Playstation emulation on Pi2 Model B?

GreyAreaUK

Morning all. Just wondering if the Pi2 Model B is up to Playstation emulation at a respectable clip? I suspect not (and can't check for myself right this minute) but thought I'd ask and find out.

Many thanks.

dankcushions

@GreyAreaUK yep, pretty much the same as the pi3b/b+ at standard settings - full speed. you will get slowdowns on some games if you use the 'enhanced resolution' mode, but since it has compatibility/visual issues, i wouldn't recommend that anyway.

GreyAreaUK

Good to know - thank you.

Now I just need to figure out how to rip my collection of PS games on my Mac. I tried one the other night in preparation (can't remember what now) and Disk Utility gave some sort of I/O error when I tried to image it. Might just be a grubby disk of course.

Solid One

I have a RPi2, but I don't remember which model it is. However, PS1 emulator is working great on my side. I'm using lr-pcsx-rearmed, and this is a very optimized PS1 emulator for ARM devices. It can perform as good as PS1 desktop emulators, and it even has multitap support for playing some games with four players simultaneously.

I've beated a lot of PS1 games on my RPi2. Games such as Crash Bandicoot, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Tomb Raider Chronicles, Megaman X4 and X5. All of them run at full speed, and even with some shaders for adding scanlines or 2xSai interpolation.

As a side note, there's a few things I've tweaked on my RPi2. Mine has a fan and three heatsinks, so I overclocked it a bit, in order to achieve better performance on heavier apps and emulators, such as PS1, N64 and PSP. That probably influenced the performance a bit, but for PS1 I don't think it made much difference.

GreyAreaUK

Thanks @Solid-One - looks like I have a project for this weekend. I'm gonna need a bigger memory card...! (Unless I can get the ROMs folder shared on my NAS...Hmmmm....)

One kinda-related question: my RetroPie Pi currently has an arcade joystick (8 buttons, 8-way stick variety) plugged into it. Can RetroPie cope with multiple joysticks or does it prefer to just have one?

dankcushions

@GreyAreaUK yep, you can use more than 1 :) i've used 5 in one game before.

GreyAreaUK

@dankcushions Cripes!

Solid One

@GreyAreaUK I'd recommend you a Class 10 MicroSD card with at least 32gb of space. You'll need it for storing all the ISOs you want to test. And PS1 isn't the only console with big ISOs: There's Sega CD, Dreamcast and PSP too. Besides, having all ISOs inside the microSD is good when you take your RPi to a place without internet or NAS to get your files.

About controllers, RetroPie can surely cope with multiple different joysticks. It basically works this way:

Everytime you plug a new joystick and boot to RetroPie, the EmulationStation frontend asks you to configure the joystick buttons;
After configuring the buttons, EmulationStation stores those settings, in order to avoid asking you to reconfigure it again;
When you open any game on RetroArch from EmulationStation, it'll automatically transfer your joystick configuration to RetroArch, thus mapping all buttons accordingly.

As a result, you configure it only once, and all emulators and ports inside RetroArch will benefit from those settings. I have at least 5 different USB controllers (SNES, Genesis, PS2, NES and even Sega Saturn), all of them configured in EmulationStation. This way, whenever I want to play a Genesis game on its specific controller, all I have to do it plug that controller, and play the games I want. And so on, with other platforms.

GreyAreaUK

@Solid-One many thanks. I see what you mean about the micro SD cards...they fill up quick!

I’m a bit unfamiliar with them though - what’s a Class 10? High speed?

Edit: ordered a 64GB Sandisk for about £12. Class 10.

I noticed FMV cutscenes were choppy, but I’m betting that’s down to my current slow card.

Solid One

@GreyAreaUK Class 10 = High speed. For Raspberries, it's very important that your SD Card is fast enough, since it'll perform just like a hard disk. Slower SD Cards can give you slow boot loading, and even freeze your system if you're running Raspbian with lots of simultaneously opened applications. A friend of mine has a RPi1 Model B, and he tried running Raspbian with a Class 4 SD Card, and he told me that sometimes the system was freezing randomly. That only changed when he got a 8GB SD Card, Class 10.

About choppy FMV cutscenes, maybe your current slow SD Card is to blame. When I beated Megaman X4 and Tomb Raider Chronicles, I got no choppiness on any videos of those games.

GreyAreaUK

@Solid-One not sure it was the card - I’ve re-ripped to bin+cue using ImgBurn on Windows, and it seems much better.

On a slightly different note: I’ve placed the PS BIOS files (not the game files) into the folder where they’re meant to belong, but is there an easy way to tell if they’re being used in place of the inbuilt ones? I’ll have a hunt for the answer elsewhere as well, you’ve been more than helpful as it is! My thanks.