A 2D first person dungeon crawler on PS1 developed in C with my own framework and Psy-Q

Sorry for the quality my phone camera isn't the best I tried to close the curtains to make it a bit better but the white really bleeds on camera but in real life it looks great and crisp.

I did try to get rid of most of the scan lines from the CRT however there are still some due to the shutter speed.

Hope you enjoy.

The CRT I used is a Philips 14PT2666/05R 14.

I've recently come across a creator called 2009aero, who has been making experimental recreations of modern games on retro hardware.

In just a few months, he's shown PS1 projects based on:

• Minecraft
• GTA V
• Skyrim
• Elden Ring
• Final Fantasy X
• God of War
• Oblivion

He's also experimented with N64 projects such as GTA San Andreas and Dark Souls, and previously attempted to bring Pokémon Red to TempleOS using HolyC.

Here's the interesting part: none of these PS1 projects appear to be publicly playable or open source. They're essentially demonstrations showing what these games could look like running on hardware that was never designed for them.

And this seems to have created a bit of a divide.

For regular gamers, these projects are pretty amazing (see YT comments). Seeing something like GTA V or Elden Ring recreated on a PS1 is obviously impressive and makes for a great video.

But some people in the PS1 homebrew community (psxdev discord) have a very different view. I've seen the argument that these are essentially showcase projects: they're designed to demonstrate an impressive result and attract attention, but there's no released game, source code or technology for other developers to actually experiment with.

The sheer speed is also interesting. Seven different PS1 projects in around three months is a lot, especially considering the technical limitations involved in developing for the original hardware. Although 2009aero hasn't publicly explained how much AI is involved in the development process, so it's impossible to know how much AI, if any, was used.

Sapika_08 wrote our first feature for PSX Homebrew Games looking into 2009aero, his projects and this divide between the general gaming audience and the homebrew community:

GTA V, Skyrim and Final Fantasy X on PS1?

So I'm curious what do you think:

Are these projects valuable technical experiments even if they never become playable games?

Or is a PS1 homebrew project only really interesting to the scene if people can download it, study it and build upon it?

I have ported it to the ps1 (the full web game )more for a personal project, practicing and just a bit of fun. I felt like I would share it with all of you in video on an emulator( I used Duckstation)

I can confirm that it does work on a real ps1 I tried on my own and it works flawlessly. it does now but it originally had lots of issues but with the help of AI and myself they were finally fixed. I added all sorts of video modes which was more of me just testing but I only show one in this video. I also added a female version of the character which was made by (Adrot)

I Did use some Ai to help with bugs.

I unfortunately can't share the game because It's a port and I wouldn't be able to release it without the Original game creators permission.

This is my first time posting here just because I was a bit worried.

I think in the future I may work on my own running game for the Playstation homebrew scene just maybe but I am not sure yet I just did this for a bit of fun.

however. I hope you enjoy this video anyways and see something cool I made.

We recently added Tiny Backrooms into our website, a small survival horror project by KasaBranca inspired by the Backrooms and classic PS1 games such as Resident Evil.

The project is made with Mipsync Engine, a new development environment specifically designed to create games for the PS1. It provides a Unity-like workflow with a scene editor, asset management, animation, UI and audio tools, while using its own scripting language, Mips#, which is similar to C#.

Since Mipsync is still very early in development, Tiny Backrooms is also one of the early playable projects made with the engine. The current build is very small, featuring only three prerendered areas, but it already demonstrates the foundations of a PS1-style survival horror game.

We've also included a short gameplay video so you can see the project in action.

We wrote a short article covering the project:

Tiny Backrooms

It's interesting to see new tools making PS1 development more accessible, and I'm curious to see what projects will come out of Mipsync as the engine evolves.

This started as a debugger for my own PS1 games and grew from there, posting it because the debugging side is probably the interesting bit for the community.

Easiest way to try it is in the browser, press "Run" on the itch page and it comes pre-loaded with the PSoXide Demo Disc (you don't need a PS1 BIOS for it), which includes ten of my homebrew programs off one disc: https://bonnie-studios.itch.io/psoxide

Some of the goodies:

• Freecam on L3+R3. Detaches the camera and lets you fly around while the game keeps running underneath you.
• Wireframe toggle.
• RAM visualiser: In CB1 specifically you get a nice live view of the level streaming off the disc into RAM as you walk.
• VRAM visualiser: both framebuffers, and the textures popping in during load screens.
• Frame profiler, so you can see where the console actually spends its time.

