While we typically focus on playing original games on dedicated hardware, we do like to dive into the occasional emulation project to offer us flexibility in our gaming lifestyle. Sony’s Playstaton Portable (PSP) was an interesting portable platform that had some titles that appealed to both retro and modern gamers.
Oct 03, 2018 Using a gamepad on a PSP emulator? Discussion in 'Technical Help' started. I'm using PPSSPP on Win10 PC with a Logitec gamepad. Thanks for the advice guys. I've done the Analog Test with the PPSSPP and my 360 controller seems to work fine so far. On a related note, does anyone know of any good PS2 emulators with similar controller.
PPSSPP is an excellent PSP emulator that broke out 5 years ago with impressive game compatibility and the ability to make games look even more beautiful. Over the years, PPSSPP has also shown itself to be a very portable piece of software with support for a wide range of software platforms such as Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and others. This all becomes less of a surprise when you learn than PPSSPP was created by one of the co-founders of Dolphin, the acclaimed Gamecube and Wii emulator that has become a shining example of console emulation.
It is also worth nothing that unlike most emulators for modern consoles, PPSSPP doesn’t require any BIOS, additional plugins, or image mounting. You simply download the emulator, unzip it, then point it to your directory of (ripped, following the instructions listed on the PPSSPP FAQ page) PSP games, and you should see them available in-emulator with a nice presentation.
All the settings to get game looking good are more straightforward that you might thing, but we will run through the settings and options below. PSP emulation has never been easier than it is now, and by the end of this guide you’ll know all you need to know to get started on your favorite PSP titles, re-imagined with better texture filtering, resolution and more.
Quick Links for the PPSSPP Project:
PSP Emulation for PC and Android using PPSSPP. An XInput/DirectInput controller. We highly recommend an Xbox 360/One Controller for PC gaming in general, but a properly-configured PS3/PS4 pad will do the job, too. PPSSPP, the leading PSP emulator.
PPSSPP is currently the best PSP emulator for almost any platform out there. It is open source and follows a community development model. This is the Windows version. Download Download PPSSPP 1.5.4 (20M) Some emulators may require a system BIOS to run game titles.
PSP Emulation for PC and Android using PPSSPP. While we typically focus on playing original games on dedicated hardware, we do like to dive into the occasional emulation project to offer us flexibility in our gaming lifestyle.
What You Need
Before you dive right into installing and using PPSSPP, here’s what you’ll need to make the most of it. (Note that this primarily a PC-oriented guide, but should be useable for other platforms as well as well. If you fall into the Android category, check out the additional section below.)
A recent Windows 7+ PC.
An OpenGL 2.0-capable GPU or better. (Any graphics card or integrated graphics chipset released in the past few years will meet this requirement.)
Any decently modern x86 CPU. (If it came out within the past five years, it’s probably good.)
An XInput/DirectInput controller. We highly recommend an Xbox 360/One Controller for PC gaming in general, but a properly-configured PS3/PS4 pad will do the job, too.
PPSSPP, the leading PSP emulator. Click here to download for Windows, or here to grab it from the Play Store.
What About Android Devices?
PPSSPP is also available on Android. Mobile devices aren’t as obscenely powerful as desktop machines, however, so you’ll need to play on the higher end to have a good experience with an Android device.
In terms of hardware power, any flagship phone newer than the Galaxy S3 or Nexus 5 should do the job just fine. A few lower-end devices, like the Xperia Play, may also work with some settings adjustments.
With controls, any Android-compatible gamepad will do, but MOGA’s line of Android controllers are the most well-supported and should provide the best experience overall.
It’s, also possible to have on-screen controls. Having overlapping controls on the screen can work ok for some types of games, but you could also opt to a smaller game screen to leave room for controls on games like shmups.
The instructions following this section should all be easily followable on your Android device as well.
Basic Configuration
Control Binds
To start with some basic setup, open PPSSPP and select Settings. If you’re using a compatible XInput/DirectInput controller and it’s turned on, you should be able to do this with your D-pad.
Regardless of whether or not your controller is working, you’re going to want to dive into Controls and then Control mapping.
Scrolling down these options, you should see something that looks a lot like this if you have a properly-configured XInput controller. If all you see are bindings for letter keys, click the “+” to left of each option to set a new binding. You can also try to use the “Auto configure” option here if you need to.
Scrolling down through the list of bindings, you may realize that you actually have much more available to you than what you could do on the PSP. We recommend setting a bind for Pause, ideally your home button. If that doesn’t work, leave the ESC key option intact.
