
One creator is recreating GTA V, Skyrim, Elden Ring, God of War and Final Fantasy X on PS1
I've recently come across a creator called 2009aero, who has been making experimental recreations of modern games on retro hardware.
In just a few months, he's shown PS1 projects based on:
- Minecraft
- GTA V
- Skyrim
- Elden Ring
- Final Fantasy X
- God of War
- Oblivion
He's also experimented with N64 projects such as GTA San Andreas and Dark Souls, and previously attempted to bring Pokémon Red to TempleOS using HolyC.
Here's the interesting part: none of these PS1 projects appear to be publicly playable or open source. They're essentially demonstrations showing what these games could look like running on hardware that was never designed for them.
And this seems to have created a bit of a divide.
For regular gamers, these projects are pretty amazing (see YT comments). Seeing something like GTA V or Elden Ring recreated on a PS1 is obviously impressive and makes for a great video.
But some people in the PS1 homebrew community (psxdev discord) have a very different view. I've seen the argument that these are essentially showcase projects: they're designed to demonstrate an impressive result and attract attention, but there's no released game, source code or technology for other developers to actually experiment with.
The sheer speed is also interesting. Seven different PS1 projects in around three months is a lot, especially considering the technical limitations involved in developing for the original hardware. Although 2009aero hasn't publicly explained how much AI is involved in the development process, so it's impossible to know how much AI, if any, was used.
Sapika_08 wrote our first feature for PSX Homebrew Games looking into 2009aero, his projects and this divide between the general gaming audience and the homebrew community:
GTA V, Skyrim and Final Fantasy X on PS1?
So I'm curious what do you think:
Are these projects valuable technical experiments even if they never become playable games?
Or is a PS1 homebrew project only really interesting to the scene if people can download it, study it and build upon it?