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PSP Hackers Go Retro

Posted by Zonk on from the hi-mom dept.

ByteWoopy writes "Hello World!' That's the traditional phrase that programmers display when they create their first piece of software for an unfamiliar operating system. Owners of Sony's handheld PSP game system were delighted to hear May 5 that a hacker had managed to write a small program that displayed those words on a PSP. They wondered what would be next. As it turned out, it only took hackers five days to go from 'Hello World' to Mario World. On May 10, sites like PSP Hacker reported that a Japanese hacker known only by the name Mr. Mirakichi had developed a program called RIN that let the PSP play software written for the original black-and-white Nintendo Game Boy system.'"

69 comments

  1. good old hello world by aka_big_wurm · · Score: 1

    This is a little bit of old news but looks like the mainstream is picking up on it.

    The real news will ben when the new firmware is cracked or a hole is found outside the firmware to run unsigned code. But with all othter things its only a matter of time.

    1. Re:good old hello world by Eric604 · · Score: 2, Funny

      The ultimate crack protection is to stop time.

    2. Re:good old hello world by JediSB · · Score: 1
      This is a little bit of old news

      Yes it is: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/10/ 1224235&from=rss

    3. Re:good old hello world by KillShill · · Score: 1

      the real news will be when they aren't allowed to segregate processors from their owners in the first place.

      i guess you didn't realize that you paid for the hardware: the cpu, gfx processor and the audio chip.

      the fact that you have to ask permission to use what you bought is so insanely outrageous, words fail me.

      --
      Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
    4. Re:good old hello world by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Well, let's put it like that: They cripple the hardware and try to make you buy overpriced games (where I live console games are 15-25 Euros more expensive than PC games) and in exchange sell the hardware at close to producion cost (the PSP is even sold at a loss). If they gave you unrtestricted hardware they couldn't subsidize it and would have to demand at least the 75 dollars they lose on it more, probably a huge markup to make up for R&D and bring in the profit the games don't. I.e. you'd pay 400 for the PSP if it was open.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  2. Wow... by game+kid · · Score: 1

    ...people would hack just about anything. Not that the PSP is exactly "anything"; it's immediate envy whenever I see one (waiting for the price to go down, if ever) and besides, I had read of the earlier browser hack and other things. Maybe this should be in CmdrTaco's because-you-can dept. instead.

    Side note: ByteWoopy?!? Just as Michael Bolton wondered about that PC Load Letter, so I wonder about that, uh...name. (Not that game kid is any less odd...)

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  3. But can everyone benefit from this? by pnice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought running these applications was limited to just the Japanese V1.0 firmware. The rest are unable to run any of these programs. This kind of limits the cool factor to me. If this one particular firmware didn't have the loophole/exploit (whatever you want to call it) would the PSP be moving along as fast as it is...well, for those with the right PSP/firmware?

    --
    My Xbox Live Gamer Card
    1. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by alvinrod · · Score: 2, Informative
      If it's anything like the Xbox, you'll more than likely need a certain model or firmware version in order for any mods or hacks to work properly. Early versions of the Xbox were fairly easy to mod, but Microsoft changed a few things in later versions that made it harder or less desirable to do.

      I'm sure someone will eventually figure out how to hack the newer firmwares so you can play Gameboy ROMs as well. But no, not everyone benefits from this, especially Nintendo.

    2. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by pthor1231 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, it is limited to a certain version of firmware, 1.0 as indicated in TFA. But this doesn't stop you from hacking. I have a friend who has downgraded his 1.5 firmware version to 1.0, and now can run all that fancy hacking schtuff.

    3. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a friend who has downgraded his 1.5 firmware version to 1.0, and now can run all that fancy hacking schtuff.

      Really? Get him on here. I'd love to hear how he did it. Nobody on ps2dev seems to be able to do that.

    4. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by pnice · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is the point I was trying to make. I would love to see a slashdot article that points us towards downgrading the firmware to an older version so we can all benefit from the advances in PSP homebrew. I honestly didn't think it was possible yet. Can you point me towards any information?

      --
      My Xbox Live Gamer Card
    5. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by pthor1231 · · Score: 1

      Maybe I mis-understood what he did, but I will ask when I see him later, and post any links he gives me.

    6. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by Vermifax · · Score: 1

      tagging for future reference.

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      Vermifax

      Logout
    7. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by pthor1231 · · Score: 1

      Ok, so I mis-understood what my friend did. He was NOT able to downgrade his firmware. Sorry for getting your guys hopes up.

