It's been a while since we've picked up word from uberjack's SMS Plus PSP application, which is why we're happy to report that the coder's recently released a new update. In case you're wondering what SMS Plus is, it's a PSP-based emulator designed to play games from the Sega Master System and Game Gear consoles. It's based on Charles MacDonald's SMS Plus emulator. Getting back to our topic, here are v1.2.4's tweaks:

• Various bug fixes
• Added animations to the menu UI
• Fixed buffer overflow error affecting units without a battery
  

Installation and usage instructions for SMS PLus PSP v1.2.4 are available in the readme included with the file bundle. While you're here, make sure to visit uberjack's other emulator works, such as the PSP ports of fMSX and Atari8000. Enjoy the download.

Download: SMS Plus PSP v1.2.4

Homebrew developer Brunni has just released a new build for the highly flexible emulator MasterBoy bringing it up to version 2.02. For the uninformed, this particular application is able to emulate Game Boy, Sega Master and Game Gear video games on the PlayStation Portable.

One of the many good features MasterBoy carries is that it allows users to fully recolor not only by selecting one scheme for the whole screen but every single in-game object. VGM and GYM files can also be listened to because of the bundled music player. The changes particular to MasterBoy v2.02 are the following:

• EBOOT now has icon, wallpaper and sound (thanks to Ass-Itch from PlayerAdvance for his nice BG/ICON)
• Corrected the bug of SRAM not saving properly for some people
• Added the last save date next to the save state slot number
• Enhanced SGB emulation (runs a lot faster)
• Corrected the garbage showing in the border of the render.
• Reworked the default palettes to be closer to the GBC ones.
• Augmented the maximum number of files per folder to 1024.
• Note: The bug that some people has, save states not working after saving/loading a few, is still not fixed (I could contact nobody who has this problem for debugging). In between, if you have this problem, use the RAM state and save manually before exiting (or save less often)

Brunni included a Readme.txt file as well as MasterBoy.pdf file that should provide you with all the information you need in installing and running this program.

We'd like to thank Matt T. for the tip!

Download: MasterBoy v2.02

PSP homebrew developer Brunni has just announced the release of the MasterBoy application as an entry to the ongoing Neo Summer Coding Competition (2007).

This app is a PSP-based emulator capable of playing games from the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Super Game Boy, Sega Master System (SMS), and Game Gear.

MasterBoy is based on Brunni's MMSPlus SMS Emulator, which was a winning entry in last year's Neo Summer Coding Competition. MasterBoy carries several new features and functions:

• Rich interface with discrete effects, redefinable shortcuts and buttons (with autofire feature). Also it's fully skinnable.
• Manage and sort your favorites folders and files to access them easily.
• Integrated music player supporting GYM and VGM formats.
• Several display options like Gamma and Color Vibrance, which allows you to choose how colored you want your display to be.
• Z80 under/overclocker: allow you to correct games that are often slowing down or displaying glitchy / blinking sprites.
• Some improvements over MMSPlus in the SMS/GG part:
• Speed up.
• Now 16-bit render mode is enabled by default. You can revert to 8-bit if you want, and it will run even faster.
• Compatibility issues
• Better country detection (now nearly all games should detect the country correctly and not play too fast anymore).
• The bar at the left of the screen can be automatically hidden (depending whether the game is actually using it or not)

That's the basic rundown on Brunni's MasterBoy emulator. To better understand this application's full details, be sure to view the readme and PDF that are included in the file bundle. Enjoy the download.

Download: MasterBoy v2.0

Thanks to Borg Queen X for the news tip!

---

Update: Brunni has updated MasterBoy to v2.0a. Unfortunately, we haven't found any documentation on what's new in this release, save for the new v2.0a text that appears on the app's GUI when run in the PSP. We're assuming it's to fix several detected bugs. The download is available if you're interested in upgrading.
Download: MasterBoy v2.0a

*Original article posted on August 21, 2007, 9: 23 AM.

A new homebrew emulator for the Sony PlayStation Portable has been added to Uberjack's list of homebrew emulator releases. This time, the fMSX-PSP and ColEM-PSP coder has released a Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator called SMS Plus PSP.

SMS Plus PSP is a PSP port of Charles MacDonald's SMS Plus emulator. The coder says that SMS Plus PSP was written in C and uses GU (Graphical Utility toolkit) for rendering. This is an initial release, so we don't have a changelog to post yet. If you encounter any bugs or would like to make a suggestion, click on the Via link below.

Don't forget to read the readme file included in the download. There, you'll find all the pertinent info including installation and usage instructions.

Download: SMS Plus v1.2.1

International market research and market data company Research and Markets just announced that it has added "The Market for Portable Video Games" in its huge roster of studies. If you are not familiar with this company, you can actually think of it as a one-stop shop for market research reports and industry newsletters.

Anyway, like we said, a new report has been published that tackles the market for portable game systems. The study itself contains a detailed five-year forecast for each platform. Aside from that, the study also discusses the potential impact of yet-to-be released gadgets.

