The first PS1, PSP and PS2 titles tested on PS5.
Thus far, however, the service is only available in Asian territories.
To recap, the new PlayStation Plus consists of three tiers.
So, how does the top tier offering work with regards to classic games?
In some cases, the files size is vastly different between the two.
The answer is yes… and no.
Some titles are NTSC and generally work fine.
But others - including the majority of the Sony first-party games - are indeed 50Hz code.
So what’s going on here?
Basically, the PS5 can only output a minimum of 60Hz but PAL versions are made for 50Hz displays.
This emulation fails at first hurdle.
Ape Escape runs around 17 percent slower than the Japanese and US original NTSC versions.
The PS5 emulation of Ape Escape not only plays in slow motion - it looks choppy while doing so.
This is the problem.
This allows full access to regional variants.
This is something Sony should consider - allow access to regional variants.
Moving on, Sony promised enhanced resolution for classic titles and that’s exactly what you get.
Whether you think the games benefit from this higher resolution is a matter of personal preference.
Personally, I’m not a fan of high-resolution rendering for PS1 content, for two reasons.
Firstly, there’s the lack of floating point precision.
Without sub-pixel accuracy, polygon models essentially pop between pixels leading to an unstable, wobbly look.
Improving resolution doesn’t help here, in fact, it makes the effect more visible.
The emulator transitions between high-res and low-res scenes without issue as well.
So, this is one area where Sony has delivered exactly what I would have hoped.
Filter wise, we have three options: default, retro classic and modern.
Retro classic, however, introduces a scanline filter.
The aspect ratio options are also strange.
Both options render narrow pixels, basically, resulting in a squished image, with incorrect scaling.
What’s particularly disappointing is that the retro community has handed in superior solutions to the problem.
Another sobering though concerns Sony’s prior emulation work.
The PS1 compatibility feature on PlayStation 3 was known for boosting performance on titles with unstable frame-rates.
Perhaps it was unintentional but it was a welcome feature.
No such option is available on PS5 so don’t expect any improvements in that regard.
However, 2D elements are simply upscaled and filtered, resulting in blurry artwork.
Secondly, the scaling and display options are very weird too.
The retro classic mode, for instance, simply enables the same scanline filter as PS1.
The PSP uses an LCD panel - there is no reason to simulate scanlines for these games.
There should be a dot-matrix filter at the very least but that’s not there.
There’s no reason to squish the image for PSP games at all, in fact.
There is no native PS5 software for these games.
However, the emulation itself traditionally had issues and none of them appear to have been addressed.
Take Jak and Daxter, for example.
This is a simple, streamlined solution that Sony should mirror.
Regardless, it needs to be addressed.
