PSX On PSP

I decided to take a break from diddling with my "new" Puppy Linux laptop and instead spend some time diddling with my (legitimately) new PSP. I'm a big fan of both the Metal Gear and Final Fantasy series that have been fixtures on Sony platforms for years now, and I look forward to getting equally drawn in to Portable Ops and War of the Lions soon. I also love the having the ability to watch portable video on a screen larger than a postage stamp (sorry iPod...I'll still listen to your music!).

However, it also occurred to me that the PSP probably has enough compuing power to run some of the old PSX (aka PS1) games I still have lying around, and surely some smart geek has come up with a PSX emulator for the PSP. Fortunately I was correct, although apparently quite behind the curve. It turns out that it's possible to install custom firmware on the PSP that will allow one to play PSX games on it (yes, that's the PSX logo on my PSP screen), among other things. The process seemed mildly scary, since the only way to get the PSP into a state that will allow you to install custom firmware involves messing with the battery & memory stick. However, I'm delighted to say that it was much easier than I anticipated, and thanks to the efforts of Dark AleX and colleagues, I can now play Vagrant Story and FFVII wherever I want to! WOOHOO!