So, the other day I got my hands on a pandora battery. I have owned a PSP for almost two years now, as I got it shortly after I got a job in San Fransisco, in February 2008. I needed something to occupy my time while I was on the trains from Belmont up the peninsula to the city.
I used that PSP for everything! My favorite thing for me to do was to play Road to the Show mode on MLB 07: The Show. Usually I could play a couple of games before BART would drop me off at The Embarcadero subway station. I would also use this nifty machine to simply listen to music as I watched the scenery go by. The best thing it did for me, though, was to block out the noise. Those trains are LOUD!! It’s hard to hold a conversation, especially inside a tunnel. (And yes, those trains are really, really, long).
For months this little device was used to play games like Patapon, MLB The Show, and Star Wars. The whole time, though, I wished it could do more. I knew it had the ability to play PSone games, but those required downloads, and cost at least $10 each, and that was the only way to do it.
I knew it had things like Skype, and internet radio (and hell even the internet itself with its web browser), but none of these things mattered because I had no wi-fi access on the trains.
Eventually, I got a new job, and didn’t ride the train anymore. The PSP just kind of sat there, unused for a few months. Whenever I went home to see my parents, I would bring the PSP with me on the plane and watch a couple of movies on there. This was great, especially considering the audio jacks on planes suck.
But, ultimately, my PSP just was too difficult to find any means to use it. Usually if I was not in a position to play xbox at home, I wasn’t in a position to play anything, even if I had it on me.
I knew that people had been hacking their PSP’s for some time now, but I never figured it would be worth the effort to try to do this myself. When I saw that people had to cut their batteries all to hell, I decided I wanted no part of that.
Recently I found out that I had updated my PSP just one firmware too many, as TIFF support was needed to allow for a hack that didn’t involve a Pandora battery. Damn it, I thought. Then, I found this little exploit regarding Medal of Honor: Heroes. Unfortunately, here I realized that nothing was to be gained, since this was essentially a proof of concept, and no real installer actually was in place as of yet.
Once I realized that PSP’s were so popular to hack, I started to look into what I could do with a hacked PSP. Once I realized that there was so much I could do, I decided it was worth a small investment to attempt to get my PSP loaded with Custom Firmware.
I saw many ads for Pandora Battery Buys, and decided that their site looked legitimate enough to merit buying a pre-modified battery from them.
Their site said that it would ship within 1-3 days, and that it should arrive within 7. I was worried after the first week, I had heard nothing from them. They didn’t give me a tracking number or anything. Fortunately, after 2 weeks it arrived. I was surprised (yet not surprised) to find that the package had arrived straight from Hong Kong. I didn’t care too much, I just decided to plop the battery right in.
After a couple of tries, I realized that I needed to press the left trigger button as I plopped the battery into it’s slot, and presto, the installer showed up!
After it’s 2 minute installation, I immediately went to the computer and started downloading everything I could. The first thing I did was download all the emulators I could get my hands on.
At the moment I have these emulators on my PSP:
I downloaded Final Fantasy VII too, and have gotten 1 hour into that game as well. So far, everything has worked great! All the emulators are working great, and the Gameboy Advance emulator is the sweetest piece of coding I have seen in quite some time. If any of the other emulators get to that quality, then I think the PSP will rule the world.
I have had no problems getting NFL Quarterback Club up and running, as well as Ice Hockey on the NES emulator (which is ridiculously fun. If you have 15 minutes and your PSP with you, it’s hard to think of a better way to spend your time), and I have had no problems with Final Fantasy.
All in all, I’m extremely happy with my decision to mod my PSP. The emulators are small, as well as the games. The emulators take up all told about 100 megabytes which is VERY modest (including the handful of games I have on there), and Final Fantasy only takes up 1.3 GB, which is great considering that it comes on 3 discs normally for the PSone.
If you are on the fence about whether to mod or not, just decide if it is worth it to yourself. If you are on the fence like me, and hardly ever use your PSP, then I can’t imagine a better way to upgrade your hardware.
I’d love to keep chatting, but it’s time for me to go to bed! Actually, time to play more ice hockey!