    8. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by pnice · · Score: 1

      No problem. Thanks for taking the time to find out and actually reply. It's a bummer but I'm sure someone will figure it out soon.

      --
      My Xbox Live Gamer Card
  4. Getting started by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The PS2DEV forums is currently the best resource to get started hacking your PSP with 1.0 firmware. There's even the beginnings of a PSP GCC toolchain: http://www.oopo.net/consoledev/files/psptoolchain- 20050603.tgz.

  5. Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Is it just me or does anyone else think that if you could emulate and play Gameboy (and eventually Gameboy color and advance) games on a PSP that it really negates any reason for buying a Gameboy Advance or DS?

    It's like buying a PSP and getting a gameboy for free. Granted it is illegal, and the ROMs won't play as well as the originals, but how much will people notice or care?

    1. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by FLAGGR · · Score: 3, Insightful

      1. It's illegal
      2. It only works on Jap 1.0 firmware
      3. PSP is teh ghey
      4. PSP is *not* powerful enough to emulate the DS and all its hardware, emulation isn't easy at all, even pentium 4's cant emualte DS at fullspeed (not implying DS is anywhere close to the power of a P4, just explaining how difficult emulation is)
      5. You couldn't control/view DS games properly.

      I know I loose any chance at getting modded anything but troll for the 3rd reason, but oh well, at least im still 80% imformative :)

    2. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by mclifford · · Score: 1

      I only like Gameboy and Nintendo for a few of their games. If I could get those few games on other machines, I would buy them instead. Nintendo is going to the wayside soon me think.

    3. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by alvinrod · · Score: 1
      1. A lot of people do it anyway

      2. For the time being

      3. That's your opinion

      4. I said GB games, not DS games. There really aren't too many DS games worth emulating at the moment anyhow. Not to mention I think it uses a similar processor to the N64. I've seen a PC do a pretty good job emulating an N64.

      5. Once again, I said GB games. That's regular, color, and advance.

    4. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by FLAGGR · · Score: 1

      I said GB games, not DS games.

      "negates any reason for buying a Gameboy Advance or DS?"

      Well, I'd figured DS games were implied. To answer your original question, then no it doesn't because people by DS's to play DS games (well, at least they will when they start coming out :) )

      It uses a similar cpu as the n64, but theres more to it than that. It has to emulate the dual core 2D chip, the 3D chip, the ARM7 CPU and the ARM9 CPU, the audio chip, the wireless chip etc etc etc. Also, last time I checked n64 emulators were pretty choppy and needed some good hardware to run. Either way, the PSP is not a peecee. As for your first point, do you really think alot of people would be able to mod their psp then run the emulators? Don't think so. Maybe they will be able to crack newer firmwares, but Sony will be right there to patch the holes, and they could do it to older units by making the games upgrade it (which could however enventually be hacked too, but still), there was a silly hole in the 1.0 firmware and Sony won't make the same mistake again, so don't count on seeing the new fw's cracked soon.

      Also worth mentioning: DS firmware was hacked a long time ago, and the DS homebrew community is amazingly far in their work. Nintendo doesn't seem to care and hasn't tried to fix the firmware yet. Most of the DS hardware has been figured out in ndslib, and even Linux kernel 2.6 runs on DS.

    5. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by alvinrod · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I think that Nintendo mostly doesn't care about whether or not someone has hacked the firmware because people aren't using it to pirate games. When it comes to protecting their games, Nintendo takes the cake. The N64 used carts which no one wants to steal, the GC uses non-standard discs that Nintendo apparently controls the distrobution of. The DS uses carts as well if I'm not mistaken. Because no one goes around selling blanks and a machine to write data onto them, they're not to concerned.

      Now if some website had a DS emulator for a PC, they'd probably be a little more irked about that. However, from your description of the DS, and the fact that N64 emulators aren't very good (probably because no one wants to bother making a good one or optimizing the ones that already exist. I mean, it's an N64, there aren't too many great games on it that don't have better versions on the GC or SNES.) makes me think this is unlikely. But I don't see a PSP having a problem with a regular Gameboy game.

      Essentially what I'm saying is that this takes away an advantage the DS has with a huge back-library of games. What it boils down to is which system will have better games or features, because the playing field is a little more even.

    6. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      3. PSP is teh ghey

      Um... Wow.

