Retro gaming fans listen up — homebrew developer Notaz has released an update to his PSP compatible port of PicoDrive, a Sega CD and Genesis (Mega Drive) emulator.

In addition to the usual round of bug fixes, version 1.50 features several enhancements, including support for Sega Pico titles, as well as improved sprite rendering and optimized load times on the Sega CD end.

Hit the break for the full changelog.

* Added some basic support for Sega Pico, a MegaDrive-based toy.
* Added proper support for cue/bin images, including cdda playback.
.cue sheets with iso/cso/mp3/wav files listed in them are now supported too (but 44kHz restriction still applies).
* Added bin_to_cso_mp3 tool, based on Exophase’s bin_to_iso_ogg. The tool can convert .cue/.bin Sega CD images to .cso/.mp3.
* Greatly improved Sega CD load times.
* Changed how scheduling between 68k and z80 is handled. Improves performance for some games. Credits to Lordus for the idea.
* YM2612 state was not 100% saved, this should be better now.
* Improved renderer performance for shadow/hilight mode.
* Added a hack for YM2612 frequency overflow issue (bleep noises in Shaq Fu, Spider-Man – The Animated Series (intro music), etc.). Credits to Nemesis @ spritesmind forum. Works only if sound rate is set to 44kHz.
* Implemented some sprite rendering improvements, as suggested by Exophase. Games with lots of sprites now perform better.
* Added better idle loop detection, based on Lordus’ idea again.
* “accurate timing” option removed, as disabling it no longer improves performance.
* “accurate sprites” was removed too, the new sprite code can properly handle sprite priorities in all cases.
* Timers adjusted again.
* Improved .smd detection code.
* Minor general optimizations and menu improvements.
* Fixed a bug in Sega CD savestate loader, where the game would sometimes crash after load.
* Fixed a crash of games using eeprom (introduced in 1.40b).
* Fixed suspend/resume (hopefully for real).

Download PicoDrive v1.50 for Custom Firmware / PicoDrive v1.50 for Firmware 1.50

PicoDrive for PSP v1.50 – Genesis/Sega CD Emulator for the PSP [DC Emu]

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