Got a few minutes to sit down and play the Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters demo. I was gonna make a thread about it and post my impressions in there, but this'll suffice, unless a few people want a thread made. Anyway, on to the impressions.

You're given three places to choose from in the demo -- some time with Ratchet on Pokitaru Island (reminiscent from the first and maybe the second or third games), some time with Clank, and a boss battle. Thus far, I've only played as Ratchet, so my impressions come from that.

First off, the graphics. Very pretty. Looks really, really close to what the first game had, which is saying a lot considering the first game was very polished. Good draw distance from what I've seen -- no blurriness looking into the horizon. The cutscenes are beautiful, more than on par with their PS2 counterparts. They're not CG, just further-polished in-game polygons, but they look really good.

The sound is everything you'd expect from the series. Nothing's changed, which is entirely a good thing. It's to be expected, since the developers (High Impact Studios) had previous experience with the Ratchet series. All the sound effects are intact, the voice acting has remained the same, all the grunts and groans, etc. I really like the music for Pokitaru Island as well -- it was pretty suiting and fun to listen to.

The gameplay's what's really important. In a platformer, it always is. The area I played didn't exploit anything terribly intuitive, since it was a tutorial level of sorts. The good news though is that players of the previous games will have no trouble figuring anything out -- it's the same R&C you've played before, control-wise. The gunplay is as fun as ever, and it's just as easy and seamless to switch between melee and long-range combat. You have the ability to switch to first person view and fire weapons as well. Again, nothing new but nothing bad.

In the game, you're given a few weapons and one to buy. Of course, you've got your handy wrench. The Lacerator is your typical blaster, the Acid Bomb is just as it sounds and the Concussion Gun is your basic shotgun. The new weapon is the Bee Mine Glove, which when thrown releases a pack of bees to terrorize your enemies. Pretty fun to watch. You can buy the standard issue flamethrower called the Scorcher for 2500 bolts (easily attainable) as well.

So what makes this game new from all the others? Not too terribly much, but there was one awesome concept I ran across and hope to exploit to a much greater degree later on. During the Pokitaru level, you come across pieces of armor. In the previous three games, you just bought a whole set all at once which upgraded your defense. However, in Size Matters your armor does something a little more--when you gather all the pieces (body, gloves, feet, helmet Megaman lolz) your weapon takes on that armor's characteristic.

In Pokitaru, you pick up the Wildfire armor set. Getting the whole collection makes your weapon flamable, and your attacks burn your enemies and (presumably) cause more damage. Pretty cool!

Beyond that, you gain experience the same way you have before. Beat enemies, experience bar fills up. When it peaks, you get another point of life ala Deadlocked. I didn't see any such bar for the weapons though, so I hope they didn't leave weapon upgrading out of the game.

I had a blast playing the first level, and I'll give the others a go shortly. Between Daxter and Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, I'd say Size Matters is shaping up to be a bit of a better game. Have to wait until the endgame to declare that though.

Can anyone recommend any PSP games. I need something to play over the holidays =/ I have MGS:PO, MGA 1/2, Loco Roco, and Lumines.

Killzone Liberation and/or Ace Combat X. Both games are tons of fun.

Both of the Megaman games (Powered Up! and Maverick Hunter X) are incredible. Daxter's a really good platformer, and Valkyrie Profile is ftw of internets all over the place.

OK... Ths right here will upset a few people. But I will say it anyway

I have been away from the Psp scene for a while because it was stolen, So all the Stuf I did know about Hombrews have prolly been updated. I need somebody to Tutor me again from the Top so I can be updated.

What I have been doing is saving the new updates that have come out ever since the 2.6 to the new 3.1
I'm pretty sure that all the knowledge I DID have about the PsP is useless now. Like only being able to play Homebrew on 1.5 or something. I'm pretty sure that was updated and I'm trying to get a Psp for christmas

My goal is the Following


*Being able to play some type of Emulator on my Psp. Preferably a playstation one so I can play Final Fantasy any and everywhere I go.

That's all I want... An n64 emulator would be nice too.

I know this makes you sick, Trust me... I used to flame people too for asking such stupid questions... It now seems that I am one of them, And I regret my actions. Any and all help would be appreciated

Thanks

So the 3.02 custom firmware is out and the latest revision (OE-B) allows you tu run your own fucking PS1 games via the official (now cracked) Playstation emulator at full speed. The thing is said to be 99% compatible with all PS1 games.

I seriously never expected this to happen, as I thought each title bought from the store came with its own emulation code.

I'm still on my 1.5 firmware PSP, but I plan to upgrade to 3.02 OE-B soon. This is almost too good to be true.

http://pspupdates.qj.net/Dark-AleX-s...g/49/aid/77278

Here's a YouTube clip showing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PSP running at full speed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEvxGiPq_VE&eurl=

Merry fucking christmas, PSP owners!

The PSP hacking scene has moved along so fast this past month or two its hard to keep up if you don't keep an eye on it for a while. Will this new firmware allow you to play PSP ISO's too like Devhook does?

