Happy New Year

Just wanted to say Happy New Year and I hope the coming year is good to you all.

Polygunwars version 0.4

I did a head-to-head between Trigonometry Wars and Polygunwars v0.2 soon after ahrimanes released it. Here is an impressive update to the Geometry Wars clone. Polygunwars v0.4 is only available for 3.xx cfw.
Some of the major improvements are:

• main menu
• take screen shot with select button
  
• improved graphics
• improved enemy spawning/added enemies
  
• improved scoring system including hi score table
• improved collisions

These advances among others have really brought this game into it's own. One problem that I found after a short time playing is that there is a significant "slow down" or lag in the game which I can not account for. I assume it is due to the number of enemies/graphics which are displayed at one time because it only happens later in the game when things get busy. I suspect this is a coding problem and may be a relatively easy fix.

Even with the lag problem, this is a major step forward over the version I played a while back.

Well done ahrimanes!

site/download

Star Ocean: The First Departure Release, Trailer, and Themes

Star Ocean on PS2 was one of my favorite RPG's and I can't wait to get a hold of SO: The First Departure for my PSP. It was released on Dec. 27th in Japan. Here is a trailer and a couple of themes for your PSP to hold you over until the U.S. version show up.

Head to Head Multidisk Popstation GUI's

I was hoping to do a 3 way comparison of the new gui's created for DAX's multidisk popsloader (after the holidays) but Kingsquitter isn't showing signs of updating PSX2PSP anytime soon. I don't feel like waiting so I am going to just compare 2 gui's: Red Squirrel's RS-GUI PopStationMD v2.0 and Impaler's PSX Eboot Creator. Look for the comparison post soon after the new year.

Happy Holiday's and a Happy New Year to all.

Dev Kit for PSP Internet Radio Player

Is Sony letting up (a little) on the homebrew war? Here is a post on Playstation.com that says Sony will be putting out a development kit for people who want to create their own internet radio player for the PSP. This is a shock to me. Anyone else?

Official Firmware 3.8 released today

Sony released the official fw for the PSP today. The biggest change/addition to the firmware is now you can access internet radio, Playstation's blog has details, here is a list of what's new. The internet radio player has already been hacked to allow you to use something other than Shoutcast or Icecast. Here is what jas0nuk and Dark AleX have to say about 3.8. Also, it looks like we may get the PSP Media Manager for free, the Japanese Playstation Store did. Of course I will be waiting for a new cfw.

Crisis Core FF7 comes out March 25, 2008

I am a Final Fantasy junky so I have to mention that Crisis Core will be released in the U.S. on March 25th. Here is a teaser trailer for the game. Looks pretty good.

More PSP Homebrew Games Worth Trying

I was so impressed with OpenTyrian that I went looking for other ports, by deniska and others. I found a few and some homebrew games that were originally created for PSP. This is only a few that I thought had promise. They may not be very new but are worth taking a look at.

Project Starfighter:
Ported by Deniska.



Space Shooter with RPG elements. Complete different missions to earn money to upgrade your ship.
Pros: Gameplay and game elements seem adaquate.
Cons: Controls feel sluggish in game and buggy in menus.


Kill Everthing That Moves (KETM):
Ported by Deniska.



Very similar to Tyrian. There are a few different skins that you can use to change the look of this game.
Pros: Lots of power ups and different weapons. Skinable is a nice feature.
Cons: Steep learning curve. Lots of enemies right from the start.

rRootage:
Ported by M.R. Brown.



Destroy the "ship" at the top of the screen while avoiding the different styles of missiles.
Pros: Graphics and animations are nice. Gameplay and controls feel solid.
Cons: The instructions in the readme file are hard to follow so you don't know what you are doing or why you are doing it.

Callisto:
by Fraglab



Side scrolling shooter.
Pros: Graphics are decent. Gameplay is fun but challenging.
Cons: The game is so challenging that it becomes frustrating from the beginning. Steep learning curve.

