Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

offenders yet - players have approximately 1
minute and 15 seconds of load times. That’s not
an exaggeration.
On the other end of the spectrum are
games with short load times and very long
play times such as Lumines. After all, what is
a portable game console without a good puzzle
game? The PSP has delivered in that category,
and this game alone was more than enough to
win over a few hearts and dollars. The PSP also
got help from some major companies bringing
their grandest franchises over: Metal Gear, Ridge
Racer, Wipe Out, Twisted Metal, Tiger Woods,
Hot Shots Golf, Spiderman, Tony Hawk, Dark-
stalkers and promises of Grand Theft Auto cover
just about every genre for Playstation users. It’s
a pretty impressive launch line-up. But we’ve
played all of these games before.
Without any games on the horizon -
Memory Stick in hand - those who like to tinker
did. Initially, early adopters with their Japa-
nese PSPs were working on circumnavigating
security so they could play emulations of their
favorite Famicom games. When the word got
out, all involved in the emulation and homebrew
scene jumped aboard. At first were rumors and
hoaxes. A trick video, using the PSP’s built-in
movie player, fooled some into thinking that
Super Mario Bros. 3 was playable. Still, little was
released to the public for quite some time.
Finally a breakthrough occurred as a flood
of emulators hit the net with status reports
ranging from working but unplayable to playable
with bugs. Around this time, US players were
getting their feet wet with the PSP while Europe
was still in limbo. Shortly after, PSP emulators
hit the scene which allowed hackers to play
and test games on their computers, speeding
up the process of homebrew and emulation by
allowing even those without PSPs to take part.
Then the 1.50 firmware that shipped with US
PSPs was slowly cracked, initially via a Memory
Stick swapping exploit, and days later by abus-
ing holes in the firmware which made swapping
Memory Sticks unnecessary.
Europe, wanting a piece of the action, was
122 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #3
left to import systems from overseas. With the
September first release date still in the future,
sitting back while the rest of us got to play was
just not an option for some. To put a halt on
imports Sony put out legal threats to several
retailers (including eBay) who were selling early
PSPs to Europe. This rubbed some people the
wrong way - was this step really warranted?
Sony was losing money with every import
system sold to Europe, which might have “very
significantly impact(ed) the excitement and
anticipation of the market and the way we can
exploit that (excitement) in the run-up to the
September launch.” Sony was grasping at straws
to maintain a hold on their own system.
Then, on July 11th 2005, just when Sony
was starting to cool things down a bit, WAB
Launcher software was released for the PSP.
“Leaked” is a probably a better descrip-
tion than released. So what is this and why
did it get its own paragraph? Well, this is what
the pirates use. It allows you to put an image
of a UMD (Sony’s optical disc format for the
PSP) onto your Memory Stick Duo and play any
game without a UMD in the drive. Of course, the
memory stick has to be large enough, and most
games require quite an investment to obtain
the proper sized Memory Stick, but even with
Sony’s inflated Memory stick prices it costs no
more than that of two PSP games. With a bit of
searching and the use of a few chat programs,
you can find someone who will let you download
the latest PSP games to play without ever touch-
ing an actual, physical, game.
This makes a system that: Sony is losing
money on, has the ability to play thousands of
games through emulation, faces stiff competi-