OVERMonster Hunter Freedom Unite gets a native Android port, with online hunts through rooms
One of the PSP's biggest games now runs on Android without an emulator. Developer PateeerQ released Monster Hunter: Freedom Unite Recomp on GitHub, and shipped v0.2.0 and v0.2.1 on October 25. There are builds for Android and Windows.
How it works
The game's PSP code is translated ahead of time into C with sp00nznet's psprecomp and compiled for each platform, so it runs as native code rather than through an emulator. The project re-creates the PSP's system functions, graphics and sound around it. The developer says every one of the game's 298 code overlays now recompiles, and puts in-game testing at about 83% of them.
What works
- The core loop: the game boots, plays its movies, creates and saves a character, and runs the village, your house, the Training School, the Gathering Hall and quests at the game's own 30 fps with sound. A village quest has been played start to finish without a crash.
- Multiplayer through rooms. The PSP's ad hoc play is carried over rooms with passcodes, and PC and Android players can hunt together. v0.2.0 adds online rooms on the project's relay, joined with an
MH-XXXXcode with no port forwarding, plus a room chat on SELECT. - Touch buttons with a layout editor, controllers with the right stick on the camera, and RetroAchievements in softcore mode.
- v0.2.1 adds a 1x to 4x resolution setting on Android, pauses the game in the background to fix a black screen after switching apps, and can update itself from the app's menu.
What's still missing
It's early. The developer rates overall gameplay coverage at about 40%, with many maps and monsters untested, and lists gaps in the renderer (stencil, mipmaps, culling and more), encrypted saves and the PSP's sound module. They report 30 fps on a Poco X7 Pro. The README says the project is developed with AI assistance.
What you need
An arm64 phone or handheld on Android 8 or newer with OpenGL ES 3.0, and your own copy of the Europe release (ULES01213), the only one supported. You need the disc image as an .iso and its decrypted EBOOT.BIN, which PPSSPP can dump with its developer option. Since v0.2.1 the Android app takes the PSP fonts from your installed PPSSPP. The release contains no game files, and Overclocked doesn't host or link them.
Get the APK from the project's GitHub releases; it's now in the Overclocked ports directory, along with a new entry for Mr4xd3mn's Android build of the Perfect Dark PC port. Today's other directory updates bring Metroid Prime Port 0.33.1, Open Nectar 1.0.9, DW5 Android v1.4 and LAS Recomp for Android (mamcjr) 0.5.4 preview.