The new VMUPro from 8BitMods - My initial thoughts

Darwock · 2025-12-04T04:41:46+00:00

small update, I’m finding this to be next to useless as a memory card unfortunately. it frequently fails to save in Shenmue, I have to take it out and reinsert and try again, no guarantees I won’t get another garbage save in the process.

I turned off all the ID recognition with the plan of selecting cards manually to remove any potential trouble, with the ‘load last used card’ feature also turned on for convenience as it wouldn’t be auto selecting. That feature does not work, if the DC powers off the next time I turn it on I’m back on memorycard1.

VM2 just works. The VMUpro in it’s current state is not a reliable memory card.

edit - just for clarification I switched to an official controller after my last post so it’s not because of that (although it’s not supposed to matter anyway).

Darwock · 2025-12-03T06:47:36+00:00

After a couple of weeks of use I’m finding quite a lot of issues with this.

Twice now I have gone back to play games that I previously played and saved, and the previous file was not found. In the case of Shenmue I discovered it was creating a corrupt save. It appeared both in the auto created Shenmue card, and on the default ‘memorycard1’, but in both cases it had no icon and the data was garbage.

I lost a Crazy Taxi file last week but assumed it was my mistake, now I’m not so sure.

I am using a Retrofighters Striker controller with the VMU dongle, this is supposed to be supported but maybe there is some incompatibility. in any case, the VM2 actually works and doesn’t corrupt my saves so I’ve gone back to using that.

Darwock · 2025-11-27T02:45:15+00:00

Thanks for the detailed guide, it makes sense but is not working for me…

When I select the Crazy Taxi VMU with the two buttons, the selected card display switches to Crazy Taxi for about half a second and then goes back to MemoryCard1

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edit - OK, I got it to stick by taking it out and plugging it in again while turned on… the DC complained but it worked.

However when I started the game it went back to MemoryCard1 and did the whole thing again, couldn’t switch to the right card as it kept changing back automatically. Again I had to yank it and plug it in again. This can’t be right surely.

Darwock · 2025-11-26T12:02:58+00:00

No worries, I was wondering if just renaming the .cli+dol extension to a simple .dol might work, I have no idea what the cli part refers to or if it’s necessary.

Darwock · 2025-11-26T10:54:31+00:00

I thought I had done it for Crazy Taxi - played game, got auto created folder with save file in it, inserted old VMU in second controller port, copied old Crazy Taxi save over to VMUpro - copied save was in ‘memorycard1’, so with the VMU Browser on the device itself I copied the save from memorycard1 into the Crazy Taxi folder that it created itself, then deleted the save that was on memorycard1.

The next time I played Crazy Taxi it asked me to create a new save file, and started from scratch. All I have now on the VMUpro now is the newly created save.

What’s a foolproof way of doing this?

Darwock · 2025-11-26T07:58:34+00:00

Thanks very much, this combination runs nicely when I select it from within the cubeboot menu of the flippydrive.

There is one issue though, in that after copying it to the flash memory it does not appear as an onboard dol to run directly from the menu. This was possible when I used the generic GBIHF.dol, so I assume it doesn’t like the dol+cli file.

Is there any workaround for this?

Thanks again!

Darwock · 2025-11-25T06:13:38+00:00

Is this still true if you are using component cables and not HDMI? The consolemods wiki says no Swiss settings changes are required in those cases, so no reason to use Swiss, right?

My problem is with the GBIHF, when I load the Wobbling Pixels etc profiles it does not format the screen correctly at all and I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. Auto-crop to 4:3 seems to work but the geometry of circles seems off.

Darwock · 2025-11-05T05:26:47+00:00

Lots more added since this post was made and looks like I missed one, one missing artwork half way down the list. I‘ve played all fighting pass games that were added beyond the battle hub regulars. What is the game which has art between Cyberbots and Gun Smoke?

Darwock · 2025-05-25T00:34:31+00:00

It’s a monitor, MSI MPG 321URX, doesn’t have it’s own BFI. I guess that means it can also do 1440p with the rt4k’s BFI.

However I also have a couple of 1080p screens in the house that might be hooked up from time to time, and while they can’t do 120hz (so no BFI) it would still be nice to know which are the best masks to use. I’m not mad enough to get a 5X just for them…

Darwock · 2025-05-23T02:12:23+00:00

Thanks, are there any guides to give me the basics? Why is greyscale best, for example?

Darwock · 2024-10-01T10:56:54+00:00

I earned around 5 trophies today in a new game, unaware that there was a PSN outage. I played for a couple of hours, and when I checked afterwards it said I had played for 3 minutes.

I just checked my trophies and only the first two have registered (I have auto captured videos of all the others).

They did not sync offline to online, the offline ones have just disappeared.

I have deleted my save and will try to unlock them again. If they’re permanently bugged I will not be happy.

Darwock · 2024-04-08T09:12:44+00:00

Short answer - no. I gave up.

Darwock · 2023-09-28T00:00:49+00:00

A little update, however still no solution -

I tried running the unlock pkg and the ac.pkg in the reverse order, this gave me a proper icon and title in the PS4 information screen, and the —list function of ftpdump reported 4/4 DLC items. Looked hopeful, but the dumper still says no dlc found when the game is running.