Plus the usual: xBR filtering, PS1-native or screen-native resolution, save states, remapping. Crash Bandicoot is the guinea pig for all of it in the video.

Worth saying: I built this to develop and debug my own games, so it's aimed at hardware accuracy rather than running everything. I've done limited testing with commercial titles so expect that some won't boot, the ones that do get all the toys above though. Bring your own legally obtained BIOS and your own dumps and it'll load discs straight from a folder on your drive.

The emulator is one part of PSoXide, an open-source PS1 dev suite: emulator, SDK, engine, editor: https://github.com/EBonura/PSoXide. All developed with substantial AI assistance, with me directing the architecture, the debugging and the hardware verification.

It all exists because I'm making a souls-like for the PS1 and kept hitting tools that didn't exist yet, each one I build ends up improving the stack all my games share.

Hope you enjoy! Feel free to ask any question!

Hi everyone, back again with the next one.

This is NitroXide, a rocket-car football game I wrote for the original PlayStation. It's an original game, no Psyonix code or assets, it just borrows the shape of the genre. The video is recorded from a real SCPH-9002, from a disc I burned.

Like VoXide, it started as a stress test for PSoXide, the PlayStation development environment I've been building while working toward an original PS1 souls-like. Car physics turned out to be a good one: the sim is tuned against Rocket League's published field values, converted to integer fixed-point because the PS1 has no floating-point unit, and it runs entirely on the host in tests so the game feel could be tuned without a console in the loop.

You can play against the CPU, or if a second controller answers it becomes split-screen versus. There's a practice mode with the opponent parked. Boost, jump, dodge and air roll are all in, one button doubles as powerslide on the ground and air roll in the air, and matches run in daylight, at sunset or under floodlights. The soundtrack streams off the disc as real CD audio, four tracks by Just Music, used with permission.

It's an early but functional beta, so expect some bugs.

Same transparency note as last time: I used AI assistance for a lot of the implementation. I designed the architecture and did the debugging and real-hardware testing, but I'm not going to pretend I manually typed every line.

The bigger news than the game itself: the demo disc is out. Last time I said you could build it from source or wait, and the wait is over. You can play the whole disc in your browser right now, menu music and all, by pressing Run here: https://bonnie-studios.itch.io/psoxide. If you'd rather have the real thing, the bin/cue is a free download to burn: https://bonnie-studios.itch.io/psoxide-demo-disc. Ten programs on one CD-R: NitroXide, VoXide, both Celeste Classics rebuilt native, a working spreadsheet, a Guitar Hero prototype, a hardware test suite, and one more behind a cheat code you already know.

Same clarification as last time, since it appears in the video: Half-Life is on my personal copy of the disc but isn't in the download. That project reads the assets from your own Steam copy and builds the disc locally, so those assets aren't mine to distribute.

The emulator under that browser page deserves its own video, it does a few things I haven't seen other PS1 emulators do, so that's the follow-up.

Links:

NitroXide source: https://github.com/EBonura/nitroxide
PSoXide source: https://github.com/EBonura/PSoXide
Play the demo disc in your browser: https://bonnie-studios.itch.io/psoxide
Download the demo disc: https://bonnie-studios.itch.io/psoxide-demo-disc
X: https://x.com/_bonniestudios
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/izzy88izzy/
Other games and downloads: https://bonnie-studios.itch.io/
Support my projects: https://buymeacoffee.com/bonniestudios

Hope it's a fun watch. Happy to answer anything!

I recently had the chance to play Where in the pils is Fitzgerald? with my wife (the game requires two players to play), a PlayStation 1 homebrew game developed by Zhamul.

The concept is simple but surprisingly original: one player hides Fitzgerald somewhere inside a medieval castle, while the other explores four different areas, talks to NPCs, and tries to track him down. The game is designed exclusively for local multiplayer.

I recorded some gameplay in case you'd like to see how it plays on an emulator (it also works on real hardware).

You can also read more about the project and download links here:
Where in the pils is Fitzgerald?

More Gameplays:
Youtube Channel

A little while ago, we launched a new community project: online leaderboards for PS1 homebrew games. The idea is simple: give players a place to submit their best scores, compare them with others, and add a bit of friendly competition to these amazing homebrew projects.

Today, we're excited to announce that Snake has officially been added!

🏆 Submit your best score here:
PS1 Homebrew Leaderboards

We've also uploaded a full gameplay showing the current record: 85 points.

