My PSP with 11 years of use, still strong today!

chrono@apollo.town to RetroGaming@lemmy.world – 412 points –
64

PSP 2000 hanging around somewhere. Thing was awesome. UMDs where a wild choice tho.

Thankfully softmodding them to launch games of the memory stick was super easy

Yep, quite a lot of potential especially with microsd card adaptors

The PSP was a real beast and the perfect competitor to the DS. I have one that I bought around 2012 (still works, too! though the card reader seems a bit finnicky), rooted it and was happy for many, many hours afterward. Getting a microSD->MemoryStickDuo adapter was was just 😘 πŸ‘Œ

OP, if you haven't yet, play Kenka Bancho Badass Rumble. A beat'em up with big replayability, where you play a delinquent student in the last school trip of the year. Your job is to beat the "main guy" of every other school to prove you're the best!

I had one for 2 glorious weeks after buying it at initial release. Then my baby brother dumped water or something on it while I was at work. That was a lot of money for a teenager at the time. I is sad

Well they are not that expensive just yet. I would grab one, I am actually planning on getting another one just for the sake of it

They were quite expensive when first released, especially compared to the ds

I think they were $299 in my area at release

Right, I think the base model was 250 In the US but the ds was like 125 or 150, also just for fun the inflation matched price today would be 391

Yeah I’d like to pick up an old one at some point. I collect handhelds

I always wanted a PSP but never got one. I really wish Sony would come out with another.

Best modern Sony can do is a streaming shitbox that you can accomplish the same thing with using a phone or tablet you already own, and it’ll have same janky aesthetic as well.

I remember prying open whatever the specific PSP battery you had to use to make a Pandora's battery. Used my Dad's magnifying lense and a needle to sever the connection, and got custom firmware running. Such a cool feeling

You came late to the modding scene then. I bought mine secondhand so I had a PSP with firmware 1.52 that could be modded. Since the newer 2.0 firmware was still unhackable. (soon after you could mod version 2.0 with a gta savegame hack)

So many good memories. I really loved the PSP modding scene.

I loved my psp. It's kicking in a box somewhere in the house. I have fond memories of ad-hoc'ing Untold Legends with my friends in my buddies garage. Good times! Also as a young teen, having an internet browser at my fingertips for porn was a game changer 🀣

The only worthy successor for me has been the steam deck (maybe if I ever jailbroke my switch, but even then). Just wish we had the deck version with a PSP form factor, that would possibly be the best handheld system for emulation and PC gaming you could ask for.

The screen and controls on these things were amazing; they still hold up even today. If only there was a way to put a modern processor in it so you could play emulated and streamed games like a modern device...

Introducing the PSPi. It's that thing I just describedβ„’

As a kid I cracked the main circuit board in mine after dropping it once. Repair was impossible. Those five hours of playtime I got in were nice tho.

Same as a kid I somehow broke the spring for the power button. I swear I had to get it repaired 3 times for other random quirks.

One of the best handhelds of all time. For me it's gotta be Steam Deck, GBC, PSP, DS, GBA in that order.

Atari Lynx? Sega Gamegear? The OG color portables.

He said best handhelds not "mistakes that only exist to complete with the grey brick"

Damn that's harsh. I grew up in a world where there was no such thing as handhelds. There were Tiger Electronics black and white LCD "games" but nothing like an actual handheld game system.

First time I saw a Lynx my mind was blown. I saved up every penny as a little kid to get one, used.

Gamegear came later, and again it blew mind. I do remember how it ate batteries.

That you could play for all of 30 minutes(exaggeration but the battery life on these things sucked hard.)

Holy shit core memory unlocked. I don't think I ever got past like stage 3 of sonic because that thing DEVOURED batteries, and it was like a full set of 6 AA's, too. Felt like it was cheaper to go to the arcade. Worst console I ever owned!

I was the Nintendo dude in my friends group and my best friend was the Sega dude. So while we had fun back and forths we both got to experience both consoles pretty well. I remember being so happy when my friend got the wall adapter for his game gear lol

Sega Nomad was my favorite, bit I'm not sure you could really classify it as a handheld since it ate through batteries like nobody's business

It reminds me of good old times but the device itself is not "modern" anymore. Feels like cheap funstation from aliexpress. It would be great to have a new version of it.

