What is shadPS4?
shadPS4 is an early, in-development emulator for Sony PlayStation 4 games.
Disclaimer
It’s important to mention, shadPS4 is very, very early.
Some games can be played, and they have a compatibility on their website to check that out, but don’t go in expecting miracles just yet.
Bloodborne though, has really good compatibility.
ROMs
Before we start, you’re going to need PS4 games of course.
Not something I can help you with unfortunately, but a quick Google (hint hint PS4 ROMs) should get you to what you need.
For storing the games, I would simply create a ROMs folder anywhere you want on your PC, and then a ps4 folder and throw all your games inside of it.
Installing shadPS4
Let’s go ahead and install shadPS4 through their website, shadps4.net.
You’ll see a Downloads tab at the top, and then you can grab the download for your version of operating system.
Use the top downloads which is the GUI versions.
It is going to download as a zip, and so you just need to extract it – in Windows, it’s as easy as a right click, Extract all then extract.
You can now move this extracted folder anywhere you want – maybe you have an emulators folder somewhere on your PC, you can put it in there if you want.
VCRedist
Before we run it, for Windows users at least, make sure you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 redist.
Just run the exe to install what you need – if you already have it, it’ll show a screen that says Repair, Uninstall and Close, so click Close as you’re good.
If not, install it.
Head inside the shadPS4 folder we extracted and open the shadPS4QTLauncher.exe to start it.
First time setup for shadPS4
The first thing it’s asking is where are our PS4 games located, and that’s easy, we put them in a ps4 folder within a ROMs folder so navigate to that and select that folder.
You can skip the other two and leave them as default.
Click OK.
Converting PKG to GP4
Now you’re going to notice – our games aren’t showing, well mine aren’t and likely the same for you as well.
Why is that? Well, our games are in PKG format and shadPS4 dropped support for PKG files after 0.70.
That means, we have to convert our games to work for shadPS4.
We’re going to download a tool called PKG Editor.
It’s going to download as a RAR.
I would suggest downloading 7-Zip, which let’s you unzip RAR’s and 7z files easily.
Once you do, right click that RAR > 7-zip and extract to PKGEditor.
Go ahead and open the PKG Editor folder and the exe inside.
Head to File and then Open and choose one of the games you need to convert, the PKG file since that’s the file type that most PS4 games are in.
Make note of the CUSA ID in the Content ID field – all games will start with CUSA then a bunch of numbers before the underscore.
Highlight that, and click Copy.
Then, you want to select Export to GP4 Project.
Navigate to your ps4 ROMs folder if you aren’t there already and create a folder with the CUSA ID as the name of the folder.
Then, choose to save this new project inside of it.
It’ll take quite a while depending on your PC.
Once it’s done extracting, go ahead and click OK.
Repeat these same steps for as many games as you have.
You can now delete the original PKG files if you want, they’re not needed anymore.
Game Updates
Now for updates, it would be the exact same steps except, after you click Export to GP4 Project, you want to once again create a folder with the CUSA ID and then hyphen UPDATE.
Ex. CUSA00038-UPDATE
The game folder and the update folder need to be in the same folder, which if you’re following the guide, it should all be in the ps4 ROMs folder.
Refresh List
Head back to shadPS4 and click the Refresh List at the top.
As long as you have your games within the same folder you set before, you should see them here in the list and any updates if you have them.
Settings
Go ahead and click Settings so we can change some settings.
Frontend
Head to the Frontend tab.
I like to enable Display Compatibility Data and Update Compatibility Database On Startup.
This shows how compatible the games are in the list.
Make sure to choose Update Compatibility Database now so we can get that information.
I also like to enable Check for Updates at Startup and Always Show Changelog so that we can get updates and see what’s new.
Graphics
Head to the Graphics tab next.
For Graphics Device, make sure to select your graphics card if you have one to avoid the emulator maybe choosing your internal graphics by accident.
Let’s also change Display Mode to Fullscreen (Borderless).
Paths
Head to the Paths tab.
If you ever move your ps4 games folder, or want to move it, you can Add/Remove the folder here at the top.
Or any other folders.
Click Save at the bottom to Save all our changes.
Controllers
Connect your controller to the PC if you haven’t already.
Head to Controllers next (from the main screen of the emulator) and you should see your controller listed under Active Gamepad.
Go ahead and click Set Active Gamepad as Default to enable it.
If you want to remap anything or double check the mapping, just click any mapping and the corresponding button on your controller, but an XInput or Xbox controller should be perfectly mapped out of the box.
Click Save when done.
Hotkeys
Head to Settings at the very top now (from the main screen of the emulator) and then Customize Hotkeys.
Some of these are useful like Show FPS Counter, and Quit Emulation.
You can do combo mappings, so maybe L3 + Y for Show FPS Counter and L3 + Start for Quit Emulation.
Cheats & Patches
Head back to Settings at the very top now (from the main screen of the emulator) and this time choose Utils then Download Cheats / Patches.
Click Download Cheats for All Installed Games then come back and do the same with Download Patches for All Games.
If you want to check them, right click any game and choose Cheats/Patches.
You’ll be able to see them under each tab and can enable or disable whatever you want.
You can also choose Download Cheats or Download Patches at the bottom to update them.
Right Click Menu
While we’re here in the right click menu (right click any game), you can use this to find all sorts of things like the folders that have the game, or save data and so on.
Per-Game Settings
Or more importantly, Game-specific Settings, which is where I would suggest you do any settings you need for this specific game to get it to run well.
You’ll likely be using this a lot to get each game to run well.
Especially the Experimental tab.
Launching a Game
To launch a game, double click the game and you’ll probably get a popup that says No Version Selected – click OK.
Then OK again.
On the right, you should see a bunch of different versions.
If you know a game needs a specific version to run, you can try that, otherwise the Nightly version is best.
It’ll ask you to download it, click yes then OK.
You can close that Window.
If you ever want to get back to it, just click Version Manager top right.
And above that you can see a drop down with the versions you installed.
Try again to load the game by double clicking it.
If you’re lucky, the game loads up and you can now play – awesome.
To exit the game, use whatever hotkey you setup earlier.
Compatibility
Now, you likely had some sort of issue while playing, and given how early this emulator is, that’s to be expected.
There may be fixes though and you can check that by right clicking a game > Compatibility > View Report.
Give the report a read to see if there’s any setting changes you can make for that game to get it to run, or run better, or fix issues.
To save yourself some time though, you should probably stick to games that have a Compatibility rating of Playable.
