Does Era have fond memories of the PSP?

[It’s Time To Go]

I listened to a cane & rinse podcast on the PSP recently

In our latest single format special, Leon, Chris, James and Leah review "The Walkman of the 21st Century", Sony's PlayStation Portable.

In our latest single format special, Leon, Chris, James and Leah review "The Walkman of the 21st Century", Sony's PlayStation Portable.

caneandrinse.com

And they only got one user post about the PSP. PSP seems to be relatively overlooked as a console. It feels as though it was considerably overshadowed by the DS. However, I love the PSP hardware for one, I think its gorgeous.

I loved the hardware in 2005, and I love it now.


Sony tried to go all digital with the PSP. Didn't work, but the Go is also a lovely piece of gaming kit

Whilst UMD was a weird failure, and its multimedia capabilities were definitely made redundant by the iPod and imminent release and take up of various smartphone models, I know I used my PSP for music, video, and photos back in the day. I also have a huge nostalgic soft spot for UMD's, despite, in retrospect, their quality being pretty rubbish.


And of course, the games. The PSP had a 1300+ game strong library. Whilst a lot of it has been ported to other platforms, some of it remains exclusive on the PSP.


Two God of War games.
Two Syphon Filter games
Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker
Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII
Lumines
A jak & Daxter game, and a daxter spinoff.
Same for ratchet & clank
Lumines
The Patapon series.
The LocoRoco series
A whole bunch of great final fantasy remakes, including 1,2,4, and tactics.
A bunch of monster hunter games
Two Grand Theft Auto games
Two exclusive Wipeout games
A kingdom hearts prequel
An exclusive Resistance game
An exclusive Killzone game
An exclusive Assassins Creed game
A bunch of Ape Escape games


And stuff I'm probably forgetting.

 

[RoninStrife]

Ace Combat PSP Memories! beautiful. Even Gran Turismo running on it at 60fps was pretty incredible. Loved Killzone on it too, same with the Metal Gear titles. Flood of memories here!

 

[Hybrid Rainbow]

Played Project Diva for the first time on a hacked PSP. It'll always have a special place in my heart. So many great games (including MH Freedom Unite).

 

[Bor Gullet]

I still have mine and have been playing it during quarantine.

 

[Deleted member 4970]

I used to play Socom Fireteam Bravo 2 multiplayer practically 16 hours a day with this little headset

So many good times with that game

 

[Noisepurge]

so many long flights learning the "claw" to 100% Peacewalker and Crisis Core :D

Final Fantasy IV Definitive Edition, two great God of War prequels, Tekken 5, Wipeout Pulse & Pure, Tactics Ogre, Megaman Maverick Hunter X, Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles...

 

[Theswweet]

Hacked PSP was basically my smartphone before contemporary smartphones were really a thing.

 

[Brass Body Dave]

 

[Rodrigues solitaire]

Best handheld ever made. Can't believe Sony cooked up this sleek high-end device in 2004.

 

[It’s Time To Go]

Hacked PSP was basically my smartphone before contemporary smartphones were really a thing.

Click to shrink...

I forgot to even mention emulation. Which was a big part of the PSP, even though I never did it myself.

 

[Helix]

Ace Combat X, Killzone Liberation, Persona 3P, GTA Liberty City Stories, NFS Underground, MGS: Peace Walker. ahhhh man i need to charge it up and play it again.

 

[Sanctuary]

I borrowed a friend's to play Chains of Olympus, and had it hooked up to the TV (which was a feature more handhelds should have had). That's the totality of my experience with it. I ended up playing some of the games that were on it later though via remasters or compilations for the PS3.

 

[Samiya]

Persona 3 Portable, FF Tactics WOTL, Tactics Ogre, Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean 2, Lunar Silver Star Harmony, Metal Gear Acid 1+2, Jeanne d'Arc, CRUSH, Patapon, Locoroco, Ace Combat X, the entire PS1 library. Yup, it was amazing.

 

[Cess007]

oh jfc, not only the games. I loved the homebrew scene for the PSP.

I remember spending hours setting my own custom themes; the crazier, the better.

 

[GeekyDad]

Was never in love with the device itself, a lot of that due to the weird design of the thumb-thing (rough against the skin), but as just an FFT/Tactics Ogre-playing machine, it was well worth the money. I still get plenty of mileage out of it just for those two games alone.

 

[Silly Buck]

I'll never forget Midnight Club on my PSP. What a system!

 

[krossj]

Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together and Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions, so good!

 

[Syril]

I forgot to even mention emulation. Which was a big part of the PSP, even though I never did it myself.

Click to shrink...

Retro games actually look very good on it because their native resolutions take up most of the screen.

 

[Rotobit]

I have a lot of nostalgia for the little thing. It was essentially the last time we got regular output from JRPG devs because the capabilities were that perfect sweetspot where you could either have something verging on PS2 quality...

(Crisis Core)

Or something more pared back and 2D...

(Tales of Eternia)

... and both would sell well and get the same treatment from critics and audiences.

I have extremely fond memories of playing Birth by Sleep for the first time on the move to my university dorm.

That said, the controls were a bit clunky and the UMD drive was a little too loud. Plus the last time I dug my PSP out the battery looked like it was about to explode, I'd make sure to check on that if you've got one sitting in a closet.

 

[RPGamer92]

It was a great FF/Persona/PS1 machine.

 

[Eriol]

I still have around my original psp somewhere, was the first handheld ib ought with my own money. So many good stuff on there

 

[JulianV]

Last week I got 195 ps1 games for psp, wish I had the Go to use the dualshock.

 

[Zippedpinhead]

A lot about the PSP worked great.

and the 3rd party support was incredible.

