Bonnie Studios’ Manny Builds a Full PS1 Port of Half-Life From Scratch

A Polish YouTuber known as Manny—running the Bonnie Studios channel—has built a full, from-scratch conversion of Half-Life for the original PlayStation (PS1). The project is presented as a genuine port (not an emulator-based workaround and not a demake), implemented in Rust, and demonstrated through gameplay footage despite the console’s major limitations.

Key takeaways

• Manny created an original Half-Life port for the first-generation PlayStation without relying on emulation or a demake approach.
• The conversion was developed from zero in the Rust programming language.
• Performance on the PS1 is intentionally low: it targets around 20 FPS on average, with slowdowns down to roughly 10 FPS in some moments.
• The visuals and resolution are scaled down heavily to make the port run at all on a system with 2 MB of RAM and 1 MB of VRAM.
• Manny plans to release the conversion code as open source, but only after checking with Valve—using a one-month window for a response.

A real PS1 port, built from scratch

In Manny’s own framing, this is an authentic conversion of Half-Life—the kind that requires real engineering work rather than simply running the game through an emulator or shrinking it into a simplified “demake” format. The author says the port was written from the ground up using Rust, and the result has been shown via a gameplay video.

Because the original PlayStation is extremely constrained by modern standards, the port uses low resolution and aggressive performance tuning. The outcome is best described as a technical experiment: it can reach about 20 frames per second on average, but certain parts can drop as low as around 10 FPS.

Why it matters for Half-Life history

This PS1 conversion stands out partly because Half-Life did not receive an official console version on Sony’s early hardware. The game’s first official console-style release came later on PS2, and there was also a Dreamcast version, though it never made it to retail stores.

With Manny’s project, the focus isn’t on comfort or playability—it’s on what’s technically possible on hardware that has only 2 MB of system RAM and 1 MB of dedicated VRAM. Even if it’s not something most players would choose as their main way to experience Half-Life, the engineering achievement is the point.

Next steps: open-source code, pending Valve’s response

Manny says the next goal is to publish the conversion as open source. The planned release would require players to own the full PC version of the game, since the project code is intended to be used alongside the original assets/installation.

Before releasing, Manny has reached out to Valve to ask whether the company has any objections. He’s aiming to receive explicit approval first, but the plan includes a contingency: if Valve does not respond within a month, Manny intends to treat that silence as permission to move forward with the open-source release.