Psp Users: As Impressed As I Am?

[ste_167]

That's saved me a decision then if I bought one: PSP For Homebrew or PSP For Flash

 

[Angel]

yeah, i think it will get better in time, but for right now, its not very useful. I just like the fact i can take my PSP places and connect to the internet, was nice tapping into the hospitals wifi to send emails to people to announce the birth of my son.

 

[soup_nazi]

That's saved me a decision then if I bought one: PSP For Homebrew or PSP For Flash

There's no decision really. If you have a 1.5 psp you can use devhook to emulate up to 2.71 firmware.

My two cents on the psp subject:

I really like my psp. Heck, I love it. Provided you have a 1.5, I can't see how someone can claim that it's crap. From being able to network it with my pc over wi-fi (way more handy than samba, at least from my non-dev standpoint) to firmware emulation up to 2.71, you really do get a lot for your money. Plus now that fullspeed gba emulation is happening on it there's plenty of 'original' nintendo games to be played on it as well. Add to that the fact that N64 is fast shapping up to be playable as well you've got some DS style games as well (mario kart etc).

These days I use my psp a lot more than my '2x, just because there's so much more to do on it: devhook, iRShell, SnesTYL, gpSP, daedalus, excellent eBook reader, PSP radio,the list goes on. Plus of ourse it can do almost anything the GP2X can as well (except TV out and Video obviously...sony what were you thinking?)

Plus if you really hate sony so much, then buy a psp, downgrade to 1.5 (if you can) and download lots of games. That way they sold you the console at a loss and never got any of their money back. Not that I do that ofcourse... h34r:

 

[nem]

at £35 Loco Roco is too expensive for a low budget looking 2d game.

Errr.. what? Loco Roco a budget looking 2D game? In my mind it's the most stunning 2D game since Yoshi's Island, so we must be playing different games.

Shinneri: you definitely need to try out Loco Roco and Every Extend Extra. Utterly superb games that make the DS look weak.

 

[grahf]

I owned a PSP for a while, then sold it. It was right about the time they released the web browser (firmware 2.4 or 2.5 maybe?). At the time there was nothing on it that interested me. Homebrew was crude, and I just purchased a gp2x anyway so i upgraded the psp firmware. I think i spent more time messing with the new web browser than i ever did with any of the games i tried.

Fast forward to now. I picked up used copies of the Metal Gear Acid games, as well as a copy of the (possibly crappy) MGS graphic novel on umd. Im also going to pick up a copy of the aformentioned Loco Roco, and maybe one or two other games that seem interesting. I still dont own a PSP, but im going to pick one up the next time they drop in price.

 

[declaration]

I will never a good Nintendo first party game on the PSP, and since the only good first party game so far is Mario kart, I imagine, i'll have to wait until a Smash bros DS is released before I see another. I'm sorry, i'm not 13 or a girl, I don't want to play a game as a pink puffball or 50 year old plumber anymore, especially as sports games.

fair enough, prefer the PSP, but surely you can see that there is more than one first party published quality game for the DS.

What about these for example-
* Advance Wars: Dual Strike
* Animal Crossing: Wild World
* Big Brain Academy
* Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
* Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training 2
* Electroplankton
* Kirby: Canvas Curse
* Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
* Mario Kart DS
* Meteos
* Metroid Prime: Hunters
* Metroid Prime Pinball
* New Super Mario Bros.
* Nintendogs
* Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
* Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
* Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
* Pokémon Ranger
* Pokémon Trozei
* Super Mario 64 DS
* Super Princess Peach
* Tetris DS
* WarioWare: Touched!
* Yoshi's Touch & Go

Fair enough, the majority of the games above are Mario/ Pokemon based, puzzle, or brain training, but there are at least 10 quality games in that list.
Just because a game is part of a franchise doesnt mean its tired. How many MarioKarts have there been in 15 years? Not many, but there have been millions of Mario games- does this detract from MarioKartDS as a gaming experience? No- or at least it shouldnt do.

MarioKart, NSMB, Mario64 DS and 'Mario and Luigi: Partners in time" are all completely different games. They do share one thing in common however- they are all brilliant games.