I completely disagree, the device feels really sturdy, I own both a PSP and a Switch and if you ask me I think the switch is more flimsy. The only thing that ages the PSP imo is the UMD reader and the lack of a second joystick, but I still love the design today

The only one that feels cheap is the PSP street, but the others are built to last. 11 years of use is no joke and the buttons still work great on mine

I mean anything works if it's built to last and you take care of it. I still have my original brick grey Nintendo DS 1st Gen and it works flawlessly.

Yea and they could call it PSLife, for breathing new life into the handheld. Surely there would be plenty of games for it and Sony could support it for years to come!

Not sure if you say it with irony or not, let me know tho

I've got my original homebrewed with a bunch of emulators and it still holds up as a solid handheld. I need to bust that out again.. been a little while.

Same here but last year the battery decided to puff up and blow the back off. I could probably still turn it on but I'm not going to risk it lol.

Oh no! Man that reminds me I need to replace the original battery on my original Xbox before it explodes.. Got coin-ops and a lot of old saves on it I don't want to lose.

Yep, there's a lot of juice left on mine, such a huge library and the emulation options are great too

I just dug mine out after losing the charger like 9 years ago. Got a new one, got a new battery, new battery door cover, memory card, and used my cellular hotspot to update the firmware. The original memory card was too small for the firmware.

Hot Shots Golf Open Tee still holds up.

I sold my PSP and spent the money to buy a 2DS.

Too many PSP games tried to have "realistic" 3D look but they struggled because of the weaker-than-PS2 graphics.

I prefer the stylish low-poly look of 3DS games, and its huge library of 2D games.

This is so nice, and then is me with my cringe PSP 3000 which I got new in the box in 2016 and it failed some years after lol.

The battery was messed up (something not uncommon) and then it stopped recognizing batteries at all, something about the bios kinda thingy that is soldered in the motherboard, I read that if you cleaned it up it would help, I opened my unit and I couldn't de attach correctly the cable that powers the unit, I ripped the piece where it plugs all with my hand, to have it half working I glued that piece to the motherboard, which seemed to work (unit wired) for some time, so yeah, this whole mess was a big fail from my part 🀑

I think the best route for me would be to swap the motherboard entirely, or call it a day and get a Retrod Pocket 3 Plus lol.

That's some cool looking background. Is it animated?

Sadly no, it's from the warp gate effect from Chrono Trigger. Best game of all time

Don't forget the beef jerky when you time travel

It is possible to make it, though. At least the tools exist for it.

Still have my launch day version and bust it out to play some guilty gear with friends time to time. Got me into soft modding then hard modding other consoles. Even now it's a tinkerer's delight.

I remember badly wanting one after seeing someone playing Gran Turismo on the subway. I eventually bought a 3G Vita with the expectation that I would be playing PSO2 β€œsoon”. Well, as some of you may know, PSO2 was a surprise hit in Japan, and they never got around to translating it to English until fairly recently, and after the era of the Vita.

I have a 3000. I replaced my cracked screen awhile back and now it can only turn on when plugged in. It sucks because before that the screen was broken, but I could stream it to my TV.

I love this handheld, but my 3000 stopped charging a couple years back. I'm pretty sure it's a bad connector in the body itself, since I used to be able to get it to charge if I set the adapter just right.

But this thing is so small and has so many moving parts that I'm a little more wary about taking it apart and swapping out a component than I would be a full-sized console (or even a Game Boy or something). I might just take it to get repaired instead...

That's impressive! How is the battery? Replaced it over time, if that's possible? How long can you play on it, before it needs to recharge again?

I don't play long enough to run out of it, maybe 3 or 4 hours? I should do some tests. It's still the original one though

I loved mine,homebrew was awesome on it. I really should have gotten a microSD adaptor, those expensive cards were no fun. I played so much with the GBA emulator, actually swapped my GBA saves between the PSP and the Wii.

Recently fished out my PSP-1000 from my closet only to find the battery ready to pop. Need to look into disposing of it now before anything bad happens -_-