      4. PSP is *not* powerful enough to emulate the DS and all its hardware, emulation isn't easy at all, even pentium 4's cant emualte DS at fullspeed (not implying DS is anywhere close to the power of a P4, just explaining how difficult emulation is)

      This is total bull. If the low-level specs for the hardware were available, it would be emulated on a modern PC fairly easily. Your comment can't help but remind me of the people saying you'd need a 1 Ghz machine to emulate an N64 back around 1997 when hitting 1Ghz was an unobtainable milestone... Then UltraHLE came out and people with a P233 were playing Goldeneye. It's the lack of hardware docs that make emulation hard. If the hardware design docs were available, any third year CS student worth his/her future diploma could emulate it on a box that was approximately twice as fast.

    7. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by theREALMcCoy · · Score: 1

      What? And what games on the PSP are so great that warrant the $250 asking price?

      As far as Nintendo going by the wayside, that is the most rediculous opionion to be had by a gamer. Nintendo isn't going anywhere. They are the most profitable of all the game companies.

    8. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by FLAGGR · · Score: 1

      Wow. Uninformed.

      You can buy blank carts for sale, and the right hardware to flash them (i.e. write to them)
      DS doesn't have any avaliable yet, but soon.
      There are many DS emulators for the PC. DSemu, Dualis, iDeaS, and Hyper-something-or-other. They're getting pretty close to being able to start running retail games.
      People actually do use blank carts to pirate games.
      GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks, so that's why pirating is hard (I think even nonexistant at this point)
      Saying that N64 emulators suck because no one wants to improve it, since "there aren't too many great games" for it is pretty silly. It's just a fact that emulation is such a complicated thing, and you obviously don't understand what it entails.
      Of course the PSP wouldn't have a problem with a regular gameboy game, its like what, 300mhz?
      And finally, I don't see how this takes away from the DS's back catolog, since VERY FEW people would be able to do this IF they can crack the future firmware, and there will never be a GBA cart port on the PSP where you can plug in your GBA games. I think slashdot people don't realize that 99.9% of people just don't have enough skill to read a tutorial on modding their PSP and putting the ROM's on to it. Sure, they could possibly lose that 0.1% of people that can do it, but it won't even dent the fact that the DS is backwards compatible.

    9. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by Jahf · · Score: 1

      As long as you buy your ROMs (yeah right) it wouldn't be a big deal. Most hardware is built at cost or loss to turn you around for buying the games.

      Emulation doesn't kill platforms, piracy does.

      --
      It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
    10. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by alvinrod · · Score: 1
      99.9% of people might not have enough skill to mod a PSP or read a tutorial on how to do it, but 100% of people are easily capable of sending their system to someone who can.

      I recall the PS2 being somewhat difficult to put a mod chip into, mostly because you had to solder at over 30 points and most people weren't willing to take the chance of having a "slip of the wrist." I'm not sure exactly what it cost, but I think people usually tended to charge around $30, plus whatever it cost to ship the system to them.

      My reasoning behind the N64 lacking quality emulators is because no one really has the desire to spend time doing it. There are better things to do, such as hacking next gen. consoles or making something like XBMC, http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ rather than spending time on an N64 emulator which isn't in high demand.

      I think someone else posted that the difficulty in the emulation lies in the fact that insufficient documentation of the Nintendo hardware exists to create an effective emulator. If people had this information, it wouldn't be difficult at all. Just build an interpreter to take the code from and N64 game similar to how a java interpreter works. If you could do that, there's no way that a P4 or anything of equivalent power wouldn't be able to emulate an N64 smoothly.

    11. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by Westacular · · Score: 1

      I agree with most of your points but have a few corrections:

      GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks

      No, they spin clockwise just like (practically) every other optical disc under the sun. The ARE different in that the data is read from the outer edge toward the center -- the "start" of the disc is on the edge, and if it's only half-full, then it's the center portion that will be blank. This is uncommon among optical discs, but it makes sense -- for any modern drive, read spead increases as you move towards the edge; by concentrating the data there the GameCube achieves a higher mean read speed on non-full discs.

      I think slashdot people don't realize that 99.9% of people just don't have enough skill to read a tutorial on modding their PSP and putting the ROM's on to it.

      To be fair, I'd say it's more like 75% don't have the skill. The other 24.9% realize it simply isn't worth the trouble and have better things to do with their time (and money).

    12. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > If you could do that, there's no way that a P4 or anything of equivalent power wouldn't be able to emulate an N64 smoothly.

