411mania got the idea right when they talked about their list of top 5 anything. From top 5 RPG characters to top 5 worst movie-based games, the guys who put up their individual lists always do a good job (or at least a funny one) explaining their choices. Most recently, the staff of 411mania decided to do the unthinkable: list the top 5 best games based on movies and TV.

For the most part, the picks were spread out among different genres and game types since the creation of video games. For instance, Tommy Colona, one of the three staff members who made a top 5 list, picked Capcom's NES-era disney games as his number one choice on the basis  of gameplay fun. Different incarnations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games also got some love from these guys. Nintendo 64's Goldeneye FPS was mentioned, as well as the Kingdom Hearts series, and if you haven't played those games, you definitely missed out on some good times.

Not one to miss out, allow me to offer my humble list of top 5 games based on movies and television. Feel free to comment with your own list as well.

5. Lego Star Wars Series
    Nothing gets the adrenaline pumping faster than the killing Lego blocks shaped like Darth Vader. Nothing at all.

4. Spider-man 2
    Not all the games did the Spider-man franchise justice, but the game based off of the "Spider-man 2" movie was a lot of fun. Add to that the voice of Bruce Campbell as your tutor, and the ability to deliver pizzas as the wall-crawler, and you have a fun game.

3. Avatar: The Last Airbender
    You have to admit that the show is great fun to watch. The handheld versions are pretty nice renditions, but my prediction is that the Wii version will probably make people who've never heard of the series want to watch the show.

2. Anything that has Spongebob Squarepants in it.
    This is biased, but any game that I can do a preview on in sing-song format is going to be something interesting. I don't even need to wait for a release, because it'll just be perfect.

1. Anything WWE-related since the new century began.
    A good number of WWE games have had such awesome gameplay mechanics and fun matches. Why it counts in this list, above all others? Because the WWE has more drama than a soap opera.

The moment many PSP enthusiasts have been waiting for – the Alpha release of Yoshihiro’s PSXP v0.1! In the past, it was believed that emulating the Nintendo 64 system was near impossible, yet PSMonkey and StrmnNrmn proved those critics wrong. Well, now Yoshihiro has taken emulation up a notch and has successfully emulated the Playstation released by Sony in 1994 (JP) and over 10 years later we are seeing it being emulated on a portable device!

One of the major aspects of the PSP is that it is stronger than the original Playstation and even comes to a point where many say it rivals the PS2’s graphics. Early this year, Sony announced that they are working on an official PS1 emulator for the PSP that will be released at a later date with a new firmware update. This will most likely come after the PS3’s launch.

Yoshihiro is, once again, breaking the boundaries of the PSP with this new emulator. This emulator is a port of the PC's PCSX so I wouldn't expect speed improvements to happen regularly. There have been several videos of the PSX emulator released in the past few days, many of which seemed too good to be true. However, the emulator is true, and you can test it out on your 1.50 PSP right now once you download it below!

Note: Here at PSPUpdates, we do not condone piracy, please do not distribute links to ISO files or BIN files as you will be banned from the comment; also applies if you are asking for them.

Update: In light of the fact that Yoshihiro has not released the source code to his "port" of PSPSONE we have removed the download and have replaced it with the original PSPSONE emulator. As many readers have noted there is "no difference between PSPSONE and PSX-P except Yoshihiro's modified menu." As such we would like to support the original author who actually put the real work into this emulator.

Download: [ PSPSONE ]

Daedalus "Spiff Up", a.k.a. Daedalus Wally, has got a new release for you all to enjoy! Making graphical changes on the popular N64 emulator Daedalus, Wally the developer is leaving the N64 emulator's optimizations to StrmnNrmn.

Some of the improvements that can be found are in Micro Machines, with now visible characters, and a slightly better map. For Super Smash Bros, the characters may look weird not having facial detail, but hey, at least now they're all in one piece. Besides, Wally the developer promised that it will be fixed in the future. Also enjoyable in the new release is the "fun to watch" intro and visible Nintendo logo.

The developer also notes that to get this game playable, you have to turn DYNAREC off. According to him, this doesn't seem to be getting ingame without support of PSPLink, but he swears it goes ingame. The screenshot above is testament to his claim.

Here's a list of the other changes from Wally:

• World is not enough: Not many fixes here except the carpet is red where you start and walls have less black dots, this needs more experience
• Diddy Kong Racing: Some Text at start
• I'm trying to figure out why it stays blue,
• I think it has something to do with the way the blending is done
• These fixes may fix some other problems in some other games, however its not guaranteed.

So basically, while there are many graphical fixes to share, there isn't much optimizations done. Wally admits that there sure is still a lot to learn, a lot to implement, but definitely it will all be done (within this lifetime, hopefully). So check out this Nintendo 64 Emulator for the PSP.

