Playstation One Emulator on iPhone! Controls still suck!

Following hot on the heels of the NES emulator for the iPhone, a working Ps1 emulator has recently been released in beta form. The ¨private beta¨of the aptly-named psx4iphone emulator supports about 75% of the Ps1 library, a fairly impressive feat for a hand-held port. Readers that have (or have played with) an iPhone will of course want to know how the programmers have handled the input of controls on the device. Well, the control problem has been ¨solved¨ by assigning buttons to transparent overlays that make use of the built-in touch functionality of the device. While this looks pretty cool, it is easy to see how this solution might fail in games that require any sort of coordinated control input (like say, Metal Gear Solid). Wait, Metal Gear Solid playable on an iPhone! *faints*

After having picked myself up off the floor from amazement, I must say that both the NES and Ps1 emulators are kind of a cruel joke. It is clear from the work of these skilled coders that the iPhone has loads of latent videogaming potential, but where both of these efforts fall short is in the control scheme. The touchscreen, while awesome, isn´t quite up to scratch when it comes to traditional button-mashing. Apple could easily remedy the situation by releasing a peripheral that would attach to the bottom of the device and provide basic gaming input, the same way that a third-party company is planning to do with their upcoming GPS device. That would definitely propel the iPhone into gaming readiness and offer a reasonable amount of competition for Sony and Nintendo. Sorry, Husdson, but point-and-click memory ¨games¨ simply aren´t going to cut it.

Thanks: [Apple Weblog]