Mame Working on the PSP

An anonymous reader writes "The PSP Wiki site has posted a release of Mame the arcade emulator for the Sony PSP, heres an english site with Screenshots of the Emulator in action." I guess I won't need to go to such great lengths to play Pac-Man next time.

Comments

Useless waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the PSP has less CPU power than PS2 and PS2 can barely play Pac Man in MAME. What's the point of this, really?

To play Mortal Kombat 2 in MAME you need about a 1.2 GHz processor. To play Cruisn USA you need a top-of-the-line CPU and still won't get perfect framerate. Heck, even to play Neo-Geo full-speed takes a 2-ALU CPU about 600 MHz, and PSP is nowhere near that!

Re:Useless waste of time

[Registered Coward v2]

Considering the PSP has less CPU power than PS2 and PS2 can barely play Pac Man in MAME. What's the point of this, really?

To play Mortal Kombat 2 in MAME you need about a 1.2 GHz processor. To play Cruisn USA you need a top-of-the-line CPU and still won't get perfect framerate. Heck, even to play Neo-Geo full-speed takes a 2-ALU CPU about 600 MHz, and PSP is nowhere near that!

Well, my Zodiac does a decent job with xarcade ( a pre-mame emulator) playing various games, so I doubt processor speed is the limiting factor.

What the hell is wrong with Sony

[delicious]

The DS has a huge advantage over the PSP. Namely, there are thousands of Game Boy games compatible with the system at launch. The PSP has a dreadfully small amount of games for it, and if they opened up the firm ware, they could have the entire cataloge of MAME games available just like that. DS's advantage completely wiped out. Sony is killing their own system, IM not so HO.

Re:What the hell is wrong with Sony

[TomHandy]

I'm not sure the horsepower is such a big deal though. Remember that the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Color were both dramatically underpowered compared to some of the competition they faced throughout the years (Lynx, GameGear, TurboGrafix Express, Nomad, NeoGeo Pocket, etc.).

It's pretty clear that horsepower can certainly garner some attention, but what it comes down to is the games, and the GBA and DS still have a huge and amazing library (I think the point the parent poster was making was that even though the DS's software library isn't quite that impressive yet, it still benefits from being able to play all the great GBA games).

As far as the DS is concerned, it seems to be doing ok so far (which is pretty impressive when you do think how lackluster most of the lineup of DS games is), and seems to be in good shape for some of the DS titles coming out later (Animal Crossing DS, Mario Kart DS, Advance Wars DS, that surgery game, that attorney sim game, Trace Memory, Lost in Blue, Nintendogs, etc.)

The PSP almost seems to have the opposite problem. And first, just to clarify, I bought a PSP on launch day, and have also bought a number of games for it (Lumines, Wipeout Pure, Twisted Metal Head On, NBA Street Showdown, MVP Baseball, Untold Legends and Hot Shots Golf). It had a really excellent launch lineup with a lot of variety, and it seemed to really drive a dagger into the DS, which looked absolutely pathetic in comparison.

But it seems like the PSP's subsequent lineup has been pretty thin. Hot Shots Golf and MVP Baseball are the only two games I've bought recently (and Hot Shots is excellent), and there honestly isn't a ton of stuff on the horizon. The GTA game is looking pretty good (although I still wonder about battery life while playing it), and the Coded Arms and Ghost in the Shell games look pretty good for handheld FPS's. And GT4 looks good if it ever comes out. But really, beyond that, there isn't a whole lot that is getting me excited about the PSP's future.

In comparison, even though I own only one DS game (Super Mario 64 DS), along with a lot of GBA games, I'm actually much more interested in some of the stuff coming out for the DS. Are they all groundbreaking games? Do they have better graphics than the PSP? No, not really....... in some cases the games look not that different from GBA games (i.e. Advance Wars) or n64 games (Animal Crossing DS)........ but frankly, those were awesome games before, and I'm looking forward to the idea of being able to play them online against other people. And I'm looking forward to some of the non-games like Nintendogs and Elektroplankton and Band Brothers.

So anyway, "horsepower" seems like the less relevant issue. I'm impressed by the PSP's horsepower, and it's made for some beautiful and amazing games. But horsepower only gets you so far......... if the PSP is only going to have a handful of compelling games, it is irrelevant how much horsepower it has. The PSP needs to have more interesting games as well.....

On this rate...

[ID000001]

I foresee the value of PSP with Japanese Firmware actually go UP.

Re:Great...

[m4g02]

Seems like 1.5.x will soon run homebrew applications, the warez group Dynarox did dump UMD games and released promising a loader soon... Wouldn't like if piracy hit the PSP market but homebrew is way cool, can't wait until someone makes a Linux diestrum that runs from the memory stick :)

More info: http://www.psphacker.com/2005/05/loader-in-near-fu ture.html

Don't get all excited

[M3wThr33]

Unless you want a dedicated Mame machine, don't get too excited.
These only work on LAUNCH PSPs from Japan, Sony started requiring hardware signing after that. It's not going to be "cracked" for 1.5.x anytime soon.
On top of that, most games released now won't play unless you update your firmware, meaning you're stuck with a 20 game library of japanese games (5 of which are Mah-jongg), plus old emulated titles.