Ppsspp emulator apk for pc. Having this available will allow you to open up PPSSPP’s pause menu at any time, which you can use to save different game states, set game-specific settings and enable cheats. The screen should look something like this.
Adding Games
Now, if you’re going to be playing games with PPSSPP you’ll want to make sure the app knows where your games are stored. Head over the Games tab in the top-left, then select Browse… to set a default folder.
Find the folder where your games are stored and click OK.
After you launch a game from its folder, it’ll always show up in “Recent” so you don’t have to dive into your filesystem every time you want to open it.
Using Psp As A Controller For Ppsspp Windows 10
Those are the basics: let’s dive into the real meat of things.
Graphics Configuration
Back to Settings and into graphics, you’ll see a wide range of options. We’ll just go ahead and list the most important ones and what to do with them. We’ll be skipping over options that either aren’t important or aren’t recommended for beginners to touch at all.
Rendering mode options
Backend – OpenGL is most-recommended. Other backends may perform worse or be unstable.
Mode – Skip buffer effects is fastest, buffered rendering is the most accurate. Using either of the Read to memory options is unrecommended.
Framerate control options
Frameskipping – Enable if you experience slowdowns.
Alternative speed – Leave alone. If you set to unlimited, your device will render scenes as fast as possible, often at multiple times the speed of the game. This is useful for getting past unskippable cutscenes, but you’ll need to set a bind for it.
Features
Postprocessing shader – Various postprocessing options that tweak colors or enhance visual fidelity. Experiment with as you please.
Performance
Rendering Resolution (PERFORMANCE INTENSIVE) – Auto will render to the resolution of your display or your window. 1x PSP will provide native PSP resolution (480 x 272- pretty much 240p!). Modern PCs should be able to push 5x (1080p) and higher quite easily. Flagship phones should start at 5x and turn down as necessary for performance.
Lazy texture caching – Enable for better, but less accurate performance.
Texture scaling options
Upscale level – 4x as a baseline. Adjust upward or downward according to performance.
Upscale type – xBRZ or Hybrid is recommended. If this causes performance issues, simply disable upscaling entirely.
Deposterize (PERFORMANCE INTENSIVE) – Enable if playing at high resolutions with high upscaling. Disable or tweak other settings if this causes performance issues.
Texture Filtering Options
Anisotropic filtering – Set at 16x on PC and lower as necessary. Typically this option is very light on performance, though, and offers great visual quality in return. Start at 4x as a baseline on mobile/low-end devices.
Overlay options
Show FPS counter – Set to Both while you’re just starting to use PPSSPP. You want to have at or around 100% game speed at all times- if you find you’re frequently dropping frames, head back to settings and start turning things down.
Extra Tweaks
While we don’t dive TOO deep into this one, there’s a few more things you can do with PPSSPP. By enabling Cheats, you can use codes like the ones in this thread to play titles like Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep at 60 FPS. Many PSP titles run at 30 FPS or below due to the low power of the hardware, and this can be a lot more noticeable on a big screen or to a trained eye. Titles like Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops run at a native 20 FPS!
Overall, we at The Great Setup hope this guide helped you dive into PSP emulation. Feel free to comment below if you need any assistance, and if you’re interested in building an emulation-capable gaming PC, check out this $500 gaming PC for budget PC builds.
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About PPSSPP
This tutorial is to help you with PPSSPP for Windows. PPSSPP is the #1 emulator for the Sony PSP! It has the usual bundle of features we expect from an emulator. Its game compatibility is very good. PPSSPP's drawback is that it's too good of an emulator - it's resource demanding! Even if you have a pretty fast computer, PPSSPP may struggle to run at full speed.
*If you would like to download PPSSPP, I have it in my emulators page.
64-bit and 32-bit versions
Included in the zip file for PPSSPP are two EXE's: “PPSSPPWindows.exe” and “PPSSPPWindows64.exe”. So what's the difference and which one do you use? That depends on which version of Windows you have:
PPSSPPWindows64.exe - PPSSPP for 64-bit Windows
PPSSPPWindows.exe - PPSSPP for 32-bit Windows
What's 64-bit and 32-bit Windows? I won't drown you with technical jargon. In short: these are types of Windows systems. 64-bit is newer and faster, and 32-bit is older and slower. If you have 64-bit Windows, you need to use the 64-bit version of PPSSPP. And vice versa with 32-bit.
They stopped making 32-bit computers around 2017, so chances are you're most likely using a 64-bit computer. If you're not sure if you have 64-bit or 32-bit Windows, here's how you can check:
On the bottom left where you see Search the web and Windows, do a search for “64-bit”.
