A black screen after launching a game is ePSXe’s most common failure — and it is almost never the game itself. Work through these checks in order; each one takes under a minute and the list is arranged by how often it is the real cause.
1. Is a BIOS selected?
No BIOS selected = black screen on most games. Open Config > BIOS (Windows) or Preferences > BIOS (Android) and confirm a .bin file dumped from your own console is chosen, then restart ePSXe. If you do not have one yet, our legal BIOS guide covers the only legitimate way to get one. Note that some titles boot on the HLE fallback and some simply refuse — a black screen with HLE selected is expected behaviour for those games.
2. Reset the video plugin to safe settings
An over-tuned or mismatched video plugin is cause number two. In Config > Video, open the plugin’s Configure panel and click Fast (the safe preset), then try the game. If it runs, re-apply your HD settings one at a time — the last one you changed was the culprit. Framebuffer effects set to disabled is a frequent offender: several games render their picture through them. Background in our OpenGL2 settings guide.
3. Check how you launched ePSXe
Running ePSXe.exe from inside the zip preview — or from a folder Windows protects, like Program Files — produces silent failures that look exactly like a black screen. Extract the full archive to its own folder and launch from there.
4. Test the disc image, not the emulator
- Load a different game image. If others run, this rip is the problem — re-rip the disc (see how to rip your own PS1 discs).
- A BIN without its CUE file, or a multi-track game ripped as a single track, commonly boots to black. Re-rip keeping the .cue alongside the .bin.
- If the image is still zipped or in an archive, extract it — ePSXe does not open games from inside zip files.
5. Android-specific checks
Grant the app access to the folder holding the game (scoped storage), confirm the BIOS path survived any app update, and switch the renderer to Software once: if the picture appears in software mode, the OpenGL renderer or a shader setting is at fault — the v2.0.19 shader changes make a shader reset worth trying. More Android context in the Android setup guide.
Still black after all five? Change nothing else and note which step changed the symptom — then see the troubleshooting index for the error-specific fixes.