Also, your reluctance to play a game because you dont want to play as an Italian plumber cartoon, or as a "pink puffball" suggests more immaturity than maturity. Statements like "I'm not a girl so dont want to play that" are really childish and typical of teenagers who want to be seen as men but are trying a little too hard. The same sort of people who would never watch a film based on a love story, or cry at the cinema.

I guess you see playing another tired war game or playing the role of a gangster as adult entertainment, whereas a game which can be enjoyed by anyone and is engrossing because of it's playability is lost on you.

I sincerely hope my input here doesnt start a flame war, but I guess that all depends on a certain other member of these forums. I am after all a Nintendo fanboy because I occassionally disagree with comments such as the above.

 

[Angel]

its just a matter of opinion.

For the DS i own

Mario 64
Mario Partners in Time
Nintendogs
Mario Kart
Elf Bowling
Nanostray

For the PSP i own

Untold Legends
Madden 06
Socom Fireteam bravo
Gta: Liberty City Stories
Twisted Metal: Head on.

Of those DS games, none are truely impressive to me. Mario Partners in Time is a complete joke. If you didn't think Nintendo was kiddy before, play through this game. I spent probably 14 hours on this game and haven't touch it in months, its very very annoying. Nintendogs i bought for my wife, i played it but again, haven't touched it in months, mario kart is the same way, the game is pretty boring, even with wifi, there's no options.
Nanostray is a decent game though. Elf bowling, my wife bought that for me as i wouldn't have never wasted my money.

But for the PSP, Socom is fantastic with a masterful use of wifi gaming, even Twisted Metal Head on is pretty damn good with Wifi. Untold Legends is nothing to get excited about. Madden is Madden, GTA is grand theft auto. What makes it so great is that i can play these types of games on the go. Something i'd never be able to do or be remotely close to doing on the DS, which is why i own both. I just happen to like my PSP more.

But no i'm not a teenager. I'm a home owning, multiple automobile owning "MALE"adult with 1 kid so far. So Yes i believe i'm entitled to say I don't want to play games as a pink puffball or pokemon. I don't like puzzle games, other than Mean bean machine, I don't like party games. So that takes away probably 50% of the DS games.

Nintendo appeals to different people. Sega did it right, they had their franchises, but they also strayed from the mainstream, they even had their own sports line. Nintendo can't even do that without including Mario and friends. If i want to play football, i'll play Madden or Fifa (depending on your def. of football) not Mario. Could Nintendo make a game like Panzer Dragoon? Sure, but Mario would be riding the dragon. And it's just amazing what you read when it comes to these 2 systems, like read the story for Metal of honor that is being released for the PSP. "it will never work because of no 2nd analog stick" but the DS gets a FPS and its pure genious and the DS doesn't have even 1 analog stick. It's just amazing.

This is why i love the GP32x board, this is turning into a great discussion.

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

ANGEL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, GO BUY SYPHON FILTER!!!

 

[Angel]

ANGEL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, GO BUY SYPHON FILTER!!!

I will if i get my $25 gift certificate thing from my work.

 

[grahf]

Angel, in regards to your comment about the no analog stick on the DS. While i havnt played the game in weeks, i feel that metroid prime hunters has phenominal control. The dpad + touchscreen control feels exactly like a keyboard + mouse combo. I feel that works excellent.

 

[Angel]

yep, I have no problem with Metroid hunters either, and i don't believe the PSP will have any problems with first person shooters, i was just making the statement of how the fanboys react to good PSP news. Go to gamespot and find the story about medal of honor being released for the PSP and read the posts. It's just absolutely amazing.

 

[Flack]

After owning the original GBA and GP32, I was amazed at the PSP's screen. So big and bright! Unfortunately I'm more of a 2D gamer than a 3D one, so I find myself still preferring the GP32 (for emulation) and GBA SP2.

 

[Goity]

The more psp games I play, the more I tend to like it. the more DS games I play, the less I like it .

