How to Make Playstation 1 Games

Setting up the environment on Ubuntu, Debian or distributions based on those

Installing the compiler

Start by installing the compiler. Here we use gcc-mipsel or g++-mipsel, depending on if we want to use C or C++. It compiles to MIPS architecture with little endian, which is the architecture of the Playstation 1 CPU. You can install it like so:

sudo apt install gcc-mipsel-linux-gnu g++-mipsel-linux-gnu binutils-mipsel-linux-gnu

Installing mkpsxiso

We need mkpsxiso, a tool that allows you to make ISO images specifically designed for Playstation 1.
Using mkpsxiso, we can create a CD image, that is ready to be burned to disc and played on an actual Playstation 1.
You can find a .deb file you can install in the releases section of mkpsxiso's Github page.

After downloading the .deb file, you can install it using apt like so:
sudo apt install ./mkpsxiso-2.10-Linux.deb

Emulation

When testing your games locally, you will need to download a Playstation emulator or debugger.

I recommend that you use the beautiful PCSX-Redux. I just use the AppImage on Ubuntu.

To run the AppImage, simply download it from the Github page.

Then you need to make it executable.
chmod +x PCSX-Redux.AppImage

After that, you can run it
./PCSX-Redux.AppImage

It is really nice, and works well in most scenarios.

Sometimes it is not entirely accurate. If you get stuck on something specific, then it can sometimes be helpful to use a secondary emulator, to compare the results. For that, I recommend no$psx. It works very well through wine.
You can also even verify that the result is the same on Duckstation as well.

If your game runs well on all 3 of those emulators, there is a good chance it works well on real hardware too.

Finished

Now you have set up everything, here is a game that I made you can try on the emulators.
I wonder what game it could be... but I'm sure you know of it.