After years of existence on PC, the Vita3K emulator is making a remarkable entrance on Android. It therefore now allows you to launch some of the iconic titles of the old portable console… on your smartphone.
A console with undeniable success, but unfortunately much less obvious commercial success, at least in the West, the PS Vita had ended up being abandoned by Sony at the end of 2019. Part of its catalog has nevertheless remained accessible for several years through the Vita3K emulator, launched in 2018 on PC. A tool that is now available on Android.
This Android port of Vita3K, which has not been easy, we read, therefore allows you to play some of the portable console’s emblematic games on a smartphone. To do this, you must first download the emulator at this address, then install it manually on your mobile.
An emulator still raw… but the basics are there
As XDA Developers points out, Vita3K for Android is far from immaculate, however. The emulator suffers from many teething problems (bugs, perfectible graphical interface, problematic optimization for certain titles, etc.), but it takes advantage of sound bases to improve afterwards. The initial version of Vita3K Android can, for example, use custom drivers for Adreno iGPUs, it also supports Vulkan and benefits from numerous modifications which should lead to a truly convincing emulation tool later on.
Note that the emulator is currently only compatible with 64-bit Android devices, running Android 7.0 Nougat (or newer), and with support for Vulkan 1.0 (or newer). Open-source project under GPLv2 license, however, it will only be fully shared in a few months. For now, the development team behind Vita3K for Android is limited to precompiled APKs, accessible on GitHub.
Compatible with some of the best PS Vita games (including Persona 4, Unchartedor Hotline Miami, to name a few), Vita3K is a legal tool. Remember, however, that hacking PS Vita games to make them work, using the emulator, is not. To stay in the nails, the only (legal) way to take advantage of Vita3K is to digitize games held on physical media on your own.
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