FPse (PSX emulator) and PocketISO

Has anyone tried the PSX emulator FPse?

http://www.fpsece.net/

I was playing around with psx4droid but wasn't having much luck getting anything to run properly, so I tried FPse and it is a lot better. Much nicer range of settings and features, and it runs much faster with more compatibility.

It also works well with the Sony Xperia Play, allowing buttons to be mapped. I did have an initial issue with the O button because this is mapped on the phone to the same as the Android back button, so when trying to input the setting for that button it would just go back up the menu instead of setting it. Updating to the latest version of FPse for Android fixed this, and also added more options and nicer looking interface.

I ripped Wipeout 2097 from the original disc, into a BIN file, and that worked perfect with FPse to test it out. With FPS displayed it showing the emulation never dropped below 50fps, and as this was running in PAL mode and it is a PAL version of the game, it means it was always running at full speed, which is great. And I had image smoothing and audio active too.

Something also to mention is that you can still get hold of FPse directly from the Android Market. Not sure why when Sony were quick to get psx4droid pulled from it. It is worth getting this though as it is the best PSX emulator available.

PocketISO

Also from the same developer as FPse, and available to download from their site, http://www.fpsece.net/ , this is a utility that processes PSX ISO images and reduces them in size. It can take the CD audio tracks and convert them into MP3s, compress video files into lower quality versions, reduce videos to just the first 10% part of each (so you can just skip them in game) or strip the videos out altogether. It also has 2 compression modes, normal and maximum, but the developers advise to only use normal.

So using the Wipeout 2097 BIN file, I ran it through PocketISO. I selected normal compression and told it to convert all audio tracks into MP3s. I then set it to process the ISO, and I was very impressed as it took a very short time to complete this.

The results are impressive too. The original BIN was 697,038KB, and the compressed version is just 83,979KB. That is over 8 times smaller than the original!

The created compressed version is called a bin.Z file and has a small index file that needs to be kept with it called a bin.Z.table file.

I tested this out in FPse and didn't notice any difference between loading the game from BIN or the compressed bin.Z version. The game ran exactly the same, including all video and audio. Very impressed with this.

This utility means PSX ISOs will take up a lot less room on the device's storage, in this case being over 8 times smaller, and meaning that it is possible to put 8 times more PSX ISOs to play. So a great reason to use it.