PSP 2000 hanging around somewhere. Thing was awesome. UMDs where a wild choice tho.
Thankfully softmodding them to launch games of the memory stick was super easy
The PSP was a real beast and the perfect competitor to the DS. I have one that I bought around 2012 (still works, too! though the card reader seems a bit finnicky), rooted it and was happy for many, many hours afterward. Getting a microSD->MemoryStickDuo adapter was was just 😘 👌
OP, if you haven’t yet, play Kenka Bancho Badass Rumble. A beat’em up with big replayability, where you play a delinquent student in the last school trip of the year. Your job is to beat the “main guy” of every other school to prove you’re the best!
As a kid I cracked the main circuit board in mine after dropping it once. Repair was impossible. Those five hours of playtime I got in were nice tho.
Same as a kid I somehow broke the spring for the power button. I swear I had to get it repaired 3 times for other random quirks.
I remember prying open whatever the specific PSP battery you had to use to make a Pandora’s battery. Used my Dad’s magnifying lense and a needle to sever the connection, and got custom firmware running. Such a cool feeling
You came late to the modding scene then. I bought mine secondhand so I had a PSP with firmware 1.52 that could be modded. Since the newer 2.0 firmware was still unhackable. (soon after you could mod version 2.0 with a gta savegame hack)
So many good memories. I really loved the PSP modding scene.
The screen and controls on these things were amazing; they still hold up even today. If only there was a way to put a modern processor in it so you could play emulated and streamed games like a modern device…
Introducing the PSPi. It’s that thing I just described™
I sold my PSP and spent the money to buy a 2DS.
Too many PSP games tried to have “realistic” 3D look but they struggled because of the weaker-than-PS2 graphics.
I prefer the stylish low-poly look of 3DS games, and its huge library of 2D games.
It reminds me of good old times but the device itself is not “modern” anymore. Feels like cheap funstation from aliexpress. It would be great to have a new version of it.
I completely disagree, the device feels really sturdy, I own both a PSP and a Switch and if you ask me I think the switch is more flimsy. The only thing that ages the PSP imo is the UMD reader and the lack of a second joystick, but I still love the design today
The only one that feels cheap is the PSP street, but the others are built to last. 11 years of use is no joke and the buttons still work great on mine
I mean anything works if it’s built to last and you take care of it. I still have my original brick grey Nintendo DS 1st Gen and it works flawlessly.
Yea and they could call it PSLife, for breathing new life into the handheld. Surely there would be plenty of games for it and Sony could support it for years to come!
Not sure if you say it with irony or not, let me know tho
I always wanted a PSP but never got one. I really wish Sony would come out with another.
Best modern Sony can do is a streaming shitbox that you can accomplish the same thing with using a phone or tablet you already own, and it’ll have same janky aesthetic as well.
One of the best handhelds of all time. For me it’s gotta be Steam Deck, GBC, PSP, DS, GBA in that order.
Atari Lynx? Sega Gamegear? The OG color portables.
He said best handhelds not “mistakes that only exist to complete with the grey brick”
Damn that’s harsh. I grew up in a world where there was no such thing as handhelds. There were Tiger Electronics black and white LCD “games” but nothing like an actual handheld game system.
First time I saw a Lynx my mind was blown. I saved up every penny as a little kid to get one, used.
Gamegear came later, and again it blew mind. I do remember how it ate batteries.
Sega Nomad was my favorite, bit I’m not sure you could really classify it as a handheld since it ate through batteries like nobody’s business
That you could play for all of 30 minutes(exaggeration but the battery life on these things sucked hard.)
Holy shit core memory unlocked. I don’t think I ever got past like stage 3 of sonic because that thing DEVOURED batteries, and it was like a full set of 6 AA’s, too. Felt like it was cheaper to go to the arcade. Worst console I ever owned!
I was the Nintendo dude in my friends group and my best friend was the Sega dude. So while we had fun back and forths we both got to experience both consoles pretty well. I remember being so happy when my friend got the wall adapter for his game gear lol
This is so nice, and then is me with my cringe PSP 3000 which I got new in the box in 2016 and it failed some years after lol.
The battery was messed up (something not uncommon) and then it stopped recognizing batteries at all, something about the bios kinda thingy that is soldered in the motherboard, I read that if you cleaned it up it would help, I opened my unit and I couldn’t de attach correctly the cable that powers the unit, I ripped the piece where it plugs all with my hand, to have it half working I glued that piece to the motherboard, which seemed to work (unit wired) for some time, so yeah, this whole mess was a big fail from my part 🤡
I think the best route for me would be to swap the motherboard entirely, or call it a day and get a Retrod Pocket 3 Plus lol.
You could try the PSPi thing on this post
This is so cool, but I don’t think it would handle PSP games better than… Well the actual PSP 😅
Still have my launch day version and bust it out to play some guilty gear with friends time to time. Got me into soft modding then hard modding other consoles. Even now it’s a tinkerer’s delight.
That’s impressive! How is the battery? Replaced it over time, if that’s possible? How long can you play on it, before it needs to recharge again?
I don’t play long enough to run out of it, maybe 3 or 4 hours? I should do some tests. It’s still the original one though
I loved mine,homebrew was awesome on it. I really should have gotten a microSD adaptor, those expensive cards were no fun. I played so much with the GBA emulator, actually swapped my GBA saves between the PSP and the Wii.
I love this handheld, but my 3000 stopped charging a couple years back. I’m pretty sure it’s a bad connector in the body itself, since I used to be able to get it to charge if I set the adapter just right.
But this thing is so small and has so many moving parts that I’m a little more wary about taking it apart and swapping out a component than I would be a full-sized console (or even a Game Boy or something). I might just take it to get repaired instead…
The only worthy successor for me has been the steam deck (maybe if I ever jailbroke my switch, but even then). Just wish we had the deck version with a PSP form factor, that would possibly be the best handheld system for emulation and PC gaming you could ask for.
