That serial I/O port was removed on the original PS for reasons like this. It definitely was interesting to see all the devices that came out that used the port.
Oftentimes, it's less things like these (as most were never really successful), and more a matter of removing extraneous features that had proven to be underutilized, if used at all, officially. A good number of game consoles have had things added just in case they might be useful. The SNES has a port or two that went completely unused, as they were placed there in case of a possible addon like the Famciom's Disc System.
@@shiftfire4511It's always important when considering Nintendo's consoles to look and see what was released in Japan, since many official products never came it to the US.
Beat me to it. Yeah only the first and second versions had the ports. The third version lost it. Oddly i have a first version and it has dedicated composite ports built in along with the standard video output port.
I didn’t know about this but back in the day I had a bootleg PS1 disc that had 100 Master System games built in with an emulator and I played on it a lot.
This emulator is using the Super Gameboy feature for Pokémon Blue like you mentioned, what's interesting is that it colorized the sprites as if it was the Pokémon Yellow version, just like the SGB did, so it must be using similar firmware. Fascinating how they implemented it to run on a completely different platform.
The GAL on the cart is significantly simpler than an FPGA and most likely is just doing some glue logic between the Playstation bus, the cart, and the rom (the winbond chip). I’m guessing the rom there just has an emulator program that gets loaded when the playstation boots up, and then the emulator likely copies the contents of the gameboy cart to the playstation memory. This whole thing would have been suuuuper cheap to make. Interesting device either way! Don’t often get to see that port being used on the playstation.
Yeah this, it's a GAL to interface the parallel bus to the GB cartridge. And the flash ROM simply contains the Playstation code (emulator, menu, etc.). The whole thing then runs on the Playstation. That also explains the option to save backup - only then will the emulator write back the emulated SRAM contents to the GB cartridge via the parallel bus.
That part was quite popular (at least here in the UK) mostly with people that didn't want their console modded internally. Also was quite popular with the Video CD / Mod Chip combo for pirated movies on VCD before DVD players and writers became more widely affordable. I never knew this existed for it, I've played GameBoy games from an emulator on a disc, this is cool though
Remember seeing this featured on a Gaming historian video years back. Always stuck in my head because of how "peak 90's unlicensed peripheral" it was. Glad to see a full technical overview of it all these years later!
This product was featured in The Gaming Historian's video on third-party Gameboy accessories for TV use. The cheats option that is used is specifically looking for certain events. Let's say your character dies: pulling up cheats singles out codes that have to do with what just happened. Repeat the same thing: the chests menu narrows it down even further. The cheats it will give you will relate to what you're looking for, whether it be infinite lives or something else.
I remember discovering this when I was looking for the emulators available for the PS1. I used to play an NES amulator for PS1 called "it might be NES" and it had really good emulation
I actually bought this back in 1999 to play pokemon yellow on as i never owned a gameboy and bought it from a playstation magazine advertised website on its backpages. It also is a gamecheat device and has built in game media veiwer for fmv and music. Its in my attic somewhere... what a blast from the past as i just turned 40 lol
I used the parallel port for a mod that played Japanese disc on the OG Playstation. This was back when you had to boot the PS with a domestic disk then swap it with the Japanese disc.
The fact that they actually went out of their way to implement the Super Game Boy pallet (maybe it was a pirate border, but the fact that the emulator applied the pallets fine) is pretty impressive. lol. When did this thing come out?
Congrats on 700k subs! I know It happened a few days ago, but congrats none the less. I’ve been watching your daily for awhile now, so thank you for your hard work!
I specifically remember a utility for the Nintendo 64 known as the GB Passport that basically does the same thing as with this PS1 GB Booster, but with a difference, one of them being that repetitive BG music that plays over and over again. It’s pretty much an unofficial way to play GB games on the N64, as the Pokémon Stadium games have a GB/GBC emulator built-in to it that utilizes the Transfer Pak, which was made specifically for certain GB/GBC Pokémon games. Another thing to note that there is also the WideBoy 64, which was a utility that allows GB/GBC (and by extension, the GBA) games to be played on the N64, but was only used by developers and the gaming press, specifically to take screenshots of games to be shown in gaming magazines and such.
I saw this at a convention once and thought "why would I want that?" But the back expansion port was also good for the external mod chip. I was able to play Japanese games and backups with it.
Nah, that ain't the problem, unlicensed 3rd party accessories still exist, as does emulation. It's just the combination of both that went away, because there's no need and no market for such accessories today. Standalone emulation devices are cheap enough to produce and much more compelling, and anything else is just done in software on the target system itself, without the need for special hardware. Discs can easily be ripped for use with software emulators. The closest things that still exist today are ROM dumpers for retro systems that use modules (up to N64 / GBA, later hardware uses a jailbroken system instead of special hardware).
@@dapperfan44 pretty much that. emulators and hardware clones are moreorless legal as long as you don't use any copyrighted software (also for hardware clones specifically the patents for old 8-16-bit systems have mostly expired)
@@dapperfan44 That's a slightly different case, analogue's systems (not familiar with the other one mentioned) don't use emulation, they are effectively clone systems. Those are legal today, because the patents for the OG systems have expired. Copyright and trademarks however are a completely different beast. That's why you don't find any Game Boy branding on the pocket or screenshots of Nintendo games in its marketing. Even the name itself is only ever mentioned when talking about OG game cartridge and hardware compatibility.