You'll see this come up: “See if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows”. Click it.
You'll arrive here . Look for “System type”. If it says “64-bit operating system” then you're using 64-bit Windows. If it says “32-bit operating system” then you're using 32-bit Windows.
Using Windows XP? Here are directions for that .
Installation
PPSSPP is a standalone program so it does not have an install wizard. Installation is simple: just extract PPSSPP from its zip file. Not sure how to extract zip files? Here's a video tutorial showing you how: how to unzip files on Windows.
IMPORTANT! PPSSPP must be placed in a common folder on your computer. I recommend Documents, Downloads, or create a folder on your desktop. If you place PPSSPP somewhere else on your main C drive, then you may be restricting it to read-only access. Doing so prevents PPSSPP from saving anything.
To open PPSSPP, double-click on , or if your system requires the 32-bit version.
Setting up the keyboard or gamepad
Firstly, PPSSPP doesn't let you access the button configuration while a game is running. So if you currently have a game running, save and go to Emulation > Stop.
The button configuration is found by going to Game Settings > Control Mapping, as shown below:
You'll arrive at the Control Mapping screen: You can navigate this screen like a web page. You can click & drag, use the scroll-wheel on your mouse, or use the keyboard directional arrows. As you can see, PPSSPP already has all the buttons setup including gamepad buttons. Each virtual button has multiple instances of buttons. For example, “kbd.Up” is Up on the keyboard and “pad1.Up” is Up on a gamepad (if you have one plugged in).
If you wish, you can reconfigure any button. Just click on the one you want to change. PPSSPP will prompt you with a little box. From there, press the new keyboard key or gamepad button you want it changed to.
Loading a game
PPSSPP needs games extracted from their archives. So if your PSP ISO is in a ZIP, RAR, or 7Z file, you need to extract it. If you're not sure how to extract ZIP files, here's a video with directions. If you don't have the ability to extract RAR or 7Z files, you can do so with 7-Zip (it's free).
Examples of PSP ISO files
Once extracted, note that your PSP ISO must be one of the following file formats: ISO, CSO, PBP, ELF, or PRX. If your ISO format is not in one of those formats, then it is not a valid ISO. You'd need to download your game from somewhere else to obtain it in a valid file format.
To load a game, go to File > Load or click Load - as shown below.
You'll see the “Open” window. PPSSPP defaults to its main folder. If you placed your PSP games here, they will be the first thing you see. If you placed your PSP games elsewhere on your computer, you'd need to navigate to that folder. Select the game you want to play then click Open, as shown here . Your game will begin running.
You only need to load a game this way once. Hence, your game will appear as an icon shortcut on the main PPSSPP screen. Like this: To load your game, all you'd need to do is click the icon shortcut.
Q: I get errors loading games!
If you get one of these errors:
This is not a PSP game
Error loading file: file is compressed
There are two reasons you might be getting these errors:
Possible Reason #1: You didn't extract the game from its archive. The archive would be in ZIP, RAR, or 7Z format.
Is Windows hiding the file extensions of your archives? Here's a video showing you how to show file extensions.
If you're not sure how to extract ZIP files, here's a video with directions.
If you don't have the ability to extract RAR or 7Z files, you can do so with 7-Zip (it's free).
Possible Reason #2: You have a bad game. Perhaps it's partially corrupt. Try downloading the game from somewhere else.
Full screen
Press Alt+Enter or F11 to enter full screen. Press Alt+Enter or F11 again to go back to window mode. While in full screen mode, you can press the Esc key to access your save files or exit the game to the main PPSSPP menu.
If your computer is not that fast, you may encounter lag while your game is running in full screen. If that's the case, read the section below about improving slow performance.
Improving slow performance
The challenge with PPSSPP is that out of the box it's optimized for maximum performance. Slower computers may not be fast enough for it. Fortunately, PPSSPP can be tinkered with to improve its performance on your computer.
1. Reduce the rendering resolution
I think this is the best start toward better performance. By default, PPSSPP is automatically setting the rendering resolution depending on the size of the window or if you're in full screen mode. You can force PPSSPP to always render in a lower resolution. You can do so by going to Game Settings > Rendering Resolution > 3x. If 3x still doesn't improve your performance, try 2x. Look below:
See, it's not too bad. All that lowering the resolution does is make the screen look a little blurry and slightly more pixelated. Try even 1x if 2x doesn't help. But if even 1x doesn't help (or looks too ugly), keep reading.
2. Enable frameskipping
Enabling frameskipping will allow you to keep optimal graphics, but animation will no longer be smooth. To enable frameskipping just go to Game Settings > Frameskipping > Auto. This should be enough to improve performance. If not, keep reading.
