In the world of retro gaming, some legends never die – especially the ‘phantom’ PSP, Sony’s mythical handheld that never saw the light of day. While that elusive device remains a dream, hacker and gaming wizard [Kyle Brinkerhoff] built his own – and Macho Nacho made a video about it. His creation, which also goes by the name ‘Playstation Zero’, isn’t just another handheld emulator; it’s a powerful, custom-built system that revives the classics and plays them on a portable device that feels like the future.
Driven by a hunger for the ultimate gaming experience, [Kyle] set out to blend modern tech with retro gaming magic. He started with the Raspberry Pi, loading it up with emulation software for all the iconic systems—from NES and SNES to the Sega Genesis and Game Boy. But [Kyle] didn’t just slap on an off-the-shelf emulator; he dived into the code himself, optimizing and tweaking for lightning-fast responsiveness, so each game plays like it’s running on the original hardware. That’s hacking in true form: pushing the limits of software and hardware until they work exactly the way you want them to. Best of all: he published it all open source for others to use.
In the spirit of the Geneboy—a handheld Sega Genesis built by [Downing] and featured on Hackaday back in 2012—[Kyle]’s device pairs handheld emulation with the consoles all nineties kids wanted for Christmas. To capture the tactile thrill of vintage gaming, [Kyle] went a step further by designing and 3D-printing a custom controller layout that mimics the feel of the original systems. If watching someone neatly soldering a pcb sounds relaxing to you, don’t skip the middle part of his video. Although this little beast is packed with all bells and whistles you’d expect to see on a Raspberry Pi, it does lack one serious thing: battery life. But, [Kyle] is open about that, and hopes to improve on that in a future version.
If you want to see the full build, check out the video below. Or, immediately dive into [Kyle]’s Github, order the cute Takara shell, and get started!
Raspi zero feels like a bit anemic to me for this purpose but then again the creator tweaked the actual emulator code to make it better so maybe it’s okay.
My biggest gripe is the screen. Its tiny, and definitely not usable for longer periods of time.
Besides that it’s a fine handheld. I too would like to make my own
I played thousands of hours on a Gameboy color screen size to playability argument is null and void here my guy
How many hours have you played PLAYSTATION games on a gbc-sized screen though? The UI is designed for a certain size/resolution and going too small definitely has an effect on playability as far as reading text goes.
While that screen does seem a tad undersized, the actual resolution of PSX consoles wasn’t all that high to begin with, so information density might not be all that bad just yet?
Really depends on how old your eyes are I guess. Smaller text (say 7 pixels high) on a 640×480 display that’s only ~2.5″ would probably start giving me a headache after a few minutes if the game required more than occasionally reading short snippets. Given most games aren’t going to be this punishing but I’m sure some rpgs would be lol.
Is this about the shell design and implementation, right?
My feedback would be about screensize (leave the circle out, make it a square and then there will be more space to put a bigger screen and a bigger battery) and the ergonomics (hand cramping is an issue even for those of us with smaller hands).
Meanwhile, Ben Heck doing this with actual hardware 15-20 years ago…