Back in the day I had IMBNES burned on a CD and I had the whole NES library playable on my PS1 using the swap trick. Kids these days will never relate to that.
I remember wanting to get this, but hte person at the store convinced me not to. He mentioned that the quality was not good and the sound wasn't accurate, so I ended up not going with it.
That port was used for Gameshark type devices for the most part and was removed on later versions of the console because of it's use by devices that allowed the use of pirated copies of games.
The trainer is for you to make your own cheats based on the game's current memory values. Gameshark Pro for PS1, which also used the parallel port, had the same functionality (though far more feature-rich) and it was explained on the included VHS that came with it. That Gameshark Pro is also super useful as it has 8 memory cards worth of backup/restore and can act as a memory card itself as well. Basically, it pulls the full RAM of the currently running game and saves it in it's own RAM. Then, you go back to the game and make something change (health, lives, etc). You re-open the menu and check for values that are now higher, lower, or equal to what they were before (not sure what that exclamation mark is, I'm assuming it's just "not equal") so you can identify what values correspond to health, lives, etc and make your cheats by locking those values to what you want.
The version ai had as a kid used ! For not equal and introduced a ? For I don't know if it changed or not. Which is useful say if you want to track something which might be difficult to track or have some noise to it(so you'd use that before every known update to be sure the noise/unknowns don't mess with the tracking).
@@Diavire Nope on mine it had a LCD screen showing which bank it was one and you could press I think it was "select" and then either L2 or R2 to increment between each bank. It didn't work for the PS2 so the PS1 (Mine was the PS One) must of had some interesting hardware
@jamescampbell1599 Did it not work on PS2 even in PS1 mode? That's surprising. The reason those worked was that the memory card and controller used the same bus. (Multitaps leave the memory card port untouched) It makes sense that it wouldn't work in PS2 mode - different buses. It's like how third-party GBA-GCN link cables often don't work in Wii mode due to it using stricter communication timings on the master side.
I tried it on a ps2 slim so not sure if that was a hardware revision or some other reason it didn’t work (Perhaps I didn’t try with the correct combination of controller, card and game as I was kid at the time)
Wow I forgot that I had this. Was pretty cool, but I probably used it only a few times. Didn’t they also had a device that made the PlayStation region free?
If they did, it probably allowed burnt games too. Probably why Sony removed the port, most people used it for these purposes and they had no accessories for it.
@@NottJoeyOfficial yeah I think it did actually. I never used burnt games but I did use it to play games from another region. It came with a spring that kept the disc spinning when you opened the lid. Then you had to remove the disc while spinning and insert the disc from a different region. It worked but the risk of damage was pretty high I guess.....
My cousin had the region free device. It wasn't exactly user friendly, though: you always had to boot the PlayStation with a correct region disk, and then somehow swap disks while it was running (usually, you ran it with the disk drive open and a pencil jammed into the button so that it thinks it is closed). A real mess, and a great way to destroy your disks, the laser, and the CD motor. Still, he did have a copy of _Parasite Eve,_ which makes me jealous to this day!
Same here. I got the gameshark a few days after it released at Walmart. I already had every game genie so I was familar with what device did, and was super excited the PlayStation had a game genie like option
You know, I'd heard about that before. The rumors about it were that the basic thing was based on hardware from when Sony and Nintendo were working together for the DD and a few kits might have slipped out in different ways
I had one of these as a kid! I'm not sure if it was the same brand or not. I don't remember it being as glitchy as the one in the video. I remember playing Pokemon on it and being able to edit my Pokemon to create my own versions. For example: I was able to create a color palette swapped Pikachu that was purple, its types were electric/ghost, it had custom move sets comprised of 2 electric and 2 ghost moves, and I called it Pikaboo. It was fun to mess around with this device for that purpose.
@14:20 If you're right about how this device is working, I wonder what would happen if you swapped cartridges? Like what if you loaded up a Pokemon Red cart, removed it plugged in a Pokemon Blue cart and then chose "save backup"? Would it write your Red save data to the Blue cart?
I would like to see more of these attachments for the Parallel Port on the original Playstation consoles. Neat to see the cool stuff people came up with
The trainer was used to produce your own cheats. You enabled the trainer and all memory values are recorded. Then as you play and lose lives or health, you go back into the trainer and refresh. The trainer will give you only the values that changed the the direction you specify (higher, lower or equal to the value before). You repeat that process until you eliminate all the memory values and zero in on the memory value that controls the health or lives. Then lock the value by entering into the cheat system.
I Did not have This one. I had a Different One, Different Company at least Think it was from different company. But, It worked with the Gameboy Color Games and Displayed the Gameboy Color Games Correctly. I Have No Clue If I still Have it or Not. I still Have My original Playstation. But, as Far as the Accessory Piece No idea. If I do, It would be in one of the Many many Game Collection Storage Boxes in Basement.
It been done back in a day, this device in the video was already outdated or is broken, however there been homebrew discs that had most games from old systems that you can play easily so as modchips, so these type of devices became useless. Especially by the time PS2 came out it ran everything you ever needed with a mod chip. I use it still to this day to play retro games, mine have a messiah chip that unlocks the PS2 to be basically hackable and a dev unit so I am set for life ... These were common in Europe and Russia so we never needed devices like these in the video at all or for much long.