      Ok, in theory what you said is true, but this would take you several years to write, and would be friggin hard to do. Writing an emulator is one thing but writing an interpreter which would also need JIT compilation is extremely non-trivial. This WILL never be done, hence we will have to wait for more powerful PCs before we get decent N64 emulation.

    13. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. It's illegal

      Illegal? Someone dig Turing up so he can stand trial.

      2. It only works on Jap 1.0 firmware

      For now, anyways. Maybe Sony has perfectly flawless firmware with a perfectly secure signing system for encrypting and authenticating new firmware.

      4. PSP is *not* powerful enough to emulate the DS (and 5)

      Personally, I think the lack of a touch screen is the major stumbling block.

    14. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by kyojin+the+clown · · Score: 0, Troll
      This is total bull

      How you gonna emulate that touchscreen, wizard boy? magical megagigauberhertz sooper dooper imaginary surface trickery? or are you being a monkey?

    15. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by prionic6 · · Score: 1

      > GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks, so that's why pirating is hard (I think even nonexistant at this point)

      As others told, the discs do not spin backwards. Also, there is a working and publicly available Modchip for GC, but only since a few months. IIRC its called Viper.

    16. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      last I checked touchscreens emulate the mouse, so what is your point?

    17. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by ivan256 · · Score: 1

      A monkey?

      Let's get something straight about emulation... Emulation is about making a general purpose device to act like a specific device. not about turning a PC into a DS. That means you don't do any magical morphing of hardware or anything, you just take a general purpose piece of harware that maps an event to a coordinate and you map that functionality into touches on the DS touch screen. That means you can emulate the touch screen with mouse clicks and drags, with a trackpad, with a digitizer tablet, or with a PC touch screen for that matter. It has nothing to do with how powerful the PC is.

      Your question is like asking me how I'd emulate the case, or the battery, or the D-pad... It's just stupid.

    18. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by kyojin+the+clown · · Score: 1
      oh dear, i have been modded troll. i was actually being facetious calling you a monkey, i didn't mean any offence.

      my point was, that we are talking about emulating a DS on a PSP, and whether the technology can handle it or not, there are actual physical boundaries which prevent this from ever working well. the case/dpad etc are different, they can be emulated, however the touchscreen is an essential element of the device. ergo, what is the point in arguing about the megahertz?

      its like trying to emulate a yoghurt - it might look right, but you still cant eat it.

    19. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by ivan256 · · Score: 1

      my point was, that we are talking about emulating a DS on a PSP...

      The comment I was responding to was saying that a madern P4 PC wasn't fast enough to emulate a DS... If we're arguing unrelated points, it's no wonder we don't see eye to eye on the matter.

      I agree that emulating the DS on the PSP would be, for the vast majority of the games, impractical.

  6. DUPE by News+for+nerds · · Score: 1

    Triple dupe, I say

    http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/10/ 1224235
    http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/01/ 1215214

    1. Re:DUPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pete and Repeat have nothing on Zonk.

  7. Whoa, this is crazy! Lookit what I just realized! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I adore the irony.

    I really, really wasn't considering getting a PSP, ever. Ridge Racer and Wipeout Pure (while nice, especially the browser hack in the latter) really aren't my "thing", and considering that and "Lumines" are the only games for it that have really caught my eye, including the new ones that have been announced recently, and the battery hour difficulty, and the lack of color options (I think it would infinitley better in white), and the load times and Sony-made hardware, and Sony-type price, I really wasn't going to get it.

    But now, now that there is a slew of illegal emulators for it that will allow me to bring such games as STREETS OF RAGE 2 (aka ORGASM, being one of the best games of all time) with me wherever I go, and play them for quite some time (FYI, Streets of Rage 3, which is miles more complex than 2 shipped on a 24 meg cartridge), considering they're very simple games, I might actually buy it.

    Yes, illegal emulation can be a selling point for a system. This is really quite the revelation for me. Where will this lead? What does this signify? I don't know, but i'm liking it more and more.

    If they come out with a Dreamcast emulator, I am sold x10.

  8. Anyone else annoyed... by Tickenest · · Score: 2, Informative

    by the fact that the author writes "from Hello World to Mario World" when the Game Boy version was called "Super Mario Land" (note: I'm fine with leaving out the "Super", but changing "Land" to "World" just to get a cute line is cause for making a declaration of shennanigans.) Still, the ingenuity of those who manage to hack the PSP and similar systems never ceases to amaze.