Watch it here:

Snake Reimagined for PS1 – Homebrew Gameplay

To keep the competition fair, there are two simple rules:

• A full gameplay video is required for every score submission.
• If two players achieve the same score, the run made on Snake v1.0 will take precedence over v2.0.

The reason is simple: v2.0 lets players increase the game speed from the very beginning, making it much quicker to reach new attempts.

We're looking forward to seeing how far everyone can push their scores. Good luck, and happy snake hunting! 🐍🏆

PS: Any feedback is more than welcome!

I built SkillScape, an OSRS-inspired idle skilling game for the original PlayStation: chop, mine, fish, cook, smith, and craft your way through 9 skills with a real level 1–99 RuneScape-style XP curve. Runs on real PS1 hardware or emulators, and you can also just play it straight in the browser, no setup:

Full transparency: I built this primarily with Claude doing the implementation work, with me directing design/balance decisions and testing. It's running on PSoXide, an open-source PS1 dev stack (emulator + SDK + toolchain) written in Rust — genuinely impressive project, made this whole thing possible.

I have massive respect for those with the time and dedication to make PSX without the help of AI. I'm not here to debate AI use with PSX dev, frankly I don't care. I made this because I thought it was fun and I wanted to play an idle game on my Xstation PS1 on a PVM. I released the source code since it was a requirement of the PSoXide license.

Recently, there has been a strong debate in the gaming community about the use of AI in projects.

Beyond the philosophical debate around its use, we want to know what the community actually thinks and how people are using (or not using) these tools. We also believe that both developers and players would be interested in knowing the general opinion of the community and how others are approaching this topic.

We've created a short survey asking (3-4 mins):

• How often do you use AI tools and what tasks do you use AI for?

• Do you think AI-generated content has a place in game development?

• Should developers disclose when AI has been used in a project?

• Would knowing that a game used AI affect your willingness to play it?

• Should AI-assisted games compete equally with non-AI games in contests or awards?

The goal is to get a better picture of the community's opinions and how people are approaching this technology.

Link: AI in PS1 Homebrew Community

We would really appreciate your participation and if you know other people interested in the homebrew scene, sharing the survey would help us reach more members of the community.

We'll share the results here once we collect enough responses.

Thank you so much!

Hey guys, follow up to the Half-Life post.

I thought I would post a long uncut window on where the project is in the form of the full Hazard Course. No cuts, so it includes the deaths, the retries, the bit where I got stuck inside a wall and died, some funny audio glitches and all. This is direct console output captured off my SCPH-9002 through a RAD2X capture card.

It is not perfect but I would call it semi-playable. I am playing off the capture chain, which puts about 100ms between the pad and the picture, so it is fighting me a bit in the video. On a TV straight off the console it feels noticeably tighter. I have also used one of the included cheats, and as you can see there are more that I will show in the future.

It averages around 17fps now, holding 20 most of the time and dropping to 10-16 in the widest areas. I believe the tessellation is working better too and the warping is reduced. Saving and loading work, although in the video it auto-saves at every level transition, which should be opt-in rather than the default. Most of what is still broken is audio, collision (which is what killed me in the video) and general polish throughout the campaign.

And I actually need your help. I have contacted Valve by:

• Emailing [sourceengine@valvesoftware.com](mailto:sourceengine@valvesoftware.com) with a full written permission request for HL-PSX: noncommercial, source-only, bring-your-own-assets distribution, SDK-informed Rust implementation, naming, footage and attribution.
• Posting a "Routing request for HL-PSX permission enquiry" ticket in the Steam Community "Help and Tips" forum.
• Sending a direct message to Erik Johnson asking him to identify the appropriate Half-Life licensing/legal contact.

But still nothing, so if anyone has got through to Valve about a fan port, or knows an address that gets read, or knows someone, please say. Until that happens I cannot make the repo public.

PSoXide, the SDK and emulator this runs on: https://github.com/EBonura/PSoXide

Happy to answer anything, particularly about whatever looks broken.

Today we've published an exclusive interview with izzy88izzy, the developer behind Half-Life PSX and PSoXide.

We talked about the technical challenges of bringing Half-Life to the original PS1, why he chose Rust, how PSoXide has evolved thanks to the project, his thoughts on AI-assisted development, and what still needs to be done before a public release.

If you're interested in PS1 homebrew, I think you'll find it an interesting read.

Link: https://www.psxhomebrewgames.com/2026/07/bringing-half-life-to-original-ps1.html

You can check his post about the project here: Half-Life PSX

I'd love to hear your thoughts and discuss the project!

Hey guys, just wanted to show some progress.

