10 THINGS TO DO WITH A PSP
Sony’s PSP hardware is selling quite well around the world. In Japan the Monster Hunter games has given impetus to the handheld that isn’t a DS, bringing gangs of otaku together in order to play with each other (emphasis mine). In the west, the PSP is the is hacked console currently on the market.
10. Use it as a remote controller for your PS3 I don’t know why but somehow you can and somehow you would want to. Your PSP interfaces with the PS3 in useful ways not seen since the Gamecube could be attached to the Gamecube. You can download, via the PS3, PSOne games. You can use your PSP, via the PS3, to play online multiplayer games. You can watch movies stored on your PSP, via your Bravia, in a resolution best described as “I paid 3k for this TV and it looks like what?”
9. Play movies on UMD disc. Movies such as XXX, Charlie’s Angels, SWAT and Hitch.
8. Play movies from your DVD collection ripped to PSP or the digital copy many DVD’s come with these days.
7. Skype. With its inbuilt Wifi functionality you can use the PSP as if it were a telephone, not not as if it were an NGage. For some reason, Sony forget about the whole Sony Ericsson thing when they designed this thing. Its a multi-media player, not a taco.
6. Spend countless hours updating the firmware every 14 days. The system has been out since 2005 and the firmware is now up to version 5 something.
5. Spend countless hours downgrading the firmware so you can run “homebrew.” Apparently everyone wants to use “homebrew” games. Note that when you say this out loud you must hold up your hands and articulate the quotation marks with your fingers. This is so people know you’re using “homebrew” as a euphemism for pirated games. In lieu of articulating quotating marks with your fingers, you can also tap the side of your nose or wink (or ever say “homebrew, wink wink.)”
4. Pirate the games. Why lie? That’s why you bought this thing. That’s why the system sells respectable numbers each month but UMD is a completely dead format and PSP games almost never chart. Its incredible that western publishers bother so much with trying to port their PS2 and Wii titles onto PSP considering the return on their investment must be less than the distance between a corpse of a Wall Street Stockbroker with an office on the 30th floor and the pavement.
3. Use the PSP as an MP3 player. Yes apparently Sony didn’t completely forget they invented the walkman. But they did forget how and why they invented it. The PSP, with a decent size memory stick can play music as well as movies.
2. If you own any version of PSP, you know have something to use as a conversation starter with someone who works in a store where memory cards are sold. You can have long and ponderous conversations about the differences between the 1178 different variations of Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick format, complain about why the fuck they couldn’t just use the ubiquitous and far cheaper SD cards
1. Play legally bought games. No only kidding. What would you want to play that shit? Instead you can look cooler on the bus than those DS-playing kiddies playing New Super Mario, Mario Kart and whatever else came out on the DS two years ago.
Editor’s note: I have not downgraded the firmware on my PSP. I also have not played my PSP is a long time. It has more dust covering it than my Wii.
