Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows.
Duckstation for Windows will give your PS1 games the correct vintage aesthetic.
Older PlayStation emulators, such as PCSX and ePSXe, may allow simple access to the popular console's enormous catalog of games. Nonetheless, Duckstation illustrates that they have the potential to be better.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
Let's have a look at how this relatively new emulator can play practically any game from your Playstation library while also offering better resolutions and enhanced aesthetics.
How to Get and Install Duckstation
The installation of Duckstation varies based on the platform:
- It is supplied as a compressed archive on Windows.
- Users of Linux can use the official AppImage versions or build it from source.
- Duckstation for Android is available from the Google Play Store as a pre-packaged APK download.
The most current Mac version is officially labeled as "experimental" for the time being.
For this essay, we'll be utilizing its "main" variant, the Windows version. Except for the installation technique, everything we'll see should be (more or less) relevant to the other versions.
- Download the program from Duckstation's official Github page. Duckstation does not come with an installation, so simply extract the download to a location of your choosing.
- Within that folder, look for the Duckstation executable program. It should look like duckstation-qt-x64-ReleaseLTCG.exe.
- To make a shortcut, right-click the file and drag it to your desktop while holding down the right mouse button. This removes the need to look for its executable every time you want to play your favorite PlayStation game.
How to Import Your Duckstation Games
When you execute the Duckstation program, you'll be presented with a simple and uninspiring window. Nonetheless, this modest window will quickly become your gateway to your whole Playstation collection.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
For complete compatibility with its titles, Duckstation, like many other PlayStation emulators, requires the console's original BIOS. This article will not go through how to acquire it, but the official and legal approach is to "dump" your own PlayStation console's BIOS.
If, on the other hand, you've previously used PlayStation emulators like PCSX or ePSXe (as we showed in our post on how to play PlayStation (PS1) games on your PC), you already have that file. In our situation, we imported into Duckstation the identical BIOS files that we used with ePSXe.
- From the Duckstation Settings menu, choose BIOS.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
After that, you're all prepared to start gaming. That does, however, imply that you have some games.
Although you may install PS1 games individually, Duckstation is far more user-friendly if you batch-import everything in your library. To do so, follow these steps:
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
2. In the top right corner, click the "+" icon.. Choose the folder that contains your Playstation games.
Click Scan For New Games in the bottom right corner of the window. If you keep your games in directories within folders, select yes when prompted to scan the specified folder recursively.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
Setting Up Duckstation for PS1 Games
Let's go through the most significant choices in the Settings section of Duckstation.
1. General
Most users should be satisfied with the General page's defaults. Your interest and passion may also be in the following:
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
- Pause On Start: Games will begin in "paused" mode unless you explicitly restart them.
- Start Fullscreen: Rather than launching your games as a floating window, have them launch in fullscreen mode, like most "regular" Windows games do.
- Pause when you lose focus: the game will automatically pause when the Duckstation window "loses focus".. This prevents opponents from firing at you while you're checking an incoming email.
2. Consolation
It's recommended to keep those settings "globally" unchanged and simply alter them every game. They have the ability to improve certain games while breaking others. Duckstation, fortunately, enables you to preserve several game setups.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
- Region: When it comes to games that support different regions, NTSC often has a better framerate, although PAL has a slightly greater vertical resolution. To have Duckstation choose the optimal solution for each game, set the setting to auto-detect.
- Recompiler (Quickest) is the fastest option, as the name suggests. Try one of the other settings provided below if a game malfunctions or the emulator crashes when attempting to run it.
- Enable Clock Speed Control (Overclocking/Underclocking): If a demanding game is running too slowly, you may "overclock" the emulated Playstation to boost performance.
- Async Readahead, Read Speedup, and Seek Speedup: increase the speed of the emulated Playstation CD drive to help your games load quicker.
3. Imitation
To become a master of time, go to the Emulation page, where you may manipulate the emulator's real "flow of time" in both directions, among other things.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
Emulation Speed: Select "standard" NTSC/PAL with 100% speed or a different percentage to slow or speed up Duckstation. For optimal compatibility, leave it at 100%.
Fast Forward and Turbo Speed: These options may cause some games to run too quickly for you. That is why you can adjust how fast those alternate speed options go from here.
Allow Rewinding: By utilizing the primary feature of the Prince of Persia games, "time rewinding," Duckstation may assist you in "undoing" mistakes in difficult-to-beat titles. This is performed by storing the emulator's state continually while you play, every Xth frame and for Y frames - the settings you may change for that option. It is up to you to choose how Rewind should function by balancing granularity and RAM needs.
4. Showcase
On the Display tab, you'll discover the options defining how Duckstation will "display a game's images on the screen".
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
- Renderer: Leave it at Hardware for most games and contemporary GPUs (Vulkan). If a game crashes or you have an older GPU, try Hardware (OpenGL) or Hardware (OpenGL) (D3D12). For even older GPUs, use the Hardware (D3D11) option. If you continue to have problems with them, resort to the most compatible but slowest choice, Software.
- Aspect Ratio: Auto (Game Native) is the greatest option for purists because it does not produce distortion. Other choices allow you to make a game's graphics "cover" your full display, although this frequently results in "stretched" images that are more pixelated or indistinct.
- On-Screen Display: Enable this option while debugging a game or tweaking its settings to examine how the emulator operates in real-time when running a title.
5. Improvements
This is the initial set of settings for boosting game graphics.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
- Internal Resolution Scale: A game will be rendered at its native resolution if the 1x setting is used. Choose 5x for high-definition monitors, 6x for 1440p screens, and 9x for real 4K displays.
- Texture Filtering: Improves the look of "surfaces" in 3D games.
- If you activate Widescreen Hack for 3D games where it does not produce problems, you should also enable Force 4:3 for 24-Bit Displays (disable widescreen for FMVs).
- PGXP: All PGXP-related parameters can significantly improve a game's aesthetics by reducing the "wobbly geometry" look found in all Playstation titles. It's worth experimenting with these, but they can and will break certain games. That is why you should customize them individually for each game.
6. post-processing
Post-Processing, the second location where you may modify the aesthetics of your games, lets you to employ "shaders" to give Duckstation's visual output a more realistic, "vintage" look.
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| Duckstation is the best way to play PS1 games on Windows. |
This part will be skipped because it is a question of personal taste. Feel free to test out all of the available shaders by clicking the + button and going through them one by one. You might even skip them totally.
7. Controller Configuration
To ensure that your joypad is identified, go to the Controllers option in Settings. On the right side of the Global Settings screen, your controller should be displayed.
Configure the button mappings for one of the two Controller Ports shown below. Choose your joypad and "remap" its buttons to the virtual Playstation joypad if the emulator "doesn't respond" to any button pushes.
If you don't have a joypad, don't worry: we've already covered how to utilize your Android phone as a controller for PC gaming. Because the emulator is a "PC game" counterpart, everything you read there should also function in this scenario.
Duckstation for Windows Brings Retro to the Modern Age
Duckstation follows the new emulator paradigm: once properly set, it behaves more like a front-end for your games than a tool you must continually alter to make things work.
Following this initial setup, you'll be able to see all of the games in your Playstation collection and start them with a double click in Duckstation's main list.
Duckstation may function as a Steam launcher comparable for all of your Playstation games after some setup time. It will be as simple as double-clicking on the original Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII and grabbing your joypad to play them.