The Anbernic RG552 is powerful enough to run plenty of Playstation Portable games thanks to the PPSSPP emulator app, but the performance varies a lot. To get the playable PSP games running, you might need to tweak several settings until you find the one that works for the game that you’re playing. In my experience, it’s best to start with a set of settings and work your way from there, either incorporating performance enhancements or lowering it down. This short guide will show you the settings that I prefer starting out with for every PSP game that I test.

 

 

Before We Get Started

Of course, this guide applies to what I’ve got installed on my Anbernic RG552. If you want to use this configuration, you may need to mirror what I’m running. For the operating system/firmware, I’m using Black-Seraph’s AOSP 9.0 Beta 12 (Android 9) which is available on his Patreon page. You’ll need to subscribe to the Royal Pass tier, which is $10 per month. You can cancel after one month, but personally I think what he’s done is worth a full year subscription. It comes with pretty snazzy features, such as user controlled overclocking and fan controls.

For the emulator, I’m using both the free version and the gold version of PPSSPP. Both apps are on version 1.12.3 as of this writing. PPSSPP Gold doesn’t really offer advantages, but I purchased it to support the people behind the development of the emulator. Both are available on the Play Store. Alright, I think that covers it.

 

Restoring Default Settings

In case you’ve already been using PPSSPP on your Anbernic RG552, I recommend that you restore the default settings first. That way, we’re all starting from the same configuration, and there’s no chance of a rogue settings change messing everything up. When you run PPSSPP, you’ll see Settings in the middle of the main app menu.

 

 

In Settings, you’ll see a panel on the left that says Graphics, Audio, and so on. Go all the way down and choose System. Scroll all the way down until you see the General sub-section. The third option says “Restore PPSSPP’s settings to default”. Choose that and confirm the change when the app asks if you want to proceed.

 

 

You’ll need to restart the app for the change to take effect, so close it and run it again. Now, time to make a few changes to PPSSPP’s default settings.

 

Take Control of the Controls

We’ll need to configure Controls first. Because we’re using the Android version of PPSSPP, it will assume that we’ll be using the touchscreen to play. So it’s got that onscreen buttons turned on by default. We’re using the RG552, which has built in buttons and all that, so we don’t need any onscreen buttons. Go back into Settings, then scroll down to Controls.

 

 

There’s an entire section for On-screen touch controls. Just uncheck the first option and this feature will be disabled. Scroll back up to the first option which is Control mapping. Select that and map the PSP controls to your desired RG552 control options.

 

And Now the Important Stuff

We just need to change a few more things in the configuration to get your PPSSPP on RG552 at it’s best starting point. Go into Networking and look for the option that says “Send Discord Rich Presence information” and uncheck it. Scan the section to see if there are any other options that are checked; you’ll need to uncheck those too.

 

 

Now go back to System and look for the “Fast memory (unstable) option. Disable it, then scroll further down until you see PSP model.

 

 

In PSP Model, choose PSP-2000/3000.

 

 

Finally, go to Graphics and change OpenGL to Vulkan in the first option, just in case OpenGL is selected. And we’re all done! Go back, close and restart the app!

 

Optional Changes

You might have noticed that we skipped the Graphics and Audio sections entirely. There’s not a lot of options to change in Audio, and I’m pretty satisfied with the default settings under Graphics. But you might consider changing one option’s default setting: the Rendering resolution. I’ve got mine as 2x PSP, which means it renders PSP games at twice the original’s resolution. I’ve seen some games run great at 3x PSP so you might want to try that as a default.

 

Final Words

These are the default settings that I start with when playing PPSSPP on RG552. I then tweak the settings if I’m not satisfied with the performance of the game that I’m running. Some games do work well with this configuration, so I don’t want to start out with any options that lower down graphics quality at the very start. In case you want more information on PPSSPP configuration, check out their forums here!