Sonic CD gets a native homebrew port to the PlayStation Vita days after Switch port!

Despite Sega having been out of the game console market for over a decade, its franchises and their associated nostalgia lives on. With Sonic being the most popular one, it is no surprise that it keeps seeing its way onto more platforms and now, Sonic CD has just landed natively on the PSVita!

What is Sonic CD & how did it get ported?

Sonic CD gets a native homebrew port to the PlayStation Vita days after Switch port!

Sonic CD founds its way on a ton of platforms… including the Vita! (Source: Release Thread Below)

Sonic CD is a game within the Sonic franchise released in late 1993 for the somewhat ill-fated Sega CD which is an add-on for the Genesis/Mega Drive. Having received excellent reviews when it was released, the game ended up being ported to a wide range of platforms including Windows PCs (multiple times), Android, iOS, the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, the Apple TV and even Windows Phone 7.

Thanks to all these ports, developers managed to decompile both the Windows and Windows Phone 7 versions upon which the PSVita and Switch ports are based respectively. As Sonic CD is still being sold, both the Vita and Switch ports do not contain data files but these can be legally bought for spare change from Steam or other sources if one goes down the mobile route.

What about the PSVita port?

The PSVita port of Sonic CD, by SonicMastr, is based upon a decompilation of the game PC’s version by Rubberduckycooly and was released a few days after usineur ported the game to the Switch albeit using a different code base.

Sonic CD on the Vita runs quite well bar for special stages (Image from Tweet below)

Having been released on Saturday and receiving two updates ever since, the Sonic CD port for the Vita is in the current status:

  • The game’s normal levels are fully playable provided one overclocks their PSVita “to the max”
    • Overclocking the Vita “to the max” presumably refers to the 494/500MHz mode which can be achieved using PSVShell or other plugins
  • The main menu runs at full speed with the latest update released hours ago
  • Special Stages, which include 3D graphics, are currently running at around 40FPS which is a tad short of the 60FPS target
    • Special stages will probably only run at 60FPS once a hardware renderer is implemented which offloads some processing from the CPU
    • No word has been given on when a hardware renderer will be implemented just yet

  • With the latest update, video playback works although no audio is played and framerates aren’t great
    • Video playback should improve once a Hardware Decoder is implemented

Conclusion

You may learn more about the Vita’s port of Sonic CD by following the link below to its release thread on Team CBPS’ forums. Data files are not included and need to be obtained separately. A tweet containing a video of the port in action can be found below.

Sonic CD Vita release thread (more information): https://forum.devchroma.nl/index.php/topic,312.0.html

Sonic CD Vita GitHub release page (download link): https://github.com/SonicMastr/Sonic-CD-Vita/releases