gpSP v0.5 Beta: GBA emulator for the PSP Released

August 19, 2006

We have a new GBA emulator on hand to add to our collection, thanks to the programming efforts of Exophase. He’s new to the scene: the program’s pretty young (Exophase’s been working on it for about three months now), a start-from-scratch emulator and only a beta.

And it’s already making eyes pop out, jaws drop open, and believers out of our QJ PSP homebrew forum readers. Exophase’s designing gpSP with a premium on emulation speed and optimization. And even in this early stage he’s hit the holy grail! Users simply cannot believe that their favorite GBA games will run at full speed, with the sound quality they’ve come to expect from a good-quality GBA game. It’s even faster than the previous GBA-PSP emulator we’ve featured.

So far, gpSP v0.5 only emulates the core GBA system, and does not emulate the special hardware available on a number of GBA cartridges. This version will take 16Mb-sized GBA ROMS (he’s working on the capability to play the larger files).

There are a few caveats. Not all games will be compatible with this release; future updates will improve on the compatibility issue. Also, there are some games that will run slowly unless idle loops are taken care of; this is done through a supplied ROM database (game_config.txt) and on a per-game basis. As of this release there are a few games on the database; future releases will have more games added.

A very impressive effort for a bolt from the blue. Exophase, you have our kudos. Keep it up!

Instructions (from the readme.txt):

Provided is an EBOOT.PBP which will run as is on a 1.0 firmware PSP or custom firmware that can run unsigned EBOOTs. On 1.5 firmwares you must use a kxploit tool to run it (try SeiPSPtool). On 2.0 firmwares and higher further exploits must be used (see http://pspupdates.qj.net/ for more information). Note that this emulator has not been tested on any firmware version besides 1.5, and it’s very possible that it doesn’t run well, or at all on higher versions. Therefore I strongly recommend you downgrade if possible, and use Devhook to run games that require > 1.5 version firmwares.
Be sure to include in the same directory as the EBOOT.PBP file the game_config.txt file included and the gba_bios.bin file which you must provide yourself.

As this is a beta, both Exophase and we here at QJ will be very grateful for your comments on this program, both here and at our forums. The standard warnings about uploading executables to your PSP still apply, and don’t forget to read the file’s readme.txt for complete details.

Controls:
At the ROM selection screen:

Up/down: navigate current selection window.
Left/right: switch between file window and directory window.
Circle/start: select current entry.
Square: go one directory up.

In game:

Up/down/left/right: GBA d-pad
Circle: GBA A button
Cross: GBA B button
Square/start: GBA start button
Select: GBA select button
Triangle: Adjust frameskip

In frameskip adjustment:

Hold down triangle to keep up, press up/down to increase/decrease frameskip, respectively

Download: [gpSP v0.5 (beta) GBA emulator for the PSP binary file]
Download: [gpSP v0.5 (beta) GBA emulator for the PSP source file]
Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]