Emulating games older than the PS3 is fairly straightforward these days; even practically all PS2 games, barring a few exceptions, will play on a modern Android handheld.
But Sony’s last-last-gen console remains a headache for developers, largely due to its complex architecture.
Readers will know that the Cell processor was capable of outstanding results, but it required devs to really work to get the most out of it.
Instead of leveraging a more traditional architecture, it required various commands to be offloaded to SPUs, which need to be translated into a more conventional format during emulation.
Fortunately, the creators of RPCS3 have come up with a new “breakthrough” in the emulator’s development, which is already netting results in SPU intensive titles like Twisted Metal.
The team heralded the achievement in a recent social media post:
“We have achieved a new breakthrough on emulating PS3's Cell CPU. [Programmer] Elad discovered new SPU usage patterns and coded ways to generate more optimised PC code from them – benefitting all games! Twisted Metal, one of the most SPU-intensive games, sees a 5-7% average FPS improvement.”
The dev added “we're close to achieving 60fps on the highest end hardware that exists today” in Twisted Metal, which is double the original console performance of 30fps.
James Stanard, an original programmer on the game, was stunned by the “amazing work” being done by RPCS3:
“I wrote 90% of the SPU code in Twisted Metal. (A lot of it was moving PostFX off the GPU.) I'm proud that it got called out for being SPU-intensive. It sure was! We basically maxed out the PPU, SPUs, and RSX all at the same time.”
He added he was “convinced at the time that PS3 would never be emulateable” due to its complex nature.
Of course, this all bodes well for future preservation as it means you may not necessarily need to rely on original hardware to play your old games.
Furthermore, it gives us hope Sony may roll out its own emulator one day.
We know Implicit Conversions, the team behind PlayStation’s classics catalogue, has been exploring that possibility, so watch this space.