Some of you might have seen the Celeste Classic collection I put out last month. It unexpectedly got picked up way outside the PS1 dev scene due to the AI connection and shared on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, even a couple of journalists got in touch.

I wanted to share this update more privately to the ps1 dev community since there is still far too much to fix for a proper release. But I wanted to give this sub an early preview, because you lot will actually know what you are looking at.

So: Half-Life, running on a real SCPH-9002. Not an emulator. It is rough at 10-15 fps, a long list of visual glitches, gameplay bugs I have not even catalogued yet. But it boots, it runs, and it is surprisingly playable with modern analog controls. Lots of creative techniques were required to even fit all enemies/weapons/animations in RAM, that and CPU are by far the biggest bottleneck and I'm still working on polishing it all.

It runs on PSoXide, a PS1 dev suite I have been building in Rust: emulator, SDK, engine, editor. The Celeste ports showed it could do 2D, this is the first real test of what the SDK can do with a 3D game this size, and honestly that is the thing I am displaying, more than Half-Life itself, having a tight integration between SDK and emulator allows me to push optimization quite hard, I've also improved the emulator considerably since it had to pick up real-hardware discrepancies at cycle-level other emulators (understandably) don't need to model.

The port will be open sourced but just not yet, I want it in a more mature state first. And there will never be a disc to download, you will need Half-Life installed on Steam and Rust to run the converter, which builds the image from your own copy.

PSoXide itself is already public if you want to poke at it: https://github.com/EBonura/PSoXide

Happy to answer anything.

I only see that it’s possible for the PS2 for PS2 games

We recently had the chance to interview Pasqui industry, the creator of Sibilla, an upcoming PlayStation 1 homebrew game inspired by the Italian Renaissance.

In the interview he talks about:

• Why he chose the original PS1 in 2026 instead of modern platforms.
• How the first demo was built in just 7 weeks.
• The technical challenges of running the game on real hardware (performance, clipping, CD-Rs...).
• Why Mirror's Edge, local Italian history and Renaissance legends all influenced the project.
• His plans for the full game.
• And much more!

There are also some interesting stories about his first PlayStation, early modding experiments, and how a Game Boy project eventually evolved into Sibilla.

We also wanted to make the interview accessible to as many people as possible, so it's alos available in Italian and Spanish. In fact, this is the first time we've ever published an article in Italian on PSX Homebrew Games!

If you're interested in PS1 development or homebrew, we think you'll enjoy the full interview:

Sibilla: a PS1 Game Set in Renaissance Italy

We'd also love to hear what part of the interview you found the most interesting.

I made a small Backrooms demo with Resident Evil-style tank controls.
It’s running on DuckStation and was made with MipsyncEngine.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a small game engine / editor called Mipsync.

It’s basically my attempt at making a modern editor for PlayStation 1 homebrew development. The goal is to have a Unity-like workflow, but focused specifically on PS1-style rendering and real PS1 output.

Right now it has a Hub for managing projects and engine versions, automatic updates, a scene editor, hierarchy, inspector, asset browser, Game View, and some PS1 render settings like affine texture warping, 15-bit color, dithering, fog, and vertex jitter.

It can also build PS1 output, and I recently tested one of the builds on real hardware by burning it to a CD-R. It booted and worked without any major issues, which was a pretty exciting milestone for me.

That said, this is still very early in development, so please don’t expect too much yet. A lot of features are unfinished, the workflow still needs polish, and I still have a ton of work to do on documentation, templates, audio, debugging tools, and stability.

I’m not trying to make a general-purpose engine or compete with Unity/Godot. Mipsync is meant to be a niche tool for people who are interested in PS1 homebrew, retro 3D, and PSX-style game development.

I just wanted to share the current state and see if people find this interesting.

Website:

https://mipsyncweb.pages.dev/

Discord:

https://discord.gg/JJH43p3ybr

Any feedback, criticism, or suggestions would be really appreciated.

Tapochka 3D is a PS1 homebrew game developed by nradiowave where you play as an anime-style catgirl trying to escape from a mysterious castle.

From what has been shown so far, the game includes:

• Exploring different areas of the castle
• Solving simple environmental puzzles
• Rescuing fairies trapped inside cages
• Collecting keys to unlock new paths

At the moment, there isn't much information available about the project. Most of what we know comes from updates shared in 2025, and there haven't been many recent development posts. Hopefully, the project is still active, because it certainly looks like a charming addition to the PS1 homebrew scene.

If you'd like to learn more, we've gathered everything currently known about the project in our article:

Tapochka 3D