Attack of the Mutants:
by DeNitro



A basic shooter with many enemies, power ups, and mods.
Pros: Numerous mods have been made to this game. Many of the mods are funny and fun.
Cons: Same gameplay regardless of mods. The game is very basic. It is fun but looses its novelty quickly.

Overall:
I will only be keeping Project: Starfighter on my memory stick. I enjoy RPGs and I didn't get very far in Starfighter and I want to see what else it has to offer in the later missions. The other games are solid but not good enough to take up valuable real estate on my memory stick.

New CFW 3.71 M33-4 is here with Multidisk Popsloader

I mentioned yesterday that Dark AleX and the Devs at Maxconsole were coming out with a Popsloader to allow multidisk PSX games to be created in a single eboot. It is here. DAX and his team have implemented the new Popsloader in an updated CFW to support multidisk games and included in the download is Popstation-md; to create the multidisk eboots. Well done guys. Here is the forum post and downloads (look for the bugfix for 3.71 M33-4 that has already been released). Thank you DAX and M33 team.

New Popsloader for PSX games having multiple disks

The Devs over at Maxconsole are coming out with a new Popsloader which I can't wait for. This new Popsloader will allow you to play Playstation 1 games having more than one disk on your PSP but all the disks will be contained inside one eboot. Currently you have to have a separate eboot for each game disk. I am excited about this because I created eboots for my FF7, FF8, FF9, Chrono Cross, and Legend of Dragoon disks but I can only fit two of the eboots on my ms at a time. Each eboot is about 500 mb and my largest ms is 2 gig (gotta save room for other games, podcasts, videos, etc.). Can't wait for the 8 gig to come down in price. I am speculating that this should reduce the size of the eboots as a whole. Even if the size of the eboot isn't reduced, this will make playing your old PSX games more convenient. Well done guys, can't wait to see it.

OpenTyrian: first impression (UPDATE)

I've been playing Deniska's Tyrian port for a couple of hours and it is awesome. I will continue to play and then give a detailed review but for now it seems like this should be on every homebrew memory stick. One problem: this game is for kernel 1.5, no problem most homebrew is; Deniska didn't KXploit the eboot so I had to download, install, and KXploit it myself. I've been in the homebrew scene for a while and I know how to KXploit but it just another hoop that the user has to jump through. Come on Deniska, what is this 2005? You could have KXploited this for us, all other developers do. Besides that, well done.

Here is the already KXploited complete original game file for those of you who don't want to bother doing it yourself.

Deniska reports that there is a "black screen bug" that occurs occasional with some PSP's. Four alternative eboots are provided to avoid this problem. Here are the 4 alternative eboots already KXploited. Just replace the eboots in OPENTYRIAN and OPENTYRIAN% with one of these. Leave all other files in OPENTYRIAN untouched. Continue replacing eboots until you find one that does not give you the bug. I didn't provide the complete game files for the "alternatives" due to bandwidth concerns and number of downloads.

I am currently using alternative eboot 2 and haven't encountered the bug yet.

For those of you who want to KXploit the eboots themselves, here is the tool download and tutorial.

Check back for the full review.

UPDATE (12/06/07):
In Deniska's readme file, it states that you may encounter a black screen bug. Well I have experienced it several times which means that some of you who downloaded the KXploited file I offered probably have the same problem. I will KXploit Deniska's alternative eboots and upload those also (tonight hopefully). I plan to post my review tomorrow. It is looking good though.

UPDATE2 (12/06/07, later that night):
Alternative KXploited eboots are uploaded. See link and explanation above. Even later, Deniska released a new version v0.6. This version is a bug fix. See my full review here for complete info and new KXploit download link.

Tyrian port release today? (UPDATE)

When I heard about Deniska's port of Tyrian (OpenTyrian) to the PSP I was excited. I am not a patient guy and I really need to play this. Is it still coming out today? This post at QJ claims it will. Although I can't wait I would rather Deniska take the time to do it right. I'll give an in depth review of this port when it arrives. Here is a video of Deniska's work so far.




UPDATE:
As I said earlier, I am impatient. Only a few hours after I wondered if OpenTyrian was coming out, Deniska released it. See my first impressions here.