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[Gp1]

Jumping from a GBA into a PSP was an experience like when the primates in 2001 discovered the bone and the Monolith.

Probably the biggest generational leap of the entire industry.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

PSP was such a revolution, gave us a first taste of that beautiful XMB UI.

 

[SkylineRKR]

PSP had a ridiculous amount of good games. Its underrated even though it sold over 80 million units. Vita had nothing on the PSP really. It was due to evolution a better piece of hardware with 2 sticks, but the software lineup? PSP won hands down. KH, Dissidia, FFT, MG Acid, RR, PES, God of War, Daxter, Darkstalkers, SFA, Syphon Filter, GTA, MMX and Powered up.. there were many great games on this device.

 

[Evil Calvin]

And almost 80 million batteries have swollen up or exploded. Great manufacturing Sony!

 

[YCoCg]

PSP was such a revolution, gave us a first taste of that beautiful XMB UI.

*PSX looks on from the shadows*

 

[Magic Carpet]

I traded in my PSP for the Vita. I still have the Vita and it's doing that battery bulging thing where the case is bending outward. I'm waiting for it to 'splode someday in my drawer. Hopefully not burning my house down. I do have it in a case but I don't know how much that will contain the 'Boom'.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Great little handheld, and at the time was a total revelation. It destroyed the previous gen handhelds with an incredible screen.

Glad Sony have got a working emulator for PS5 but we all know they'll piss it down the drain.

 

[Killer8]

I would be curious to know how many units the PSP Go shifted. As a digital only console it was received poorly, but consequently when you added custom firmware it became my favorite handheld of all time.

It came along too late in the life cycle to make a big difference, but also came along too early since digital distribution wasn't as big as it is now.

 

[Kadve]

Its called "Gaming's most successful failure" for a reason. It failed to make a mark in Nintendos handheld domination yet it still somehow sold amazingly.

Though iirc it also had some of gaming's worst attachment ratios. Thing was so convenient that many people used for other stuff than games or just ran Emulators from it.

 

[Tunned]

Amazing device. I remember seeing it for the first time in a shop running Ridge Racer... I was left speechless. GTA LCS + VCS blew me away at time too. So many great games. I still own my CFW PSP, need to pull it out of the draw to check if the battery is ok.

Luckily my PSP lives on through my Steam Deck.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Gorgeous aesthetic. For me PSP still had the best Ridge Racer game ever made.

Tekken was just mind blowing on it.

 

[gtabro]

This and the DS marked my late high school years, hours upon hours of fun with these handhelds. I may have a Switch, but I have almost never taken it out to play on the road (too big), and the Windows devices like the Steam Deck, RoG Ally, etc. have 3 major problems for me - the games they run are made for bigger screens, so UI is crap in a lot of them, they are bricks just like the Switch, and finally their batteries are a joke. If they started making games for the PSP right now in 2024, not even Vita, I would buy them. I mean we had amazing gems like God of War, FF7 Crisis Core, Motorstorm, Resistance Retribution, MGS Peace Walker, Manhunt 2, and GTA on this device and even without the 2nd analog it was glorious (though I wouldn't say no to a PSP with 2 analog sticks).

 

[SCB3]

The PSP was well ahead of its time and had some fantastic games, I still have mine around here somewhere and some of the games on it were incredible at the time

 

[apocaliptic]

Was easy to hack. When I bought I couldn't find games in my country and the limited number of them were very expensive. Great device for the time

 

[Kenpachii]

gta 3 and kingdom hearts birth by sleep was some next level handheld gaming back in the day.

 

[Robb]

PSP was amazing, really neat little console.

 

[Lokaum D+]

come back Shawn

 

[Calverz]

Graphically it was impressive for the time but that analog nub was absolutely atrocious. My hand is getting cramp just thinking back to it.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

It's hard to believe that the PSP outsold the SNES and Jaguar combined.

What a beast

It's pretty amazing. That's two consoles compared to just one handheld.

Jaguar sold 150,000 units worldwide. What am I missing? It's such a miniscule amount and such a massive commercial failure I'm not understanding why it's worth being mentioned, in conversations like this where we're talking about consoles and handhelds that sold 50-150 million units each?

 

[Katatonic]

I still use my 2 CFW PSP GO's. Still has the best PSX emulation ever. When connected to a CRT using the dock, it's literally like a hw PS1 but with wireless Sixaxis support.

I was so hoping the Vita would iterate on that form factor (still love my Vita's though).

