Configure Epsxe

[Tancredo Dori]

Thistutorial is to help you with ePSXe for Windows. For nearly two decades since the 2000s, ePSXe was considered the #1 PlayStation 1 emulator. Most games emulate flawlessly. You can play games via the CD-ROM or via ISO. It's a plug-in based emulator, meaning ePSXe is nothing but a shell. It's your job to collect and configure the plug-ins that control video and audio. With Pete's OpenGL plug-in (and others), ePSXe can render 3D graphics sharper than the real thing! See for yourself:

With all the emulator offerings as of 2024, should you use ePSXe? Well, probably not. DuckStation is currently the #1 emulator. Another great option is RetroArch, a multi-system emulator that supports over 40 systems. Both DuckStation and RetroArch offer superb PlayStation 1 emulation. They don't use a plug-in system, so you don't have to bother with plugins to set everything up. They can also correct 3D gittery and distorted textures . Just like ePSXe, DuckStation makes it easy to swap discs for multiple-CD games. RetroArch, however, is a hassle when it comes to swapping discs.

I no longer have any reason to recommend ePSXe. It's not a bad emulator, but it hasn't been updated since 2016. DuckStation and RetroArch, which are new and in active development, have clearly surpassed ePSXe.

ePSXe is a standalone program, so it does not have an install wizard. Installation is simple: just extract ePSXe from its zip file. To make things clearer, check out the video below that shows how to 'install' a portable emulator (it shows Snes9x, but ePSXe is the same process). It's pretty straight-forward - all that you're doing is extracting a zip file while doing a little bit of folder management. If you want to 'uninstall' a portable emulator, simply delete it!

PlayStation 1 emulation revolves around the plug-in system. The same system used by PlayStation 2 and N64 emulators. PlayStation emulators are merely the shell of the operation. It's your job to gather the plug-ins for each component of emulation. Those components are:

They need to be set up the first time you open ePSXe. Each plug-in comes with a whole bunch of useful customizable features. You can download the PlayStation plug-ins from any major emulation site. If you don't feel like looking around, you can just download them below.

Do this step if ePSXe once worked, but now all games are giving the black screen. So deleting ePSXe from the Registry Editor might fix the black screen problem. This won't mess anything up on your computer. All that this process does is revert ePSXe back to default.

Perhaps you prefer using your own PlayStation 1 games instead of downloading them from the Internet? Or maybe you just want to keep backup copies of your PlayStation 1 games? Whatever the case, here's how you can dump your games:

Press the Esc key to pause the game. Doing so will make the screen disappear and exit to your desktop (with the ePSXe window still there). But don't fret! The game is paused and still running in the background. To continue the game, click on the Run menu then Continue. If you accidentally close the ePSXe window, then your progress is lost.

Note: ePSxe's save state feature is slightly glitchy. It has a history of not working well when you save during FMVs or instances of heavy activity. It's best to capture a save state at a point when the game is at a standstill with nothing going on.

Pro Tip: If you're playing a game that has in-game saving (such as an RPG) I recommend that you use both save states and in-game saving to save your progress. That way you'll always have a backup.

Figuring out how to add your own Game Shark cheats from scratch could take 10 or so minutes. You can read this guide if you really want to know how. But I have something even better for you! Just download the zip file below that already has every cheat prepared for ePSXe.

Even though ePSXe is the #1 PlayStation 1 emulator, it's not perfect. Maybe the video plug-ins don't like your video card. Maybe the game you downloaded is partially corrupt. Maybe the game you're playing is obscure and not fully supported. Popular games do get more attention to run better. There could be many reasons why you're having problems. Keep reading for general tips on how to troubleshoot problems with ePSXe.

So what do you do if nothing works? You tried everything but ePSXe is still buggy and laggy? Try ePSXe's competing emulator: pSX. It tends to run better than ePSXe on lower end computers. It's easier to use as well

Ha, that's a good problem! This simply means your computer is too fast for the current settings of the video plug-in. To resolve this just beef up the settings. Doing so is easy. Go to Config > Video > Configure. If you're using one of Pete's plug-ins (which I hope you are) all you need to do is click on the Nice button.

