My newfound gaming life on the PSP.

So a year ago I moved out of my apartment as I finished my time at the community college I was attending to move to a University and finish my BA in Theatre. I sold my PS4, Xbox One, WiiU, 3DS (acquired another) and Vita as I needed to money at the time for my move. I have always stayed as current as I possibly could, but in the last year I have found myself gaming very little. I was OK with that for a while, as I wanted to finish my degree (currently three semesters away) with as little distraction as possible. I still kept with watching GB quick looks from time to time and enjoy listening to the podcast, as always. However, along the lines I did get really antsy to play some games, but with very little money and in the last years of my degree, I thought that would be something that wouldn't happen. However, I stumbled across the PSP. I had one at launch a decade ago and own it for three years. I really liked the system back then, but I find that in the years I have been away from the system it grew into a very interesting indie style system. It often reminds me of the Dreamcast, as there are many weird, indie titles and plenty of great ports of older RPG's that it really fits my current gaming lifestyle as I have very little money and time for games, but still want to dedicate some time in the week to games. I also really love that there are quality ports of games I always wanted to play. For instance, I have always enjoyed the Final Fantasy games and have completed each game in the main series from VII and foreward, but never delved into the SNES and NES era. I am currectly nearing completion of Final Fantasy IV on the PSP and it's a great port that I have enjoyed. I currently have Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops coming in the mail, as I ordered it from amazon for very cheap. Most of the games in the library are also impressively inexpensive. I think this post was more to share my story, but I do ask what retro style system has surprised you over the years and that you see yourself coming back to?

Yo, that thing is a bitchin emulator machine. Throw some CFW on it and play all the games.

The PSPGo really impressed me. The screen was perfect for retro games, especially 2D RPGs.

My PSP got new life when I got CFW on it and put some emulators on there. I got a bigger memory card, put all my UMD's on the PC, and that thing was suddenly fucking awesome again.

@believer258: Out of curiosity how do you put UMD's onto a PC?

@freezyfrog: If @believer258 is doing it the way I always have, it's a CFW thing.

I ended up buying a copy of Darkstalkers Chronicle on a whim when I was in a Goodwill over the weekend and was reminded of how fondly I remember the PSP, as well as the sheer utility the damn thing has with custom firmware. That system has a pretty great library, looking back.

With a UMD in the PSP and the PSP on the XMB, you could push a button and get several options. One of those was to change the USB mode. If you put this on UMD, you could plug your PSP into your PC and instead of seeing what you'd normally see, you would just see an ISO. You'd copy that to wherever you kept your PSP ISO's, rename it, then disconnect your PSP. If you so chose, you could then change the USB mode back to normal and copy that ISO back to an ISO folder on your PSP's memory card. Then, when you turned on your PSP and went to the games section, you'd see whatever game you just copied. With a big enough memory card, you could carry around a lot of games with you.

This could only be done with custom firmware (CFW) installed. Well, I'm using past tense, it's still perfectly doable, but the PSP homebrew scene has, from what I understand, died out, or at least it almost has. The remnants are still there if you want to venture down the path of putting CFW on a PSP. I haven't personally played mine all that much in a long time. My PSP looked absolutely pristine when I put CFW on it and these days the UMD drive doesn't work and the back of it is taped together - that should give you a pretty good idea of how much extra life I got out of that thing with emulators and carrying all of my games in my pocket and stuff.

@believer258: I feel like it's less that the homebrew scene has died out, it's that the PSP hasn't gotten any regular updates, and the CFW has achieved its purpose. You can still launch actual UMD's, and officially downloaded games on it, but also switch modes and launch all the CFW stuff. All the emulators work mostly great as well. I sold my PSP several years ago but even back then I managed to play through Chrono Trigger on my PSP. PS1 emulation is particularly good.

Or in other words, it's more that there isn't really any more development needed on the PSP. There can be more but I think you can say "it's done."