UPDATE: Gpghax’s author, Maku, asked me to add some important information. Firstly, gpghax is not meant as the go-to solution for adding PS1 games to your PlayStation Classic and you should use BleemSync instead. Secondly, he (Maku) is the author while the three mentioned below were people who helped him, this wasn’t made clear in the README. Thirldy, this mod doesn’t work on non-EU PlayStation Classic models and again, this wasn’t included in the README when this article was written. Maku would like to remind you that this method has potential to make your PlayStation Classic useless so use with caution.

It seems that Sony made virtually no attempt to secure the PlayStation Classic which led to it being hacked mere days after its release. Now, regular end-users can use these hacks to load any PlayStation 1 game they want with gpghax.

Why load other PS1 games on a PlayStation Classic?

As people have already cracked it open, we know that the PlayStation Classic is just a somewhat cheap ARM mini PC running an open-source emulator and a dodgy UI that doesn’t even incorporate all of the emulator’s features.

Unfortunately, the game selection on the PlayStation Classic isn’t great so without a doubt, people wanted to play other games on this mini-console. Now, this is possible thanks to gpghax which lets you run any PS1 game you want off a USB pen drive!

What is gpghax? How does it work?

gpghax is a software solution that modifies the PlayStation Classic’s game database to allow you to swap out games with other ones. The folks behind it are madmonkey (who found the intial entry point for the payload launcher), DanTheMan827 and skogaby and they’re still actively updating the hack with new features (like auto-backing up the database file on the PlayStation Classic when the hack is run).

As of right now, it has the following noticeable issues:

You have to mess about with a database (SQLite) editor to add custom games which may be a bit difficult That being said, you can use SCUS-94426’s folder (21) to inject a single custom game without modifying the database.

There’s a bug in which your console would refuse to boot if you add a game, navigate to it in the main menu, shut down the console, remove the added game and then boot the console up. This happens because it would be trying to load up a database entry that doesn’t exist



To get it on your PlayStation Classic, the instructions roughly have you modifying the database file to add your desired game(s), putting that on a pen drive and copying your desired game(s) to the same pen drive. Unfortunately, the instructions given in the GitHub page are somewhat lacking so you’re better off watching a video tutorial on how to do it.

You can also run your own games without modifying files on the PlayStation Classic itself. This is done by running a modified lolhack.sh file which copies the PlayStation Classic’s files to a pen drive and then runs everything off that. By doing this, you can modify add/remove games without messing around with the files on the internal storage of the PlayStation Classic itself thus removing the chance of you messing up. To read up on this method, check out this Reddit thread.

Conclusion

If you decide to wait a bit longer, something much simpler will most likely be released and you could add games with just a few clicks on your computer. However, if you don’t feel like waiting and want to hack your console now, you should really check a video tutorial on how to do it.

All in all, the PlayStation Classic scene seems to be getting exciting quite quickly and in a short while, we may get homebrew (such as emulators for other systems), the ability to boot other Linux distributions and lots of other stuff!

The video below demonstrates how to add games on the PlayStation Classic. Wololo is in no-way affiliated with “8 Bit Flashback” (the video’s channel) and it’s only being provided due to the written instructions on GitHub not being very clear.