Right now is the best time to play SNES games on your PSP or PS Vita

Snes9xTYL is one of the most popular Super Nintendo emulators available for the Sony PSP and PS Vita. However, it has been a long time since this emulator last received an official update. Specifically, the last update came on April 4, 2018, which is eight years ago. Fortunately, one developer has swooped in and given the emulator a much-needed performance boost and a few improvements.

A Reddit user who goes by Bitter_Cry7001 has announced that they have revived Snes9xTYL. Over on the developer’s GitHub page, the project is described as a modernized and performance-focused fork of Snes9xTYL, designed to handle large ROM collections and improve hardware performance. According to the user, the goal of this revival “is to improve compatibility and performance for specific SNES games over time.”

The project brings some hefty improvements to the emulator. For example, loading is said to be 90% faster than before. Previously, it took about 20 seconds to load about 1,000 ROMs, now loads happen in a few seconds with support for up to 4,000 ROMs. There’s also support for more languages, including Portuguese and Spanish. And a favorites system has been added, allowing you to add or remove ROMs from your favorites list with the left trigger.

Before you go installing this new fork, the developer has some words of caution. They warn that you should “make sure to backup your SAVES and/or S9XTYLSAVES folders just in case something goes wrong.”