psx4droid

[gcairns84]

Anyone used the psx4drod on there desire yet?

If yes how is it?

 

[Jason71]

I use the GBA one and its great for games like advance wars but terrible on Mario Kart due to the lack of hardware buttons apart from the track pad which is frankly rubbish ( HTC's fault not emulators). I have been wondering about the PSX myself. Would assume PSX needs more horse power and GBA seems a little slow sometimes. Have you tried posting on the games forum there are a lot of PSX posts there. Some of them must be Desire users.

 

[TheTrueSpin]

I used PSXDroid, but got a refund in the end... but it wasn't because the Desire couldn't run it.

I downloaded FF7 and got it working on the Desire. It ran perfectly well and I didn't have any issues.

The problem is - the HASSLE!

PSX games are large files, normally between 200 and 300 megs. First of all you have to download the files (which is a bit naughty) or rip them from existing CDs you own. Then you have the issue that the PSXDroid only plays certain formats, and none of the files you download will ever be in the format you need (.bin). So then you have to download a converter and convert the file into something PSXDroid can play. I also found that most sites use really strange zip file formats, like .z7 and other little used compression systems.

Finally, once you have got the file you wanted in the correct format, you now have to stick it on your memory card. Since I currently use the standard 4gig card, 400 megs (first disc of FF7) is a good chunk of my memory.

Don't get me wrong, it was kinda cool playing FF7 on my phone, and it did run very well, but it was a hell of a lot of work to get it going. And this was just the first disc.

Second problem is that many games are not compatible with PSXDroid and either don't run at all or run very badly. This isn't to say the Desire doesn't have the grunt needed to run them, it's just the nature of emulation - even Galaxy S / Droid X users have had performance issues with PSXDroid. Perhaps as PSXDroid gets updated and evolves, things will improve.

The biggest killer, however, was the fact that most PS1 games were designed to work around a gamepad with 10+ buttons. Playing PS1 games on a touchscreen phone is an exercise is frustration to say the least. Genesis, snes and older games work well because they really only use 2 buttons.

Overall, PSXDroid is great from a technological perspective and shows why an open OS like Android is great. However, do not expect to suddenly be in gaming heaven. The Desire certainly has the horsepower to run PS1 games, but PSXDroid requires a lot more work.

Oh, to the poster above, I have the Genesis and GBA emulators (paid versions) and I never have any slowdown, they are blistering fast on all the games I have tried... actually, except Street Fighter which was slow, but could have been bad rom... maybe try some different bios or play with the settings a bit (frameskip etc)

 

[celticone]

To save space on your SD Card use a program called Ice Tea to convert the PSX file to a PSP Eboot file.

IceTea free Download

Chrono Cross 702Mb - now 497Mb
FF VI 256Mb - now 154Mb
FF Tactics 516Mb - now 251Mb
Vagrant Story 600mb - now 118Mb

I find all the emulators (snes, psx etc) aren't really that great when playing any of the action type games, games where you need responsive controls.

The RPG are great though, much slower pace so the touchscreen controls are fine.