How to Play GBA Games on a PSP

The Sony PSP is capable of playing more than just its own games. It is powerful enough to play games of older systems that use more resources than that of PSP games. The Nintendo Gameboy Advance is one of those systems that the PSP can emulate. You will first need to install custom firmware onto your PSP before you can use this guide. Custom firmware is user-made software that runs the PSP. It will void your warranty, but it is legal.

Turn on your PSP and connect it to your computer with its supplied USB cable. Your PSP will automatically go into USB mode when connected to your computer. A window will pop up giving you access to the PSP’s memory stick where there are many folders. Open the PSP folder and you will see 2 to 3 game folders. Open the GAME folder.

Download GPSP, the Gameboy Advance emulator for the PSP (the download link is in the Resources section below). There will be two separate folders found within the download. One will be named GPSP and the other is named GPSP%. Copy both of the folders into your GAME folder.

Place your GBA roms into the GPSP folder. There are many different places to find GBA roms on the Internet, but downloading GBA roms which you do not own is illegal, and we cannot show them in this guide.

The roms must end in .GBA for them to work properly. Once you have the roms and they are in the GPSP folder, press the O button on your PSP to eject and disconnect your PSP from the computer.

Navigate through the PSP menu until you find the GPSP icon in the game menu. Select it and it will load. Your roms will load on the first screen you see. You can select them with the X button. You are now playing GBA games on your PSP.