Happy Birthday PSP! [A look back at the PSP]

!!Happy Birthday!!

Yes, we are aware that the PSP was released in Japan at the end of 2004, but this is to celebrate the American release and the homebrew that followed!

Well, since it is a birthday, we would like to recap on all of the major events over the past single year. This one year span of time was not wasted at all, we all spent time developing the PSPÂ’s future, and Sony has done as well. The PSP has a promising future thanks to the homebrew developers and Sony (yes, we have to give credit to those who made it!).

Continue to read the entire article for a re-cap on the entire year!

   

!!Happy Birthday!!

Yes, we are aware that the PSP was released in Japan at the end of 2004, but this is to celebrate the American release and the homebrew that followed!

Well, since it is a birthday, we would like to recap on all of the major events over the past single year. This one year span of time was not wasted at all, we all spent time developing the PSPÂ’s future, and Sony has done as well. The PSP has a promising future thanks to the homebrew developers and Sony (yes, we have to give credit to those who made it!).

The first place in the United States to sell these beautiful systems on the 24th was the Sony Metreon. The first person to buy the console in this area was Richard Roth of San Francisco who lined up at 8AM, the morning before. With the doors open and the crowd filed in, the selling began and by the end of the day, the PSPs were gone.

The release titles for the American release were outstanding, taking the PSP graphics to the max in Ridge Racers, Untold Legends, Tony Hawk, and many other titles. The PSP would never have been a hit success without the great games provided at the start, and the graphics that went with them!

The greatest news that was ever reported for the PSP was the execution “Hello World” by Nem, the first homebrew “program” ever released. This program displayed the text “Hello World” on the PSPÂ’s screen and opened the doors to PSP homebrew! Nem is a name no one should forget, so write it down if you didn’t know his name! Following the days after the Hello World release, the source code was released, along with some new homebrew programs. One of the largest homebrew releases seen was the Gameboy emulator. This emulator ran at normal resolution (no stretch) with no sound. This release was such a shocker, that many did not believe it. Luckily enough, PSPUpdates was right there and shortly after it made a proof video for download.

Several other emulators were released after the RIN (Gameboy Color) emulator. Only a week after the release of the Gameboy Color emulator came the SNES emulator.

When these emulators were showing up, they were only playable on firmware 1.0 (JP) PSPÂ’s and not the American versions (1.5). This was sad news to all those who found PSPUpdates (PSPHacker back then) and everyone heard these American cries, and they knew they had to do something about it! A month after homebrew first appeared, the 1.5 firmware was exploited and homebrew could be executed! This was the most exciting news at all because it was the first exploit of the PSP, making the Spanish PSP-Dev team special! The method required two memory sticks, which I was lucky to have a brother with a PSP as well at the time, and started to run RIN and SNES9x on my PSP the same day. The blood rushed through my veins a little bit too fast, almost fainting at the sight of Zelda on my Sony PSP! This method was less than ideal, but it worked, so many were happy, but others were not. Within a short period, PSPersonalize was released for the PSP that would allow users to change their backgrounds with images, this being another great breakthrough in the PSP! This program was so revolutionary that people began going crazy and did not know what to do, so we compiled a guide for them! Only a few days later, a new method came out, using the same exploit, but this time it only required one memory stick! This was such great news, a large smiley face had to accompany the news! With the announcement of homebrew on 1.5 and 1.0, we saw new homebrew tools released to aid developers and users with their PSP. Several programs were released to allow users to edit the eboot fileÂ’s images and hide corrupt icons that were annoying. With this, came even more homebrew games including Squarez. Squarez came to be the most renowned homebrew games ever due to itÂ’s drastic gameplay improvements and additions. I played Squarez for a total of 22 hours, playing it longer than any PSP game I owned at the time. I donÂ’t know how I could play the game so long, but for some reason..I did!
 
There are tooooo many (extra “Os” used to show how many) homebrew games and applications released and you can enjoy the best of the best on our download site.

Sony, meanwhile, issued two security updates to the PSP firmware marked as: Firmware 1.51 and Firmware 1.52. These two firmwares are the only two of the current firmwares unable to run homebrew or downgrade. The newest PSPs would ship with this new firmware, and left many customers “homebrewless.” On July 17th, Sony announced that the newest firmware, 2.0 will be released in Japan very soon, and that the European release date of the PSP will ship with 2.0 firmware as well. Everyone was anxious to use their new PSP as a web browser, many loved homebrew too much to let go, but all seemed to work out in the end. Sony released firmware 2.0 on July 27th of 2005 marking the first “major” update for the Sony PSP. Since the update was so large, a FAQ had to be posted to aid many of our users in their new firmware.

Well, with the 2.0 firmware “rush”, the next big event was the European release. This release succeeded as Sony hoped for, and many European owners were left with “homebrewless” PSPs. This prompted more developers to work on a solution, and so one was brought in the form of a tiff (a picture format) exploit by toc2rta. This caused a major need for future exploration in the 2.0 TIFF exploit, and so, a downgrader was released by MPH! A downgrader was thought of to be difficult with the PSP and its high security, but that did not stop the dedicated homebrew developers/hackers! With this exploit in hand (the tiff exploit), Fanjita made the first homebrew launcher for 2.0 firmware. With the tiff exploit and the downgrader, Sony quickly patched the firmware to version 2.01 and shortly after that released firmware 2.50. Firmware 2.50 offered a few new features to the PSP which mainly consisted of network updates and additions. These new firmwares brought forth new firmware requirements for games, forcing users to update to higher firmwares to play the games, and thus lose homebrew!

With new firmwares released by Sony, hackers found it even more difficult to exploit the PSP, but this did not stop them! Edison Carter released the first ever, in-game cheat device for a PSP game. This game was the renowned Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. This game is amazing on the PSP, and with the cheat device, even better! With this cheat device and the save game hack it used (found by Edison Carter), Fanjita and Ditlew were able to construct the first-ever 2.01, 2.50 and 2.60 eboot loader! This news was the most important news since the 2.0 firmware update and everyone started buying GTA according to some peopleÂ… We canÂ’t attribute GTA sales to this hack, but I think it would be safe for Fanjita and Ditlew to ask for a couple of bucks from Rockstar, whose headquarters are only a few blocks down from FanjitaÂ’s crib!

The PSP is getting quite exploited by now, with MPH having released the downgrader and a firmware launcher, the PSP was far from dead! MPH announced only several weeks ago, that he ran 2.0+ ISOs on his 1.5 PSP, and then released the program to show it! Everyone was able to run their 2.0+ UMD (shortly after the ISOs) and ISO’s on their 1.5 and 1.0 PSPs, and everyone seemed to be in a very good mood! ISOs are never a good thing, but they are much easier to “hack” than UMD execution.

Well, that is the majority of PSP news over the past year, and developing it took a lot of great developers and hackers! Thanks to these dedicated people, the PSP homebrew scene has expanded, and the PSP has reached its American birthday! The PSP homebrew will not see a birthday for another month or so, but it is what made the PSP what it is! Sony has a bright future planned out for the PSP and the “next generation of video games”, so be sure to stay tuned at the loyal PSP sites for constant news delivery.