Sony PSP Appreciation Thread

[dumpster]

3 hours ago, buizel said:

Anyone figured out how to get a good PSP Battery?

 

Everyone I buy has like ~2 HRS Max on average.

 

I've seen people on Reddit build their own chunky battery but I wouldnt mind if it was 4HRS.

 

At 2HRS max, and in standby it still drains quickly, its unfortunate.

There are many fakes out there.  I got some off eBay, they claimed to be more powerful than the standard battery but they were rubbish.  

 

Personally, if you love the PSP I'd seriously consider getting a Vita and modding it.  The emulator called Adrenaline is incredible and filling a memory card with all your PSP games (and that screen) is great.  

[Bluejam]

In my days of refurbing PSP’s, getting a decent replacement battery was a pain in the arse. 
 

1 1/2 - 2 hours if you were lucky. If you are using UMDs, even less. 

 

Don’t pay more than a fiver for

one, they are all the same 
 

 

 

[MikeBeaver]

On 18/05/2021 at 11:18, filecore said:

I bought a new battery for my PSP1000. I hadn't used it in a few years as I also have a 3000. 

Now my original PSP doesn't read any UMDs, a problem it never had before. What's the best, most recommended fixes?
 

Take the battery out and try it on the PSU only, I've found that with some of the replacement batteries on the 2000/3000 models, the battery causes the drive lid not to close by a fraction of a mill and that stops the second lid switch from detecting the door is closed, or... it could be a bit of dust on the laser, so a cotton bud and some light IPA work needed.

Failing that, custom fw and roms will be the way to keep it useable.

[filecore]

7 hours ago, MikeBeaver said:

Take the battery out and try it on the PSU only, I've found that with some of the replacement batteries on the 2000/3000 models, the battery causes the drive lid not to close by a fraction of a mill and that stops the second lid switch from detecting the door is closed, or... it could be a bit of dust on the laser, so a cotton bud and some light IPA work needed.

Failing that, custom fw and roms will be the way to keep it useable.

 

Cheers Mike, it closes and attempts to read the disc but will double check  I'll go the cotton bud and IPA method.  As odd as it sounds I'm just interested in playing my existing library on UMD

 

[dumpster]

If you don't want to be a pirate you can put your umd disks into a modded psp, connect the psp to a computer and the PSP appears as a external disk drive.  Press select on the psp menu screen and one of the option makes the psp appear as an ISO file.  Drag the ISO to the PC, then copy it to your PSP that has a faulty disk drive and before you can say "Bloggo's POW" you have a totally legal ISO file made from your own PSP disk using some kind of magic. 

[Gotters]

Well the Steamdeck has bought me to another great retro thread to trawl through for some ideas.

 

I had a PSP, paid about £5-600 for a japanese import as was working near Tottenham Court Road at the time, but I have no fond recollections of loving the thing. It was desirable tech and beautifully built but other than playing a lot of Everybody Golf in japanese don't recall liking it much. Similar experience with the Vita.

 

Looking at a few games running under upscaled emulation think I'm in for a bit of a treat.

 

Sega Rally Revo is by Bugbear of Wreckfest/Flat Out fame. There is a flat out and split/second to try, Modnation racers, 2 Ridge Racers and an Outrun.

 

I was a fool to think that 256gb was going to be big enough. 

[Camel]

There’s a nice port of Gitaroo Man too. Patchwork Heroes is a really fun take on Qix.

[Gotters]

36 minutes ago, Camel said:

Patchwork Heroes is a really fun take on Qix.

 

thanks for that random recommendation, I was only playing Qix on PS1 and thought it was a style of game you don't see any more.

 

Patchwork Heroes totally passed me by, literally never heard of it, just had quick go and seems great, Terry Gilliam crossed with Qix.

[Gotters]

the PSP is becoming a real rabbit hole for me of games that just passed me by, I did start a big new job around 2010 and think I had my head elsewhere.

 

A Patchwork Heroes review lead me to something known as Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, renamed to What Have I Done to Deserve This My Lord 2 in the US - a realtime strategy game.

[Camel]

There’s a great version of SF Alpha with a really good world tour mode if that’s your bag. There’s also a surprisingly good version of Blazblue.

 

I always found the Konami shmup collections on the system a tad frustrating as the bullets were a bit too small for my liking but you may not have that problem on a bigger screen. Darius Burst is pretty good.

 

Brave Story is one of very few RPGs I’ve actually completed. Jeanne D’Arc is supposedly very good but it didn’t really grab me. 

