AjncSystem/ShadowOfTheColossus-PC

A playable native Windows port of the 2018 PS4 Shadow of the Colossus, provided you own the game dump and can supply the sound modules. The README claims a full playthrough is possible, but expect setup friction and hardware-specific rough edges.

The problem

You own a copy of the PS4 remaster and want to play it on a Windows PC without a full emulator layered between the game and your hardware. The usual path is to install an emulator, configure it, and hope the specific title works well. This project changes the middle step: the game's own x86-64 code runs directly on the CPU, while the PS4 GPU calls are translated to Vulkan. The result you get is a Windows executable that loads your dump, offers an F1 menu for FPS, upscaling, textures and controller settings, and can import an existing shadPS4 save.

What's different

The mechanism is a loader plus the system functions the game expects, in the style of the bloodborne_pc project, rather than a general-purpose emulator. That means fewer moving parts to configure, but also a narrower scope: this build targets one specific release, the CUSA08809 EU 1.01 dump. The launcher automates detection by searching your drives for the game folder, sound modules and saves. That is convenient, yet it also means your files must match what the launcher knows how to find.

The trade-off is visible in the changelog. Recent releases fixed rainbow texture garbage and sudden closures caused by GPU readbacks overwriting reused memory, and added HDD read-ahead. The README still warns that the first launch after an update rebuilds shaders, producing a roughly two-minute loading screen and stalls the first time each area is visited. "Maximum" texture quality can close the game in very wide views, and it is not offered in PS4 Pro mode. AMD GCN cards may render characters and Agro incorrectly. These are current, documented boundaries, not hypothetical risks.

Who should try it

Good fit: a PC gamer who already owns the PS4 disc or dump, has a Vulkan-capable GPU, and is comfortable digging through logs when something closes unexpectedly. The project's own reported performance — around 67 FPS average on the title-screen demo with an RTX 2060 SUPER in 60 FPS mode, dropping to 29–34 FPS in the heaviest section — suggests a mid-range NVIDIA setup is a reasonable starting point, though that is a single author-reported figure, not a benchmark suite.

Poor fit: anyone without a legal dump, anyone expecting a plug-and-play experience with working sound out of the box, or users on older AMD GCN hardware where documented rendering problems apply. If you need a general emulator for many PS4 titles, this single-game port is the wrong tool.

Requirements and limitations

You need Windows 10/11, a Vulkan-capable GPU, your own CUSA08809 game dump, and two Sony firmware modules (libSceNgs2.sprx and libSceUlt.sprx) for sound. The launcher can copy those modules from an installed shadPS4 under user/sys_modules; the README does not describe another documented source for them. No game or Sony files are included, and packaging explicitly refuses to bundle firmware.

Ongoing upkeep matters: every update forces a shader rebuild on first start, so expect slow first loads and area-by-area stutter after each release. Crash diagnosis relies on the session log under user/, and the documented workarounds — lowering texture quality, avoiding PS4 Pro mode with Maximum textures — are part of normal use. Vulkan is the only graphics backend; there is no DirectX path.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo recorded this repository at #3 on its NEW-REPOSITORY board for C++ on 2026-10-25, with 1,452 total stars, on a project created 2026-10-12. That is a dated board placement, not a daily growth series, and the two-day sample cannot establish whether interest will persist. For a 12-day-old port, the useful check is the changelog: confirm that the fixes relevant to your GPU and texture settings are in the release you download, and read the known-issues section before assuming a smooth first session.