2 Pieces of Essential PSP Homebrew.

Continuing the PSP vibe, I'm posting a couple of essentials. These two Homebrew applications have a permanent place on any Memory Stick that gets inserted into my PSP.

The first is a small file manager called 'PSP Filer'. It allows access to the file system of the Memory Stick in the PSP and very useful when you just need to move files around on-the-fly.

This is version 6.6, as far as I know, the final version.

Next up is FuSa Gamepad, a very clever app that mimics a USB gamepad device when the PSP is plugged into a PC.

Basically, run the app, then plug the PSP into your PC via USB. After the drivers have been installed, your PSP will be available as a gamepad device for use with games/emulators for Windows.

This is version 0.3. Probably the final version.

Cave Story PSP.

Well, this game truly is a gem. It's a testament to what independent developers can do, in fact, this game was made by one Japanese fella for the grand total of... Nothing! This wonderful game is Homebrew!

I'm not going to get into the story surrounding this game, there's tonnes of information about it online and it makes for a good read actually. What I will talk about, however, is the quality.

To start with, the graphics are beautifully 8-bit. Yes, it started life as a PC game and that does mean that technically, it could've had much 'better' visuals. But after you've played a little bit, you'll realize that the graphics suit the game very well indeed.

Then there's the music, again, delivered in an 8-bit style-ee, complimenting the visuals very well. Every track is spot-on, adding a lovely atmosphere to the adventure. The music is easily good enough to listen to without playing the game, I may upload some of it, it's really that good.

Another aspect I like in a video game is the story, I do enjoy being spun a good yarn and Cave Story has a lovely one. It isn't the most compelling of anecdotes, but it has everything you could want. The protagonist, (Quote), is a loveable machine of death, there's plot twists, a love story, lots of bosses and an evil Doctor calling the shots. Plus, there's 3 different endings!

Playing this game is hugely pleasurable too, not just because of graphics, music and story, but the overall design is just right. Everything from the level layout, to how high you can jump is flawless. The difficulty curve is nice, starting out at, 'quite difficult', and finishing up at 'so frustrating you'll nearly be pulling your hair out'. All the while keeping a 'just one-more-go' level of addictiveness.

There's so much to this game, It's a real genre-blurrer of the highest order. Part Platformer, part Shoot-em-up, part RPG. Playing this masterpiece is the only way to fully understand what I'm talking about. It is available for PC, under the original Japanese title, Doukutsu Monogatari, for which there is a translation available at Romhacking.net, but that is easy to find. Here I'm going to focus on the PSP port and also include a couple of mods that have been done.

I will add more information about these mods as soon as I find the website I initially got them from. I'd like to credit the original author, y'see. But in the mean time, enjoy them. All of these are in PSP EBOOT format so Place them in the /PSP/GAME/ folder of your modified PSP's Memory Stick.

Cave Story PSP RC1. - The original game, translated for Japanese to English. 

Cave Story - 4 Endings Mod. - Identical to the original Cave Story, just with an extra ending. Very strict criteria must be met in order to find the 4th ending.

Cave Story - Boss Rush. - Boss Rush mode. A mod which takes out all the levels so you get to fight all the bosses in the game, one after another. More fun than it sounds.

Cave Story - Julian's King. - A full overhaul of the levels and story. It's slightly more difficult than the original, but is still a lot of fun to play.

Cave Story - A Lost Land. - Another full overhaul of the story and levels which adds another side to the story.

I have some more too, so this post will be updated to include them at some point. However, there's a lot of fun to be had from the stuff I've already posted. :-)

Wallpapers for the PSP.

Happy Saturday and happy Hallowe'en, everyone.

I just thought I'd pop in and share some of my wallpapers from my beloved PSP, (yes, I still play mine). They're mostly jut resized image I've found on the internets, but they all look great as background images on the XMB.

I've put them all into a .zip file f you want the whole lot, (38 images, 5.80Mb). But I've also posted them individually in case you just want a couple.You can find them below. 

Awesomesauce!

Nice. I hope you enjoy this lot. I will post more when I've made them.

My New Website.

Boredom set in and I decided to make a new web page. This one is for BIOS files, (for now) and I've uploaded a load of hard-to-find BIOSes so they're all accessible from one place.