Also I somewhat doubt it to be 99% compatible with all PSone games, if it is able to pull such a statistic I truly would be amazed and plaudits to DAX. But my main gripe becomes what happens with games that require the L2 and R2 buttons and mulitple disc games such as Metal Gear Solid and the Final Fantasy games.

I'm in the process of installing OE-A (and subsequently upgrade to OE-B). Expect some reports soon.

For PS1 games, you need to convert your games (ISOs) to the PopStation (the official Sony PlayStation emulator) format. I hear it's as simple as running UMD ISOs from memory stick and the compatibility rate is indeed amazing.

I'm sure the first PopStation games will "pop" up on the internets anyways, so you can save yourself the trouble of converting.

I wish we could emulate 3.02 with devhook and be able to use the PSone emulator, whether I wait to see if that becomes reality is yet to be seen but I really don't want to say bye bye to the 1.50 firmware on my PSP, shame you can't downgrade again.

Does the new custom OE-B firmware allow the emulation of PSP Iso backups like devhook does?

Yes it does. And the implementation is even better than in DevHook: You start your PSP ISOs straight from the Memory Stick menu in the Game section of the XMB. The UMD options remain untouched, so you can still play your original games/movies.

DevHook couldn't even switch between original UMD and ISO mode on the fly until recently.

The great news after reading threads on qj.net and ps2nfo.com you can downgrade back to 1.50 using the recovery program built into the firmware. Very nifty indeed.

The biggest drawback is that the PAL format gives graphical glitches, which means I will have to download NTSC versions of games I already own which is bothersome to say the least.

Any success yet Rock?

Yeah, OE-B is awesome indeed. I'm really glad that I finally decided to get rid of DevHook with all its glitches, ugly menus, data corruption issues and constant Memory Stick access). The custom firmware seems to be running fine so far, all my PSP ISOs and original games work fine. Without having to load the firmware from Memory Stick, everything (and most notably the browser) is much faster now.

I like how you can just throw all sorts of homebrew in their folders (PSP\GAME150 for 1.50 homebrew and PSP\GAME for everything else) and it's running absolutely flawless. The recovery mode menu is also a very nifty thing, allowing you to go back to whatever firmware you like and repair a bricked PSP).

I have yet to try out PS1 games.

How did you install OE-A was it through an easy installer or via the included instructions?

Another point worth noting is that you can't beat Psycho Mantis on Metal Gear Solid as there is no second controller to switch to.

The included instructions are just fine. Totally did the trick for me. Downgrading my 2.6 firmware to 1.5 was a lot more complicated than this, actually.

I'm guessing that the emulator code will be upgraded by Sony as soon as new games are released on the PlayStation Store. Shouldn't take too long to integrate them with the custom firmware.

Are the PS1 games stretched to fit?

The emulator offers three display modes: original, normal and full screen.

Normal mode increases the resolution to fit vertically and keeps the original aspect while full screen obviously stretches the game to use the entire widescreen display.

YouTube-clip demonstrating display modes with Ridge Racer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmORAtFsNYI&eurl=

Kinda late for this, but Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins is awesome. Very difficult, but extremely good.

hey I got Power Stone collection for christmas ^^ I'm a big fan of that game XD it's good to have 2 game in one ^^ for now the only problem I see is the loading time >.< they are pretty bad... and I think the graphic in power stone 2 was tone down a little (some textures look really bad)

but overall I like this port ^^

I'm currently playing Einhander on my PSP. The game is running flawless at full speed, FMV playback is fine. You can assign buttons for up to 4 controllers, so beating Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid is no problem.

Oh and from what I learned so far, the 99% perfect compatibility rate does indeed seem to hold true. Select games that have been confirmed working:

- Gran Turismo (Video on YouTube: Click)
- Gran Turismo 2
- Symphony of the Night
- Final Fantasy VII (Video on YouTube: Click)
- Final Fantasy VIII
- Rayman
- Ridge Racer Type 4
- Einhander
- Metal Gear Solid
- Air Combat
- Diablo
- Harvest Moon: Back to Nature
- Parappa the Rapper
- Persona
- Xenogears
- Thousand Arms

This emulator is a technical masterpiece. Its encryption, however, was not ... *g*

This is freaking incredible.

I can't wait until they're able to use compression, so that we can save memory card space.

At least with PS1 games they have a max of about 700 megs, so it's not like the sizes of some PSP games.

I just hope that Sony or knowledgeable people of the homebrew scene will continue to improve the emulation code. From the video, Final Fantasy VII seems to have some (minor) sound issues. -__-

EDIT: Converting Vagrant Story now ...

Just curious - I'm really ignorant in this area - with 3.02OE-B, I can still play downloaded PSP ISOs, and I don't need a PS3 to run the PS1 games?

Yes to both and you can downgrade back to firmwares 1.50 to 2.71.

When I update, how would I play the ISOs? Would it still load Devhook? But damn, I can't wait to try it out...

Metal Gear Solid <3

Dammit. Where in the hell are you guys getting the 3.02 updater eboot file. I managed to find the 1.5 one, but I can't seem to find the 3.02 file.