Platform: Playstation Portable (PSP)

Platform description


General description

The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed by Sony. Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on May 11, 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004. The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in the PAL region on September 1, 2005. It primarily competed with the Nintendo DS, as part of the seventh generation of video games.

The PlayStation Portable became the most powerful portable system when launched, just after the Nintendo DS in 2004. It was the first real competitor to Nintendo's handheld domination, where many challengers, such as SNK's Neo Geo Pocket and Nokia's N-Gage, failed. Its GPU encompassed high-end graphics on a handheld, while its 4.3 inch viewing screen and multi-media capabilities, such as its video player and TV tuner, made the PlayStation Portable a major mobile entertainment device at the time. It also features connectivity with the PlayStation 3, other PSPs and the Internet. It is the only handheld console to use an optical disc format, Universal Media Disc (UMD), as its primary storage medium.

The Universal Media Disc (UMD) is an optical disc medium developed by Sony for use on their PlayStation Portable handheld gaming and multimedia platform. It can hold 900 megabytes (single layer) or 1.8 gigabytes (dual layer) of data and is capable of housing video games, feature-length films, and music. UMD was the trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. for their optical disk cartridge (ODC).

The original PSP model (PSP-1000) was replaced by a slimmer model with design changes (PSP-2000/"Slim & Lite") in 2007. Another remodeling followed in 2008, PSP-3000, which included a new screen and an inbuilt microphone. A complete redesign, PSP Go, came in 2009, followed by a budget model, PSP-E1000, in 2011. The PSP line was succeeded by the PlayStation Vita, released in December 2011 in Japan, and in February 2012 worldwide. Shipments of the PlayStation Portable ended throughout 2014 worldwide, having sold 80 million units in its 10-year lifetime.

PSP1000
PSP2000
PSP3000
PSPN1000 (PSP Go)
PSPE1000 (PSP Street)

For more information on the PSP, including models, hardware and software specifications, see Wikipedia.


Emulating the PSP

PPSSPP can run your PSP games on your PC in full HD resolution, and play them on Android too. It can even upscale textures that would otherwise be too blurry as they were made for the small screen of the original PSP. Even on modern Android phones and tablets, you can often run at double the original resolution. PPSSPP is an open source project, licensed under the GPL 2.0 (or later).

You can download PPSSPP for free, as well as find instructions, help and more at the developer's website here. At Sierra Chest we've tried it out and are very pleased with it.

Games