Yesterday we covered the news of the AetherSX2 update and the furious community reaction that followed. We’ve kept up with the story, and new developments continue.
Community members have tested reported performance issues in the new update, and there’s a developer working on a fork of the game, apparently from leaker source code. The saga continues.
Community Testing Efforts
The emulation community was rocked by the surprise update of the thought-abandoned PlayStation 2 Android emulator AetherSX2. The developer, who goes by the moniker Tahlreth, stepped back from developing the app in January, citing harassment. For that reason, this came as a surprise.
Quickly, the surprise turned to horror as the listing had updated to show ads as part of the experience.
Users were also citing performance issues in the newest version.
Since then, some of the emulation community took it upon themselves to test the veracity. Some test results posted on the EmulationOnAndroid Reddit give interesting results.
The overall framerate does not seem to have suffered significantly in the games tested. Sometimes the FPS is better. It’s worth keeping in mind that this is over a limited range of titles, so your mileage, and framerate, may vary.
Enter AetherPurpleSX2
While it appears the current build is playable, the addition of ads in the AetherSX2 update left many concerned about the security of the emulator in the long term.
In addition, a developer who goes by MrPurple has gained renewed interest in the wake of the anxiety about AetherSX2’s future.
The developer has launched a GitHub with an apparent fork of the AetherSX2, called AetherPurpleSX2.
Mr Purple plans to pick up development, however, at the moment the emulator most closely resembles a very old build of AetherSX2. It may be worth keeping an eye on it, even if you don’t want to switch over at this stage.
Interested in some cheerier emulation news? Check out our story on the NieR Automata Android gameplay on Skyline.