Download: [Daedalus Spiff Up v1.0]

More on the Daedalus Wally v1.0 after the jump!

Just around a week after PSMonkey has said goodbye to the homebrew scene, his Nintendo 64 emulator for the PSP, Monkey64 (M64), has already made a quick comeback, thanks to the help of his fellow coders.

PSDroideka has just released his own take on PSMonkey's work on the M64, dubbed as MONKEY 64 ATLANTIS: Droideka Build. At the moment, he has specified the following features that can be found in the latest version:

• Zelda OOT Now Loads, Microcode: F3DX2 (Monkey)
• Beginnings of expansion pack support (Monkey)
• You can choose EEPROM (save) size
• Roms now load from a roms directory
• Old Pochi icon
• New Pochi eboot background
• Implemented the one word source change StrmnNrmn Found (1-2 VSYNC's a second speed increase) (Droideka)

In the included readme file, Droideka also noted that fans can look forward to the following features, which will be added later on:

• Automatic Microcode loading
• Further tlb emulation
• Further Expansion Pack support
• Possibly a file browser (but i doubt it)

Download: [MONKEY 64 ATLANTIS: Droideka Build]


Erratum: We have previously mentioned that Zion and Droideka have been working on this emulator together, but as Zion has pointed out, this is not the case. We have corrected this article as requested. Our apologies to Zion and Droideka for the mix-up.

Without Clipping	With Clipping
The large triangles that make up the floor that Mario is standing on are rejected by the PSP, leaving a large hole where the floor should be. By breaking the triangles into smaller pieces before attempting to render them, it reduces the chance that the PSP will decide to discard them.	I started by ripping out all the exisiting polygon clipping and tesselation code and starting from scratch. After a couple of days of hacking I've finally got a replacement system that seems to be clipping everything I've thrown at it perfectly.

Optimizations was a word we can constantly find on previous articles regarding StrmnNrmn's Nintendo 64 emulator, Daedalus. Most especially on the most recent one with speculations that R8 will be released sooner than we expected due to the large amount of progress that StrmnNrmn's been making.

Now, he makes another one of the optimizations that he keeps on mentioning. Tesselate Large Triangles. Ring any bells? When R7 was released we were advised to set this option to "No" to boost the framerate aside from disabling "Texture Update Check." Of course, in doing so, you sacrifice graphics over speed. Well not anymore. When he started out ripping all the existing codes and starting from scratch, he has come up with an even better solution that the "quick fix" he initially intended. Optimization of his discovery is well on its way of course.

Thanks a whole bunch to Captain Morgan for letting us on the scoop.

StrmnNrmn has released a new version of the hottest, and most anticipated emulator today. Daedalus R7 (Release 7) contains a nice speed increase over the previous version of R6 and also is the host to a new configuration system that will allow users to map the PSP buttons to the configuration/setup they have been dreaming of.

 

Many have complained that the PSP does not have enough buttons to emulate the Nintendo 64 console, but others like myself have pointed out that not all buttons are used in every game. So, if you are playing a game that have different layouts, you can easily change the configuration of the buttons before you start playing that game.

 

Aside from the button mapping feature, this new release features an average speed increase of 25-30% from the previous release. You can read the full change log below and see a video that I compiled of this new release. The video shows Super Mario 64 with tessellate large tris enabled and disabled. You will also see Mario Kart 64 which runs at 10fps in the game with large tris disabled (for performance). So, if you are like me and must have the latest, and the greatest emul

ators for your PSP, download this release below the change log –

• [^] Avoid checking for interrupts in dynarec code in most situations.
• [^] Optimise dynarec Load/Store instructions to avoid checking for interrupts directly.
• [^] Implemented the remaining 32-bit integer instructions in the dynarec.
• [^] Implemented the remaining commong load/store instructions in the dynarec.
• [^] Implemented JAL/JR in dynarec.
• [^] Optimised various texture cache related features.
• [^] Added various known value optimisations to the dynarec engine.
• [^] Link together blocks even when they exit with branch likely instructions.
• [+] Added option to allow frequency of texture update checks to be reduced.
• [+] Added the ability to configure buttons
• [!] Fixed a couple of compatibility issues caused by the dynarec.
• [!] Fixed a couple of issues related to self-modifying code and the dynarec.
• [!] Fixed issues with the framerate counter flickering

Download: [Daedalus R7]
View: [Daedalus R7 Video]

As Shakespeare once wrote in his most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet.". So whether you prefer to call it Panel De Pon or Tetris Attack, it's still one of the most enjoyable game to date.

Panel De Pon is a puzzle game developed for the Super Famicom and was later released in North America as Tetris Attack which features characters from Yoshi's Island. It was later on released as Pokemon Puzzle League for Nintendo 64, and as Access_Denied pointed out in the forum thread, the first images used by db26 were from that game.