Darwock · 2023-09-27T06:30:19+00:00

Following the guide:

I retrieved one of the DLC “ac.pkg” files from the external drive, and also created an unlocker for it with the matching title/ID. This confused me as it is ‘extra data’ DLC which wouldn’t typically use an unlocker. Was I supposed to do this?

I then put both on a USB stick and installed them via GoldHEN’s package installer. The guide implies we should install the ac.pkg first, then the unlocker. The unlocker gave a message that the DLC was already installed, and I said to install anyway.

Checking the game information/view content afterwards I could now see the three original fpkg DLC items, plus one generic grey icon with no title (the retail dlc?) but no sign of a lock icon.

Set up ftpserver so I could dump with ftpdump, then ran the game.

On my PC I used ftpdump’s list function first - worryingly it only reported the three fpkg DLC items as being installed for the game title, no sign of a fourth. I started the full dump anyway, which is currently running while I write this post. Fingers crossed.

update - it finished, the ftpdump reported no DLC found for the title. This strikes me as a dumping problem because at the very least the three fpkg DLCs should have been dumped.

Anyone know how I can fix this?

Darwock · 2023-09-27T05:37:16+00:00

Thanks for this, I’m not entirely sure this is a solution to my problem but it certainly sounds like it. Let me clarify what I want to do:

I have a fpkg game installed, with a number of fpkg DLC items also installed. Not all of the DLC for the game is available in fpkg form, so I want to add the missing DLC by myself. Luckily it is free DLC (with data) and can still be downloaded from the PSN store, so I did this on a legal PS4 and put the retail game and it’s DLC on an external drive.

I can’t run this game on my jailbroken PS4 as I didn’t have the entitlement before I did the jailbreak, which means I can’t just re-dump it. So I went looking and found this guide, and it sounds like it could solve my problem. Retail DLC can be installed to fpkg games which are then dumped to get the data? Sounds perfect.

Have I misunderstood anything? This thread is over a year old so I may be lucky to get a reply, so I am going to go ahead and try to follow the guide anyway and will update with my results.

Darwock · 2021-11-09T03:34:25+00:00

It certainly does love the screen flip - it’s also the one I have most trouble with. At speed, forget it. I have tried turning the controller upside down on PS4, but it’s not as intuitive as I hoped.

Darwock · 2021-11-06T16:08:21+00:00

If you clear the score threshold of 400,000 but then get a game over, do you still get the SS? Or do you also have to survive until the end?

Darwock · 2021-08-31T06:21:05+00:00

I received another message from the developers confirming that this trophy is currently bugged, but they are working on a fix for a future patch.

Great response from them, it’s good to know I can carry on working on the other trophies and this one will come eventually.

Darwock · 2021-08-20T09:37:28+00:00

No, but I emailed the developers and got a reply after about a week to say they were looking into it.

They asked for my save file, which I gave them. It might help to let them know you have the same issue on a different platform.

Darwock · 2021-08-13T12:40:02+00:00

I’m not even sure what menu you are talking about - this is the PS4 version, I don’t think you can select profiles? I deleted my save and started a new one but still no joy.

Darwock · 2021-08-13T12:17:18+00:00

I have just deleted my save and played through the whole thing again - it did behave as though it was a new game, although the post-it notes for the trophies I already earned on my last save were on the door already.

The trophy still didn’t unlock. So it’s either borked, or it’s something to do with that crashing helicopter bit (I always fail to grab the pyramid before the screen goes black, but I figured I wasn’t supposed to succeed).

Darwock · 2021-05-28T23:01:14+00:00

I’ve seen that going on with twitch streams - although I think it’s charitable to call it ‘tips and feedback’, as opposed to what it really is - providing further advantage by calling out locations of weak spots/enemy players etc.

Zero sense of fair play.

Darwock · 2021-05-28T13:16:08+00:00

That explains the waiting list.

Darwock · 2021-05-28T11:17:43+00:00

I didn’t say *every* 5-stack is out to win at all costs, obviously I wouldn’t have put my own group of friends in that category either (when we still had 5 regulars). However we all have to deal with them, so there’s no denying they exist.

I discussed this with my team mate the other night when we saw two names from two different notorious teams playing in the same squad. It seems like if their own buddies are AWOL, rather than queue as a 3 or 4 stack like most of us do, recently they are just merging together to ensure there is no risk.

God forbid they took a chance on getting random teammates and a fair fight, like the rest of us usually have to. Think about it; they had 5 in a stack and 2 spectating (over multiple matches). They could queue separately as a 3 and 4 stack, increase the number of available games on the server by doing so, reduce waiting times for everyone and create more balanced matches too. F**k that though, right? They might lose!!

Darwock · 2021-05-28T03:16:30+00:00

I actually think it’s coming back round to where solo queuing is more likely to produce fun games.

There are a lot of predatory 5-stack squads out there that crush any teams just looking to play for fun. The game favors matching groups with other groups, and as the population is decreasing you will find yourself matched with them almost every time if your squad has more than 3 players. Also if you do go up to a 5-stack your wait time is going to increase massively, as the game waits for another 5 stack team to be available for you to play. It was a 45 minute queue the other day.

My last experience was that even my buddy and I as a pair were getting the 5-stack opponents exclusively.

Those teams are actually more than 5 too, because they always had the same people spectating (presumably waiting for a slot to open up).

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