    --
    This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
    1. Re:Anyone else annoyed... by Bagels · · Score: 1

      There's an SNES emulator out, too, whether or not TFA mentions that (haven't R'ed it) - it's a port of snes9x.

      --
      --- Bwah?
    2. Re:Anyone else annoyed... by Mekabyte · · Score: 1

      Well, a "Mario World" demo came out based on the "Hello, World" demo, though this was only 2 days later, and it was nothing more than a graphic.

    3. Re:Anyone else annoyed... by Tickenest · · Score: 1

      That may be true, but the article definitely references a Game Boy emulator.

      --
      This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
    4. Re:Anyone else annoyed... by IntergalacticWalrus · · Score: 1

      by the fact that the author writes "from Hello World to Mario World" when the Game Boy version was called "Super Mario Land"

      No.

    5. Re:Anyone else annoyed... by roju · · Score: 1

      Don't feel bad, it annoyed me too. :D

  9. Why is this being posted now? by ironfroggy · · Score: 1

    This s very outdated news. Not only is this little "hello world" program far from the first things hacked onto a PSP, but its crap compared to the impressive feats that were created on the first day it was released, such as the PSPIRC program that lets you chat on IRC anywhere you have a PSP and a hotspot. PSPIRC was created within 24 hours of the PSPs US release, just on a whim of "wouldn't it be cool".

    --
    Question
    http://www.ironfroggy.com/
    1. Re:Why is this being posted now? by TheRealJFM · · Score: 2, Informative

      the early "hacks" were really just finding clever ways to use the web browser built into wipeout. they weren't actually running any proper code on the PSP itself, and you had to stay near a proper PC or laptop to use them

      these hacks are *actualy pieces of code* being run *directly on the firmwire*...

      i'll be really impressed when I see linux boot, but i'm waiting for linux on a DS far more

      (before anyone says "why the hell.." - the DS is a dual processor, touch screen system - it would make a great cut price PDA)

      --
      Joseph Farthing
      http://josephfarthing.com
    2. Re:Why is this being posted now? by rmccann · · Score: 1

      "i'm waiting for linux on a DS far more"
      Waiting?

    3. Re:Why is this being posted now? by TheRealJFM · · Score: 1

      ooh...

      now *that* looks promising

      I am still waiting for a decent GUI, etc for it, because I feel that would be pretty nessesary.

      --
      Joseph Farthing
      http://josephfarthing.com
  10. Re:Whoa, this is crazy! Lookit what I just realize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not illegal emulation. It's only an illegal ROM if you don't own the cart.

  11. Nothing new by b1t+r0t · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I read last week that you could get homebrews to run on the 1.0-J firmware, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't news even then. After RTFA, this is the same thing that I already knew.

    Wake me up when this works on a current US firmware release.

    Now that my rant is done with, I will say that I expect the PSP to be broken for homebrews eventually, probably through some kind of buffer overflow exploit like the one in 007 Agent Under Fire (?) for Xbox. You may have to carry a UMD of some particular game around and use it every time you want to run a homebrew, though.

    --

    --
    "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
    "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
  12. Black and white? by Availle · · Score: 1

    Wasn't the original gameboy kind of dark grey and greenish color?

  13. Re:Please Stop by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 1

    Please stop posting news about the Japanese only PSP.

    Why?

    Slashdot is news for nerds. Nerds buy things as soon as they come out. What makes you think that the majority of slashdot readers with PSPs didn't buy them before the US release?

    I, for one, got my PSP on January 3rd. There were several sites that had them available for an acceptable price. I paid 315$ for mine including shipping AND it came with a game. Although it didn't come with the memorystick or strap or any of the cool stuff. Still, it was a great deal, especially considering that I got it 3 months before everyone else.

    Although I'm pissed I upgraded my firmware. Luckily, all my other friends who got their japanese PSPs didn't upgrade their firmware, so I can test out a lot of these hacks.

    --



    ...spike
    Ewwwwww, coconut...
  14. GameCube discs do not spin backwards by tepples · · Score: 1

    GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks

    MYTH. FALSE.

    GameCube discs spin clockwise viewed from the label side, just like CDs and DVDs. Turn on a game in your PS1 (which uses CD-ROM), then turn off the machine and open the lid. Watch it spin down clockwise. Now repeat the process with the GameCube and observes that it spins down the same way.

