Gaming PS Vita

A page about using a hacked PlayStation Vita as a replacement for a hacked PSP.

Mostly things nobody tells you or which are nontrivial to figure out yourself.

Assumed Knowledge

• Firmware versions which work or are hackable
• How to install Henkaku
• How to install Enso if desired
• How to install Adrenaline
• I'm not really interested in Vita piracy but you can look up NoNpDRM or MaiDump or Vitamin

Charging the Vita

• Via USB, Vita will only charge when it is off (not on, not sleeping)
• With the official AC adapter, Vita also charges when on and in use

CPU Speed

• Vita runs up to 333 MHz with wifi on, and 444 MHz with wifi off, so turn wifi off I guess
• There is overclocking called LOLIcon but there's forum posts saying people have got their Vita into an unuseable or unbootable state with it, so I've never bothered

File Transfers

• VitaShell FTP is slow (like 30 minutes to transfer 1GiB)
• If you leave the FTP server idle, it times out. To get around this, exit from VitaShell and swipe it away, then go back into VitaShell, start the FTP server again.
• You can sync files via the official app or qcma on Mac/Lin but I haven't tried this yet
• "Refresh the LiveArea" is done from VitaShell, while at the list of filesytems press Triangle

Adrenaline

• The PSP game location is ux0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/
  • Example: ux0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/Wipeout/EBOOT.pbp
• The PSP ISO/CSO location is ux0:/pspemu/ISO
  • Example: ux0:/pspemu/ISO/Tactics Ogre.iso
• Don't make file names too long or Adrenaline will say Corrupted Data. I think you are actually supposed to use the gameid like SLUS12345 or whatever.
• Use Adrenaline Bubble Manager to put PSP game shortcuts in the Vita Live Area so you don't have to launch Adrenaline to play

Emulators

• Most native emulators are not as good as RetroArch. Get the latest from: https://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/
• SNES - Use RetroArch cores snes9x2005 or snes9x2010, the most recent snes9x has performance problems for me
• OutRun - Use Cannonball
• PSX - Adrenaline uses the Vita's built in PSX emulator to play games. When a PSX game doesn't work with 6.60 or 6.61 (eg: on a PSP the game needed POPSLoader 5.00 or 3.xx to run) then the game will not run on Vita. You can use RetroArch's PSX emulation to try instead: reference

Links

• Basic Howto
  • http://wololo.net/vita-cfw4dummies/
  • https://nblog.org/guides/nicoblogs-ps-vita-general-guide/
  • https://gbatemp.net/threads/guide-the-ultimate-noob-ps-vita-pstv-hacking-guide-check-here-first.403035/
• Henkaku
  • http://henkaku.xyz/
  • https://enso.henkaku.xyz/
• Software
  • VitaShell - https://github.com/TheOfficialFloW/VitaShell/releases
  • VitaTweaks - https://github.com/TheOfficialFloW/VitaTweaks
  • VitaIdent - https://github.com/joel16/VITAident/releases
  • Adrenaline - https://github.com/TheOfficialFloW/Adrenaline/releases
  • Adrenaline Bubble Manager - https://github.com/ONElua/AdrenalineBubbleManager/releases
• Games and Emulators
  • Cannonball - https://github.com/rsn8887/cannonball/releases
  • Chocolate Doom - https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/chocolate-doom/releases

Things I Don't Know Right Now

• SD2Vita - use a common MicroSD card instead of Sony's expensive memory card
• QCMA file transfers on Linux
• NoNpDRM - newest Vita piracy method - https://github.com/TheOfficialFloW/NoNpDrm
• MaiDump - older Vita piracy method - https://github.com/LioMajor/MaiDumpToolEN/
• Vitamin - older Vita piracy method
• https://www.reddit.com/r/VitaPiracy/