The PSP is a great console, with a huge library of its own, but there are a lot of other things to enjoy on it, and I decided to write once again and talk about the homebrew, plugins and programs I got on mine.
I am very far behind on my quota of blog content, so I wanted to make a blog today since I got some free time and have managed to overcome my laziness for a little bit, maybe 400 words or so. An internet friend of mine, @jp has managed to get a hand on a PSP, and has written a couple articles about it. I promised him to write about some of my favorite games and tools that Iāve used in my journey, after owning a PSP for the last 11 years and getting as much juice out of it as I can.
There is a huge library of games native for the PSP, and Iāve played quite a lot of them. From original, exclusive titles, to ports identical to home consoles such as the PS2 and PS3. And of course, native support for a ton of PS1 games, with official releases and the option to port title to the console, with varying degrees of success. Here are some of the games I have.
PSP Games
The PSP uses the .iso format on his games, that usually come packaged into UMDs, this little disk is the storage medium chosen by Sony for his handheld, and it kinda sucks. Thankfully, once you mod a PSP, it is very easy to extract your ISO files, and they are also easy to come across if you sail the seven seas, I very much implore you to avoid doing that since Sony may get poor and run out of money to produce high quality products like the Play Station Portal, you know?
Anyway, I got my games on a microSD card, thanks to a memory stick adaptor, very cheap and easy to get, I canāt say Iāve played every single one of them, I recently removed quite a bit of games I had completed already, such as Ys Seven, Jeanne DāArc and a few I canāt remember, here is a list with the ones currently in my device:
Burnout Legends: A fantastic racing arcade game with a bunch of destruction and fun courses. A few of the mods are kinda boring (I am looking at you Pursuit), but Iāve played a bunch of this game lately, I donāt have to think, just seek and destroy.
Lumines: This is the game that exists when you try to make Tetris while you avoid making Tetris, add a fantastic soundtrack that keeps you in the zone and this is fantastic. Really fun to lose time.
Metal Slug Anthology: Its Metal Slug, what else do you want? I have to be honest I havenāt gotten too far but itās always fun.
Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G FUC: This is a patched version of the japanese version of Freedom Unite, with English translation and some extra mission and nice quality of life improvements.
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (English Patched v5): This game never came out of Japan, so the english patch is all we got, itās not 100% but itās perfectly playable if youāve played other games in the series.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: The JRPG series I want to get into one of these days, itās fantastic so far, but a little difficult. The grind is real but it is how it is.
Games I am not currently playing, but they're there
Crimson Gem Saga
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Dante's Inferno
Echochrome
Exit
Final Fantasy IV The Complete Collection
Killzone Liberation
Mega Man Powered Up
Patapon 2
Rengoku 2: The Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N
Star Wars The Force Unleashed
Tales of Eternia
Wipeout Pure
PS1 Games
When it comes to PS1 games things change a little, most of them are JRPGs or Resident Evil, channels like The Sphere Hunter and others got me into a Resident Evil craze, and I came across Parasite Eve in 2018, even read the novel. Regardless, I still havenāt finished any of them, despite the amount of media Iāve consumed about them. Hereās the list:
Final Fantasy VII: No need for an explanation. This is considered one of the greates game on the console, while its successors improve on their graphics, the story and nostalgia factor of this one is strong, even though I never had a PS1 growing up.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile: A platformer that many consider better than Crash Bandicoot, it is really fun and has some fantastci 3D mechanics that I imagine were great for its time. Enjoyable, still need to play it more.
Metal Gear Solid: Great game, clearly. I am stuck with Psycho Mantis, but itās because I am lazy to keep tryingā¦ Itās been like that for 4 yearsā¦
Parasite Eve: This game looks and plays great, other than the slow movement speed. A unique setting and fantastic cinematics and artwork. If only I could get out of the Hospital area pleaseā¦
Resident Evil 3: This game is genuinely scary to me, I donāt know why I started with 3, but itās quite a challenge. I have to come back to it.