Aside from the above mentioned, a sub-report has been attached to the study that concerns the mobile game market and you can get a lot of insights from it given the round table discussion with leading players and visionaries in the mobile game space. The companies included in the study are:

• Atari (Atari Lynx)
• Bandai (Bandai Wonderswan)
• NEC (NEC Turboexpress)
• Nintendo (Game Boy, Virtual Boy, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo Ds)
• Nokia (Nokia N-Gage)
• Sega (Sega Game Gear and Sega Nomad)
• SNK (SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color)
• Sony (Sony PSP)
• Tiger (Tiger Gamecom and Tiger Telematics Gizmondo)

Quite interestingly, the study also gives a detailed history of the portable game market as well as an overview of failed systems. Video game genres were also discussed aside from complete business models for third-party software sales broken down by platform.

Refer to the Read link below for more details and how you can get the study.

And so another classic game is resurrected on your PSPs. Having previously appeared on several systems with the last being Sega Game Gear in 1992, Alien Syndrome will have you running and gunning down (make a wild guess on this -- yep, ya got it) aliens.

Don't expect to see Ricky and Mary though, as Aileen Harding will be featured as the new Earth Command Trooper. Not to worry, we trust she'll be just as kickass, what with 20 different types of weapons to blast the bejeezus outta the 100 alien species you'll encounter in the game.

And to give you a sneak peek at all this action, we're gonna share with you this Alien Blasting gameplay video we scored via GameTrailers which shows us some of the aliens you'll be fighting off -- from the ginormous creepy crawlies (that multiply when blasted) to the three-legged weird-assed creatures.

But anyway, we'll just let you catch all that yourself, just hit play and you're good to go.

Sega surprised the world the other day when it announced that it will be resurrecting Alien Syndrome on the PSP and on the Wii.

To those of you who aren't old enough to remember, the game is a run and gun arcade game released back in 1987. It was ported on several systems and its last appearance was on the Sega Game Gear in 1992.

The new game developed by Totally Games will highlight a new Earth Command Trooper in the person of Aileen Harding. Old timers might miss Ricky and Mary but we reckon that Harding could be as good as well. All we know is, our new savior will have 20 different weapons in her arsenal for blasting away - what else - aliens.

Here's the first gameplay video for Alien Syndrome in case you want to familiarize yourself more with the game. It's expected to hit retail stores sometime this summer.

Download: Alien Syndrome gameplay video

Brunni has updated his MMSPlus Sega Master System and Game Gear Emulator for the PSP today to version 1.1. This emulator is undoubtedly one of the best SMS emulators around, with no shortage of updates to add new features and bug fixes so that you can play all of your roms on your PSP at full speed.

MMSPlus has been coded in C and was based off the original source of SMSPlus, a PC SMS emulator by Charles Macdonald. You'll also be pleased to know that most SMS games run perfectly at 166 MHz and Game Gear at 133 MHz. Here's whats been added since the last release:

• Added VGM support for the menu (VGMs are SMS music files)
• Added VGM GD3 tag support
• Added Screenshot option. Screenshots will be saved as png to a MMSPlus folder in Photo.
• Major GUI update
• Disabled returning to game after choosing exit from the menu. Previously after choosing exit from the menu it would show the last game loaded briefly before returning to the xmb.
• A number of minor bug fixes

Thanks for the tip Mister Chief!

  

Download: [MMSPlus SMS Emulator v1.1]
Discuss: [Forum release thread]

[Bo]Trops has released another version of his homebrew Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator called PSPMaster today, updating it to v009 beta4. PSPMaster is one of the favourite SMS/Game Gear emulators for the PSP for a couple of reasons, firstly for the huge feature list and the amount of compatible ROMs, and secondly for the amount of updates that [Bo]Trops fires out on a regular basis. The last version of PSPMaster was released not even a week ago! Here's the v009 beta4 changelog:

• New high definition renders. Be sure to change the CPU clock to 300MHz to get a decent speed.
• Some minor changes

Now the changelog isn't massive, but the addition of new high definition renders is a huge update and as long as your PSP's battery is charged up enough to run at 300Mhz then you will notice a significant graphics improvement. This is one of the few emulators that still comes in firmware 1.0 and 1.5 formatted eboots so make sure you download the correct one!

Download: [PSPMaster v009 beta4 fw1.5]
Download: [PSPMaster v009 beta4 fw1.0]

The wonderful e[mulator] has been updated to v0.82e today by developer e. If you've missed this one before or are a newcomer to the homebrew scene, e[mulator] is a multi-platform emulator supporting Gameboy, PCEngine, WonderSwan, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and NES.

It also currently supports Atari Lynx but e has noted that this feature is still quite buggy; although a fix added since the last version should fix it. It is also supposed to support NeoGeo Pocket, but e has pointed out in his readme that it's still very slow and doesn't have savestate support.

Here is the changelog for this version:

• Bug fix to characters that weren't displaying correctly
  
• WS : SRAM retention, state retention and operation verification being completed
• Lynx: Operation of the Lynx part of this emulator should work correctly.
  

Thanks for the tip Byte!

Download: [e[mulator] v0.82e]