Playing PS3 games on anything but your PS3 has always demanded lots of power. One of the main things people look for when they’re searching for retro handhelds is something that can play PS2 games. They’re excited to play games like Simpsons Hit & Run and Final Fantasy 7, but in the back of their mind, they’re also thinking ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you could get PS3 games on something like this,’ residing themselves to the fact that it’ll always be a pipe dream and never happen.
That could all be about to change, however, with PS3 emulator RPCS3 now working on the $85 Raspberry Pi 5 as well as Arm64 devices including Apple Mac devices with M1 chips, Windows, & Linux-based systems. While the game framerates are locked to 30fps and bear more resemblance to the PSP than the PS3 with a resolution of 272p, they work. Ok, there are some instances that would make PS3 purists cringe a little, but the games all look incredibly playable in the video below.
It’s got me thinking – could this end up working on handhelds that use Raspberry Pi 5 in the future? Is someone going to soup up a PiBoy to try and get this working on it? Admittedly it would probably become a fire risk within seconds – the Raspberry Pi 5 is already being pushed to its limits here, but with an industrial fan keeping the handheld and your hands effectively flameproof, it could be possible.
There’s a great blog post written by RPCS3 that I urge you all to read if you’re interested in the subject as it goes behind the scenes with the trials and tribulations of getting the emulator to work on these different systems. There’s also an important message that I want to highlight here too.
There are too many scam emulators out there on the internet, and it can be hard to know whether you’re using a reliable program if you’re new to the world of emulation. RPCS3 is currently the only PS3 emulator that can safely run PS3 games. If you’re using EmuDeck to play PS3 games on your Steam Deck, you’ll still be using RPCS3 as your emulator too. It’s why there are no plans to bring the emulator to iPhone or Android with ‘toxicity’ highlighted as one of the reasons behind the decision.
