Firmware hackers! The main reason I got a PSP was to play roms from the Gameboy Advance and Super Nintendo consoles. Boy was I disappointed when I found out I could not do so out of the box. So for the first few months I began to play a game named Talkman, which teaches multiple asian languages from Chinese to Japanese. Afterwards the only use I had for my PSP was for movies and music, which was not very convinent considering the PSP’s size, so my PSP ended up sitting in a corner. I sat there envying the people who had 1.5 firwares on their PSP bragging about playing the latest Japanese or American games downloaded, games like Final Fantasy Tactics. I decided that since I had a 2.6 firmware I might as well just update to the latest 2.71 since I could play the demo Loco Roco for free. It was great, but Sony did not make any more demos for a long peroid and again my PSP sat.
Then one day as I checked out gamefaqs, which I normally do to find new games that I might have missed, and I learned that that I could now downgrade! Wow, I was so happy, but of course there were risks to downgrading and it would take quite a bit of time to follow all the instructions. I did not care though, I threw aside everything I was doing to downgrade and since the 2.71 downgrader had been out for a few weeks there was an easy downgrader so I mostly had to push X or O. Then, with a little bit of fear, I turned my PSP back on and Yes! I had 1.5! But to be safe I had to go back to 2.o then back to 1.5 to give me a complete 1.5 instead a 1.5 compiled of the hackers data. Then began my days of downloading GBA and SNES games and I lived happily ever after.
Nope! There was more to come. Rumors of a 3.00 firmware was around the corner and it would have the Playstation support that was promised at E3! I was in a pickle, should I upgrade and sacrifice my 1.5 or stay at 1.5 and wait to see what the hacker community would bring. I waited and learned that Sony would only offer PSX games through the PS3 and in limited amounts. I was shocked! I wanted PSX games directly to the PSP and I would pay retail for them! I did not want to have a PS3 yet and I also wanted to play games like Suikoden or Xenogears which may not arrive downloadable for months or years.
So I gave up my dreams of 3.00 until I learned I could have the new 3.03 OE (Open Edition) which would allow me to play PSX games and maintain my roms like 1.5! I updated right away after hearing this from irc. I then got a copy of Xenogears which was ripped with Popstation. Then finally I thought I had the perfect PSP. I’ve flashed it many times and it did not brick, and now it had an anti-brick feature as well as all the 1.5 features and more! Updating to 3.10 OE-A was a little more complicated, but worth it as it will support more PSX games. I was suprised at the speed the PSP hackers like Dark_Alex had gotten these hacks out.
So if you have a PSP sitting around collecting dust I suggest you try to make the most of it with these downgrades/upgrades. Be sure to read about your PSP’s version and motherboard number before updating for your first time. I suggest you learn to do it at gamefaqs and if you do I assure you your PSP will be reborn!
The hackers have recently made BBC news.