    The difference lies in the spiral. The spiral of a CD or the first layer of a DVD goes from center to edge, while the spiral of a GameCube disc or the second layer of a DVD goes from edge to center. Somehow this got distorted into a "spins backwards" myth. Another difference lies in encryption, possibly including encryption of the error correction data.

    Of course the PSP wouldn't have a problem with a regular gameboy game, its like what, 300mhz?

    Even NES emulators use speed hacks to run on any machine less than 600 MHz (the minimum suggested requirement for Nintendulator, the only known cycle-accurate NES emulator).

    Slow Down Cowboy! Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. It's been 29 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

  15. Re:Please Stop by torpor · · Score: 1

    .. and not only that, but does he think nobody in Japan reads slashdot?

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  16. Re:Please Stop by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 1

    and not only that, but does he think nobody in Japan reads slashdot?

    I guess you've never heard of http://slashdot.jp/ ;)

    --



    ...spike
    Ewwwwww, coconut...
  17. Of course... by game+kid · · Score: 1

    ...but even I'd prefer that the two-bit "on-or-off" color structure is emphasized with phrases like "black-and-white".

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    1. Re:Of course... by jimi+the+hippie · · Score: 1

      on or off would be one bit.

    2. Re:Of course... by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Agreed.

      Black-and-White > Greyscale > Creamed-Spinach-Scale

  18. Here's the current list... by wheresdrew · · Score: 4, Informative
    ...of emulators that'll run on a J1.0 PSP:

    Gameboy/Gameboy Colour - Rin, Rin Unnoficial
    GameGear - SMS PSP
    Genesis (Megadrive) - Megadrive for PSP, Generator/PSP
    MAME (Arcade) - XMame PSP
    Master System - SMS PSP
    MSX - fMSX, Hitbit
    Neo Geo Pocket - NGPSP
    Neo Geo CD - NEOGEO CD
    Nes - InfoNes, Famicontest, Nes for PSP, Nesterj PSP
    PC Engine - PCEP
    Snes - UO Snes9x PSP, Snes9x PSP, Snes9x Optimised
    Wonderswan - Oswan PSP

    They're not all running at full speed, but some of them are great pieces of work. Rin, for instance, is damned near perfect (and getting better with each release). I use it to play the Zelda GBC games and they look (and sound, and play) great.

    The work on them is continuing at a rapid pace - a lot of the emulators are getting updated several times a week - and they're just going to get better.

    The one I'm waiting for (that hasn't shown up yet) is a GBA emulator. I think that's the one that's really going to get people's attention.

  19. Re:Please Stop by jimi+the+hippie · · Score: 1

    There is something wrong with you if you consider $315 for a PSP a "great deal."

  20. Re:Please Stop by jimi+the+hippie · · Score: 1

    Especially considering that it probably won't even play American games. Or will it?

  21. Re:Please Stop by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 1

    It plays american games fine. American PSPs play Japanese games fine, too.

    Japanese PSPs don't play american movies, though. I can't play spiderman. But the UMD movie feature is 90% worthless in my eyes. Espeically since I have 2 512MB memorysticks.

    I love uninformed comments. =P

    (aside: I bought the japanese PS2 when it first came out for 900$).

    --



    ...spike
    Ewwwwww, coconut...
  22. Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...I have my bits and possible values confused today. --game kid

  23. Triple? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If this is the third time it's been posted... then wouldn't it only be a double dupe?

  24. PSP Hacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where is mention of where this was all launched from? PSP Hacks was the first site to have these stories and their programmer Darryl wrote the first Hello World.

  25. Re:Whoa, this is crazy! Lookit what I just realize by joshsisk · · Score: 1

    I had always heard it's only actually legal to own a ROM of YOUR PARTICULAR CART, not just a ROM of someone else's cart that you happen to also own.

    Not sure if that is true or not...

  26. Re:Whoa, this is crazy! Lookit what I just realize by Dhaos · · Score: 1

    Nah. It's the same thing as with downloading music. I can sit here all day and download files, and I'm not -technically- doing anything illegal. The person providing the download is violating copyright, however.

    So if someone else makes you a copy of their cart, and gives it to you, -they- are probably technically breaking the law (unauthorized distribution). This is true even if you own your own copy of the cart. Fair Use laws may protect them. Possession of such a copy, as I understand it, is legal.

    If I'm wrong, someone please tell me. But I always understood that this was the reason the RIAA went after file-sharers-, not file -downloaders-.

    --
    It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn .sig