You like video games? Almost everyone does (even those people who say they don’t but secretly wish they could play with them anyway). And the current fashion for video games exists in the area of portable games, which may explain why Sony Inc. has created the PSP mini or portable gaming system. All PSP units are based on proprietary Universal Media Disc technology, the exclusive property of Sony Inc.
With the PSP and handheld games growing in popularity by leaps and bounds, it is not surprising that emulators were created. An emulator, for those of you who don’t know, is a hardware or software product that can mimic the functionalities of one system when the emulator is installed on a completely different system. Therefore, emulators can come in the form of software that will run on PCs so that a new software application can run on those machines; or in the form of hardware with embedded firmware. The firmware on this hardware would be responsible for telling your PC how to operate once a specific gaming software has been downloaded onto that PC.
One free emulator software that has been around is the Neo Geo Emulator. This emulator, which is now popularly installed on many PSPs, aims to allow end users to play games that were popularized in the late 1990s in Japan and that are based on the Neo Geo Game console. Obviously, Sony Inc. does not officially allow Neo Geo Emulator to be installed on their PSPs, but that doesn’t stop people from downloading the emulator software on their PSP units for free.
It should be explained that the Neo Geo emulators do not come in a single version. A source on the Internet recommends this version, MVSPSP 2.0.6, and explains how to install it correctly. See the details below for the installation process:
* To install MVSPSP 2.0.6, you must copy the MVSPSP folder into the GAME folder so that you can proceed to run the program on kernel 1.50. If you can secure some roms yourself, look for the other folder named romcnv. The romcnv folder has an exe inside that can turn your roms into a cache file. This cache file is required (as is the zip roms file) for use on the phat PSP due to its low memory.
* After that, you need to create a folder labeled ROMS and another labeled CACHE inside the MVSPSP folder. Also, you need the neogeo.zip which works like the console BIOS; this allows you to run Neo Geo games.
* Once done, set it in ROMS folder. However, it is not necessary to create a cache of that information.
The Neo Geo emulator described here can play Metal Slug 1, Samurai Showdown, and King of the Monsters with 100% accuracy and functionality as well. This source also revealed that you can now get the MVSPSP 2.2.0 (applicable for the PSP version called PSP Slim) which does not need the use of cache files as the PSP Slim has a mirrored memory spanning 64mb.