Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

Retroarch Not Opening PS1 Games


Flintz

Recommended Posts

Hi there,

For some reason, Retroarch through Launchbox will not open any of my PS1 games. When I double-click the game, nothing even opens. When I opened open Retroarch outside of Launchbox, the game doesn't open either.

I've switched to ePSXe, but I like the Retroarch much better. I'm using Mednafen. Doesn't that emulator open .bin files? Am I using the wrong files? I've tried both .bin and .cue files and both don't work. 

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Edited by Flintz
Changed wording in first paragraph
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep. Or it could be that the path to the bios files got altered if you're not keeping up with your configs. Just to confirm me, load core, then go to information, then core information and confirm the bios are present. If they are, you might got some wonky ones. If not, you need to set the path.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep. Or it could be that the path to the bios files got altered if you're not keeping up with your configs. Just to confirm for me, load core, then go to information, then core information and confirm the bios are present. If they are, you might got some wonky ones. If not, you need to set the path.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk






Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, I haven't yet because I'm at work unfortunately. I'll definitely do so when I get home today and report back. Hopefully I can get this working. Retroarch video settings are much better than ePSXe. Whenever I exit out of ePSXe, my desktop resolution downscales and it drives me crazy that I have to put it back to the recommended settings. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Assuming your bios files are correct, Mednafen is picky when it comes to the disc-based games themselves and they must be in bin/cue format (no ISO, no MDS/MDF, no PBP, etc., etc.) with no bad sectors. You can potentially correct issues with images using CD Mage to scan and repair disc sectors and/or re-output a disc using Daemon Tools/ImgBurn if it's in a format unsupported by Mednafen. I don't use Mednafen for PS One games (I use ePSXe for that), but I do use the standalone version of Mednafen (not the Retroarch core, but it operates the same, at a fundamental level) for Sega Saturn and TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine games and I have, on a few occassions, needed to correct disc images for Saturn that wouldn't run with Mednafen, but had no issue with SSF or Yabause (two other Saturn emulators that aren't as picky).

 

Just something to keep in mind with Mednafen if you have problems getting disc-based games to boot with it.

Edited by CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, fromlostdays said:

Yeah mednefen is definitely preferred. You can change the plug in settings for espxe to your native desktop resolution, for what it's worth. Should fix that. Let me know how it turns out.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
 

How? I played with the video settings for about an hour last night and couldn't figure it out. Is there a specific setting in ePSXe that needs to be changed? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT said:

Assuming your bios files are correct, Mednafen is picky when it comes to the disc-based games themselves and they must be in bin/cue format (no ISO, no MDS/MDF, no PBP, etc., etc.) with no bad sectors. You can potentially correct issues with images using CD Mage to scan and repair disc sectors and/or re-output a disc using Daemon Tools/ImgBurn if it's in a format unsupported by Mednafen. I don't use Mednafen for PS One games (I use ePSXe for that), but I do use the standalone version of Mednafen (not the Retroarch core, but it operates the same, at a fundamental level) for Sega Saturn and TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine games and I have, on a few occassions, needed to correct disc images for Saturn that wouldn't run with Mednafen, but had no issue with SSF or Yabause (two other Saturn emulators that aren't as picky).

 

Just something to keep in mind with Mednafen if you have problems getting disc-based games to boot with it.

Yeah, it seems that way. I'm going to try and play with the settings today and maybe grab the standalone of Mednafen to see if I can get that going. I'm pretty sure it's the BIOS files that the emulator is being picky about. Mine are in all caps (including the extension), so maybe I have to put them in lowercase? Who knows! Hahaha!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Flintz said:

Yeah, it seems that way. I'm going to try and play with the settings today and maybe grab the standalone of Mednafen to see if I can get that going. I'm pretty sure it's the BIOS files that the emulator is being picky about. Mine are in all caps (including the extension), so maybe I have to put them in lowercase? Who knows! Hahaha!

I highly suggesting downloading a checksum verification tool. Case-sensitivity doesn't matter for this, but naming convention does (it needs to be named to what RA is looking for, but it can be either upper or lower case).

I just did a test with the bios I have for North America, Europe and Japan using RA's Mednafen PSX HW and Mednafen PSX cores and booted up one game from each region without any problems.

RA will give you the MD5 hash for each BIOS for you to verify against what you download. If the hash doesn't match, it's unlikely to work.

To see this, load up a core in RA, scroll down to Information -> Core Information and then scroll down to see which BIOS are needed and what the MD5 hash for each is.

I have attached a screenshot that shows where I placed the BIOS I have and also what the MD5 hash needs to be for each (screenshot on the right)

SCPH5500 is Japan

SCPH5501 is North America

SCPH5502 is Europe

Hope this helps.

Download for a simple checksum calculation tool. Just download the ZIP version and extract it someplace on your PC or you can download the EXE version, if you want to install it through an installer. Drag files into the window that you want to calculate. Click Checksums at the top and change it to MD5 and then click calculate all or press F5 to get the hash.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/checksumtool/files/Alpha-Releases/0.7.0/

 

Untitled.png

Edited by CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Flintz said:

Awesome, thanks! I'll definitely look into this for sure!

No problem. And just another FYI, for Mednafen, it will ONLY load your game from the CUE sheet. You need the BIN (because that is the actual game), but you can't point Medanfen at it and expect it to run.

Also, CUE sheets are plain text files, so something else you might check is opening the file in Notepad, and make sure the file name at the top is pointing to a .BIN and not a .ISO and that the filename itself matches the filename of your.BIN. If it's not the same, just fix it in the CUE sheet and then click File -> Save. This doesn't happen very often, but it is necessary to fix from time to time.

Edited by CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...