The Good and Bad of the PSP Scene

August 26th, 2007, 21:57 Posted By: wraggster

Hi all, no real news of releases this weekend but hey its not surprising after the madness of Neoflash and Pandora its settling down now and hey we all need a break now and again.

This is my chance to detail the good and the Bad of the PSP Homebrew Scene a scene that more than any other is in the mainstream eye, sure we have had the Dreamcast, the GP32, GBA, GP2X and the Nintendo DS Scenes and all are good in their own way but never has a scene got the attention of the mainstream press like the PSP Scene.

When Nem released Hello World and the realisation that the PSP was open to homebrew in a way that no one could dream of it opened the eyes of every hardcore homebrew fan. Any system that doesnt need Modding or additional hardware is a fantastic one to enjoy homebrew on.

The releases that followed Nems release was amazing, most of them coming from some excellent Japanese coders who were releasing mostly emulators at anything up to 15 releases per day, trying to be a newsposter then was a bloody hard job.

When the japanese slowed down it was the rest of the worlds coders who took over releasing hundreds upon hundreds of games, demos, applications and emulators.

The scene did slow down a trifle until the release of the first downgrader, that release was absolutly massive, it gave the DCEmu server such a pounding that only a few releases since have matched it.

Other high points of the scene are the masses of releases by Deniska (famous for MapThis) and Zx-81, the GBA Emulator from Exophase stunned us with its near full speed on first release, StrmnNrmn`s Nintendo64 Emulator, PSmonkeys Iris, PS1P the playstation emulator, infact theres so many great releases that you would be hard pressed to remember them all.

Then we moved onto the Custom Firmwares which gave you the ability to play new games and region free umd films on much lower firmware, the real major Custom firmware release was the one with the full speed Playstation Emulator that was amazing, to see games at such speed on the PSP was an emulation fans dream. Releases such as Eloader opened up a world of homebrew to more users but the biggest release was to happen a few days ago, Pandora by Team C+D a collection of many of the worlds best PSP Hackers gave us the ability to downgrade and unbrick PSP Consoles at Will and for the cost of a Battery and a PSP Memstick.

Sony who never managed to stop homebrew were dealt a serious blow with Pandora, yes they will somehow stop homebrew again with future firmwares but the PSP Scene is sure to crack them someday.

The list of good releases and happenings in the PSP Scene is a very long one and something that every hacker, coder and fan should be pleased with.

With the PSP Scene being mainstream and you could tell is was going to be massive early on it brought a few things to the table that homebrew could do without, there was incidents of sites putting their own readmes into releases so confusing people into thinking that the release was from them. Sites poaching coders to release on their forums, Some coders were offered money for exclusive releases and one sad occasion was the release of software featuring GPLed work and people were being asked to pay for it, all very sad.

The release of Devhook and other ISO loaders brought in sites who hadnt been interested in the PSP Scene but because they had piracy backgrounds they dived into the scene, the release of Devhook was the killing of the interest of Japanese coders who had released so much for the scene, a friend on IRC who translated for us at times told me that none of the coders wanted their releases next to a piracy release. Which any hardcore homebrewer can understand.

With the PSP Scene becoming such a massive concern it became apparent that it wasnt just homebrewers running sites, infact 3 of todays PSP Sites are ran by backers with millions at their fingers (i wont name names but its not hard to guess). One of the worst of the rogue PSP Scene sites is a site that cover every release to make it appear that all is released there, sadly they stole the source to a custom firmware and in the melee that ensued ended up bricking a lot of PSP Consoles. Thankfully Team C+D released the unbricker which came at a great time for all those hurt by the brickings, even that release was forced by some idiot who had leaked the release to make money its presumed.

So theres my little run through of some of the good and some of the bad of the worlds first mainstream homebrew scene. Its been a great ride so far with so many great coders and hackers supplying so many great releases and with the PSP Slim and the extra 32MB of ram around the corner and not to mention all the new features for PSP on the horizon its going to be an awesome time.

Lets remember that theres still so much to achieve and so much that can be hacked on the PSP that theres always a chance of a killer release soon.

Wraggy out

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