PlayStation Vita

Check the dumping hardware overview for a list of known preservation hardware.

If you need help, please come chat with us on the VGPC or No-Intro discord servers.

Important Notes

• Unopened games should have their ROM and save data dumped before attempting to play them. This avoids inadvertent modification of the data and helps preserve the game in its unused/“factory” state. Note in your submission whether the physical media was sealed and include a photo of the cart/packaging in its sealed state, if possible.
• You should clean the physical media's electrical contacts before trying to dump it, and dump it twice, checking if both dumps match using a file comparison tool or calculating the SHA256 of each file and comparing those values.

Vita specific note:

• Currently there is no known method to dump games with the writable partition (grw0) without the system initialising/modifying the filestystem. It may be best to keep unused grw0 carts unused (not inserted into a system) until a method is found.
• If you own a Blackfin backup device for the Vita, or have information about its workings, please get in contact, as it could help with reverse engineering the cart protocol.

1. Vita console with homebrew

This method involves creating a dump of the cart after the block-level encryption has been “removed” and unique data stripped from the file. It also involves creating a generic (aka “fake”) licence file for the cart.

Technical Note: There are some game cards that have a writable partition called “grw0”. PSVGameSD can probably dump that partition fine (todo: confirm this), but it cannot mount dumps with that partition, so the only way to play these dumps is to convert them to NoNpDrm format first (todo: confirm this works). Also each time a cart is used, the partition data and therefore the dump will be different. PSVStrip does not have support for stripping/emptying this partition.

• A PlayStation Vita (1000 original model or 2000 revision model)
• At Vita Memory Card (minimum 4GB)
• Henkaku software installed (able to load homebrew, https://vita.hacks.guide/)
• VitaShell homebrew installed (to be able to navigate through the Vita's file system, as well as enabling access to it by USB on PC)
• PSVgameSD plugin and app installed
• NoNpDrm plugin installed

1. Once all the tools are correctly installed, go to the LiveArea menu and launch the Virtual GC bubble.

2. You will be presented with a console UI. Press “Left” or “Right” on the d-pad to switch between different modes - choose Physical MMC mode.

3. Once selected, press “Up” or “Down” to navigate through dump files and select the Game Cart.

4. Press “Cross” to start dumping the came card (this option is only available if a game card is correctly inserted)

5. Process should start automatically, displaying the “Dump progress” and indicating the sectors still to be dumped. The process can take long to finish (30-45 minutes), so just leave the device to do it's thing.

6. If the dump was successful, a .psv dump file will be stored in the “ux0:iso” folder.

7. In order to transfer it to a PC, enter VitaShell and then connect your PS Vita to the PC using a USB cable. Open the VitaShell settings menu by pressing the START button of your PlayStation Vita. Once opened, go to the “USB device” option and select “Memory Card”. Press START once again to close the settings menu. Then, press the “SELECT” button of your PlayStation Vita to enable the USB connection. Your PC should now automatically detect the Memory Card as a new USB device.

8. Copy the “.psv” file from within the “iso” folder to your computer for further analysis.

To be able to compare your dump to other dumps for verification purposes you have to remove the license information using PSVStrip (or alternatively for Linux/Mac, this docker image: GitHub, Docker):

PSVStrip.exe -psvstrip source.psv destination.psv

To finish the dump we must generate a fake license file. For this, you need to launch the game (original cart or unstripped .psv) in your Vita as you were going to play it, with the NoNpDrm plugin enabled. As soon as you start it, exit the game and enter VitaShell.

The license to be faked will be a “.rif” file with a long name, which should be stored at “ux0:nonpdrm/license/app/TITLE_ID/6488b73b912a753a492e2714e9b38bc7.rif”. While you are in VitaShell, please check if the grw0 partition is present (it will be beside the gro0 partition), and note that down so you can provide this info in your dump submission.

Copy this file from the Vita to the PC. Rename it to match your psv file, but with a “.rif” extension.

Once you've dumped your games, it's time to generate and submit metadata to a preservation project for validating and cataloging. See the dump submission instructions for more information.