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.