 

[clone]

The PSP is one of the greatest handhelds I have played. (prefer the gp2x overall, though.) The commercial games are typically of a decent quality. I don't own one myself, I have a GP32 and a GP2X, but a few friends of mine have them, and from what I've played/seen, I've been reasonably impressed. I do think that the emulated mobile-phone way of typing is kinda lame. I can understand that many gadget-loving people are formilliar with the mobile phone keypad layout due to repeated use of the SMS functionality, but as an on-screen display, I don't think it's the fastest way to enter data. I'd like to see something similar to that nifty GP32 text editor that split the keys into blocks, and made use of the joystick and buttons to select the block then the corrisponding letter within that block. For me, that system seemed very fast and very practical.

I'm also a bit of a Dreamcast fanboy, having owned one since release, and I use it still today (been sent in for repairs once, that was back in the PSO craze era.) So was delighted to see the title "Virtua Tennis 2" making its way to the PSP (with a new title.... Virtua Tennis World Tour, or some-such.) As it was truely a great title ~~ One I still play four or three player on when mates are in the viccinity. [2p has a bit less appeal.] Anyhack, one day I think I'll snatch one of my friends' PSPs and have a few ad-hock mode matches against them (I heared this is possible in VT:WT) I'm unsure if it'll prove as entertaining as the DC version's multiplayer, but it should come close. (I own an xbox and GC too, but the prior I pretty much don't touch, and the latter I bought recently for almost nothing, just so I can play PSO:episode 3.)

The Wi-Fi of the PSP is pretty good, the latest firmware offering flash support (albeit very basic.) The browser itself is not completely compatible with the internet, with some sites not functioning as they should, or at all. This in-part is due to the low resolution of the console -- very few sites are designed with such resolutions in mind, but most of the time it is the fault of the site designers for doing things in a very browser-specific way, or relying on technologies such as JAVA and Flash, that are either not supported at all, or very sparcely implimented.

The video playback is nice from UMD form (which I hear has been a non-proffitable exploit for sony, with UMD-video sales being reasonably low. Some major stores no longer stock them, but they are still in production, so it seems.), as for MPEG4, I have no idea. I tried to encode some stuff in a PSP-friendly way with mencoder (my computer's OS is gentoo linux) and failed. If anyone could point me in the right direction here I'd be greatful. All of my attempts used MP3 for audio (maybe I should try MP2....) as for the video, I used something along the lines of -ovc lavc -lavcencopts vcodec=mpeg4:bitrate=70 (I was doing it low-res @ 13FPS) -ffourcc DX50

The PSP just said it was corrupt and such. Later I grabbed one of them game-promotional vids from the MemStick my friend had in the PSP, and found the video header said something like avc1. my quick-googling listed something about it useing h.264 technologies, so I proceeded in producing an encode using x264 as my video codec and using the -ffourcc avc1 flag in hopes of producing something it would understand.... Nope.

The GP2X wins at playing video. Tenfold.

Batt-life seems good to me, but I do like using my 2,700mAh batteries more-so, as I can fit a spare pair in the GP2X carry case, and if the sony pripietry battery should ever stop working, it'll cost a fair bit to replace.
Talking of which, I think my friend got ripped off regarding his MemoryStick. The guy bought a 256mb ScanDisk Memstick for about £30. I think he could have got it for cheaper if he looked about a bit more, on the internet, perhaps, but even then, the sony sticks do seem to be rather costly.

As for fonts, I suppose the PSP is smother, however I have hopes for the 2X, maybe sub-pixel rendering could be enabled? Even falsely enabled by developers using PNG graphics with sub-pixel alised text. I have my linux computer setup with sub-pixel rendering enabled, and it's the smoothest alaising system ever. I shit you not, a fine bonus when used. The GP2X has an LCD screen, does it not? So then it should be possible. If I ever get round to coding something, I'll use sub-pixel alised fonts. Probably in pre-rendered PNG form. I like that idea.

And on a completely unrelated matter; I formatted my 4GB SD to ext2, and the GP2X failed to read from it. Had to shove it back to the flawed FAT32. Sadness
It's always good to end a post diving into irrelevance.