PSX Games that load with .EXE files

A_Username · Post by **A_Username** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:21 pm

I was working on a project with a PSX Game today, I ripped Eingander and Driver to my computer and was taking all of the ingame movies out of them and replacing them with blank ones so I can save space on my HDD when I run them on an Emulator. And I noticed they loaded with .EXE files. I clicked one of them and it said "not a valid Win32 application" what a surprise. So does the PSX have WinCE or something like the dreamcast or is it just a file used by the PSX with the same extension?

-Derek

dman762000 · Post by **dman762000** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:32 pm

i don't know about all that but i know that if you put original psx games in a reg. cdrom it will bring up netmeeting I have often wondered whether or not this was going to be for some sort of crude online gaming system or what

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:28 am

The 'SYSTEM' file in PSX games is just a small file containing no more than some text that gets the game loading. Go ahead, open it in Notepad & see for yourself!

As for the *.exe files, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a data (as in non-executable) file with the exe extension & nothing more...

A_Username · Post by **A_Username** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:04 am

http://www.megagames.com/psx/psx_multig ... rial.shtml

If you look here, it says that you can load up games that have an .exe files off a menu with a signle .exe file, if you remove all ingame movies and last night after I made this post i crammed Crash Bandicoot 1-3 and Spyro the Dragon all on one disk using this method. I still don't know what why their .exe but that's how the PSX starts some games.

-Derek

A_Username · Post by **A_Username** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:06 am

atari2600a wrote:The 'SYSTEM' file in PSX games is just a small file containing no more than some text that gets the game loading. Go ahead, open it in Notepad & see for yourself!

As for the *.exe files, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a data (as in non-executable) file with the exe extension & nothing more...

That's the liscense file, it doesn't get the game loading, it's just the company that made it and stuff. It says on the internet that it doesn't bypass the boot protection or anything

but you can modify it to show the text later in the boot process

-Derek

Phasmatis · Post by **Phasmatis** » Tue May 22, 2007 10:56 pm

If you've ever used an emulator such as ePSXe, you'd know that the .EXE file on the PSX CD is the main executable!

Actually, it's just a little program to get the game loaded. The actual game code is hidden in the disc itself and doesn't get shown as files.

Also, I'm interested to know if replacing the STR files with blank ones worked for you? I think there's a bit more involved...

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Tue May 22, 2007 11:10 pm

A_Username wrote:
atari2600a wrote:The 'SYSTEM' file in PSX games is just a small file containing no more than some text that gets the game loading. Go ahead, open it in Notepad & see for yourself!

As for the *.exe files, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a data (as in non-executable) file with the exe extension & nothing more...
That's the liscense file, it doesn't get the game loading, it's just the company that made it and stuff. It says on the internet that it doesn't bypass the boot protection or anything but you can modify it to show the text later in the boot process

-Derek

LOL, probably should've replied to this 4 months ago! Anyways, sorry for my misinformation, I was basing it off of PS2 discs, now realizing that I've never looked at a PS1 game's SYSTEM file!

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Tue May 29, 2007 9:28 am

A_Username wrote:http://www.megagames.com/psx/psx_multig ... rial.shtml

If you look here, it says that you can load up games that have an .exe files off a menu with a signle .exe file, if you remove all ingame movies and last night after I made this post i crammed Crash Bandicoot 1-3 and Spyro the Dragon all on one disk using this method. I still don't know what why their .exe but that's how the PSX starts some games.

-Derek

It's also worth noting that despite what the tutorial says, you can do the same thing with game that don't load from an EXE - just include the name of the binary as it is in the SYSTEM.CNF of that particular game.