Recommendations and Stability for new users on PS Vita

RetroArch Sony consoles
#1

Hello!

I recently started using my PS Vita for emulation. I have originals of games, but it’s not convenient to bring consoles with you when you travel, so i’m interested in playing some games on my Vita.

I have a first generation Vita and am currently on 3.60 firmware that I custom uploaded using QCMA. I jailbroke my vita using the henkake method. I also downloaded the nightly RetroArch build, which was say Dec 20, 2016.

I was not able to find much documentation on optimal configuration, so for now I am using the default parameters.

Finally,

For SNES, there are multiple versions available. Based on others recommendations and performance I experienced, I am using the 2005 version of snes9x. For the most part, it seems solid, although during some games, example super turrican, if there are a lot of objects on the screen there is slowdown, but it is manageable. When I play Mega Max X, however, it is completely buggy. For example, when you chose either Armored Armadillo or Storm Eagle, I was able to play for a minute or so, then the level ended as if I had beat the boss. I received the special weapon and went back to stage select.

For NES, I am using nestopia. The bugginess of this app is much much higher. Example, Parodius, Wai Wai world, and other titles will not even load, citing an error then crash. Games like Holy Diver is really buggy and unplayable, as in, the screen background changes when you move in any direction and shows false walls, boundries, etc. Shatterhand is very slow playing to the point that I would prefer to play only on the NES.

What can I do about these issues? Could someone point me in the right direction, or is this just how the current software has evolved? My concern is starting an RPG that takes 50 hours and getting half way through it only to come across some bug and then be forced to start the game over on a real console because of the issues.

Thanks!

#2

For Nestopia, make sure you have the NstDatabase.xml in your system/BIOS directory. I don’t know if it will solve all of your problems but it definitely fixes glitchy stuff with Holy Diver and many other games that simply refuse to run.

Dunno about snes9x2005. I haven’t used it much since I don’t have any devices that require it, but no matter which core you use, the SRAM saves should be portable across cores and devices, so if you play a long RPG and run into a crash, you can either switch to another core temporarily to avoid the crashy part or migrate the save to another device and continue/finish there.

#3

On my PS Vita, using filezilla, can you explain where I would put this file? I do not know where this directory is. I understand only the file path to the flash card is ux0.

Thank you.

#4

I figured it out. I found the config file path by saving it. It actually is just system instead of system/bios. It would be most helpful if there was some documentation on these apps. It seems like some people are very knowledgeable but I didn’t see how I could learn this material.

Thank you