God of War on PSP, recompiled to WebAssembly and running in the browser
Developers have successfully recompiled PSP games like God of War to run in web browsers using WebAssembly and C++. This project bypasses traditional emulation by translating machine code to run natively within Chrome and Firefox.
Why it matters
It demonstrates significant advancements in web-based performance and software preservation, allowing legacy console games to run efficiently without dedicated hardware.
PSP games running in the browser without an emulator. The game's MIPS machine code is translated ahead of time into C++, compiled to WebAssembly, and linked against a small reimplementation of the PSP's operating system and graphics chip that draws with WebGL2.
The first title brought up this way is God of War: Chains of Olympus. It plays from boot through the menus, cutscenes and combat, at 60 frames per second in the scenes measured so far in Chrome and Firefox on a laptop, at up to four times the PSP's resolution, and on phones with on-screen touch controls. Music, speech and sound effects work. Movies are skipped for now.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in