Best devices for Vita Emulation
If you’re curious what the best devices are for Vita emulation, here’s a few of my top picks:
ROMs
So right off the bat, you are of course going to need Sony PlayStation Vita games if you plan on following this guide, and I would suggest just simply creating a ROMs folder on your internal storage or SD card (recommended), and then a psvita folder inside of it, where you will put your Sony PlayStation Vita games.
As far as finding the games yourself, the video below should help:
Installation
Let’s go ahead and download and install Vita3K.
Head to Vita3K.org, the website for the emulator, and click the menu top right then click Download.
Choose Android Nightlies and it will download the APK for us.
Go ahead and open that APK file to install Vita3K and then open the app.
The first thing you need to do is set your language then click Next.
Grant access to the emulator for full file access then click back to get back to the emulator.
Emulator Path
And now we have an option to change the emulator path and this is important.
By default, Vita3K is set to use your internal storage for all of its files, and also, it’s hidden behind Android’s data storage, making it equally difficult for a lot of devices to access.
Also, because with Vita3K you have to install the games, that means that however many gigabytes of games you have is how much space this will take up.
Long story short, no matter what device you’re using, you want to change this so click Change Emulator Path.
Now you want to create a Vita3K folder, on the root of your internal storage or SD card if you have one connected.
If you have an SD card connected, I’d highly recommend you use that for this folder.
Choose Use this folder when done and Allow.
You can confirm the new path on screen and then click Next.
Firmware
Now we need to install some firmware to use Vita3K properly – thankfully, the emulator links us directly to what we need.
So first click Download Preinst Firmware and it’s supposed to redirect you automatically, but usually doesn’t work.
To fix it, change your web browser to desktop mode, then refresh the page and it should download.
Head back to the emulator.
Then click Download Firmware.
Scroll down to Download update and you can click that to download it.
If it doesn’t, push and hold and click open in new tab to get the download to start.
Click Keep to keep the download.
Head back and this time click Download Font Package.
This will be the same issue as the first download link, change to desktop mode to get the download and it’s going to ask you to download again because it has the same name as the first download unfortunately, but just click yes and it should rename the file to add a 1 to it.
Head back and now click Install Firmware File and then you want to go to the three files we just downloaded, and choose one – one is called PSP2UPDAT, the other PSP2UPDAT with a 1 and the other is PSVUPDAT.
Choose one to install it, wait for it to install, then click OK and then repeat and install the other file and repeat again and install the other file.
You’ll know you did it right because it will show Installed with a V next to it.
If it shows an X, it means you missed that install.
Finishing the install
Click Next and then Next again.
Then click OK.
You’ll get a popup, scroll down and un-check show next time, then click Close.
Now you just need to create a user, like a Vita would, so click Create User and give it any name you want.
Click Confirm and then OK.
Enable Automatic User Login to skip this screen next time and just select your user to get into the emulator.
Just tap on the screen to get to the main Vita3K home screen.
Configuration
Alright, let’s change some settings.
Head to Configuration at the top and Settings.
GPU – Upscaling & Custom drivers
Go to the GPU tab, and make sure the Backend renderer is set to Vulkan.
Now, the first thing you can do is use custom drivers.
Custom drivers are only applicable to Snapdragon devices and are pretty advanced – the Download custom driver link will take you to where you can find them and you can download them.
This is outside of the scope of today’s guide, but for those that are familiar with custom drivers – you can use them here, just click add custom driver and select your driver zip.
Then, on the drop down above it, change it from Default to the driver you installed.
If you do this, click Save & close at the bottom, then restart Vita3K for it to apply by clicking File, then Exit and reopening the emulator.
Using custom drivers can be beneficial, or hurtful, so if you find games aren’t working, try changing the drop down back to Default to see if that fixes your game.
For Internal Resolution Upscaling, if you have a powerful device, you can upscale the games to a better resolution.
2x would be a good fit for 1080p displays for example.
Emulator – Performance Overlay
Head to the Emulator tab, and if you want to see your frame rate and performance, check Performance Overlay.
Click Save & Close when done.
Controls
Head to the Controls tab next, and Overlay.
If you’re using a controller or a handheld, turn off Show gamepad overlay ingame to remove the on-screen touch controls.
Next, back into Controls and Controllers.
If you don’t have your controller connected already, you should do so now and you’ll see it here.
Click the controller.
You can now map the controls for Vita, but if you’re using an Xbox controller, it should already be mapped correctly.
If not, just double check the face buttons on the right – tap the mapped button, then the button on your controller you want it to be.
Click Close and Close.
Adding your games
Alright, now we need to install our games, updates and DLC if you have them.
A reminder again – games will install to the emulator, and I’ll show you later where they install to.
That means, after you install, you can delete the original zip files off your SD card or wherever you have them stored as they won’t be needed anymore.
But, all you have to do is click File, then Install zip and select your game to install it.
Repeat this for all the games you have, and then install updates and DLC if you have them.
Once you do, and it’ll take a while, you’ll have a full list of games you can play.
You’ll know the updates installed at least because the version number will change on the home screen.
In-Game
Just tap on the game to start it, and then click the Start button to actually start it.
Then just have some fun and play the game.
When you’re ready to exit, swipe up from the bottom and hit the back arrow, or use the back gesture if you use gestures, and then click the ESC button top right to exit completely.
Where are your files?
Alright, as promised, let’s take a look at where all of your data is saved.
Head to your File Manager, and then either the internal storage or the SD card, wherever you created that Vita3K at the start of today’s guide.
Then, inside of the ux0 folder.
Now, there’s a few folders in here that are important.
First, the addcont folder which would have your updates and DLC if you installed them.
They’re separated by the title ID of the game.
Next, the app folder is where your games got installed to, so if you head inside of it, you’re going to see all of the title id’s which are the games.
Then, we have license, and these are files connected to the games that let them run properly.
Lastly, we have the user folder and inside here is all of your save data.
The best part about this emulator, is if your Vita3K folder is on the SD card, when you move the SD card to another device, you can install Vita3K again, choose the existing folder on your SD card, and you’ll have all your games, updates, DLC and so on all ready to go – no need to reinstall or do anything.
Syncthing
Vita3K can easily be sync’d across all operating systems using Syncthing.
