Current state of the PSP world (custom firmware)

[Harrison]

Lumines doesn't look like a game I'd usually spend money on but if a lot of people are buying it simply to use to downgrade perhaps eBay might be flooded with them and I can get it cheap off there.

It is more likely to work in the opposite way. Because most people are trying to obtain the game so they can use it to degrade their systems sellers will increase their prices as the game is suddenly in high demand. This happened with GTA:LCS. Before the GTA downgrader existed GTA sold for £10-15 on ebay. Once the downgrader was released the price shot up on ebay to £22-50. And I can see the same happening with Lumines, although unlike GTA where only a specific version worked, with Lumines all versions are meant to work so it might not be so bad.

As for the game itself, Lumines is a great puzzle game. When you first play it you wonder what the fuss is about, but after playing it for an hour you realise why. It is very simple but good fun to play. Kind of like a cross between tetris, blocks, columns and a few other puzzle games. Some great music and graphics too.

How does it work once you have the custom firmware? Do you put the ISO image on a Memorystick along with some application to run it?

It ised to be the case that you needed a complicated application to run game ISO images from memory stick, but not any more. Now with custom firmware you don't need to use any applications to run them. You just copy the game ISO files onto the memory stick in the ISO directory, then on the PSP navigate to the game section and all of the game ISOs you have on the memory stick will be listed ready to play. And because the ISO launcher is built into the firmware you just select the game and it loads and runs.

A big advantage of running games from memory stick is a huge saving in battery power. As there is no UMD spinning in the drive the system is not using any power to read discs. On my system, running a game from UMD the battery lasts maybe 3 hours or so, but running games from memory stick I've managed over 10 hours between charges.

Also of note is the "No UMD" mode in current firmware. The original ISO loaders for the PSP used a method where a real game was always in the PSP's UMD drive and when the loader booted it would use the real disc to trick the PSP firmware that it was booting a real disc, and then would switch to the ISO image to continue loading the game. With current firmware there is a "No UMD" mode. This means you don't need a disc in the drive to run ISO based games from the memory stick. The only problem is that the No UMD method isn't 100% compatible with all games so for some you do need to switch to using the older method (which is also built into the firmware) where it uses a UMD in the drive to boot the ISO images.

Am I right in thinking a 1GB card will provide enough capacity?

Yes and No. Although UMDs have a capacity of 1.8GB I've so far I've not seen any game ISOs larger than about 900MB, so a 1GB memory stick is fine for running any current games. But I would recommend you get at least a 2GB memory stick as having a larger memory stick means you can fit more on it at once and have more games available at once to play.

It also means you can fit other stuff on the stick at the same time as some games. Such as music and videos.

I also recommend you stick with official Sony memory sticks and don't buy third party sticks as they are not as reliable and don't carry the 5 year warranty of the Sony ones. On all of the PSP forums I visit I've read of many people having problems with third party sticks from companies such as Sans, Lexar and others.

[AlexJ]

Looking at play.com they're doing Sony 2GB for £17.99 (£9/GB) or 1GB for £13.49 so with the 2nd GB costing just £4.50, it makes sense to go for the higher capacity.

[Submeg]

About the downgrade, it was easy, I did it and it worked, so it was ok. About Lumines...if you wish to borrow it, I have the game. I could always mail it to you for you to use to downgrade

[Demon Cleaner]

Looking at play.com they're doing Sony 2GB for £17.99 (£9/GB) or 1GB for £13.49 so with the 2nd GB costing just £4.50, it makes sense to go for the higher capacity.

That is indeed no big difference, I would also get the 2GB in your place. I never looked for memory sticks like this, but it seems they dropped a lot in price recently.

[Harrison]

Memory sticks have definitely dropped in price a lot this year, although they are still more expensive than alternative flash memory such as SD cards which cost about half the price of Sony Memory Sticks.

BTW, if any of you are interesting in seeing more pictures of the new slim PSP and the documentation about it, someone on a PSP forum found this interesting link which contains PDFs of images and all of the specs of the new revised PSP. Quite a cool find.

[Demon Cleaner]

Some nice pictures they have there.

[AlexJ]

Right got my PSP at last, firmware on it appears to be v2.71 (Firmware the same thing as system software I assume?).

[FOL]

Thats great, DONT UPDATE IT, ignore what any UMD says or Network Update.

Im sure someone can talk you through it. If not, arrange a time to meet up in chat and i will talk you through the process.