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Meet The Company Bringing Classic Games To Switch, PS5 And Xbox "By Mistake"

"I've always wanted to resurrect retro games," Lavallée explains. "There are too many forgotten games that are just completely lost nowadays, usually due to legal and hardware reasons. Also, even with quality-of-life improvements, setting up those old consoles can be complicated on modern televisions. It became clear that we needed a simple solution to emulate classic games on new consoles. This is where the SYRUP Engine came from. It's named after the wonderful Maple Syrup that we enjoy in Canada. I have a sweet tooth."
We asked Lavallée how the technology works and how it is different to other emulators available already. "Open-source emulators already exist, but they have various levels of quality and robustness for production-level games. When you emulate a console game, you can't expect the user to tweak through multiple configuration settings to find the best experience. So, we aim to make it easy to use."

Implicit Conversions' SYRUP Engine has also helped overcome some of the issues surrounding legal emulation that can be stifled by not owning the original hardware BIOS. "We reverse engineer the BIOS and write a new compatible version," says Lavallée. "We also use a High-Level Emulated (HLE) BIOS which is another rewrite of the BIOS but without implementing all its parts. This enables us to avoid implementing some of the code that was necessary for the old console hardware."
Implicit Conversions has worked on many titles since its launch and Lavallée points out some of the highlights as well as the challenges his team has overcome. "Some of my favourites are Jet Moto, Grandia, The Legend of Dragoon and several Star Wars games. We also built a great relationship with Namco and were proud when Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny and Tekken 6 came out. Valkyrie Profile was a challenging game as it required lots of tweaks to get correct. There were changes needed to upscale textures and the movies were improved using AI to insert missing frames. Finally, the game used lots of features of the PSP system software that other games did not, so there were tons of bugs to fix as well. The result is awesome, though!"
Currently, the team are working with Sony to bring PlayStation 1 and 2 titles to PS5, we asked Lavallée how the relationship came about. "My co-founder and friend, Jake Stine, worked with Sony bringing PlayStation 2 games to PlayStation 4. After he left, we reached out to Sony to start an experiment to do more emulation. One contract led to another, and we started hiring people to help us in this adventure. I like to say that we started this as a project, and it became a company by mistake."

 

Fake

Member
Why the slow down?

Why taking so long to add more PS1/PS2 games to PS4/PS5?

Thats my only complain. The ideia of bringing the PS1/PS2/PSP/PSvita catalogue to PS4/PS5 is great and I can't wait to support more.

The only thing that make me mad is doing like blocking Resident Evil Director Cut behind subscription. There should be an option to buy the game alone.
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
Why the slow down?

Why taking so long to add more PS1/PS2 games to PS4/PS5?

Thats my only complain. The ideia of bringing the PS1/PS2/PSP/PSvita catalogue to PS4/PS5 is great and I can't wait to support more.

The only thing that make me mad is doing like blocking Resident Evil Director Cut behind subscription. There should be an option to buy the game alone.
It was free for me as I had the game bought on the Vita. It's weird that one game does not have the option to buy. Did you raise a ticket as it could be a glitch?
 

Fake

Member
It was free for me as I had the game bought on the Vita. It's weird that one game does not have the option to buy. Did you raise a ticket as it could be a glitch?

I guess Cpacom have some pathnership with Sony because is dos locked behind Playstation Plus.
The others games you can buy alone. I already have some like Buzz Lightyear and Valkirye Profile. Gonna get Ape Espace too.
 

Hugare

Member
Why the slow down?

Why taking so long to add more PS1/PS2 games to PS4/PS5?

Thats my only complain. The ideia of bringing the PS1/PS2/PSP/PSvita catalogue to PS4/PS5 is great and I can't wait to support more.

The only thing that make me mad is doing like blocking Resident Evil Director Cut behind subscription. There should be an option to buy the game alone.
Emulation is complicated

Microsoft had a dedicated team only for BC games and they havent come close to emulating all 360 games. And that was their own console.

It has to be on a game-by-game basis because each game has their own quirks/use the hardware in their own ways.

The only way to have a huge/complete library of perfectly emulated games is by having that old hardware inside the console, like the original PS3 had, or by having an almost exact architecture like PS4 BC on PS5
 
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Esppiral

Member
Emulation is complicated

Microsoft had a dedicated team only for BC games and they havent come close to emulating all 360 games. And that was their own console.

It has to be on a game-by-game basis because each game has their own quirks/use the hardware in their own ways.

The only way to have a huge/complete library of perfectly emulated games is by having that old hardware inside the console, like the original PS3 had, or by having an almost exact architecture like PS4 BC on PS5
Sorry but that does not apply to Psx and PsP. They could release the full Game catalog of those consoles no problem.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
It's a great initiative and I'm eagerly waiting for more classic games to buy. So far, I've got Resident Evil: Directors cut, Valkyrie Profile, Hercs Adventures, Legend of Dragoon, Star Wars the Phantom Menace and Twisted Metal. I've also bought loads of retro games on Switch, such as Grandia, Zombies ate my neighbors, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana and the Blizzard collection with Lost Vikings and Blackthorne. Among many others. I hope they bring over a lot more classic games. I love playing retro games but I hate having to do it on old ass hardware from the 90s (I do miss booting up my Saturn, PS1 and Dreamcast though).
 
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