With the conversation around the future of backwards compatibility with the PS5 reaching an all time high, a modder has found a PS1 emulator in a very unlikely place. Unlike Microsoft and their upcoming Series X, Sony has been very quiet on the subject of backwards compatibility with the upcoming console. It hasn’t been since the first edition of the PS3 that a Sony machine was backwards compatible at all, and while PSNow offers an alternative solution, it is restricted by price and streaming.

The well-known modder Lance McDonald, who recently made a lot of exciting discoveries in P.T, made a tweet explaining how the PS4 remake of MediEvil actually has a PS1 emulator running under the hood. The game’s remake contains the entire original PS1 version of MediEvil, to unlock by completing all of the game’s 19 soul challenges, and apparently runs an emulator to make it possible.

While this may seem like an exciting discovery, Lance makes it clear that this emulator can’t do much aside from run the original MediEvil. The video attached shows an attempt at running the first Silent Hill game and, while it seems okay at first, the results are “not perfect”. McDonald tried using it to run a few other titles as well, reporting that “Syphon Filter doesn’t even get past the 989 Studios logo. Wild Arms gets to the main menu but no further. Seems like a bust to me. I had to patch some breakpoints out of the emulator to even get Silent Hill as far as you saw above. I’m not really gonna look any closer at it.”

As big as a breakthrough as this could’ve been for the modding community, it seems like there’s little hope that this discovery will lead to any major breakthroughs. Because the PS4 cannot read CDs at all, software emulation was the only hope of backwards compatibility becoming a reality. Unless a better option is either found or made, it seems like all hope lies in what the PS5 allows us to do. With not much time left to make major announcements, we’re still waiting on Sony to give us a price and release date for the new console. Hopefully they’ll let us know their plans for backwards compatibility then too.

Source: Eurogamer