3. Skip buffer effects
Now we're jumping into sacrificing graphic quality. Skipping buffer effects will disable any special graphical effects. It'll cause some pieces of graphics that were once beautiful to be solid black. See below:
To enable this, go to Game Settings > Rendering Mode > Skip buffer effects. If even skipping buffer effects doesn't improve PPSSPP's performance, then your computer isn't fast enough to handle PPSSPP.
Fixing 'jumpy' screens
Even if you lowered the rendering resolution and enabled auto frameskip (as explained above), you may find that the screen is refreshing awkwardly. It's most obvious when you turn a corner in a 3D game. Like this:
How do you fix this? With vertical sync! Enable it by going to Game Settings > VSync.
Save states
Use Psp As A Controller
Save states is a feature that saves the exact spot you are in any game. You can use this feature manually by going into the File menu or by quick keyboard shortcuts.
PPSSPP offers two ways to use save states. You have quick saves and save state files.
Quick saves
Using Psp As A Controller For Ppsspp Gratis
If you want instant gratification, quick saves are the instant saving you want.
Capturing a quick save: To capture a quick save go to File > Save State, or press the F2 key. You could also press the Esc key during gameplay to access the save states screen to save a state, which looks like this:
Loading a quick save: To load a quick save that you previously saved, go to File > Load State, or press the F4 key. You could also press the Esc key during gameplay to access the save states screen to load a state.
5 States! PPSSPP lets you save up to 5 different quick save states. You can toggle between these slots by going to File > Savestate Slot and choose a slot. You could also press the F3 key to change slots, or press the Esc key during gameplay.
Save state files
These saves require an extra step but allow you to save a state as a file with a custom name.
Capturing a save state: To capture a save state go to File > Save State File. Type in a name for the save then click Save or press the Enter key.
Loading a save state: To load a save state that you previously saved, go to File > Load State File. Select the save you want to load. Note that PPSSPP can only load PPSSPP save states; not save states from other emulators. Also, it can only load a save state from a specific game. For example, if you have the North American version of Final Fantasy IV and you try to load a save state from the UK version, it won't work.
Fast forward
Fast forward is the feature that speeds up the game. To access it, press the Tab key. Hold it down and let go until you want the fast forwarding to end.
Capturing screen shots
First, you need to decide how big you want the screen shots to be. PPSSPP will capture screen shots at the exact size you currently have the window. Or if you're in full screen mode, it'll capture screen shots at full resolution. You can change the window size by going to Game Settings > Window Size.
To capture a screen shot, just press the F12 key. PPSSPP will dump the shot as a JPG in memstick > PSP > SCREENSHOT, as shown below:
Do you prefer capturing screen shots as a lossless PNG? Well, you're stuck with JPG. To capture PNG screen shots you need a screen capture program. A good free one that I recommend is ShareX. Once installed, you can just press Ctrl+Prt Scr and hover over the game screen. ShareX will capture the game screen as if PPSSPP just took a screen shot. ShareX will dump the PNG screen shot in Documents > ShareX > Screenshots.
Finding ISOs
In my links page, I have some good links to sites where you can download PSP ISOs. If you want to try to find more sites than what's in my collection of links, just Google around. For example, if you want to download God of War just Google “download god of war psp”.
You may have some trouble finding a good site since most ROM sites do not have PSP games due to their large size. The same goes for trying to find ISOs for systems such as PS2/PS3/GameCube/Wii and beyond. Fortunately, people upload large games to cloud platforms all the time. You'll only find these links to such valuable resources on Reddit. You can find these Reddit links on Google with such keywords as “reddit download psp games”.
Q: I get Error Code 80110383!
You currently have PPSSPP in a read-only location on your computer. You must move PPSSPP to a more common location such as Documents, Downloads, or a folder on your desktop.
Q: PPSSPP isn't saving anything!
If you're using PPSSPP for the first time and you're finding that you have all these problems:
Save states aren't working. You save a state, then when you try to reload it nothing happens.
When you save your game at a save point and close/re-open PPSSPP, you find that the save is lost.
Emulator configurations that you changed aren't saved. When you close/re-open PPSSPP, you have to make those configuration changes again.
Then your problem is that you currently have PPSSPP in a read-only location on your computer. You must move PPSSPP to a more common location such as Documents, Downloads, or a folder on your desktop.
Thank you for reading my tutorial! If you found it useful, you're welcome to return the gesture by buying something from my Amazon store. If have questions you're welcome to email me or message me on social media.