 

[Audiophile]

I loved my OG PSP but I always found the lack of second analogue stick absolutely brutal for some games. Seemed like such an arbitrary, dumb move.. That said, between early '06 through to '08 the likes of LocoRoco, Burnout Legends/Dominator, GTA:VCS, Socom & Splinter Cell etc. kept my mind occupied while I was going through Leukaemia treatment.

Never had a PSVita but might still pick one up some day.

Question: can you map the right stick on Vita for original PSP games either as a standard feature or with custom firmware..?


On another note: I think a cool move would be to build a legacy system that iterates on Vita with full PSP, PSVita, PS1 & PS2 support but with a modern battery, super-efficient silicon, latest connectivity standards, better display, new UI and streamlined UX, full remote play and streaming; roll in some AI upscaling and frame gen to bring all those old games up...

"PSP Legacy"

OR, even better would be a second generation PS Portal with a base model that simply streams and then a Pro/Edge model that does all of the above. That said, I'd be torn between the ergonomics of the portal and charm/portability of the original PSP/Vita form-factor.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

I loved my OG PSP but I always found the lack of second analogue stick absolutely brutal for some games. Seemed like such an arbitrary, dumb move.. That said, between early '06 through to '08 the likes of LocoRoco, Burnout Legends/Dominator, GTA:VCS, Socom & Splinter Cell etc. kept my mind occupied while I was going through Leukaemia treatment.

Never had a PSVita but might still pick one up some day.

Question: can you map the right stick on Vita for original PSP games either as a standard feature or with custom firmware..?

I think a cool move would be to build a legacy system that iterates on Vita with full PSP, PSVita, PS1 & PS2 support but with a modern battery, super-efficient silicon, latest connectivity standards, better display, new UI and streamlined UX, full remote play and streaming; roll in some AI upscaling and frame gen to bring all those old games up...

"PSP Legacy"

Even better would be a second generation PS Portal with a base model that simply streams and then a Pro/Edge model that does all of the above. That said, I'd be torn between the ergonomics of the portal and charm/portability of the original PSP/Vita form-factor.

I remember you were actually able to map the second analog stick for Psp games! No custom fiddling required.

 

[German Hops]

Jaguar sold 150,000 units worldwide. What am I missing? It's such a miniscule amount and such a massive commercial failure I'm not understanding why it's worth being mentioned, in conversations like this where we're talking about consoles and handhelds that sold 50-150 million units each?

I'm just saying that Nintendo and Atari were two big names in the industry back then and sold a lot of consoles when you combine their sales.

 

[TVexperto]

 

[FullMetalx117]

The OG! I suspect for many other teenagers like myself, this was the device that changed our lives due to Phub on that web browser

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

FF7 Crisis Core and KH Birth by Sleep blew me away on PSP and felt like they pushed the machine to its limits.

Both of them demonstrate how good the PSP was for its time, considering how well the remasters hold up visually on modern consoles.

 

[ReBurn]

Jaguar sold 150,000 units worldwide. What am I missing? It's such a miniscule amount and such a massive commercial failure I'm not understanding why it's worth being mentioned, in conversations like this where we're talking about consoles and handhelds that sold 50-150 million units each?

Yes correct

 

[Audiophile]

 

[phant0m]

PSP was such a revolution, gave us a first taste of that beautiful XMB UI.

2000-2005 was peak Sony.

 

[bender]

XMB is still the GOAT console UI.

 

[CamHostage]

I loved my OG PSP but I always found the lack of second analogue stick absolutely brutal for some games. Seemed like such an arbitrary, dumb move.. That said, between early '06 through to '08 the likes of LocoRoco, Burnout Legends/Dominator, GTA:VCS, Socom & Splinter Cell etc. kept my mind occupied while I was going through Leukaemia treatment.

Sort of arbitrary maybe (I'm not sure how much that actually cost to have that analog sensor?), but if you look at the ergonomics of the PSP, having another nub down at that bottom level might be an uncomfortable and unsupported way to hold the device. (I don't have my PSP here to hold but even though there's that empty space there, the difference between having two thumbs at the bottom versus one at the bottom and one in the middle is significant.) Also, for those who have taken a PSP apart, it becomes clear that there wasn't actually room with the layout at the time. Maybe both could have been overcome, but it makes sense the limitations, and even one analog input (and that weird nub, flush to the system to keep it portable yet playable) struck people as crazy to have at the time.

However, I do agree that the lack of a second analog input really caught up with the system over time. Playing FPSes like it was GoldenEye using button taps felt weird, and some games really struggled to work on the system. Plus, it's weird that PlayStation redefined what proper game control should be with DualAnalog and that control layout is now as much the PS identity as the Tri/Cir/Sq/Cross buttons, yet their portable didn't follow their standard.

