ScratchPsx – a PS1 emulator for MS-DOS with a 3dfx Glide renderer

“RankNewbie
Hi all,
I'd like to share a project that may interest some of you: ScratchPsx, a PlayStation 1 emulator running natively under MS-DOS (DOS/4GW, built with Open Watcom).
Features:
MIPS R3000 → x86 dynamic recompiler
Video: VGA 320x200, mode X 320x240 (256 colors, dithered), VESA 640x480x16
3dfx Glide 3 renderer for Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo 2 (SLI handled by Glide): polygons, sprites and textures drawn by the card at 640x480, palettized textures with chroma-key transparency
Sound Blaster 2.0 / Pro / 16 (up to 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo, CD audio and XA)
An in-game menu GUI as a tribute to Genecyst (yes, with the dripping blood)
Status: so far it has been tested under DOSBox-X (emulated Voodoo 1). Crash Bandicoot and Tekken 2 boot and play, amongst almost all ps1 library.
Under emulation the Glide path isn't faster, which is expected. I'll test it soon on my real machines: a 486DX4-100 with a PCI Voodoo 1, and a P2-350 with 2× Voodoo 2 in SLI.
Known limitations of the Glide renderer: no mask bits, no read-back of what the card drew, and subtractive blending is approximated (the Voodoo can't subtract).
It's freeware.
The archive includes the MSDOS versions (three executables (VGA/VESA, Voodoo 1, Voodoo 2), DOS4GW) and the Windows version.
Check this video (DosBox-X)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK65ccNZhUY
Feedback and reports from real hardware are very welcome, especially speed on Pentium / P2 class machines and other Voodoo cards. Feel free to post your SCRPSX.LOG if something goes wrong.
Cheers,“

Source: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=112722

This would have been an amazing thing 25 years ago.

Absalom said:

This would have been an amazing thing 25 years ago.

Click to expand...

you're not impressed now?

erek said:

you're not impressed now?

Click to expand...

Present day? Not really.

Emulating the PC hardware that existed 25+ years ago to run a PSX emulator designed for said "legacy" PC hardware? A bit niche in 2026.

This isn't unprecedented. People have been getting these long since perfected emulators running on all sorts of weird hardware.

I'll state it again; this would have been amazing back in the year 2000. Running on a real Voodoo2/3. Running on a Pentium 2/3. Running on actual DOS.

I have fond memories of running ePSXe on a Pentium 3 and Matrox G400. Something like this would have been the DOS + Glide competitor to that. If it had been around back then, I'd have whipped out the PPro + Voodoos for it.

It's great if you have an actual vintage PC to run it on, but why do that if you have a newer PC when we have current PSX emulators that are cycle accurate?

And a ton of games are being AI decomped and natively ported to PC recently as well.

It must be fun to do and it is nice for collector with old 3dfx card/CRT monitor that handle 640x480 well to try, give a nice excuse to use them...

I'm still sad that about 15 years ago I pitched my Viewsonic 19" flat CRT monitor