POPStarter Documentation

Everything you need to play your PS1 game backups on a PS2 with POPStarter — recovered from ShaolinAssassin's lost wiki, krHACKen's changelog and the community, merged and made fully searchable.

🚀 New here? Start your first game Browse the full reference

63wiki pages recovered

136cross-sourced facts & commands

24downloads served locally

124images recovered

ℹ New to POPStarter? Read this first

POPStarter is a launcher that plays your PS1 game backups using Sony's built-in PS1 emulator (POPS). You supply the game and the emulator; POPStarter ties it together. The Getting Started guide walks you through your first game in about 15 minutes — start there. The sections below are the deep reference, for when you need a specific answer.

What POPStarter does

A homebrew launcher for Sony's built-in PS1 emulator (POPS), with a decade of community fixes:

Plays your PS1 backups as .VCD images — roughly 75–80% of the library runs well.
Four storage backends — internal HDD, USB, SMB network share, and physical PS1 disc (plus MMCE / MX4SIO / exFAT in the POPSLoader fork).
Per-game saves via Virtual Memory Cards (VMC), with multi-disc games sharing one card.
Cheats (CHEATS.TXT $commands + raw GameShark), In-Game Reset & exit hotkeys.
Display fixes — PAL patcher, 480p, GTE widescreen (16:9), scanlines, geometry/position controls.
Compatibility patches — per-game fix bundles, LibCrypt cracks, and 7 selectable compatibility modes.
Controller support — analog stick, vibration/rumble, and stick→D-pad mapping for games that lack it.

ℹ Canonical build & the legal line

The last public release is POPStarter Rev 13 Beta 2019/06/05 (USB drivers dated 2019-01-14). It ships only the launcher — the Sony POPS emulator is not included anywhere; you supply your own legally-obtained files (verify them by the published MD5s). Questions and support live on the PSX-Place POPStarter thread.

Full reference

Already know your way around? Jump straight in — or use the search box up top to find any command, byte, or file instantly.

🚀Getting StartedUSB · HDD · SMB setup 💾Storage BackendsPath maps & launch methods 🎮CheatsEvery $command 🩹Patches & TROJANsPatches, modes & TROJANs 🎯IGR & HotkeysReset, exit & hotkeys 🔧Config TableThe 32-byte table 💿Multi-disc & VMCDISCS.TXT & VMC 🛠️TroubleshootingFixes & display 📦DownloadsRecovered files 📜HistoryTimeline & sources

What's the difference between POPStarter, POPS, and POPSLoader?

Architecture: POPStarter vs POPS vs POPSLoader

POPStarter is krHACKen's launcher and patch/cheat LAYER wrapped around Sony's PS1-on-PS2 emulator, POPS (POPS.ELF, derived from the SLBB-00001 boot disc). The two are distinct: POPS does the actual PlayStation 1 emulation; POPStarter mounts the disc image (.VCD), reads per-game assets, applies its embedded cheat engine and compatibility patches, then hands control to POPS. The canonical reference build is the 2019-06-05 r13 Beta package (on archive.org as popstarter-r-13-beta-20190605), which ships POPSTARTER.ELF (167,700 B), POPSTARTER.KELF (167,708 B - a Sony-container 'Krypto-ELF' for HDDOSD), and krHACKen's own ~38 KB CHANGES.TXT changelog.

A THIRD project is easy to confuse with these two: the modern POPSLoader fork (a Lua launcher on the Enceladus runtime, originally by El_isra, now maintained by NathanNeurotic). POPSLoader is NOT POPStarter; it wraps the same POPS binaries but adds device backends stock POPStarter never had (MMCE, MX4SIO, USB exFAT, APA-HDD). For the site, treat the three names as separate entities and cross-link them.

The four asset families POPStarter consumes are: (1) CHEATS.TXT - plain-text $commands and raw GameShark/Action-Replay codes; (2) PATCH_#.BIN - binary blobs that force compatibility modes 0x01-0x07, disable IGR (PATCH_0), or set PAL/NTSC (PATCH_8/PATCH_9); (3) TROJAN_#.BIN - binary IGR-behaviour modifiers (TROJAN_0..5/9) and cumulative per-game fix bundles (TROJAN_7); and (4) handler files - VMCDIR.TXT, DISCS.TXT, BIOS.BIN/OSD.BIN. Many of these have exact equivalents across families ($COMPATIBILITY_0x## == PATCH_#, $IGR# == TROJAN_#, $NOIGR == PATCH_0, $NOPAL == stock PATCH_9, $480p == config $42A=0x02), so the site should present an equivalence map rather than duplicating each capability three times.