How To Play Officially Unsupported PSP Games on Your Vita, And How To Map Buttons

If you’ve already played all your new Vita games to death, you might have the urge to play some good ol’ PSP games on the younger handheld and see just how the games look on the 5″ OLED screen. But what if your favorite game isn’t listed by Sony as a supported backwards compatible game? Don’t worry, there’s an easy workaround – no hacks required.

This awesome tip comes from Mark Dauter, who explained how to get games that are not listed as officially compatible for the Vita. All you have to do is the following:

  • Go to your download list from “Account Management” on the PS3. Download any PSP title which is associated to your PSN/SEN ID.
  • Once PSP title download is complete, plug Vita in to PS3 USB port.  Select “Content Manager” app on the Vita home screen.
  • Select to connect vita to PS3 system
  • Select “copy content from PS3 system —–>>> to Vita System
  • Select “applications”  —->
  • Select “Applications (PSP/Other)”  —->
  • Select “Applications Downloaded onto PS3 System”
  • Select content of your choice to install.

We can’t confirm that every game works through this method, but here’s a forum post with some of PSLS’ community members testing out different games.

The second great tip from Mark is the ability to map the buttons for the PSP games onto the Vita so that you can have a better gameplay experience. Simply load up the PSP game on your Vita and hold your finger on the touchscreen. This will bring up a menu where you can map what the right stick does. You can also choose if it uses the front or back camera for AR games.

That menu additionally gives you the option to tick ‘Bilinear Filtering’ which should smooth textures – but untick it if you have any problems.

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