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

Wow!

[gstoddart]

People have started maming their PSPs.

What a cruel world we live in. :-P

Uninspiring

[Icephreak1]

What is emulation without games to emulate?

Let us know when this thing can run more than one game.

- IP

Re:Uninspiring

[runlvl0]

I'm pretty sure it can run any mame game.

Per the Fine Article:

"Only works with Omega Fighter at this time. Left and Right on Dpad is OK :)
...
[NOTES]
There is no sound. Any games with a bit-depth not equal to 8 will not work. This emulator has the drivers for: omegaf, darius, nova2001, and vanguard."

So, it looks like CmdrTaco still needs "to go to such great lengths to play Pac-Man next time." (Or he can just put regulara MAME on his notebook.)

Re:ugh

[blixel]

reason #21 why i hate myself for upgrading my Jap PSPs firmware :(

Just out of curiosity, what where the other 20 reasons?

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.....

All well and good but...

[Rirath.com]

These anonymous readers somehow always fail to mention it still ain't going to run on 1.5 - 1.5.2 yet.

How akward will Sony be about homebrew on PSP?

[Omega Xi]

From what I read here about firmware (it's about the height of my knowledge on how PSP works) I'm guessing Sony is already trying to make it fairly difficult to run unlicensed software on the PSP. Personally I reckon that if there wasn't so much software availabe for x-box it wouldn't have sold nearly as well as it has (though I could well be wrong).

Do you think a console manufacturer is ever going to embrace homwbrew software, or will they always do their best to stop it?