Wondering who the faces are behind the mystery team that's been churning out the newer builds of the Snes9xTYLsmcm emulator for the PSP?

According to a rumor, one such developer may actually be Ruka. A brief backgrounder on this dev - along with a history lesson in Snes9xTYL's other past coders - can get more details in the full article.

The anonymous team of Japanese developers have now released their fourth build of Snes9xTYL, Snes9xTYLsmcm 23/05/08 Release. So far, reports of satisfaction have been pouring in, thanks to the noted increase in speed. Find out more after the jump.


Download: Snes9xTYLsmcm 23/05/08 Release

Those of you looking for a decent SNES emulator for the PlayStation Portable won't run out of options anytime soon, considering the numerous releases of similar applications out right now in the homebrew community. Case in point, the highly popular Snes9xTYL homebrew emulator was recently picked up by some new developers and has gone through several new improvements. More details regarding it can be found in our full article.

Download: Snes9xTYLsmcm Test 3 16/05/08 Release

A lot have been waiting for an update to the Snes9xTYL SNES emulator for the PSP. And after about a two month hiatus for the said emu, we finally find a little version bump up on our laps. This time, the update doesn't come from Ruka (the guy who released the latest update) nor YoyoFR and Laxer3a (the original coders of Snes9xTYL).

A patch was rolled out by davex, the same coder who did a number on CPS1PSP a few months ago. This patch builds on Ruka's recent release, so you better get that first before you decide to go any further. The whole download just might take around 1MB of your bandwidth time, but that 1MB surely would get far. davex incorporates two very useful features for the emulator:

• Quick save state [press RTRIGGER + SELECT] and quick load state[ RTRIGGER + START]
• Auto-fire [Available in CONTROLS main menu]

For this patch, davex gives thanks to the previous devs who've worked on Snes9xTYL and made possible for it to happen. Make sure you check out the readme and other text files included in the download bundle below on how to patch your emulator.

Download: Snes9xTYL++Beta quick save state and autofire patch
Visit: PSP Development Forums

To those of you who still remember, homebrew developers Yoyofr and Laxer3a decided to stop working on Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator SNES_TYL9x back in September 2006.

They didn't left the program in limbo though, thank God, because they released the source code before they bid the application goodbye. Now, over at Yoyofr's online forum, another developer - fruitval - posted that he's actually working on a new emulator based on the duo's source code.

However, the coder mentioned that he's been hitting some snags with the project. Quite interestingly, Yoyofr himself posted the following: "I tried some of the latest pspsdk and had some trouble with my 3.10 OE psp. I'll update the source code and have snes9xTYL work with the latests Dark Alex firmware asap."

This means, in case you still don't get it folks, that a new SNESTYL9x is coming soon. The emulator, under Yoyofr's and Laxer3a's caring hands, ran until version 0.4.2. At that level, SNES_TYL9x is already great with only a few possible improvements needed. Stay tuned to QJ.Net for the latest updates regarding this development 'cause we'll be glued to it 24/7.

Thanks blackrave for the tip!

When do you know if it's too much? How do you know if you've gone too far? What if you found out that it might just be beyond you? Sometimes, it's better to let others continue your work.

This is what Yoyofr and Laxer3a have decided. Letting someone else's hands develop your creation takes a lot of willpower. They have layered down the integral foundations for other homebrew developers to build on.

According to Laxer3a, "I am not sure neither yoyo and I want to go that far in tuning. If any good coder is interested to join in... May be worth sending a bottle to the sea actually. As the source matches the latest binary."

So what does this mean for the SnesTYL9x? According to the developers, they have done all that they can regarding the speed of the emulator. A 10% increase in performance may be achieved if there was a near-complete overhaul of the code to incorporate a dynamic recompiler/JIT and if the graphics code was rewritten. It seems majorly difficult, but feasible. However, time is not on their side.

They have a life beyond game emulators, and decided that doing the modifications above would take a major chunk of health points out of them. Let's hope that others will carry on the torch these people have helped light.

Yoyofr and Laxer3a, thanks for the great SnesTYL9x. It will be one of the better emulators out there for a long time. For the next generation of developers, the ball is in your court.