Unfortunately, the Digital storefront failed to get some key games in the US (FF1, FF2, Crisis Core, Birth By Sleep, among many others from the early days).

Ultimately, what killed the PSP was the absolute thrashing it got by running unlicensed code. Huge install base, but by the last two years of use I was the only person i know actually buying games for the console.

Still have summon night 5 and Class of Heroes 2 sealed.

 

[Kingpin Rogers]

Nah, I hated it back in the day. My family got one and for some reason, we barely got any games for it. I subsisted on mostly just Archer Macleans Mercury, some Snooker game, FF1 and Crisis Core. For the longest time, I was just under the impression it had no games until I actually looked into it myself and realised I was missing out on so much. Funnily enough, a similar thing happened with the Vita where I basically just used it to play VLR, Danganronpa and P4G thinking that was pretty much all it had to offer until I realised years later it actually had a pretty decent library and is a great little portable device, especially with homebrew, even something as simple as SD2Vita helps that device out so much.

 

[Gay Bowser]

The PSP felt so ahead of its time. That screen put the Nintendo handhelds' screens to shame, and UMD felt like the future, even though it wasn't.

I loved the tall narrow cases, and their super narrow instruction manuals.

And we got a PoPoLoCrois game on it, released in NA <3

 

[Zerokingx]

Kingdom Hearts BBS, Crisis Core, and Dissidia 012 were the games I loved :)

 

[asd202]

Amazing PSX emulation machine.

 

[Huey]

Great system.

But the poll should read "I wasted money on proprietary memory"

I'll never forget Midnight Club on my PSP. What a system!

Click to shrink...

Incredible ports, no idea how they accomplished that.

 

[psynergyadept]

Loved that thing! Was an absolute solid handheld, definitely gave the DS a run for its money and for my time

 

[J.Devesh]

I have 3 of them... A black 2000, a turquoise 3000 and a white Go!

 

[Deleted member 10737]

loved my PSP. great library of games, and the hardware was way ahead of its time.

the PSP+DS were the best generation for handheld gaming, it's a shame that gen will never be topped.

 

[rude]

3rd best handheld console after DS and GBA.

Remember playing Peace Walker and Dissidia till my thumbs got sore.

 

[SFenton]

Imagine not loving the PSP, and it having literally the best Rock Band title.

 

[TeHi & BuSp]

Hacked PSP + IR Shell were a blast in those days

 

[chandoog]

I have equally fond memories of my PSP 1000 (RIP) both as a games machine and a portable multimedia machine.

Hell, I remember downloading and copying a bunch of Giantbomb's Persona 4 Endurance Run videos on it back in the day.

One hell of a little machine.

 

[Diarrhea Day-Lewis]

I didn't have mine more than a few months but enjoyed it while I had it. Only suffered because there were simply too many DS games to play 2007-2010

 

[JamRock7]

PSP blew my mind back in the day. Didn't know a game like gta could be played on the go until my dad bought Vice city stories back in 06

 

[Lee Chaolan]

Playing Dracula X Chronicles for the first time was pretty sweet.

Although they should have brought that along with Dracula X Collection, which was disappointing.

 

[ffdgh]

Really enjoyed it.

 

[Deleted member 10737]

so many hours of playing lumines...

 

[Machine Law]

I have very fond memories of mine. Playing Midnight Club 3 after school, trying out the different demo UMDs that came with it (Spiderman 2 was included!), and afterwards it became an awesome emulation machine. The PSP was pretty great.

 

[Duane]

Yeah, I really liked it. I turned it into an emu machine later on, but it was great in its own right. I loved the DS too, that was just a great time for portable machines.

 

[Vaser]

It gave me Crisis Core, one of my all time favorites, so yeah, I like the PSP.

 

[Bradbury]

I loved it, I have a lot of nostalgia for both it and the DS. to this day Dissidia and Peace Walker are two of the games I most put hours in my life

 

[Renteka-Bond]

The over 1000 hours I spent on Duodecim would make it easily my most played game of all time if it wasn't beaten by League of Legends. I loved that little thing and I even have a hacked Go and a relatively recently hacked Vita to honor its memory, even if I hardly play them now.

Of all the handhelds, PSP is by far my favorite, with Vita as a close second.

 

[Wong Kar Why]

i remember going to the metreon with my parents on opening week to buy one. got a dead pixel the same week lmao

 

[Deleted member 17210]

I had the original model PSP and was really disappointed at how uncomfortable it was. The system had some great games but that really reduced my enjoyment. It wasn't until the Vita that I really liked playing PSP games.

 

[djplaeskool]

The words 'Monster Hunter' cause my left hand to contort itself into the Claw grip.

 

[Mekanos]

The classic homebrew system, so many games to play in the palm of your hand along with the entire PS1 library. Definitely not how I anticipated using it but I got so many hours out of it.

I only own 3 PSP games lmao. The library didn't appeal to me a ton but I certainly made my own fun.

 

[thewienke]

So to put my opinion in perspective, I've never really enjoyed a portable format more than a console/PC format. Not for any consistent amount of time at least until the Switch which has a giant screen and I got one of those grips for it so I don't get hand cramps. So I'm almost 40 now and I finally found a portable that doesn't lose a lot what I like about the console experience - hooray!

I bought a PSP 1000 at launch and it was decent. I liked Wipeout Pure and Lumines but the other launch games were pretty mediocre. The load times were pretty brutal and at that time it didn't look like there was a lot coming out for the system that weren't just truncated versions of console games so I ended up selling it.

I later bought a PSP Go because the form factor was pretty damn sexy but that too collected dust after a while.

I truly think the Vita was just a much better system and enjoyed that more except for that damn memory card problem.