VGS - Virtual Game Station

The Virtual Game Station (VGS) is an emulator by Connectix that allows Sony PlayStation games to be played on a desktop computer. It was first released for the Macintosh, in 1999. VGS was created by Aaron Giles. The recompiling CPU emulator was written by Eric Traut.Released at a time when the Sony PlayStation was at its peak of popularity, Virtual Game Station was the first PlayStation emulator, for any platform, that enabled games to run at full speed on modest computer hardware, and the first that supported the vast majority of PlayStation games. It was advertised to run at full speed on the original iMac G3/233 MHz system (relying on its built-in ATi graphics hardware), and in some cases it was able to run on 200 MHz 604e systems reasonably well. The impact of this product was huge as it changed the available Macintosh game library from a very small, select group to nearly the entire collection of PlayStation games. Graphics could be run full screen, at full speed. Several PlayStation-type hand controllers became available with VGS in mind. The only lacking features were the ability to receive Dual-Shock force-feedback or use light-guns.VGS was initially released for NTSC based PlayStation games but later versions were made for PAL based games. Like the PS1, only games released for the selected VGS system could be run, copied games would not work either, although it didn`t take too long for the Hacker community to release a "Mod Chipped" version. Versions 1.1 and 1.2 of VGS attempted to make "modding" more difficult but were soon modded as well.