Sony PSP (Experimental)

Warning

The Sony PSP application is currently designated as an experimental application.

This designation has been applied due to the following:

The resource requirements to properly run the emulator are high.

Applications marked as experimental are flagged with an "Experimental" tag in the feed editor's Select Application Dialog, but are otherwise fully available for use in both the editor and the webЯcade player. There is no separate setting required to enable them.

Overview

The Sony PSP application is an emulator for the Sony PlayStation Portable game console.

Due to its high resource requirements (see warning at top of this page), the following devices are minimally recommended for running this application:

Modern PC or Mac
iPhone 16 (or newer)

Adding Games (Feed Editor)

Important

The PSP application supports the .CHD, .ISO, and .CSO disc image formats.

To add a PSP game in the Feed Editor: if your content is on your computer, see Adding Items: Local Files; if it's already hosted online, see Adding Items: From URLs (Manual).

Important

Both the iOS Safari and Xbox Series X|S Edge browsers limit the amount of memory that can be consumed by a particular web application (such as webЯcade).

The current limit is around 450 megabytes. Therefore, loading larger disc sizes may fail.

To increase the likelihood of a game with a larger disc size loading, you can optionally choose to launch the game using a standalone-based link (versus launching the game within the webЯcade player or editor). See the Standalone section of this documentation for further information (On Xbox, you would most likely want to bookmark the direct link. On iOS, you would most likely want to add the game to the home screen).

Controls

The emulator supports one controller. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Keyboard

Name	Keys	Comments
Analog stick
D-pad
Circle
Cross
Triangle
Square
L
R
Analog stick (-50%)		Hold to move the analog stick at 50% of full deflection, for finer positioning.
Start
Select		The Right Shift Key.
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Name	Gamepad	Comments
Analog stick
D-pad
Circle
Cross
Triangle
Square
L
R
Mapped to face buttons		Pushing the right analog stick in a direction presses the corresponding face button (up=Triangle, down=Cross, left=Square, right=Circle), since the PSP has only one real analog stick.
Start		Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate) Press the Menu (Start) Button.
Start (Alternate)	and	Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Select		Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate) Press the View (Back) Button.
Select (Alternate)	and	Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen	and	Not available for Xbox. Hold down the X Button and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen (Alternate)	and	Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.

On-screen Controls

The PSP application includes an on-screen control which is detailed below.

Button		Description
Pause (Show Pause Screen)		Displays the webЯcade pause screen.

Whether this button is always displayed, or only displayed once touch, mouse, or keyboard input is detected, can be configured via the "On-screen controls" field on the Display Settings tab.

Pause Screen

The PSP application's pause screen provides access to application settings.

Display Settings Tab

Field	Description
Screen size	The screen size to use when playing a game. Options include: `Native` : The application's native resolution `16:9` : Widescreen resolution `Fill` : Fill the entire contents of the screen
Bilinear filter	The type of bilinear filter to apply to the output display.
On-screen controls	Toggle whether the on-screen controls should always be displayed, or only displayed once touch, mouse, or keyboard input has been detected.

Saves

The PSP application supports preserving in-game save data between sessions. This state is persisted in the browser's local storage or optionally to cloud-based storage. State information will be persisted whenever the pause screen is displayed (or the game is exited). Therefore, the pause screen should be displayed periodically to ensure the state is properly persisted.

Feed

This section details how PSP application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the Sony PSP application is retro-ppsspp.

Type	Cheats	Shaders	Retro Achievements	Low CPU
`retro-ppsspp` ⭐	✅	✅	✅	x

Note

The alias psp also currently maps to this application. In the future, the psp alias may be mapped to another PSP application (different emulator implementation) if it is determined to be a more appropriate default.

Item Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the PSP application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property	Type	Required	Details
uid	String	Yes	A unique identifier for the particular game (must be unique across all PSP games). This identifier is primarily used to associate persistent state with the game.
discs	Array of URLs	Yes	Array of URLs to one or more (for multi-disc games) PSP game discs. The PSP application supports the `.CHD`, `.ISO`, and `.CSO` disc image formats.
cheat	URL	No	URL to a cheat file for the current ROM. See the Cheats Tab in the Item Editor for details on assigning cheat files.
zoomLevel	Numeric	No	A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40).

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single PSP application instance (type value of psp).

{
  "title": "Sony PSP",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "Sony PSP Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "My PSP Game",
          "type": "psp",
          "props": {
            "uid": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890",
            "discs": [
                "https://<host>/mygame.cso"
            ]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

References

Sony PSP Application GitHub Repository