After owning my PSP for over two years, and pretty much never using it outside of the first few month I had it, I have finally hacked it and put custom firmware on it. I looked into this when I first got the PSP but was quickly discouraged at how convoluted and difficult the process seemed. Things have gotten a lot better over the last couple of years (especially for the older ones like mine), and I’m happy to say that the hack was fairly painless, and I am thoroughly enjoying the fruits of my labour.

I first had to take apart the battery on my PSP. I cut one of the leads on a small chip which puts the battery into service mode. This will make the PSP boot from the memory card. You can then install some custom software on the memory card and boot the PSP. Once this is done, you can install any software you like.

I’ve been playing Rock Band: Unplugged, and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. Crisis Core is a 3D rpg set in the same world as the original FFVII. It has real time combat, not turn based like a lot of games in the Final Fantasy series. The combat is very good, and so far I’m really enjoying it, although I’m still less than an hour into the game.

Rock Band can be described nothing short of incredible. It’s much much more fun than I would have imagined on the PSP. Instead of picking a certain instrument it puts you in charge of all four at the same time. There are 4 tracks displayed on the screen, and you switch from one to the next constantly, playing each one for only a single chord. Once you play a chord on an instrument, that instrument will play itself for a certain amount of time, and you can switch to the next and repeat. Much like keeping 4 plates spinning on sticks, you need to keep them all going. This seems quite awkward at first, but once you get used it it can be quite fun.

If you’re like me however and prefer to stick to one instrument, unfortunately it doesn’t have an option to make that happen on the tour, but I prefer to just select and play songs I like playing anyway. You can go into the extras section and go into practice mode where you won’t need to switch to different instruments. That way you can play away and choose any song you like. I have been doing this, and it’s very interesting to see how the same songs are different on the PSP from the normal rock band games. Some of the really hard songs on drums like ‘Foo Fighters - Everlong’ are not bad on the PSP, and there are some songs that are the opposite. It’s ridiculously fun though. You owe it to yourself to try it if you like rhythm games.

We’re having a LAN at my place this weekend, and Fydo bought himself a PSP this week. It will be fun to get his hacked up and play some multiplayer/co-op. I can’t wait!

In this twitter-esque post, I’m writing to tell you that I’ve updated my backloggery page to reflect the reborn state of my pc now that it’s been cured of it’s swine-flu (also known as Bioshock). I also added a few new games that I’m “now playing” even though I have done nothing but play poker in the recent weeks.

I have been tossing around the idea of making a complete-as-I-can-remember list of all games I have finished (seen credits, etc) over the years. I finally got down to it while bored at work and starting jotting down the names of the games I had finished in my phone. After gathering quite a big list from the depths of my memory, from Commodore 64 and the Amiga, all the way up to PS3/PC games of today. I pitched my idea to fydo on IRC. He promptly said that he had already done such a list, and pointed me towards backloggery.com which is just the place to keep track of all this.

The site allows you to add games and set a status for them. “Playing”, or “Wish list” as well as “unfinished”, “beaten”, “completed”, or “mastered”. I added the games I’m playing now (Left 4 Dead and Quake 3 Arena in LIVE form), and got to adding all the games I had written down in my phone.

This is a pretty cool idea in my opinion, much better than the plan I had to just add it to here in a table. :P

Anyways, check out my profile if you’re willing to give in to the reality that I am better at games than you.

Some ones of note that I’m sort-of proud of:

• Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (all achievements done, rocket man, 333 grubs, etc)
• Little Big Planet (all levels 100% complete, Kyle and I did this together)

Some ones of note that stick out as incredible games (for their time, or even now):

• MDK II (So fun, I have finished it many times)
• Quake III Arena (Rocket Arena III, oh how I loved thee)
• Left 4 Dead (incredible gameplay, funnest co-op game ever made)
• Rollcage II (the first racing game with a puzzle mode that I played, changed the way I look at racing games forever)
• Syndicate (Open style play, mass violence, and the first game with an “active city”. Like GTA3, but very old)
• Serious Sam Series (Intense co-op play, one of the best lan games there is to this day)
• Trackmania Series (best racing games ever made.. hands down)

A friend posted this link in our IRC channel we all hang out in. This is amazing.. just click and be amazed.

Pixel Cookies

I love poker. Nothing of real substance to say about it here, I just love poker. When the World Series Of Poker comes around each year, I get to watching each episode and each bracelet event, then finally the main event. The main event is something else. It’s a $10,000 buy in, and they got 6,800 entrants this year which makes for a pretty amazingly huge prize pool. The top 666 spots paid this year, and the 666th person got over $21,000 dollars for his efforts. The scale of the thing is just unbelievable.

I’m well into the main event now, and they’re down to about 600 guys left. Should get really interesting from here on.

Man, I need to start playing again. I also need to start playing online.

Rock band kicks serious ass. I thought the game was good fun when I started playing it a while back, but I didn’t see myself getting into it. I played guitar mainly because drums were too hard. I got pretty decent at guitar, playing a bunch of songs on expert, but the real hard ones kick my ass.

I started playing drums a bit but struggled with the kick pedal like most. Once I got used to it, I started to really enjoy it, much much more than guitar.

Anyway, I broke my own and my friends kick pedal. They like to flex with a normal note, and they will crack right in the middle of the pedal. Today me and Kyle took the kick pedals out to the shop I work at and made some aluminum pieces that fit the foot pedal. We drilled holes and riveted the pieces to the pedals. Ii looks fantastic and plays better than a stock kit. The pedal feels nice and firm, and it’s not going to flex at all now.

I play almost exclusively on expert now with drums and it’s funner than ever. The feeling of playing note for note to these songs is just awesome! I think this may be the funnest game I have ever played, and the downloadable content is really good. Especially since they have some good metal tunes.

Pictures to come soon.

UPDATE: Here’s the pictures of it! Watch out where you rivet the plate on though if you plan on doing this. In the second picture you can see the rivet thrhough the top of the pedal. There is a sensor here on some versions of the pedal that you will have to watch for.