Dan Mons

PlayStation preservation ups and downs

Mixed news in the realm of game preservation this week.  Starting on a less positive note, website TheGamer reports that the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable (PSP) stores may go offline July 2, and the PlayStation Vita store will go offline August 27: https://www.thegamer.com/ps3-vita-psp-stores-permanently-closed/ This means that legally purchased digital titles and DLC may not […]

Dan Mons

PlayStation 1 “tonyhax” soft-mod released

For a number of years there has been a small amount of research into PlayStation 1 games that created save files where certain text field length checks were not performed (say, when custom naming a character or other save information), and could potentially result in a buffer overflow attack (a common security attack that allows […]

Dan Mons

Magic Castle PlayStation game released after 23 years

The Unofficial Net Yaroze Archive has uploaded information, a developer interview and a full game ISO of a freshly completed PlayStation game named “Magic Castle”.  The title began development 23 years ago, and the developers finally decided to finish and release their work. The game is a randomly generated dungeon crawler, featuring Rogue style perma-death.  […]

Rany Battikh

X-station firmware 1.0.4 released

While it’s only been a couple of weeks since the X-station received its latest firmware update, the project’s main developer ramapcsx2  just released yet another newer update that improves, or rather simplifies compatibility and addresses a few bugs. Introduced by Sony in 1998, Libcrypt is extra code stored on quite a few PAL PS disc/games […]

Alex Mitchell

Significant update for PSIO released (Updated)

(Update, June 16th, 2020) Cybdyn has since released v2.6.14 in an attempt to fix a few bugs that were discovered in 2.6.13. Unfortunately, both of these updates have introduced several notable issues, so if the games you’re playing work fine with the firmware you currently have installed it would probably be a good idea to […]

Alex Mitchell

“LSD: Dream Emulator” fan-translation released

An English fan-translation has been released for experimental cult-classic “LSD: Dream Emulator”. Originally sold in 1998 for the Playstation, LSD has remained a Japanese exclusive even after its re-release on the Playstation Network in 2010. A bizarre curio for collectors and importers, LSD could be described broadly as an early entry in the “Walking Simulator” […]

Alex Mitchell

MLiG releases Pt2 of their ode to first-party controllers

My Life in Gaming creators Coury Carlson and Marc Duddleson have released a new video that discusses first-party controller designs from the fifth and sixth generation of home consoles (1993-2006). My Life in Gaming is a YouTube channel known for producing high-quality content that explores topics ranging from maximizing the fidelity of your retro gaming experience, to […]

Alex Mitchell

PSIO receives new firmware update (v2.6.12)

The PSIO, a Playstation optical drive emulator developed by Cybdyn Systems, received a firmware update last week that addressed several bugs and improved game compatibility. The changelog is listed below: Recent Changes from 2.6.11->2.6.12 [Bug Fix] Launching by ‘Quick Start’ would not set the HC05 license correctly which would result in some games freezing. [Bug […]

Rany Battikh

PSIO Firmware update (February 2020)

Australian team Cybdyn just released a firmware update for their PS1 Parallel I/O port device, the PSIO:  http://bit.ly/sag-psio Since the latest update back in November 2019, Cybdyn have been hard at work trying to improve the PSIO‘s overall performance and fixing some game-breaking bugs; here’s what they came up with for Menu System 2.6.11/ARM 2.6.7: After changing […]

SmokeMonster

New Playstation 1/2/3 Breakout Board for RGB, Component, Composite, S-video, and Audio

Jacob Proctor has released an open-source PCB schematic for a Playstation 1, 2, and 3 audio-video breakout board. It supports RGBS, Component, Composite, S-video, stereo audio, and obviously is zero lag. Users can decide if they’d like to use RCA or BNC jacks, or a VGA breakout (like MiSTer’s IO Board), and it can do […]