PSP now 721% more fun than before!
PSP just added about 2,000 games to its library of just under 300, making it just about 721% more fun than before. Yes, PSP can now fully emulate 99% of all the PS1 games out there and at full speed with hibernation support.
All you have to do is to upgrade your firmware 1.5 to the hacked 3.02 OE-B firmware and convert the ISO image of your PS1 game into a PSP-bootable EBOOT.PBP file using the bundled tool.
3.02 OE-B also allows you to boot UMD ISOs directly from the Memory Stick folder under Games, bypassing the need for Devhook. And of course, it also identifies itself as 3.02 and thus supports all PSP games that are currently on the market.
The first game I tried out was FFVIII because I happened to have it lying around.
Basically the official 3.00 firmware introduced the Playstation Network feature that allows you to download emulated PS1 games through your PS3 and play them on your PSP. The catch is that the selection is very tiny right now and the games cost 5.99 USD each.
Someone realized that the official PS1 downloads are actually the compressed ISO images wrapped with a fully functional emulator and cracked a copy of Hot Shots 2 to accept other ISO images. And It worked.
So now you can emulate any PS1 games on your PSP with the hacked firmware. Of course you need the downloaded copy of Hot Shots 2 from the Playstation Network in order to extract the required emulation files, but there are ways…
Basically what this means is that, licensing issues aside, Sony is trying to charge people 5.99 USD for every single PS1 game downloaded, even though no extra work is required on their part to release more emulated PS1 games for the PSP since they have already created a fully functional PS1 emulator that works with all games.
Free money?
But of course we are all dirty pirates with no PS3s so it doesn’t matter. Ironically, I probably own more original UMD games than most PSP owners in this pirate-happy country. (The average being close to zero…)
To Sony’s credit, the emulator works very well. (Well duh, they were the ones who made both consoles…) R2 and L2 functions are assigned to either the d-pad or the analogue stick depending on your preference, which is sufficient for most games but not all. (e.g. fighting and maybe FPS?) Can’t be helped I guess.
Screen size is of course not ideal. You can choose to play at the original 320 x 240 resolution (leaving lots of ugly black space), stretch to maximum while maintaining aspect ratio (leaving two ugly black bars) or stretch to fill (ugly distorted graphics). Then again, so many PSP games are ports from other consoles that I’m sure that PSP gamers are all used to this dilemma by now.
Here’s a video of the emulator in action.
Why wait for Sony to release PSP ports at full retail price when you can play your old PS1 games on the go for free?
PSP-Hacks has everything you need.
I need to get myself a 4gb MS DUO so that I can carry all four discs of FFVIII and four discs of Tokimeki Memorial 2 around with me.
December 28th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
That’s right. I just can’t stop reliving final fantasy (currently playing IX). Eat that, UMD movies.
December 28th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
O.o is that ur PSP?? thats so cool! How many games do u have??I just got my PSP months ago so I only have 5 games but I only play 3.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
lol nice… sad thing you can only play one game at a time :D
*continues renaming the WE10UE’s players to romaji for his bro which is a pain in the butt*
December 28th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
I have everything I need to perform this hack, except the psp… darn!
December 28th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Now why the hell did I sell off my PSP again?
*slams head against wall*
December 28th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Cool, gonna try it one day :D
December 28th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Cool, really cool. I might get a PSP just to play Super Robot Wars Alpha and Alpha Gaiden on the move.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
OMFGOMFGOMFOGMFOGMFOGMFOGMFOMGOFMGOFMGFOMGFOMFGOMFG.
December 28th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
bridge bunny, lolz , i am glad i bought the psp from you :D
December 28th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
interesting enuf
but dunno why, since i own my psp, i never tried using hacked firmware, thus i never play umd rip on my psp
maybe i have fool thinking, but until now that hacked firmware
somehow i feel troublesome, whether it can run ur psp perfectly without any problem … but first u need big size of memory stick duo to hold the game
and then, from several sites i read, often rewriting large size of data on ur flash disk (in this case for psp, memory stick duo) will reduce ur flash disk lifespan…
but indeed i am interesting enuf to playing FFVII again on my psp! hahahaha
December 29th, 2006 at 12:17 am
Maybe I should do an experiment whereby I buy a 16mb memory stick and shove it in and out of my USB port to see how many times it’d take to kill it.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:00 am
I want a PSP….
December 29th, 2006 at 2:26 am
I’m one of those who was watching this like a hawk and playing shortly after it was released. Unfortunately, something is wrong with either my copy of HotShots Golf or my CD images I rip, so I’m relying solely on rips other people make.
Unfortunately, most conversions have a problem with the save files overwriting each other, the text still references HotShots in some places, and the compression scheme hasn’t been cracked yet. Once all that’s in place, I’ll be an even happier man. Until then, I guess I’ll just stick with one game, if I can decide which one.
It’s time to catch up on that back-library. Now I need a 4GB memory stick, too…
December 29th, 2006 at 4:54 am
OH SHI-… you are a god DM! Dusted off my unlessed PSP, spent like 2 hours upgrading the FW to 2.71 then to 1.50 then to this. Looks like everything works so far.
Still have to test out my current PSP games to make sure they work, but it’ll be sweet to play some old school PS1 games on PSP as well (SisPri here I come). No clue how to check for homebrews though… or where to go. *cough* any links/suggestions? *cough* ;)
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PSP V3.03 « USELESS THOUGHTSDecember 29th, 2006 at 7:49 am
[...] After reading Darkmirage’s latest post about psp udates, I decided to download the and update my psp from v2.83 to v3.03. The nice part about having this version is that you can play PSone games but you have to convert the game to .iso using iso softwares. Good thing I didn’t lost my ultraISO software from before. Right now, i’m still converting SRW Alpha @ 40%… [...]