Revisiting the PlayStation Classic Mini in 2026

What you need

Before you begin, you'll need the following items to carry this all out:

• a Sony PlayStation Classic Mini (well duh, that's the defice we're modding)

• a low powered USB stick (most USB 2.0 USB drives work fine, some USB 3.0 drives draw too much power from the device and may not work)

• a Windows PC or Windows laptop - unforunately, the software used to manage the game library doesn't work on Mac or Linux, however, you could run it in a VM and "pass-thru" the USB stick to the VM directly.

• an Internet connection (to download the software and run it)

• some knowledge of Windows and how to do things like copying files, unzipping files and formatting drives

Installing the initial modification

This is pretty simple, but I'll sumarise it here:

1. Open a web browser, and browse to https://modmyclassic.com/

2. Download Project Eris v1.0.0 Full Package and Project Eris v1.0.0 Desktop App

3. Unzip both of the applications on your hard drive

4. Insert a USB stick in to your PC, go in to This PC, find the USB drive, right-click and choose Format, set the file system to FAT32 and make sure you change the label to SONY (case sensitive, must be all in caps) then click Format - however, if the USB drive is bigger than 32GB, this will fail, and you'll need to download a third-party tool like guiformat and use that

5. Now, copy the contents of the Project Eris Full Package folder to the root of the USB drive

6. Eject/remove the USB stick, plug it in to the second controller port in the PlayStation Mini (right USB port)

7. Now connect HDMI, then the Power cable - now wait (up to five seconds) for the orange power light to come on

8. Press the power button on, the initial white screen with the Sony logo will appear, then, you'll see the Project Eris screen and the device will automatically backup the stock firmware and install the mod - DO NOT REMOVE THE USB STICK OR POWER OFF THE CONSOLE WHILST THIS IS IN PROCESS, YOU WILL POTENTIALLY BRICK YOUR CONSOLE

9. Once completed, the device will turn itself off, now you can remove the USB stick and power.

10. Now plug the USB stick back in to the PC

11. IMPORTANT, DO NOT SKIP: Backup the contents of the USB stick to a folder, keep this in a safe place, however, you'll also need this for the next step

12. Once you've backed up the USB stick, repeat step 4 but format as NTFS instead, keeping SONY as the drive label - this is important to allow big files to be stored on the USB stick

13. Copy the backed up files from step 11 back to the USB stick, then, eject/remove the USB stick from the PC, put it back in the PlayStation Mini and power it on again - the console will create some new files/folders on the drive, these need to be in place for the Project Eris Desktop App to work.

14. Power off the console, remove the USB stick and plug it back in to the PC

15. Now, before you open the Desktop App, download yourself some PlayStation games, they must be in CUE/BIN format or PBP (PSP EBoot files) are also supported. I won't tell you where to get these, but a quick Google search had be sorted in less than 5 minutes, it was that simple

16. Open the Project Eris desktop app - click the Change Drive button in the top right and choose the drive letter that matches your USB stick (you can check in File Explorer if you are unsure)

17. Now, click the + button to add a game, then + Add File button to add games

18. Add the files, then click the Edit Game button to download the artwork and game details.

19. Before you move to the next game, you may need to rename the CUE file to match the serial number of the game, there's a button to automatically do this if you need it

20. Once you've added your games, there's a Generate Databsase button in the bottom left, click it, then click Automatic on the next screen followed by Generate - if it's successful, you'll see a message telling you it's safe to remove the USB stick and put it in the console - do that and test it, the new games should be visible in the game carousel 

What games have you been playing

I'm a huge fighting game fan, so I've got a lot of one-on-one fighters, but also a few other games - I've added the following:

• Alien Trilogy

• Crash Bandicoot 1, 2 and 3

• Driver

• Doom

• Final Doom

• Duke Nukem: Time To Kill

• Mortal Kombat 2 (Japanese release), Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy

• Pocket Fighter (also known as Super Gem Mini Fighter in some regions)

• Need For Speed: High Stakes (also known as Need For Speed: Road Challenge in some regions)

• Street Fighter Alpha 1, 2 and 3

• Street FIghter Collection 1 and 2

• Street Fighter: The Movie (yeah, I know it's crap)

• Ridge Racer

I've been having a lot of fun with these and still have space to add more games, so will do. However, if you're doig this yourself, I suggest you leave space for save state and memory card files.

How does it compare to "the real thing" ?

It's a lot more reliable than the real thing, and you don't need to worry about scratched CDs, not owning the game, region lockout or not having a memory card, it all pretty much works "out of the box" - I did find some PBP (PSP eBoot files) did not work, but every ISO (well, CUE/BIN) file I've used works perfectly fine on the whole. 

I have had the odd emulation glitch, but it's never been game breaking and has only been a small stutter or hang up - this could equally be a bad dump of the game disc as well as a problem with emulation.

How does it compare to traditional emulation, on say, a PC ?

To begin with, you don't need to track down "the right emulator" and the "PSX BIOS files" to get it up and running, everything you need (except the games) is included, so it's pretty simple to get up and running with the PS Classic Mini.

However, the emulation is not perfect, there has been the odd glitch (but nothing that's game breaking, and it's always only very temporary) - but the biggest downside - it feels like the PS Classic Mini is running the game ISOs at "real time" speed of a PlayStation CD Drive, so it can be quite slow for some games (as it was on the real hardware) - emulation often has more settings for speeding up disc access and applying graphics filters to make the games look better.

Emulation also requires a reasonable PC spec wise (not super high end, but must be "capable")

How does it compare to emulation on a Raspberry Pi ?

Qute favourably, depending on which model of Pi you're comparing it to.

Emulation speed is much more consistent to the Pi 3B+ that I compared it to many years ago when I was emulating on the RPi - Pi 4 and Pi 5 will yield better results (possibly better than the PS Classic Mini itself) but they're a lot more pricey.

Do I advise getting a PlayStation Classic Mini to play PSX games in 2026 ?

It's a massive yes from me, IF:

1. you don't have a capable enough PC or Mac

2. you don't want to have to deal with locating PSX BIOS files and "the right emulator to get game xxxxx working"

3. you want something that "looks the part"

4. you can find a PS Classic Mini at a reasonable price

5. the PS Classic Mini, whilst not the cheapeast, is probably a cheaper option than a Raspberry Pi with RetroPi or Batocera on it (RPi prices have shot up hugely this year, there's been a ~150% price increase)

6. Project Eris not only allows you to install your own PSX games, but it does bring RetroArch with it, allowing you to emulate other systems

However, reasons I wouldn't recommend it:

1. the emulation, whilst mostly ok, can be a little janky in places

2. the process to do the mod is quite involved, it's fairly easy if you're techincal, but if you're not technically inclined, this is not the route for you (unless you're happy to just play the built-in 25 games and nothing more)

3. price: currently, the PS Classic Mini is selling for about £60 - £80 at CeX, that's second user, and that's the same price it reatiled for, these devices are not getting any cheaper, but still cheaper than a Mini PC or an RPi

So, for me, this is a huge YES from me, the Project Eris mod is a massive improvement to the PS Classic Mini, which in it's non-modded form, is quite the dissapointment.

So, if you already have one, do it, you wont regret it.