[megamixer]

Games I have owned/played that I can recommend (obviously your genre preferences depend):

 

Tekken Dark Resurrection

Soulcalibur Broken Destiny

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max

Darkstalkers Chronicle

Outrun 2006

Koloomn (underrated falling block puzzler - was also known as "Ultimate Block Party")

Valkyria Chronicles II

Valkyria Chronicles III (Japanese only, there was a fan-translation patched version released)

Darius Burst

Persona 3 Portable

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Capcom Classics Reloaded + Remixed

Space Invaders Extreme

Lumines (absolute crack + amazing electronic music)

Metal Slug Anthology

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Jeanne D'Arc

Parodius Collection

Twinbee Collection

GTA Liberty City Stories + Vice City Stories (definitely benefit from being able to mess about and enhance settings i.e. LCS runs better with overclocking on PSP CFW)

 

[AK Bell]

2 hours ago, Camel said:

Jeanne D’Arc is supposedly very good but it didn’t really grab me. 

 

I was enjoying Jeanne D'Arc but hit a wall where I just couldn't be faffed with the strategy. 

[gunrock]

I was just grinding a bit in Jeanne D'Arc the other day. I wasn't totally feeling it, so booted up PuzzleQuest instead. I wasn't doing to well against wolves and then lost consecutively several times to catapults- that's right! Effing catapults!!

 

Managed to beat them eventually, but I sure the CPU cheats.

[Gotters]

Before I know it pulled together 24 games onto the SteamDeck, those I've tried seem to be playing nicely.

 

I never knew that Modnation Racers had a PSP version - I always vote for the PS3 game very highly in my list of all time favourite games and knew about the Vita version. On a quick go it seems exactly what you'd expect from a pared back version so excited to have a play.

 

Also found PES was released up to 2014 so you can relive the glory days of Nth London Red with Mertesacker, Sagna, Giroud, Wilshire et al. 

 

Loved going back thru this thread to pull together games I fancied a go on, these old appreciation threads are brilliant for that. 

[Vimster]

I got a new Vita recently as my last one has died, so set Adrenaline up again, put some PSP games on there. Lumines is the one I always go back to, it's just a pure joy to play, what with the music, the feel of trying to slam as many blocks together before the thing sweeps across. Was never much good at it, and I actively avoid seeing replays as it just makes me feel rubbish. 

 

I'd also recommend Archer McLean's Mercury and Mercury Meltdown. Very tricky physics-based puzzle games that get pretty taxing. 

[Gotters]

Just now, Vimster said:

I'd also recommend Archer McLean's Mercury and Mercury Meltdown. Very tricky physics-based puzzle games that get pretty taxing. 

 

There is a blast from the past, I remember buying Mercury as I used to play his snooker game on the Amiga !

 

Tried Pursuit Force 2 on PPSSPP and seems its one with some emu troubles, there may be some settings to get it running but on Deck defaults it was unplayable. Shame as the opening video with the wedding being crashed was amazing and had me right up for playing. 

[Vimster]

Another that doesn't emulate well is the excellent Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, although I think one region's version does, can't remember which. 

[Gotters]

ta for the heads up, tried both Mercy games, first runs fine but looks like the second one broke in a recent build of PPSSPP.

 

Flatout is fantastic still, plays really well for a roughly 15y old handheld port !

[Darwock]

21 hours ago, Gotters said:

A Patchwork Heroes review lead me to something known as Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, renamed to What Have I Done to Deserve This My Lord 2 in the US - a realtime strategy game.

Those are actually two separate games - the former is the first game under it’s original name, which was forced to change around the time the sequel came out. The third game is called ‘No Heroes Allowed’. Hella confusing.

[bradigor]

No heroes allowed and no puzzles either was a permanent fixture in my Vita. 

[Gotters]

Had a great couple of hours with old PSP games last night while my other half watched that jungle rubbish.

 

Ridge Racer 2 is fantastic, I’m not an expert of Ridge games but having played Rage Racer and R4 under playstation emulation recently the PSP version ‘feels’ better, so good to slide and looks great upscaled. Not sure if that the emus or the actual games but the PSP version is the one I’ll be going back to.

 

Hot Shots Golf 2 is a great version of the game, lots of courses and a meaty single player series to go thru.

 

Nice version of lemmings available too, classic levels with better graphics, though doubt the user generated levels still available.

 

Flatout feels brilliant still, great sloppy arcade car handling with surprisingly destroyable environments.

 

Sony’s own ATV game is another pleasing offroader too, again great handling and doesn’t look shabby at all.

 

Seriously in love with the Steamdeck opening all this up to me again.