I actually saw this one and the Nintendo64 version in stores back when those systems were the new hotness. Obviously I wanted either one variant but since my mom was really poor, we couldn't pick up either. Well at least the PS1 version seems to perform better, the tearing is less annoying than that loop of a bgm that came with the N64 cartridge.
No one knows the parallel port no one knows the parallel port... come on man, all the kids in my school knew it, if you bought a ps1 without such port that meant no Game Shark nor VCD player for you! Gameshark was pretty common in my region, kids used not judt to cheat, but also to watch cut scense when we wanted 😊
Im pretty suprised no one has worked out a gameboy emulator for ps1 that runs with roms on a cdr. I found one called aGBe but its not complete as of january 2003 😅
I actually bought one of these when I was still in middle school. I didn't fully understand the product and didn't understand why there was no audio. Among all the other issues with it, I couldn't stand not having audio so had to fight the owner to return it saying it was a broken product. The reality is that it's just a shitty product.
I still have a Bung PSX Multi Xchanger that lets you flash Game Boy and GB Color games to a Bung Doctor GB Card (AKA Mr Flash) and turns the PlayStation into a Nintendo 64 CD-ROM drive (seriously). It may have even worked with the Pocket Linker for Neo Geo Pocket Color but Bung was sued out of existence just as they rolled that out (firmware update never released). It’s part of the Bung Multi Game Doctor 3 (MGD³) series meaning it was meant to tie in to a lot more. The V64jr was also MGD³. I actually demonstrated loading an N64 game from a PSX to my N64 with my V64 jr512 if anyone wants to see it. Anyway, that’s not an FPGA in that thing. The GB game is dumped into RAM and then emulated with a GB emulator that is stored in the EEPROM. The emulator is simplistic with no audio and glitchy support for Super Game Boy borders. It’s likely that the GB functionality was a Trojan horse for this thing to enable PSX CD-R backups under the guise of flashing to the GB slot, but American companies demanded legal firmware that simply plays the games. Heck, even Bung hardware shipped with the backup functions disabled (users had to download “backup enabled” firmware and flash it themselves).
in 2000 or 2001 i didn't own a gameboy but we all had an emulator called NO$GMB or something like that (it was pronounced "no cash" if i remember right) and it had that border when we played pokemon. Does anyone have an explanation for whats going on? I thought it was aftermarket but is it actually saved into the real game?
Only use I’ve previously seen of that parallel port was the game shark, I had a friend who had that. Are there any other interesting uses for it, either during the ps1 heyday or more modern uses?
That parallel port was SO useful. I had this and an Action Replay with some amazing features, like a Tile/Sprite viewer and music player that could load non-CD Audio songs from the games. The GB Booster was built for Pokemon, all the rest was collateral. Those games are the only ones that ran "well enough", the rest was borderline unplayable.
I wish I had this as a kid. The option to play Pokemon on the TV at home as well as anywhere on the Gameboy would have been incredible. Might have saved my neck and eyes a little as well. 😂Cool video. 👏👍
The beautiful thing is that the Playstation initially was a collaboration between Sony and Nintendo, so had things gone differently, this may very well have been a Nintendo product.
Nintendo never knew wtf they are doing and I am glad Sony moved away from all of them and shown how things are done, Sony basically revolutionized the console market if not then we would have outdated overpriced pile of trash sold to us for another two decades at least. I am still surprised Nintendo exists and a certain number of people in the west buys their outdated trash. I thought Nintendo is popular in Japan (at home) and they get 1st hand financial support from the country how that is the only reason why they are around but turns out that is not the case instead random investors and games keep them alive so as that number of consoles sold in USA alone since next to no one else in the world ever gave a f__k about them ...
I used the parallel port all the time gameshark, disc swapping and such. I was upset when my first playstation took a dump on me and the replacement I got no longer had the port.
The first chip you showed is not an FPGA, it's just a very small programable logic chip thats replaceing a handfull 74 logic chips (most likely to decode adresses to chip select signals to switch between the Flash chip on the module and the GB cartridge ROM) to make the thing fit into the case. The real magic is the content of that flash chip, thats containing a small software emulator thats running on the playstations CPU.
Yeah, that's the SGB border (badly rendered) and colors on Pokemon Blue. Looks like it would support SGB enhanced games, but anything CGB just caused it to fail completely.
15:00 Well at the same time, Nintendo could do it because this is their own console, their own patents. If the third party dared to do what Nintendo did, they woul've been hit with a patent infringement.
maybe works with the black cart gameboy color games. Those could still be played on older models before the GBC and sometimes had extra features if played on a GBC versus a GB or GBP
I had a pro-action replay with LPT port and decompiled codes for a few dozen games in the late 90's that GamePro and EGM published. It was pretty awesome.
Used this port with the GameShark Pro. This was the best GS ever (IMO) because you could create codes for PS games. It used the difference between code (values) from one moment to the next to figure out what changed and then allowed you to change the value back to the previous value. Unfortunately, it only seemed to work during that game session. Taking the code (usually a long string of letters and numbers) and using it on a subsequent play through I was never able to get the exact same results. But it was nice when no codes existed for a game and/or specific scenario.