Suikoden II: I have almost as much progress as FFVII on this one, a very fun 2D pixelart jrpg that has not aged at all, looks and plays fantastic.
Xenogears: This one is also great, but I still have to do progress on it, plays great and the art is awesome,it kinda looks like Octopath Traveler with its 3D environments and 2D character design.
Games I am not currently playing, but they're there
Aconcagua
Chrono Cross
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy XI
Legend of Dragoon
Parasite Eve II
Resident Evil 1 DC
Resident Evil 2
Silent Hill
Homebrew Games
Cave Story: Before Celeste, before Shovel Knight, before the indie game scene was a thing people cared about, there was Cave Story. This game is really fun, and it has been ported everywhere, you should play it now, itās even available in many Linux repositories, and the PSP version rules too.
Celeste: Speaking of Celeste, the Pico-8 version that precedes the game everyone loves, has been ported to the PSP too and it works just as you would expect it to. A fun challenge.
DDLC-LOVE: This is a port of Doki Doki Literature Club, a visual novel everyone needs to play at some point, donāt let its looks deceive you, there is a lot more. The port is kinda hard to play due to the small screen but I have it because itās cool.
Tyrian: A space shooter (not in space) that has also been ported everywhere since it has a FOSS version (OpenTyrian), itās quite fun and challenging.
Minecraft: Some random clone of Minecraft, I donāt remember exactly which version I got but itās pretty nice, just surf the net a bit and you will find many versions.
Super Mario 64: This is a source port of the game, and it runs pretty decently! A bit laggy sometimes, but what else do you want?
Powder: Powder is a roguelike, I havenāt played it but I got it because I wanted to.
Tome 2.3.5: Tales of Middle Earth, I havenāt played it but it seems to be some sort of text based adventure, please if you have played it tell me whatās up.
Emulators
I found a pretty complete list of emulators you can check here. I donāt play every single system so here are the ones I have installed myself:
MasterBoy 2.02: This is an emulator for the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear and Master System, quite a powerful emulator with a fantastic interface, it works pretty well.
NesterJ AoEX: For the NES, works pretty nicely, since the PSP is plenty powerful, I got a couple of homebrew games too.
s9xTYLme Mod: There are a ton of weird versions floating around on the net, the amount of forks and mods done for this emulator is kinda annoying, there is a whole story out there regarding the original dev and the times his work got stolen by others and claimed as their own. The culture in the homebrew scene at the time seems to be a shaky one, and this emulator is where it shows the most.
UO gpSP kai: An Emulator for the Game Boy Advance. It runs fantastic when the PSP is overclocked, I have played to completion multiple games here, such as Minish Cap and both Metroid entries for this console, works wonderfully.
FusaGamePad: Use your PSP as a gamepad for your PC or any supported device.
hbsorter: When you have so many games you sometimes want to sort them, this tool does it. Your categories need to start with āCAT_ā if you want this to work with that plugin.
psp-ftpd: An FTP server for the PSP. You have to have an open hotspot from your phone or laptop since most Wi-Fi routers donāt support old WPA or WEP security protocols the PSP knows.
pspkvm: Execute JAVA programs from your PSP! A lot of java games can be played now too!
Plugins
Game Categories: A fantastic way to organize a big game library, I personally have a category for PSP, PSX, Homebrew Games, Homebrew Apps and Emulators.
Quickboot: This tool lets me start a game while playing something else. This is great, since exiting a game and opening another one the normal way is so much slower.
PSPStates: Save states for PSP games, doesnāt work in some titles and doesnāt work on PS1 titles, but when it works, it does so wonderfully.
Joysens: I used to have a joystick with drift, this plugin allowed me to configure the sensitivity and deadzone of it, right now I donāt use it but it can come handy in the future if you canāt afford a physical replacement.
Conclusion
This took me a lot longer than I expected, I feel like I could have done a single article for many of the things I wrote today. Regardless, I am happy I finally did it. Its been fun to write something again, even if it took me a while to get back into it.
These past few months, the amount of posts in this website reviewing books or videogames and things has risen quite a bit, so I just wrote a bit about that.
