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!