It's crazy to think that this was ever possible. Growing up in the era of DRM and as many anti-piracy/emulation measures possible makes this seem so crazy. I can't imagine playing a Nintendo switch game on a stock ps5.
Did you try the vertical sync option? Anytime someone talks about screen tearing and just glosses over one of the very few options listed that could help….I was yelling at my TV lol. Maybe you did try it and it just didn’t make it into the video. Just curious what that option actually did
I remember barrowing my friends GameShark that used the parallel port. After giving it back to him I went to the game store to get one for myself, freaked out half way home and got my dad to drive me back to the store because there wasn't a GameShark in the box. My dad wasn't to happy having to drive me back only to find out that the later GameSharks were just CD's that loaded RAM values before you swapped in the actual game disc. Not mad at me, more with CodeMasters because he replaced the laser unit in our PSX at least twice do to the motor burning out. Later, I got a Gold Finger Modchip that let me play burnt games, it did use the parallel port and was GameShark compatible, so I never touched the GameShark CD again.
So this makes sense. This was another peripheral that worked for some games but not all and even certain games like Pokemon where it works better than the ones that actually do work. Funny how these old 90’s emulation peripherals worked. Truly fascinating! I never saw this in store shelves back in the day but since it appears to have a moderately low compatibility list (& as we saw some games flat out work but reject the peripheral device), I imagine those who did carry it the stick for it came and went. The company that made it probably didn’t last long either..
I think there was at least one version of this (if not this one and this example is damaged) that had music but only the one tune and not the music from the game itself
Cross console emulation from that era has always been so fascinating. Bleem on the dreamcast still blows my mind.
Bleemcast!
Bleem was amazing, it was the first decent PC emulator for PS1.
Loved Bleem & Bleemcast!
I'm still salty we never got Bleem for FF7
I know it's not the same era, but I love how I'm able to play GB-GBA emulators, Master System and Game Gear emulators on my PSP and WITHOUT hacking.
@@HKT-4300I don't think that would be possible as I'm nit sure the Dreamcast would let you change the disc. I mean I know it has Shenmue but still.
That serial I/O port was removed on the original PS for reasons like this. It definitely was interesting to see all the devices that came out that used the port.
Was also as a cost saving measure, since it was never used by Sony for any retail purposes.
Oftentimes, it's less things like these (as most were never really successful), and more a matter of removing extraneous features that had proven to be underutilized, if used at all, officially.
A good number of game consoles have had things added just in case they might be useful. The SNES has a port or two that went completely unused, as they were placed there in case of a possible addon like the Famciom's Disc System.
@@shiftfire4511It's always important when considering Nintendo's consoles to look and see what was released in Japan, since many official products never came it to the US.
Beat me to it. Yeah only the first and second versions had the ports. The third version lost it. Oddly i have a first version and it has dedicated composite ports built in along with the standard video output port.
@@LeftyPem You could get a VCD decoder in Japan I believe.
I didn’t know about this but back in the day I had a bootleg PS1 disc that had 100 Master System games built in with an emulator and I played on it a lot.
isn't that the one with the godawful sound that even the creator hates?
Oh yeah, it's called "1st sega master system emulation CD", it has horrible audio lol
I have an SNES one but the emulation is absolutely terrible
@@kyles8524 there's no SNES emulator for PS1, you probably mean pNESx which is a bad NES emulator for PS1
@@davidoli isn't there a decent one called it might be NES or something
This emulator is using the Super Gameboy feature for Pokémon Blue like you mentioned, what's interesting is that it colorized the sprites as if it was the Pokémon Yellow version, just like the SGB did, so it must be using similar firmware. Fascinating how they implemented it to run on a completely different platform.
The GAL on the cart is significantly simpler than an FPGA and most likely is just doing some glue logic between the Playstation bus, the cart, and the rom (the winbond chip).
I’m guessing the rom there just has an emulator program that gets loaded when the playstation boots up, and then the emulator likely copies the contents of the gameboy cart to the playstation memory.
This whole thing would have been suuuuper cheap to make. Interesting device either way! Don’t often get to see that port being used on the playstation.
Yeah this, it's a GAL to interface the parallel bus to the GB cartridge. And the flash ROM simply contains the Playstation code (emulator, menu, etc.). The whole thing then runs on the Playstation. That also explains the option to save backup - only then will the emulator write back the emulated SRAM contents to the GB cartridge via the parallel bus.
That part was quite popular (at least here in the UK) mostly with people that didn't want their console modded internally. Also was quite popular with the Video CD / Mod Chip combo for pirated movies on VCD before DVD players and writers became more widely affordable. I never knew this existed for it, I've played GameBoy games from an emulator on a disc, this is cool though
Remember seeing this featured on a Gaming historian video years back. Always stuck in my head because of how "peak 90's unlicensed peripheral" it was. Glad to see a full technical overview of it all these years later!
I used the parallel port for my game shark and found out later on that it allowed me to play imprts as well like the action replay for the saturn
This product was featured in The Gaming Historian's video on third-party Gameboy accessories for TV use. The cheats option that is used is specifically looking for certain events. Let's say your character dies: pulling up cheats singles out codes that have to do with what just happened. Repeat the same thing: the chests menu narrows it down even further. The cheats it will give you will relate to what you're looking for, whether it be infinite lives or something else.