[Gotters]

Now found a nice version of Super Stardust too (SS Portable) and very surprisingly an initially decent looking port for Split/Second.

 

Only downside of all this PSP goodness is SD card space getting eaten up and repeatedly seeing the amateur hour front end when you go into new games have have to setup new profiles in an inelegant way (seems too many screens in the PSP OS)

[Keyboard Koala]

I've had quite a few PSP games back in the days, as it was my most played console about 10 years ago.

Here's what I kept:

 

·         Lumines 

·         Metal Gear Ac!d 

·         Ridge Racers 

·         Virtua Tennis: World Tour

·         WipEout pure 

·         Exit 

·         OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast  

·         flOw**  (still the best version of this game I reckon)

·         Ape Escape P 

·         Me & My Katamari 

·         Monster Hunter Freedom 

·         Metal Gear Ac!d 2

·         Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins

·         Ridge Racers 2  

·         Work Time Fun

·         PowerStone Collection 

·         Every Extend Extra 

·         Exit 2  

·         LocoRoco 

·         Jeanne d’Arc  

·         Monster Hunter Freedom 2 U

·         Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

·         Silent Hill: Origins 

·         Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness

·         WipEout pulse  

·         Patapon 

·         Ape Quest**  

·         LocoRoco 2

·         Numblast**  

·         Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman!  

·         LocoRoco Midnight Carnival**  

·         Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days 

·         Half-Minute Hero 

·         Patchwork Heroes** 

·         Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker 

·         Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep  

·         BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger 

·         No Heroes Allowed** 

·         Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy 

·         Persona 3P 

·         BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II 

 

** download only

[Wiper]

That's a nice selection, though I have to ask: Final Fantasy Tactics and Jeanne d'Arc, but no Tactics Ogre?

 

Here lie the paltry remains of my own collection:

 

[Keyboard Koala]

1 hour ago, Wiper said:

That's a nice selection, though I have to ask: Final Fantasy Tactics and Jeanne d'Arc, but no Tactics Ogre?

 

Yeah I pondered over that many times back in the days, but ultimately because it's basically just a port of a SNES game (with the same graphics afaict) I kept on deciding not buying it.

[Camel]

Patchwork Heroes had a Jp UMD release.

 

I forgot about the Wipeout games. I get them confused but I think it was Pure that I put a huge number of hours into. Great game.

[Wiper]

16 minutes ago, Keyboard Koala said:

Yeah I pondered over that many times back in the days, but because it's basically just a port of a SNES game (with the same graphics afaict) I never got round to actually buying it.

 

Well, I'm a few decades late to point this out, but it's not the exact same graphics — it uses the same unit sprites, but the levels and camera are fully 3D; it's using a very similar engine to Final Fantasy Tactics. Which is only appropriate, given Final Fantasy Tactics is a port of a PS1 game, which was itself designed by the creator of Tactics Ogre!

 

Of course, now's the perfect time to pick up the new remake of the remake of Tactics Ogre. I'd recommend it, inasmuch as I think it's a brilliant SRPG to the point that I prefer it to FF:T's take on its formula. Or you could even get the PSP version (which I honestly think looks nicer than the new version), which is still surprisingly affordable!

[Keyboard Koala]

Only one decade I'd say?

 

[Gotters]

As far as emulation goes PSP is my go to console at the moment, up to 52 games on my SteamDeck, PSP just passed me totally by despite owning one. Seem to recall I always hated the ergonomics and the nub, horrible thing to hold.

 

Love Ridge Racer 2 & Flatout, not so keen on Outrun.

 

Hotshots Golf 2 is just lovely and under emulation seems to play better than the PS2 equivalents.

 

Been going deep down lists of hidden gems for the machine, many mentioned here, found one the other day called Tokobots which seems to be Sony's 'we need a Pikmin' game. 

[Vimster]

Tried R-Type Tactics, an odd strategy game where you arrange fleets of ships against various enemies. Going to be honest, I had a job reading the small text even on the bigger Vita screen, but looked interesting. Might try it on the PC under emulation and see if that helps. 

 

More block-dropping with Koloomn, known as Kollon in Japan and the rather dull-sounding Ultimate Block Party in the US. Very bright presentation with upbeat tunes, has a similar vibe to Puyo Puyo but plays like a combination of a lot of block-related games, you make large areas of the same colour by rotating 2x2 sets of blocks in your cursor, you can add more  as you go for big combos, has some power-ups which frankly take away from the purity of it. Gets very tough with more colours though. It does highlight the purity of Lumines.