Coming Down

I recently found out that the newest (well, almost newest) firmware for the PSP has been hacked and enables the owner to downgrade his PSP to the homebrew haven of firmware 1.5. Taking out all the 'legal' disputes out of the way and obviously taking out the use of such methods to download and play pirated games, what would downgrading really have to offer?
Well, it actually seems like you can do quite a lot of cool stuff. Emulators being one of them. Not to mention other media players in which you can play a variety of formats by just dragging and dropping anywhere in the memory stick. Now let's be honest here, all that sounds nice and cool but really, I'm not out with my PSP THAT often, and quite honestly I'd bring my DS if I wanted to play something 2D-ish so why go through all the hazard of risking bricking your PSP, losing some features(though quite honestly I wouldn't really miss most of them -lol- I mean: the browser sucks and the only 'cool' thing they've added is visualizations which are really not that big a deal either O_o), and then if you want to play more recent games you need to either get custom firmware or use something like devhook to 'emulate' firmware. The ones in the know of PSP and homebrewing don't see this as much of a big deal, and it probably isn't but I'm just not THAT much interested in going through all that to use some homebrew stuff like text editors and emulators (I know I'm cutting a lot of progz out of the equation -lol). Now what does seem interesting ;) is making a backup of your game and putting it in your memory stick. The advantages of such is faster loading times and longer battery life. After all I bought a PSP to play PSP games... Even if it doesn't have such a good library. Plus at least I can import without worrying about compatibility. I've never been the one to pirate. I end up buying the game if I like it. In fact I've bought games BECAUSE I gave it a little test drive. Plus the PSP is so full of cool looking games that scare the shit out of you when you play or read their reviews. Though Tokobot didn't do that to me, it did get boring... While re-browsing the PSP library I did find some interesting games that, from what I read too, seem to be sure bets. One of the older (and hopefully cheaper) ones that got my attention was Infected. J'eanne d'Arc and Monster Hunter also got my attention. If Uska gets a PSP, I'd love to get Monster Hunter since it has multiplayer and is very similar to PSO/PSU XD One that really caught my eye was Brave Story: New traveler. After reading a good review of it and finding out it has the option to switch to the Japanese voices, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it.

Still in times of financial woes, it's a bit hard to dream and look at new games, so I'll mainly focus on finishing Final Fantasy 3, which I finally took a step forward in this morning. I just love that game, and I can't wait for the FFIV remake for DS which looks really similar to FFIII's style. Pokemon is there... and sadly nothing is motivating me to beat the elite four. I guess the same thing happened again. It first happened with Gold & Silver (which Uska proudly finished) I was really into the game and suddenly I lost interest at one point. It was the version where I less progressed. It didn't help me that I played a bit the import version and the hype kinda went down. Now Ruby was a similar story (and for some strange reason, me and Uska don't know WHY he didn't get it too O_o I mean, he had a GBA before me lol) but I did get to beat it completely somehow, I admit that I liked it a lot, and it seems that since I kinda skipped a generation, it helped the game look fresh. Now Pearl I got just to the part before the elite four, after finishing the ALWAYS annoying Victory Road. Some things happened, but mainly I was discouraged cause I gave3 the Elite Four a try, just to see how hard it was and well, the first one beated me. Then thinking of all the grinding I needed to do kept on discouraging me to the point that I just don't want to play it. And quite honestly the game is great and all, but I expected an actual upgrade from Ruby/Sapphire but I mainly realized and admitted it when the fuss went down. Who knows, maybe I'll need to wait a year to have the urge to finish it. See you around.