I had something similar to this. It was just a grey square but it did only the cheats no gameboy
I remember discovering this when I was looking for the emulators available for the PS1. I used to play an NES amulator for PS1 called "it might be NES" and it had really good emulation
I actually bought this back in 1999 to play pokemon yellow on as i never owned a gameboy and bought it from a playstation magazine advertised website on its backpages. It also is a gamecheat device and has built in game media veiwer for fmv and music. Its in my attic somewhere... what a blast from the past as i just turned 40 lol
For some reason I can just hear AVGN's rant "what a piece of shit what were they thinking"
I used the parallel port for a mod that played Japanese disc on the OG Playstation. This was back when you had to boot the PS with a domestic disk then swap it with the Japanese disc.
Gameshark time 👍
That is something I totally would have bought, had I come across it, back in the day.
The fact that they actually went out of their way to implement the Super Game Boy pallet (maybe it was a pirate border, but the fact that the emulator applied the pallets fine) is pretty impressive. lol. When did this thing come out?
Congrats on 700k subs! I know It happened a few days ago, but congrats none the less. I’ve been watching your daily for awhile now, so thank you for your hard work!
Yes, when I looked at my PS1 I always thought: men I wished it played GameBoy games!
Mario on the PS1
Men indeed
I specifically remember a utility for the Nintendo 64 known as the GB Passport that basically does the same thing as with this PS1 GB Booster, but with a difference, one of them being that repetitive BG music that plays over and over again.
It’s pretty much an unofficial way to play GB games on the N64, as the Pokémon Stadium games have a GB/GBC emulator built-in to it that utilizes the Transfer Pak, which was made specifically for certain GB/GBC Pokémon games.
Another thing to note that there is also the WideBoy 64, which was a utility that allows GB/GBC (and by extension, the GBA) games to be played on the N64, but was only used by developers and the gaming press, specifically to take screenshots of games to be shown in gaming magazines and such.
*Holy CRAP!!!!* *Memory UNLOCKED!!*
I had the N64 one! (I think it was called the Game Booster in the UK)
IGN did a bit on the Wide Boy back in the day, incidentally.
I used this very port a lot actually! It was for a device like an action replay to play foreign games and CD-R
Gold finger? My cousin had one for import games
The port also worked with GameShark and game shark pro
Huh, I remember using the memory card slot for GameShark.
@dapperfan44 That was the newer GameShark CD that came out, there were newer versions of Playstation without the port.
I saw this at a convention once and thought "why would I want that?" But the back expansion port was also good for the external mod chip.
I was able to play Japanese games and backups with it.
This definition could be a decent way of recording Gameboy footage without shilling out hundreds for a Gameboy Player for the GameCube.
John's fingernails look like my toenails 😂
Too bad if any indie company did this today, they'd be sued to Brazil.
Nah, that ain't the problem, unlicensed 3rd party accessories still exist, as does emulation. It's just the combination of both that went away, because there's no need and no market for such accessories today.
Standalone emulation devices are cheap enough to produce and much more compelling, and anything else is just done in software on the target system itself, without the need for special hardware. Discs can easily be ripped for use with software emulators. The closest things that still exist today are ROM dumpers for retro systems that use modules (up to N64 / GBA, later hardware uses a jailbroken system instead of special hardware).
i mean if stuff like the analogue pocket or the retron family of systems can exist then i doubt they'd be sued
@CrashFan03 I think it's because they play incredibly old media and they don't use any copyrighted tech or something like that.
@@dapperfan44 pretty much that. emulators and hardware clones are moreorless legal as long as you don't use any copyrighted software (also for hardware clones specifically the patents for old 8-16-bit systems have mostly expired)
@@dapperfan44 That's a slightly different case, analogue's systems (not familiar with the other one mentioned) don't use emulation, they are effectively clone systems.
Those are legal today, because the patents for the OG systems have expired.
Copyright and trademarks however are a completely different beast. That's why you don't find any Game Boy branding on the pocket or screenshots of Nintendo games in its marketing. Even the name itself is only ever mentioned when talking about OG game cartridge and hardware compatibility.
I used to own one in 1998 and I loved it. I used it for all kinds of cheat codes
Back in the day I had IMBNES burned on a CD and I had the whole NES library playable on my PS1 using the swap trick. Kids these days will never relate to that.
I can honestly say that I never thought of playing handheld games on a PS1, but it is awesome that some company actually did this
I remember wanting to get this, but hte person at the store convinced me not to. He mentioned that the quality was not good and the sound wasn't accurate, so I ended up not going with it.
That port was used for Gameshark type devices for the most part and was removed on later versions of the console because of it's use by devices that allowed the use of pirated copies of games.
The trainer is for you to make your own cheats based on the game's current memory values. Gameshark Pro for PS1, which also used the parallel port, had the same functionality (though far more feature-rich) and it was explained on the included VHS that came with it. That Gameshark Pro is also super useful as it has 8 memory cards worth of backup/restore and can act as a memory card itself as well.
