You can now play PS1 games on your Gamecube, if you’re willing to put in the work

There’s something fun about getting games running on devices they really shouldn’t be on. It’s why people have been getting Doom running on every device under the sun. Well, if you want to watch someone boot up a PS1 game on a Gamecube, today’s your lucky day. The emulation community has managed to get OG PlayStation games running on Nintendo’s purple box, and you can do the same if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.

The CubeSX emulator makes playing PS1 games on a Gamecube possible

This cool project was made possible by an emulator called CubeSX, which has been silently worked on for quite some time now. A recent update brought PS1 emulation to a playable state on the Gamecube, but it went relatively unknown until Spawn Wave did a video on it.

Of course, you can’t stick a PS1 disk into the Gamecube and have it play (it’s been a while since I owned a Gamecube, but I don’t think a PS1 disk would even fit). Instead, you need a modded Gamecube that can accept SD cards. Once you have one, you can then load up the emulator and your games using the Gamecube hardware.

Currently, the results aren’t amazing; some games, like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, will encounter some framerate drops and audio stutter. But others, like Final Fantasy 7, run at a smooth 60FPS. Plus, the Gamecube controller doesn’t have as many buttons as the PS1 one had, so you need to do some finagling to get everything working properly. However, it’s still a really cool way to put the Gamecube hardware to further use.