It's a shame that Sony wasn't ahead of the game with motion-sensing on PSP; this wouldn't have solved the problem outright (too many people would still dismiss tilt as a reasonable input/augmentation for game control even on smaller-scale/uncompetitive portable games,) but it could have helped a lot, plus it could have introduced some games that PSP and introduced some genres that didn't break until iPhone.

Never had a PSVita but might still pick one up some day.

Question: can you map the right stick on Vita for original PSP games either as a standard feature or with custom firmware..?

Not really, but kind of? PSP doesn't have an native "second analog" signal definition for its controller input, so it's not like you can map the stick to an input feed the games don't know to look for. (*This is sort of a fact, as PSP dev kits apparently did have dual-analog inputs since the debugs were boxes with tethered PSPs but also screens and you could use a PS controller instead of the game hardware. However, this mostly is residual code which may or may not be in the retail release, and likely isn't necessarily hooked up the way Vita feeds control signal to the game.)

However, the Vita's second stick can be mapped to a few control input choices, the most important being to emulate the D-Pad layout of the rightside PS buttons. So any game that played Nub+Buttons is now Analog+"Analog". That input will not be analog, however, it will just be whatever the button inputs were, albeit that may not be such an issue for PSP since the games are designed for digital input anyway. (Plus, if I remember right, the "Analog Nub" was more of a 360 Nub, and didn't really have a great deal of difference between a little versus a lot of movement.)

And then some late-era PSP games seem to include DualShock playback modes natively. Resistance Retribution had a DualShock feature that appears to carry over to Vita, I think Monster Hunter 3 and MGS Peacewalker had plug-and-play second stick, some others. I'm not sure if these were all true "Dual Analog" or just dual-stick games, (I kind of remember this being a marketing thing when PSP Go let you both output to TV with wires and wirelessly connect DualShock3 with BT, so maybe it is true analog?), but either way, they should be more playable if that's a comfortable way to hold your gaming device.

And then there are also hacks and patches out there for Vita and PSP emulators and whatnot, but that's its own story.

On another note: I think a cool move would be to build a legacy system that iterates on Vita with full PSP, PSVita, PS1 & PS2 support but with a modern battery, super-efficient silicon, latest connectivity standards, better display, new UI and streamlined UX, full remote play and streaming; roll in some AI upscaling and frame gen to bring all those old games up...

Yep, that came up earlier in the thread, but a PS Legacy handheld device would be a very cool collectible and IMO a compelling product even if other devices like SteamDeck and Phone+Backbone are playing UE5-level games. Unfortunately, Sony just about nuked its PS backlog, and they've been slowly reintroducing games for PS4/PS5 but they don't have nearly the library they had in the original PSN days. (Also, prices are kookoo... $10 for Syphon Filter today when it was $5.99 on PSP 15 years ago?) Back-catalog games are in a weird place these days, it seems there's some issue with rights management or whatever else is making it tough to sell classic games affordably, and publishers just aren't bothering as much as they did in years past. But I'd love to see that change, and I agree that I'd love to see a PSP/Vita-style device be part of that change for Sony's back-catalog. Unfortunately, as with a lot of things, bootleggers & hackers are going to do what big corporations just can't see fit to do for themselves.

 

[CamHostage]

...Socom {etc.} kept my mind occupied while I was going through Leukaemia treatment.

Fuck yeah, SOCOM.

I've said it before, but PSP SOCOM was a defining experience in my gaming life. To be able to link up with 16 players online, with microphones to chat with each other live, just teaching each other the tactics and calling out sniper roosts and making friends in online gameplay, all in a portable device I could enjoy in my backyard on a summer's evening... that's still an experience I crave today. (And sadly, it's hard to get today, because even though the devices are exponentially more capable plus have mics and sometimes even roaming cellular wifi built in, that culture isn't there anymore and that chat feature just isn't treasured as a way for players to meet and have fun these days.)

I don't even like SOCOM, but I fucking loved sessions with the SOCOMs on PSP.

...Maybe I met you playing SOCOM back then, when I was hanging around the house and you were in a hospital or stuck in bed fighting cancer.
Glad you survived.

 

[flying_sq]

Still have my vita, shouldn't have been greedy with the memory cards. Forced me to homebrew to use an SD card with an adapter.

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

Especially compared to NDS which looked like some Chinese knock off plastic garbage.

 

[Deerock71]

The 1-2 punch given to the Vita, ensuring it's demise:

1) SONY pulling the bait and switch by forcing you to buy memory on top of the console itself.

2) Nintendo announcing Monster Hunter 4 3DS exclusivity.