Basically, it pulls the full RAM of the currently running game and saves it in it's own RAM. Then, you go back to the game and make something change (health, lives, etc). You re-open the menu and check for values that are now higher, lower, or equal to what they were before (not sure what that exclamation mark is, I'm assuming it's just "not equal") so you can identify what values correspond to health, lives, etc and make your cheats by locking those values to what you want.
The version ai had as a kid used ! For not equal and introduced a ? For I don't know if it changed or not.
Which is useful say if you want to track something which might be difficult to track or have some noise to it(so you'd use that before every known update to be sure the noise/unknowns don't mess with the tracking).
Weird that nes was able to be emulated properly on the Ps1
We used the port on the back for gameshark all the time.
There used to be memory cards you could use the controller to switch between memory banls. Would love a video exploring how that worked
Wasn't there just a button on the memory card itself to switch "pages"?
@@Diavire Nope on mine it had a LCD screen showing which bank it was one and you could press I think it was "select" and then either L2 or R2 to increment between each bank. It didn't work for the PS2 so the PS1 (Mine was the PS One) must of had some interesting hardware
@@jamescampbell1599 weird, never seen that design here
@jamescampbell1599 Did it not work on PS2 even in PS1 mode? That's surprising. The reason those worked was that the memory card and controller used the same bus. (Multitaps leave the memory card port untouched)
It makes sense that it wouldn't work in PS2 mode - different buses. It's like how third-party GBA-GCN link cables often don't work in Wii mode due to it using stricter communication timings on the master side.
I tried it on a ps2 slim so not sure if that was a hardware revision or some other reason it didn’t work
(Perhaps I didn’t try with the correct combination of controller, card and game as I was kid at the time)
LOL How did Nintendo ever allowed this to exist?
They're usually the most aggressive with protecting their ips and what not.
Wouldn't turning on the V-Sync have helped with all that screen tearing effect?
I tried that option and it didn't change anything unfortunately
@@SpawnWave appreciate the reply though still, Jonathan.
Wow I forgot that I had this. Was pretty cool, but I probably used it only a few times. Didn’t they also had a device that made the PlayStation region free?
If they did, it probably allowed burnt games too. Probably why Sony removed the port, most people used it for these purposes and they had no accessories for it.
@@NottJoeyOfficial yeah I think it did actually. I never used burnt games but I did use it to play games from another region. It came with a spring that kept the disc spinning when you opened the lid. Then you had to remove the disc while spinning and insert the disc from a different region. It worked but the risk of damage was pretty high I guess.....
My cousin had the region free device. It wasn't exactly user friendly, though: you always had to boot the PlayStation with a correct region disk, and then somehow swap disks while it was running (usually, you ran it with the disk drive open and a pencil jammed into the button so that it thinks it is closed). A real mess, and a great way to destroy your disks, the laser, and the CD motor. Still, he did have a copy of _Parasite Eve,_ which makes me jealous to this day!
@@graemevaughey7432 hahaha yeah I remember doing that as well. I totally forgot until I saw this video.
Dude I would of TOTALLY bought this back then, wow. Great video
So this boots up without needing a disc or anything? Dang. GameCube GBA Player can't say the same.
I used the parallel port on the ps1 all the time for the GameShark. I mean the GameShark was pretty damn popular🤷🏻♂️
Same here. I got the gameshark a few days after it released at Walmart. I already had every game genie so I was familar with what device did, and was super excited the PlayStation had a game genie like option
The slot was removed on the next iteration of the ps1
You know, I'd heard about that before. The rumors about it were that the basic thing was based on hardware from when Sony and Nintendo were working together for the DD and a few kits might have slipped out in different ways
I had one of these as a kid! I'm not sure if it was the same brand or not. I don't remember it being as glitchy as the one in the video. I remember playing Pokemon on it and being able to edit my Pokemon to create my own versions. For example: I was able to create a color palette swapped Pikachu that was purple, its types were electric/ghost, it had custom move sets comprised of 2 electric and 2 ghost moves, and I called it Pikaboo. It was fun to mess around with this device for that purpose.
@14:20 If you're right about how this device is working, I wonder what would happen if you swapped cartridges? Like what if you loaded up a Pokemon Red cart, removed it plugged in a Pokemon Blue cart and then chose "save backup"? Would it write your Red save data to the Blue cart?
I was wondering the same thing.
I would like to see more of these attachments for the Parallel Port on the original Playstation consoles. Neat to see the cool stuff people came up with
The trainer was used to produce your own cheats. You enabled the trainer and all memory values are recorded. Then as you play and lose lives or health, you go back into the trainer and refresh. The trainer will give you only the values that changed the the direction you specify (higher, lower or equal to the value before). You repeat that process until you eliminate all the memory values and zero in on the memory value that controls the health or lives. Then lock the value by entering into the cheat system.
I Did not have This one. I had a Different One, Different Company at least Think it was from different company. But, It worked with the Gameboy Color Games and Displayed the Gameboy Color Games Correctly.
I Have No Clue If I still Have it or Not. I still Have My original Playstation. But, as Far as the Accessory Piece No idea. If I do, It would be in one of the Many many Game Collection Storage Boxes in Basement.
Given the simplicity of the adapter, I wonder how difficult it would be to reprogram the flash memory with an updated emulator.
