Entries from March 2006 ↓

Blue2k and the Artillery Shell team have released an update of the PSP shell known as, Artillery Shell: Live Fire! I took some time today to load it onto my 1.5 PSP to give it a few laps around the track. Overall, it is a fine application. It includes everything you could want from a shell, there is an MP3 player, a picture viewer, and of course a launcher for homebrew and UMD. And unlike the default PSP shell, you can activate USB mode and still use the system. During my testing, I only noticed a couple of small things annoyances. The first was with the MP3 player, if you have your files in subdirectories, the shell would crash. The second thing I did not like was the fact that icons do not save their positions. They show up in their default locations. Not that big of a deal considering the effort the team has put in. If you have a 1.5 PSP and have never tried a replacement shell, I suggest you check this one out.

There is some interesting news over at Gamesindustry.biz – it looks like the PSP is going to get some love from Sony. The bastard child portable still doesn’t have a good game library but it appears Sony is going to make up for that by releasing some peripherals. I wish they would release some games that I actually wanted to play. It also appears Sony is going to take care of the game library problem by making it possible to download Playstation (PS1) games directly to your memory stick/Datel 4 gig hard drive. It’s an interesting solution – going retro… We’ll see how it works out.

I did something incredibly out of character last week… I bought a PSP game! That’s right I’ve had my PSP since launch and just bought my first game! And that game is – "Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee". I bought it off Ebay because for some reason it’s still selling at Gamestop for $29.99 – for a USED copy!

Why did I wait so long to buy a game? Well, to tell you the truth I haven’t used my PSP quite as much as I should and when I do – it has only been for homebrew. I have tried out some of the PSP games; Lumines for example is a great game – just not really one I wanted to purchase. I will probably be keeping a closer eye on Ebay however, now that MPH is making so much progress with his UMD loader, so I won’t have to upgrade my firmware.

Hot Shots Quick Review:

It’s a great little game. The graphics are tight and the play is fun. I love being able to exit and save the game between holes – excellent feature! If you have a PSP, you should really pick this gem up.

It seems Bill wants to give away free USB drives (I'm sure he can afford it). All you have to do is answer some questions about the Windows licensing. So go ahead and get your free drive.

Thanks to Brinstar for posting about this and gHacks for the answers (even though the questions are simple).