So every time you close ePSXe, it closes the ePSXe window but you can still hear your game and its music in the background? This is slowly becoming a more common issue with new computers. ePSXe hasn't been updated since 2013. There's not a fix for this. Every time this happens you need to go into Windows Task Manager and force close the ePSXe process. Watch this video for directions on how to force close a process.

I bet you grabbed that save from GameFAQs. GameFAQs offers a wealth of PlayStation 1 saves, but they're all in GME format. Can you use them with ePSXe? Yes, you can! How? Just rename it. Take note how ePSXe organizes its memory cards.

When using Windows 8 or Windows 10/11, ePSXe may behave funny when you attempt to enter fullscreen. Upon accessing fullscreen it doesn't enter fullscreen. Instead it centers the window. It's been awhile since ePSXe has been updated, so this is definitely a compatibility bug that has surfaced with newer operating systems. You may or may not be able to fix this (depends on your video card, I think). The troubleshooting measure you can try is to use the Windows Compatibility feature to have ePSXe emulated under an older version of Windows. Here's how to set it up:

Thank you for reading my tutorial! If you found it useful, please spread the word that this is an awesome site to get help with emulators and emulation! If you have questions, you're welcome to email me or message me on social media.

All my products and services are free.All my costs are met by donations I receive from my users.If you enjoy using any of my products, please donate to support me.Thank you for your support.Tom Speirs

I was wondering if it is possable to use different versions of ePSXe with different settings each. I tried the video config, but when you change it in one version the changes are applied across the board. So the next version you open, say version 1.6.0, it will have the video config of the last version you modified, say 1.5.2.

Abviously this is annoying because there are some games that have compatability issues, like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy 9. I have working ePSXe settings for these but can't run other games with them. Is there a way to link ePSXe config settings to a specific game?

I supose that a hard workaround would be to use autohotkey to open the config and manually change these settings then exit ePSXe. I would have to use the mouse click and x,y coordinates to acomplish this, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. I did it with the Motionjoy DS3 tool to autoload my controller settings. However, this would be very time consuming and need done for each game, not just the incompatable ones, to reset the settings to the default config the rest play well in.

There is a fantastic solution to this, in the form of ePSXecutor. This is an ePSXe frontend written by the legendary Pete Bernett (yes that Pete; the Pete's Plugins guy). ePSXecutor will allow you to have game specific settings for any number of games. It can also be run from the command line. Unfortunately it's also extremely old at this point. Some users have reported problems using ePSXecutor with ePSXe 1.7, but I've never experienced any issues (maybe I'm just lucky?)

So in many ways pSX does offer fewer headaches, but as you mention compatibility can vary between ePSXe and pSX. I'm hoping ePSXe 1.8 allows for game specific settings, so I can finally give ePSXecutor a well earned retirement after years of service, but only time will tell ...

I'm using GameEx to automate user interaction with emulators. The goal is to remove the need for a keyboard and mouse. It is on a custom built full atx HTPC (windows 7x64) and eventually I will place it all in a mini itx. I have it setup with IR using a logitec harmony remote (iMon), which controls almost any function by itself, including mouse and keyboard. I use it to navigate windows 7 media center. However, that is very un user frendly. So after messing with batch files with some success, I looked into frontends and found GamEx, the only one recommended by the authors of project 64. It took me quite some time to set everything up and I found most of the answers I needed in these forumns.

I tried Draco1962's idea first, I placed the roms into separate folders acording to what emulator they best work in. I then made 3 instances in GameEx and labeled them Sony Playstation (ePSXe 1.7.0) ...(ePSXe 1.6.0)... etc. Then I made a group called Sony Playstation that the three would be displad as in GameEx, instead of three diferent playstation emulators it just has one that displays all the games. That works well. However, as null pointed out the problem lies in the ePSXe config loading process. I thought that ePSXe 1.7.0 would remember its settings and 1.6.0 its, and etc. Unfortunatly it change all the versions to the same plugin and config.

Sounds interesting, I'll have a google. It doesn't have to work with 1.7.0 because I only have 2 games that benifit from that version anyway, Medevil I & II. So as long as it doesn't mess with the 1.7.0 config, and works with 1.5.2 and 1.6.0, and multiple configurations within each, then it should work fine. Does it support controller input? Can I controll the interface with my PS3 controller through Motionjoy?

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