It been done back in a day, this device in the video was already outdated or is broken, however there been homebrew discs that had most games from old systems that you can play easily so as modchips, so these type of devices became useless. Especially by the time PS2 came out it ran everything you ever needed with a mod chip. I use it still to this day to play retro games, mine have a messiah chip that unlocks the PS2 to be basically hackable and a dev unit so I am set for life ... These were common in Europe and Russia so we never needed devices like these in the video at all or for much long.
I actually saw this one and the Nintendo64 version in stores back when those systems were the new hotness.
Obviously I wanted either one variant but since my mom was really poor, we couldn't pick up either.
Well at least the PS1 version seems to perform better, the tearing is less annoying than that loop of a bgm that came with the N64 cartridge.
No one knows the parallel port no one knows the parallel port... come on man, all the kids in my school knew it, if you bought a ps1 without such port that meant no Game Shark nor VCD player for you! Gameshark was pretty common in my region, kids used not judt to cheat, but also to watch cut scense when we wanted 😊
Ps1 had a VCD player? I knew Saturn did.
@@messiahmozgus Yep. I used mine to watch Love Hina back in the day lol
That’s awesome! I never seen this before, but I love the whacky stuff from the older consoles.
Im pretty suprised no one has worked out a gameboy emulator for ps1 that runs with roms on a cdr. I found one called aGBe but its not complete as of january 2003 😅
They might update it at any time!!
if that's a 2Mb RAM chip, that would be why Link's Awakening and Pokemon Yellow wouldn't work as their filesizes are larger than 2Mb!
I actually bought one of these when I was still in middle school. I didn't fully understand the product and didn't understand why there was no audio. Among all the other issues with it, I couldn't stand not having audio so had to fight the owner to return it saying it was a broken product. The reality is that it's just a shitty product.
I still have a Bung PSX Multi Xchanger that lets you flash Game Boy and GB Color games to a Bung Doctor GB Card (AKA Mr Flash) and turns the PlayStation into a Nintendo 64 CD-ROM drive (seriously). It may have even worked with the Pocket Linker for Neo Geo Pocket Color but Bung was sued out of existence just as they rolled that out (firmware update never released). It’s part of the Bung Multi Game Doctor 3 (MGD³) series meaning it was meant to tie in to a lot more. The V64jr was also MGD³.
I actually demonstrated loading an N64 game from a PSX to my N64 with my V64 jr512 if anyone wants to see it.
Anyway, that’s not an FPGA in that thing. The GB game is dumped into RAM and then emulated with a GB emulator that is stored in the EEPROM. The emulator is simplistic with no audio and glitchy support for Super Game Boy borders. It’s likely that the GB functionality was a Trojan horse for this thing to enable PSX CD-R backups under the guise of flashing to the GB slot, but American companies demanded legal firmware that simply plays the games. Heck, even Bung hardware shipped with the backup functions disabled (users had to download “backup enabled” firmware and flash it themselves).
I had one of these! I loved playing Mario land 2 on the tv, whilst playing happy hardcore cds. Happy days
in 2000 or 2001 i didn't own a gameboy but we all had an emulator called NO$GMB or something like that (it was pronounced "no cash" if i remember right) and it had that border when we played pokemon. Does anyone have an explanation for whats going on? I thought it was aftermarket but is it actually saved into the real game?
It's nocash gba and that emulator also implemented SGB mode
We certainly did have more innovation in the 90's...
Only use I’ve previously seen of that parallel port was the game shark, I had a friend who had that. Are there any other interesting uses for it, either during the ps1 heyday or more modern uses?
That parallel port was SO useful. I had this and an Action Replay with some amazing features, like a Tile/Sprite viewer and music player that could load non-CD Audio songs from the games.
The GB Booster was built for Pokemon, all the rest was collateral. Those games are the only ones that ran "well enough", the rest was borderline unplayable.
Super Great Britain booster. +10 to the "Steal Artifacts" skill, and a tea break after every level.
I wish I had this as a kid. The option to play Pokemon on the TV at home as well as anywhere on the Gameboy would have been incredible. Might have saved my neck and eyes a little as well. 😂Cool video. 👏👍
You could have play it on tv with n64 pokemon staduim. Or using the snes gameboy player. I played silver and gold on snes
I think the most common use for the serial port ended up being the Gameshark.
The soldering on the GB booster is amazingly crusty, tho!
Pretty cool. The PSIO is one of the best things you can get for the PS1.
I used that port for a mod chip that allowed me to play "backups" lol
Most people did, also for playing other regions(Japan usually)
@@jescis I forgot about region locking. That was a dumb time in history lol.
The parallel port was pretty much only used for the guncon afaik, and maybe a couple of other accessories, so that's pretty interesting!
The guncon never used the parallel port. However, it needed a special adapter to redirect the video signal (yellow chinch connector) to the guncon.
I love how the companies were able to keep the product legal all the way back when it came out by being careful with there wording. :D
The beautiful thing is that the Playstation initially was a collaboration between Sony and Nintendo, so had things gone differently, this may very well have been a Nintendo product.
Nintendo never knew wtf they are doing and I am glad Sony moved away from all of them and shown how things are done, Sony basically revolutionized the console market if not then we would have outdated overpriced pile of trash sold to us for another two decades at least.
