Well, this is quite the achievement, it must be said. Emulation is a fickle thing at the best of times – owing to the inherent complexities of varying hardware types, it often seems to be a total crapshoot how well any given game for any given system will run on any given build. You might be able to get a 2008 Wii game running at a flawless 60fps on your potato of a laptop, but struggle to even get something from the ’90s functioning at a playable stability. Twilight Princess? Pshaw, easy, consider it done. Mario 64? Oof, that’s asking a bit much, mate.
And don’t even get me started on the absolute state of Philips CDi emulation; not that I’d know anything about that, of course. What, you think I stayed up til 3AM one morning in my college days trying to get one of those godawful Zelda games running on my dinky little PC because I’m an utter loser? The very notion is absurd.
PlayStation 3 emulation today
Anyway, today’s story concerns PS3 emulation, and specifically RPCS3, a highly prominent emulator in the community. It’s celebrating its 10th year dodging Sony lawsuits, and to mark the occasion, it’s hit a truly awesome milestone: everything, absolutely everything, in the system’s library will now boot. To some degree. See, it’s still hit and miss whether they’ll run well, but hey! They boot, what more need you ask for, you greedy gits?
Kotaku has the scoop on this one. The RPCS3 team tweeted the following: “We’re delighted to announce that RPCS3 now has a total of ZERO games in the Nothing status! This means that all known games and applications at least boot on the emulator, with no on-going regressions that prevent games from booting.” To put it in perspective, non-facetiously for once, that means over 6,000 individual titles have been compatibility-checked over the emulator’s lifespan, which is indeed impressive.
“It’s important to note, though,” continues the report, “that of the emulator’s five tiers of playability, only one—“Playable”—is worth your time. The others are saddled with huge numbers of glitches, performance issues, or simply the fact they refuse to load past the title screens.” Like I said, then. No point shacking up for a week-long PS3 marathon, boys.
The next milestone for the team to hit after this is to clear out the ‘Loadable’ list, which means all games will not only boot, but at least make it to a title screen. After that, they’ve to clear ‘Intro’ (meaning you can play until a game’s opening) and then finally ‘Playable’. At that stage, RPCS3 will truly be a force to be reckoned with – nearly two decades after the console first hit the market. Some things are worth waiting for.
Are you an RPCS3 user? Are you pleased with this development? Let us know!
Via, Kotaku.