Even though, there are some differences in featured characters, the gameplay is still the same. All you have to do is match similar blocks of the same face to collapse the tower preventing it from reaching the top. Switching two blocks would require you to place the two hollow squares over the blocks you want to switch and press X to select. It has all the elements of Tetris with a twist.

The overall graphics of the game pales in comparison with the sugary sweet backgrounds found in the original, so that took a little bit of getting used to. Good news is that he promises to include "flashier graphics" in his next release. Music wouldn't hurt as well, I reckon.

The game is still a bit slow, so you better be on your toes, for those easy matches. I sometimes get all panicky because those that I've already matched aren't disappearing yet and the stack is about to reach the top. It's a good way to keep your reflexes in check though. The to-do list from the creator himself:

Current issues:

• Chains are not counted yet.
• Blocks don't stop rising while blocks are matched but not yet deleted.
• Other blocks can be added to combos before deletion of already made matches.
  

What's to come:

• Better score-keeping. (currently only stores high scores... Not names.)
• Skins/Themes during game progression.
• Different Modes of gameplay. (currently only "Endless Mode")
• Flashier graphics.
• Optimization. (it hasn't seemed to matter yet, but I haven't used pointers at all except for fading in the intro. This is "Java laziness" getting to me...)
• Vs. Mode? (maybe if I'm feeling ambitions)

Download: [PSPanel De Pon v1.0]
Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]

Well as if the 2.5 / 2.6 Downgrader wasn't big enough news for one weekend, upon checking my email today I noticed an update from longtime GBA developer and reader ZoMbi146. We have been in contact over the last few days and just today I received two brand spanking new teaser shots from ZoMbi146's new Nintendo 64 Emulator.

Work on this emulator which is based on the UltraHLE engine, has been going on for some time. It appears now the emulator will be split into separate eboots that are hard coded for specific roms. For example Mario64 and Zelda would not use the exact same loader. What this allows is for the emulator to be specifically tweaked to run the specific game at the best possible speed, sound and compatibility. A current available and rather general example would be SnesTYL switching graphic modes.

In addition "each version would have special tweaks with optimizations that would make each appropriate rom run correctly at full speed with sound." The games that are currently working in this method are Mario 64, Zelda OOT, and Goldeneye 64.

Just on a side note, the Nintendo 64 was a good platform and did have quite a few games. One of the things that made the system suffer, however, was a rather difficult programming interface. For these games to play very well, or in this case at full speed, is quite an amazing feat.

Not sure about you but I look forward to hearing more from Zombi146 in the coming days. Until then we will be standing on our heads and drooling from the mouth (yuck) as we await the reawakening of Mario 64, Zelda OOT, and Goldeneye on the PSP. Nice work ZoMbi146, nice work!

Update: So what happened, what was the final resolution you ask? Myth Busters Takes on PSP

After giving us all the latest build to his now popular Nintendo 64 emulator Daedalus, StrmnNrmn took a much needed break from the development scene and went to Barcelona, Spain. But StrmnNrmn's heart must really be into delivering us a better N64 emulator as fast as he can because just coming back from the vacation, he's giving word that he'll "have something ready by the end of next week, or early July".

The next release of Daedalus will tackle a bunch of graphical issues like "adding new combine modes to fix various pink+black textures" among others. Since StrmnNrmn suspects that stability problems related to operating the emulator with dynarec for an extended period of time are caused by the memory running low, he is looking into reducing memory requirements for the coming build. This plan can also improve the Expansion Pak support, says the author.

Time willing, StrmnNrmn promises to look into adding support for configuring the controls on a rom by rom basis. Also up for the coming build is an improvement on the savegame support.

Moving away from the upcoming Daedalus build, StrmnNrmn also highlighted in his blog some clarifications on his issue with PSDonkey. Just before he released his latest Daedalus build, StrmnNrmn received a comment by PSDonkey saying, "I went ahead and compiled the new source for everyone and also added a couple of minor changes to the source for speed improvements."

Having read this, the Daedalus author went into "a bit of a Hulk rage" (his own words) and wrote in his blog that he "[suspects] PSdonkey might simply have been attempting to take partial credit for several weeks development work".

PSDonkey however came clean and made a clarification. He says,

"About the pre R5 build that I made. Yes I did change a couple of minor things in the source code and things seemed to run a tad bit better. However, after reviewing your updated R5 release, none of the changes that I made in the other build had any effect in this new R5 build that you released. In fact most of what I did was clean up some of the excess code and I can see that you already did this in your R5 release."

Having read this, StrmnNrmn extended his apologies and even invited PSDonkey to drop him an email so they can "talk about the possibility adding [PSDonkey] as a contributor on sourceforge".

And that's all StrmnNrmn has for us this week. I bet the coming days will again be nerve-wracking for all of us whose already excited about the prospect of yet another amazing build of the Daedalus. Keep up the good work, StrmnNrmn!