ok, scenerio

if you were to port a game to another system and then do a graphics upgrade hack, would it still be consided a hack and not a project from the ground up and therefore still legal?

for example the nintendo super mario games were ported to SNES and graphically updated. Say you did that with say, megaman x snes games to PSX for example, or PS2. As long as you used the initial engine as a base and just changed things like graphics and maybe some level design, would it still be legal?

D'oh!

No more than traditional rom hacking. The lack of PSX hacking (hacks, translations, or otherwise) is because there aren't any capable hackers interested in the PSX.

Even if you REDO the entire game the legality is questionable. Remember Chrono trigger resurection (or whatever it was).
The graphics are copyrighted and likely any characters are trademarked. Cease and disist will ocure likely. Unless it's orphaneed software.

The Playstation is quite complicated.  It has several different processors.
MDEC decoding hardware
The special 2x CD decoding system (that is patented) for copy protection.
The GPU itself is just a polygon renderer (fancy 2d engine) but the GTE is the place where the real 3d happens.

Hacking the PSX also requires tools, since it's a complex system (by comparison to SNES and others) you have to make the tools to hack with.

There are several debugging emulators for the PSX however ... only a few are useable enough.  I guess I'm lazy because I'm use to professional type tools (think IDA Pro).  I've reverse engineered a few (nasty) z80 based systems for companys so they can get there source code back.

The author of pSX has a fairly decent debugging system.

The next tool is debuggable hardware (IE watch what's happening in hardware). The playstation has a SPU (another complete computer) for sound generation.  Then comes the MDEC system the GTE and the GPU. A lot of these use combined DMA.  If you recall FF7 and FF8 these had the 3d mixed with the video on the screen.  So this ment they had the MDEC CPU/GTE GPU and SPU all running at the same time. This is no small acomplishment for the PS1   I've noticed the PS2 has not used combined video and 3d graphics myself.  I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to or it can't do that.  Irregardless hacking the old playstation is NOT an easy task.  Don't neglect the serial port parallel port and a bunch of other options they had on it.

The playstation games are hackable, but the ISO images and the way game companies used the ISO's make this difficult.

Myself I'm still making heads and tails of FF9's images Although it might be better if I worked on FF8 (less headway on that)

Cyb

That's not true. There are enough tutorials and tools for hacking the hell out of a Psx game. It's just everybody in the American/English scene seems (or is) scared about it.

the example was hypothetical, my thought was actually more ambitious. It would be taking a Sega Saturn game, Sonic Jam would probably be the best, take the original Sonic games on genesis (that are already in Sonic Jam) and updating the visuals to a beautiful Saturn level.

Of course the more complex the machine and game, the more complex the hacking, the tools that are available influence it too, if there isn't great emulators, debuggers, sprite editors etc. it makes it more difficult. Anyhow, if I did decide to go ahead with my idea it would be a LONG time before completion, it would be more for personal reasons than anything else unless I really got far and did a good job.

Yu Sazuki said it took a skilled programmer to get the most out of the saturn but if you could harness it, it was good and powerful. It's funny because dual processing is finally becoming more popular. I wouldn't mind seeing a saturn emulator for a multi-core PC, or even better, the 360. I have a few real saturns of my own, a plain one, a modded etc. It's kinda an obsession for me, If anyone ever makes an emulator that can emulate Astal (my avatar) then i would recommend playing it. I was originally thinking of finding a fast paced platformer for saturn and porting the engine from sonic & knuckles but then I figured it would be easier and more legal to take the Sonic games in Sonic Jam and edit them, the problem is that they are running in a Genesis emulator on the saturn in Sonic Jam so I would have to mess with the code so that I could take full advantage of the Saturn hardware so that the whole updating progress would be worth it. Basicly I'd have to port them from the genesis emulator on the saturn to native saturn and then edit them. This would mean an INSANE amount of work especially considering that I would have to make most of my tools myself.

thanks man, it helps I'm familiar with the platform and C code since I've been screwing around with both for awhile but it's still a lot of work, plus for the acomplishment of doing all that is to mean anything I'm going to have a ton of sprites to redrawn, I might request help on it if I ever get the project off the ground, otherwise there isn't any point in anyone else wasting their time on it.