designed by Toshiba with 1 MB of video RAM and 16.7 million colors, with 153 thousand simultaneous on-screen. For audio, it has a 16-bit Sony SPU with 24 sound channels, with 512 KB of RAM, PCM audio source, MIDI support and 44.1 KHz sound. And finally, a 2x speed optical CD-ROM drive.

GameShark and Memory Card

The PSX's biggest competitor was the Sega Saturn, which was released a month before Sony's console. The PSX's initial partners were Capcom and Konami, but over time it gained more producers, and soon after, the biggest game companies were releasing games for its hardware. Piracy also ended up helping the console's fame, which became popular in other regions, such as Brazil and China, for example. Other features of the console were the unprecedented launch of the Game Shark to cheat in games and the popularization of game progress recording, with the Memory Card. It also had a controller inspired by the SNES joypad, with analog sticks inspired by arcade controls and the unprecedented experience of vibration mode, which reflected impacts in games on the controller.

PSX Games

Among the famous games released for the console, we have successful franchises, such as racing games like Need for Speed, Grand Turismo, Nascar, Drive, Destruction Derby, San Francisco Rush, Twisted Metal, Moto Racer and many others. Its fighting games were undoubtedly the console's greatest fame, bringing franchises like Tekken, Street Fighter Alpha and EX Plus, Mortal Kombat, Bloody Roar, Rival School, Fatal Fury, and the famous versus games, such as Capcom vs. SNK, Marvel vs. Capcom, SF vs. X-Men and Marvel vs. SF. It was also a console for sports games, such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, 2Xtreme, FIFA, NBA, International Supersoccer, Winning Eleven, NFL, EFootball and World Cup. First and third person action games were also another famous game on the console, such as Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Parasite Eve, Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, Tomb Raider and Syphon Filter. As for platform games, we had Crash Bandicoot, Castlevania, Megaman, Strider, Rayman and Gex. In RPGs, we had Final Fantasy, Grandia, Chrono Cross, Lunar, Breath of Fire, Valkyrie Profile, Tales of Destiny and Dragon Quest. In anime, we had Inuyasha, Dragon Ball, Yu Gi Oh, Saber Marionette J, Sakura Card Captor, Digimon, Shaman King and others. In beat'em ups, we had Fighting Force, Captain Commando, Gekido, Nekketsu Oyako, Panzer Bandit and Hokuto no Ken. And finally, in terms of games from well-known brands, we had Marvel games, such as Iron Man, Spider Man, X-Men, Hulk and Fantastic Four. From Disney, such as Bug's Life, Lilo and Stitch, Donald Duck, Hercules, Toy Story, 101 Dalmatians, Mogli, Mickey, Winnie the Poof, and Peter Pan. And from Warner, such as Flintstones, Dexter, Powerpuff Girls, Tom and Jerry, Tine Toons, Bugs Bunny and Animaniacs. The console had almost 8 thousand games released and 102 million consoles sold.

PSOne

The PSX had another console released, the miniature or baby PSX called PSOne in 2000. The console was imported to Brazil in 1996, but became popular through piracy from 1997 onwards. The PSOne officially arrived in the country in 2002. The console was discontinued by Sony in 2006, when its successor, the PS2, was already popular.