The files are mainly for me, but anyone who reads this blog is free to view and download them. I will be adding more as I require them and I will be expanding that web page to include more hard-to-find emulation type stuff in the future.

Just have a look if you need BIOS files, I'm sure it'll be useful...

BIOS Files Web Page.

Original Doom .wad Files.

These have taken me a while to find, so I decided to post them. They're the original .wad files for Doom, Doom 2 and Ultimate Doom. They are all non-shareware and tested to ensure they're 100% functional.

In case you reside under a rock on the moon, Doom is one of the first FPS games and is still played by a lot of people. It has an active modding community and can be enjoyed on modern PCs using a game engine. Some of which support fancy stuff like OpenGL.

These .wad files should work with any of the Doom engines available regardless of platform. Just configure your engine to find the folder you downloaded the .wads to and away you go. There's no shareware, so you'll get the full-game experience.

Enjoy.

Doom .wad files in my Dropbox.
and I recommend using PrBoom to play these .wad files on Android. Download PrBoom, here.

Final Fantasy V GBA Review.

Final Fantasy, Gameboy Advance. 2 things that actually don't need an introduction. Which makes things difficult when trying to write an introduction...

Final Fantasy 5 for Nintendo's Gameboy Advance.

This particular game seems to be pretty overlooked, probably because it was never released to us westerners initially. We had to wait for a remake. When the remake came, it was terrible!

This situation was eventually rectified with the release of the Gameboy Advance version, which is one of my favourite games for the GBA. The job system is in tact and the battles were sped up significantly. There's also some added extras to boot. Much further down the line saw the Android & IOS remakes, which I've only played a small amount of, but they look and sound great with reworked music and graphics. Most recently I purchased Final Fantasy V for the PC, via Steam. I'm unsure if there are other PC remakes of 2D Final Fantasy games available, I suppose I should look. Anyway, back to FFV...

Final Fantasy V features one of the best job systems in any JRPG I've ever played, it is a tad different from the usual, you can change your job at any time and there's 22 jobs to choose from, (by the end of the game anyway), and each job has a unique set of abilities to learn by levelling up. However, when you master any particular job, the abilities you've learned stay with you and you can choose one, two or three, (depending on the job), to assign to your new character. For example, I had a Summoner who was also a Blue Mage and a fully trained Monk, and a Black Mage who could dual-wield Katanas for mega attack damage when she'd run out of MP. As a result of this, you can find yourself grinding your job levels without thinking about your actual levels, and end up with a level 75 character before you'd even noticed.

The story in this game is nice too. It's the usual 'Light vs. Dark' saga, and is the last title in the main cannon which is focussed around the Crystals. Basically, nasty creatures want to destroy the world and it's up to you to stop them, (by pressing the [A] button a lot), kinda basic, but the game is home to some of the wittiest and charming characters you'll ever meet. There's a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, plot twists, love interests, deaths and an antagonist that'll make you want to lobotomise yourself with a power tool! All the ingredients of a great story.

The music is lovely. Admittedly it is much better on the Android/IOS/PC versions, and even on the PS1, in fact, it's better on the SNES too, but the GBA doesn't have the dedicated sound chip that the other consoles do, so it can be forgiven. The tunes are catchy and some of the dungeon music is just downright creepy, so adds a very nice atmosphere to proceedings.

The difficulty curve is a bit of a let-down. This is one of the easier games in the series, with clues to your next destination basically handed to you on a plate. Boss fights are plenty, and if you use your head and choose your jobs wisely, you shouldn't really have any issues. The final boss was a bit more of a challenge, a challenge that I would've liked to see earlier in the game, but it was still enough to give my level 65+ characters a run for their money. As for side-quests, (a thing I love), there's a good few. Some easy, some marginally more difficult, but all are talked about in really obvious ways by NPCs so will be easy to find.

All-in-all, this game is fantastic. Lovely chatacters and great story, coupled with decent graphics, high-quality music and nicely paced gameplay make for 24+ hours spent very well indeed. Not my favourite in the Final Fantasy Series, but sits very nicely in the series and bids a fond farewell to the "Final Fantasy Crystals".

Update: I've recently started playing this again on my PC and it's ok. The remake is quite sluggish and slightly buggy, but the remastered music is lovely. I still reckon that the GBA version is the definitive version of this game, even with the slightly lacklustre music.