The state of PSX emulation in 2009

[barbaari]

Hello!

I was involved in the emulation scene some 3-5 years ago, but I have no idea what's been going on since. Now I'd feel like playing those old PSX games on my PC again, but before that I'd like to know what's going on.

Has there been much improvement in the PSX emulation in the given years? What's the general state; can the best emulators basically run all games now? Or not? What are the biggest problems?

As for the most important question: what are the best PSX emulators right now? I'm looking for a good, (free?) all-around emulator that plays most games smoothly. I remember considering ePSXe(?) the best emulator years ago, but are there better ones now?

[Bodomi]

Terve. :p

I'd say the best PlayStation emulator at the moment is pSX.
Well, it's the most accurate. There's no graphic plugins and such, it's as close to the original PlayStation as possible.

ePSXe is still a good alternative, especially if you want to improve the graphics with some 3D plugin.

[BIrvine]

If you've not been in the scene for about 4 years, you haven't missed much. There's only two noteworthy emulators, mentioned by Bodomi (pSX and ePSXe).

ePSXe recently had an update about 2-3 months ago, and before that the last update was 5 years ago. pSX has had about 3 updates in the last 3 years, the last one about a year and half ago.

I'd say both emulators are about 85% compatibility overall (some games have glitches etc) but for 'major' games they're excellent. ePSXe has features that make the graphics excellent (even by today's standards, speed hacks, etc overall more features). pSX attempts to be more accurate to make it look exactly the way the original pSX did, and has less setup required, ie no configuration needed for plugins, etc)

PSX hacking is also more common now similar to how roms are hacked.

[Bodomi]

Thanks for the clarification, BIrvine.
I tried to explain stuff to the best of my ability, but eh... There's bit of a language barrier.

[Haoie]

It's been summed up before me.

Progress is pretty much nonexistent.

And there are still loads of plugins to fiddle with if you want certain games to work, or look/sound right.