I am still surprised Nintendo exists and a certain number of people in the west buys their outdated trash. I thought Nintendo is popular in Japan (at home) and they get 1st hand financial support from the country how that is the only reason why they are around but turns out that is not the case instead random investors and games keep them alive so as that number of consoles sold in USA alone since next to no one else in the world ever gave a f__k about them ...
That FPGA is a Generic Array Logic or GAL. I used to program those in college, which was around the time of the PSX.
The Port on the back is the reason i never sold my PS1 because i have 2 GameShark devices
I used the parallel port all the time gameshark, disc swapping and such. I was upset when my first playstation took a dump on me and the replacement I got no longer had the port.
The first chip you showed is not an FPGA, it's just a very small programable logic chip thats replaceing a handfull 74 logic chips (most likely to decode adresses to chip select signals to switch between the Flash chip on the module and the GB cartridge ROM) to make the thing fit into the case. The real magic is the content of that flash chip, thats containing a small software emulator thats running on the playstations CPU.
Parallel port was used all the time in the UK as you'd use it for a scat lead adapter
Yeah, that's the SGB border (badly rendered) and colors on Pokemon Blue. Looks like it would support SGB enhanced games, but anything CGB just caused it to fail completely.
15:00 Well at the same time, Nintendo could do it because this is their own console, their own patents. If the third party dared to do what Nintendo did, they woul've been hit with a patent infringement.
This would have been amazing if it worked with the “Psone”. I never saw or knew about this thing but it would have come in handy lol
The ps1 av cable fits into the Nintendo gamecube av port. It works too. Though you only get black and white picture with no sound.
Was this called a playboy?
same name as that one company
maybe works with the black cart gameboy color games. Those could still be played on older models before the GBC and sometimes had extra features if played on a GBC versus a GB or GBP
Seems like all of those that he tried (Link's Awakening DX, Pokemon Yellow) didn't work.
I had a pro-action replay with LPT port and decompiled codes for a few dozen games in the late 90's that GamePro and EGM published. It was pretty awesome.
Oh hey! That thing plugs into the Gameshark hole! 🤣
Used this port with the GameShark Pro. This was the best GS ever (IMO) because you could create codes for PS games. It used the difference between code (values) from one moment to the next to figure out what changed and then allowed you to change the value back to the previous value.
Unfortunately, it only seemed to work during that game session. Taking the code (usually a long string of letters and numbers) and using it on a subsequent play through I was never able to get the exact same results.
But it was nice when no codes existed for a game and/or specific scenario.
I had the N64 one. Not only did this not use the games’ sounds, but it just played the same song on a loop, and you couldn’t save.
It's crazy to think that this was ever possible. Growing up in the era of DRM and as many anti-piracy/emulation measures possible makes this seem so crazy. I can't imagine playing a Nintendo switch game on a stock ps5.
That Squirtle on the Pokemon Blue border from the Super GB Booster is nightmare fuel for sure. I'm glad I never got that accessory for my Playstation.
Would be neat to remanufacture this with some modern bits of detail.
60fps videos at last
Good job John!
Thing is crazy! Great video!
Imagine Microsoft just randomly adding a Switch cart slot to the XBOX
Wild
I didn't even know this existsed. The fact that there were so many people making physical emulator expansions is so mind blowing to me.
Missed opportunity to call it a Playboy.
I still have my original ps1 with the mod chip thing that plugs into that slot. It looks just like that Gameboy thing, but without a slot
I probably would have bought this back then if I knew it existed.
I had a GameShark that used the parallel port that also had a game boy cartridge slot
Did you try the vertical sync option? Anytime someone talks about screen tearing and just glosses over one of the very few options listed that could help….I was yelling at my TV lol.
Maybe you did try it and it just didn’t make it into the video. Just curious what that option actually did
I remember barrowing my friends GameShark that used the parallel port. After giving it back to him I went to the game store to get one for myself, freaked out half way home and got my dad to drive me back to the store because there wasn't a GameShark in the box. My dad wasn't to happy having to drive me back only to find out that the later GameSharks were just CD's that loaded RAM values before you swapped in the actual game disc. Not mad at me, more with CodeMasters because he replaced the laser unit in our PSX at least twice do to the motor burning out. Later, I got a Gold Finger Modchip that let me play burnt games, it did use the parallel port and was GameShark compatible, so I never touched the GameShark CD again.
I never heard of this. I read PlayStation magazine every month, and even they never mentioned it. I would have definitely purchased one if do.
reminds me of those weird N64/PSone controller adapter cables i saw at a thrift store one time
I used to insert a Game Shark Pro Cartridge in of my PS1. 🦈
I was just talking about this.. Crazy 😂 I have a GameShark plugged into mine
Unfortunately neither of my Ps1 console have the expansion port or built in composite.
Only power plug and av adapter
So this makes sense. This was another peripheral that worked for some games but not all and even certain games like Pokemon where it works better than the ones that actually do work. Funny how these old 90’s emulation peripherals worked. Truly fascinating! I never saw this in store shelves back in the day but since it appears to have a moderately low compatibility list (& as we saw some games flat out work but reject the peripheral device), I imagine those who did carry it the stick for it came and went. The company that made it probably didn’t last long either..
I think there was at least one version of this (if not this one and this example is damaged) that had music but only the one tune and not the music from the game itself