[PMS] GPSP – Game Boy Advance emulation on PSP

My first contact with the original Game Boy Advance took place in 2002, when I bought it for my younger brother as a gift from my exchange semester in France. I remembered how much fun we used to have with the original Game Boy and I wanted to give him the best there was. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that much money, so I only bought two games to accompany the console, namely Castlevania and Doom.

To put things in proportion – in 2002 portable console with 16bits of power and color screen was really cutting edge. At that time Doom on a portable gaming console seemed something so technologically advanced that my non-gamer buddy who studied electronics at the time came to just watch me playing it and was in awe.

The gift met with a lot of cheering, as the recollections of both of us wasting long hours on playing the original gray Game Boy were still relatively fresh. And indeed, for the next year or so, before the charm finally wore off, Game Boy Advance has given us both a ton of fun. Castlevania, Doom, Golden Sun, Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, Fire Emblem – the gameplay of these titles was simply brilliant, sheer fun lasting for hours. It does say something about both games and the console that my best memories of summer 2002 were those spent tucked in the armchair in the corner of the room with Game Boy Advance and a copy of Advance Wars.

Fast forward to 2005, when PSP’s technological prowess seemed almost as if some impossible technological dream materialized on our eyes. Barely three years later after playing Doom on a handheld seemed like a triumph of science (okay, in service of entertainment, but still). It is a shame that this powerhouse did not have a software lineup to follow. But I digress.

Back on topic, you will be happy to hear that Game Boy Advance emulation on PSP is spot on. The only problem is that there is quite a bunch of GBA emulators, most of them abandoned in development, so it’s a bit hard to chose the right one. The best emulator I have found so far is Unofficial GPSP 3.2 Test 8.7 (that is a long name indeed), which I’ve found through comments below this post.

I’ve tried a couple of other emus just for fun, but the gentleman who recommended this version to me in comments was right – it is the best. There’s plenty of options, speed of emulation is excellent, no problems at all. Performance-wise, I have to admit that there are a few titles that slow down a bit at times or lose a couple of frames (this is most noticeable in Golden Sun’s quasi-3D fighting sequences). The vast majority of GBA games, however, runs flawlessly and even those that stutter a little in some sequences are very playable with minor frameskip.

Overall, PSP is giving Game Boy Advance game their well deserved second youth… or maybe third, not sure, Game Boy Advance SP might be considered their second youth… also, there’s Nintendo DS, so it would be fourth youth… and then DS Lite… okay, now this becomes Monty Python sketch, I think I’ll just scratch this line.

Thanks to wonderful PSP screen combined with aliasing effect provided by scaling up GBA games to fit it, these classics look better than ever. Playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on PSP made me realize how colourful this game really was the way its creators intended it to be – on original Game Boy Advance’s non-backlit screen it was so dark that player could barely see what was happening. I actually remember reading somewhere that development kits for Game Boy Advance were much brighter, which is why Castlevania turned out too dark on regular GBAs. Sure, it was building dark ambiance, but made this game virtually unplayable if perfect lightning conditions were not available. On PSP screen the colours are vibrant and vivid and game looks better then I remembered it from my first playthrough.

Same goes for other Game Boy Advance titles – they look great, their gameplay is as engrossing as ever plus there are all the perks of using the emulator, such as save states for example. Overall verdict is that emulation of Game Boy Advance on PSP is just great, allowing PSP users to effectively carry in their pockets two consoles in one. Two thumbs up for this incest relationship between Sony and Nintendo

[PMS] Game Boy Classic emulation on PSP.

What better way to celebrate the Game Boy twentienth birthday than write about how it can live on in the depths of our PSPs?

I think the fact that the third post on this blog was on Game Boy emulation goes to show how dear this platform was to me. In a sense, it still is, although I am not really playing it recently, except for rare attacks of retro-nostalgia. But at the time, it was really a coveted item, ever since I first saw it in the hands of redhead girl gaming at the lakeshore. Couple years later, when we could afford this kind of thing, my parents made the most cruel move by buying Game Boy to my younger brother. I am not sure you realise the deviousness of their plan – the control over the best toy in the house was in the hands of the youngest sibling, thus giving him incredible power over his older brother. My, was that a painful experience.

With Game Boy Classic, we have three choices of emulators on PSP: MasterBoy, Rin and aforementioned [e]mulator, each of them has some unique. Chronologically, Rin was the first one and even though it is not being developed anymore, it is a competent emulator. There is a choice of colour palettes, although none of them really floats my boat, there are different customization options – a good example of well-polished hombrew program. [e]mulator is much less configurable, but it offers Game Boy emulations as just one choice, the others being NES, Game Gear and other old 8bit machines of the era. My favourite GB emulator, however, is the one that was not out there yet when I was experimenting with emulating the gray box on the PSP for the first time: MasterBoy. It is actually so good that it deserves a separate paragraph.

The first distinguishing feature of MasterBoy is the ability to not only use general colour schemes (grey palette, green plette), but also have it colorize the games to make them look like their NES counterparts. This last sentence sounds a little strange, but the image above will serve as much better explanation.

The second great feature that I believe more emulators should include is the “rewind” option. Similar to Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, player can rewind couple of last seconds of gameplay, thus avoiding death or just correcting the failed jump for a power-up. Taking into account how tricky and difficult some of these old games were, this is certainly a helpful feature for us, old gamers, with worsening eyesight and reflexes.

There is also an option to mirror levels, so even if you know Mario by heart, you can now rediscover it in reverse. The overall polish and attention to detail of this emulator is just plain incredible. It gets my wholehearted recommendation and even though its competitors are capable programs on their own, if I am to replay some Game Boy Classic classics (Mario II Golden Coins!), this is the way I want to do it.