PSP Launcher released for Lumines

So the PSP Launcher for running homebrew code on your PSP has been out for a couple of weeks, and now the commercial cat appears to be out of the bag. The new launcher will play Lumines from a Memory Stick — albeit without sound — on your version 1.5 firmware PSP. Lots of folks are testifying that this is legit and working, so you know Sony's sweating under the collar right about now.

[Thanks, Ian Nott and Bootes]

[rodents @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

i got my psp running nicely now, i got it yesterday

the emulators i found on various websites are neat.. the new gba that was out on the 23rd? is really slow, and isn't ready yet for good play
the gb and gbc ones are running perfectly, no lag
i can't get the nes one to work yet, i probably named something wrong
and i have the snes one running, yet it's a bit choppy if i want it at full speed..

[pspgamer @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

This will hurt all of us as Sony will be obliged to utilize stricter DRM. As long as they see user-developed programs as a mechanism for piracy, homebrew will never find a legitimate place on the PSP.

[Vance @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

full speed with sound retro gaming (SNES/NES/MAME/Genesis) will get me to buy the PSP. Otherwise, no thanks. What's the point. I already have a PS2 and I don't want to rebuy all my games, thank you very much.

But a retro gaming library with the PSP's screen? Yes, bring it on!

[Sahil @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

sony gunna be pissssseed. they gunna have ta do somethin, in the meen time les try to homebrew some othr games

[Mark @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Yeah I mostly bought the PSP because I knew after I got bored of like the one uber awesome and expensive PSP game I could afford, that memory stick was the key to homebrew and backup loading galore :-)

[ken fager @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

In response to #3...

"But a retro gaming library with the PSP's screen? Yes, bring it on!"

The screen on the PSP isn't really the best. Playing the SNES, NES, and Genesis emulators in modes other than their normal aspect ration warps the pixels. It really, really looks messy. No doubt about it... the PSP has the power and potential. But the screen is optimal.

BTW the only PSP emulator that is ready for primetime is NesterJ. The screen size in the normal pixel aspect ration is comparable to a GameBoy Advance.

I still like my PSP... can't wait for some more sweet homebrew action.

[ken fager @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

correction: But the screen *isn't* optimal.

[viqd753 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I wish that corpos. would look at homebrew as something they can tolerate and benefit from as opposed to something to sue over and stomp out completely. I understand they must make money to stay in business, but it seems like there must be a middle ground between the rampant piracy that was the ngage and the freaking about piracy that is michosoft. I can see where the piracy went overboard on the ngage (I mean after the ngage was out for less than 6 months all of the games were available for free
almost everywhere on the net and other places).
But to force firmware upgrades and limit legitimate development in the name of halting piracy seems backward to me.

[Nick @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Actually, the screen is perfect. Ya thats right perfect. Thats because the programmers weren't stupid like you assumed you were. They aren't going to stretch the game out to fix the aspect ratio. Instead they left it in a format that looks as good as the classics, and on some emulators you can change the sizes.

[Vance @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

oh, okay. Thanks Ken. Are there screenshots out there that show what the various emulators look like? I have to admit, the missing pixel rows on PocketNES for GBA kind of ruined the retro fun for me. Still cool, but not like the original. The NES em on my Tungsten C is kind of neat (beautiful LCD, too), but PDAs don't really have good gaming controls. Bummer, cause the power is certainly there.

[ken fager @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Thanks #8... I know you can change the aspect ratio. That's what my whole statement was about. Props to the programmers for their hard work so far. The emulatored games play great in their native resolution. In the case of NesterJ, the games look fantastic in the 50% of the screen resolution they take up at their native pixel aspect ration.

I'd like to get something straight before the fanboys start bashing. The PSP is a solid platform with the potential to be a host to some fantastic homebrew posibilities. The PSP games look great on the screen too... Now back to Lumines!

[Carl @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Actually, with new updates coming all the time, NES and GBC are 100% playable (possibly more than that with the added goodness of turbo mode, because it is a ****ing pain walking so slow on those rpgs... especially when you've play'd them before), SNES and Genesis are about 80-90% playable/good, you do have to twiddle with the settings a bit to get them running full speed, but they do run and with most games you can have sound, I also use the cn reader, which is a simple .txt reader, which finally came out in english today,,, but yeah, i have 350megs of roms from NES, SNES, GENESIS, Neo Geo Pocket, and then I have solitaire and doom, hehe.

But whats really cool is people with good photopshop skills are making custom icons and backgrounds for the emulators, so it really looks professional, this is the main "Customization Thread" on psphacker
(now pspupdates)

http://www.pspupdates.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1514&highlight=custom+icon

So I have Zelda theme on when I select NES emu, mario theme on snes, the voice yelling "SEGGAAAA" on the genesis, and its all under the same theme and works great,,, I've shown it to some of my friends and family and many are now going to get one with since homebrew emus are there alone, although back on topic: this piracy is not good news... as people have said it will only feed the sony's fire to close down the psp to any outside individual dev work, (read homebrew).

Because many argue that emulation of old things are the just as bad, but the fact is this
they are NOT manufacturing probally ANY of the roms I have stored on psp , most of which I owned in the first place, thus they are not making profit anymore, however they ARE manufacturing Lumines, etc so they will be losing profit to piracy (however I do not believe its a large % by any means, it is still lost profit)

[Hig @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Only bad things from SONY will come from this. Old-style emulators are one thing; full-on retail games step over the line. Don't BS about "Backing-up" rights, because the big corporations always win (not necessarily because they're right though). Yes, I love to play SNES on my PSP when I get bored from Minna no Golf, but I'm pretty sure that if this take off I'll be seeing many more torrent files on friend's computers.

[jesse @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

i think it's interesting how everyone always claims to be super anti-piracy on web forums, yet you can go take a look at any bittorrent tracker and see countless thousands of cases of software piracy.

[Sol @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

SONY would look at something like this as a good reason to not release 2GB Memory Sticks in case users download complete UMD game images into it and never buy another game again.

[Trejkaz @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

There's also an interesting duality, where a company will end up benefiting from the piracy but still need to pretend that they hate it (see Microsoft with regards to Windows.)

[David Q. Carder @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Emulating games which have long since gone permanently out of production is something I don't have any problem with (although non-perfect emulations drive me up the wall); however, emulating games available for purchase is total bullshit, and I think it's only as accepted as it is because it's so easy and so many people, before thinking into it, have participated in the piracy. I'm not judging anyone, I got my share of free music back in the day which was just as bad, but I don't see how someone can argue FOR it without being totally in denial (or simply accepting that it's wrong and doing it anyway).

Why would you want to play Lumines without sound anyway? I LOVE Lumines, but the sound is a big part of it.

[Sean @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Sony will just do what they've done before. New games coming out will *require* a firmware update in order to play.

I have no doubt Sony will lock down the PSP again. Remember how they went after the PS2 modders?

[Mashko @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

They may lock it down but there will always be someone out there to crack it. I've been putting off buying one for some time now but seems right now is a good time to get in.
http://dmashko.typepad.com

[Nick @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

All this does is give Sony the moral high ground in upgrading the firmware to stop this sort of piracy. Of course Sony will try and lock it down. The PSP is sold at a loss, so they are reliant on software sales to make any money out of it. This sort of thing really annoys me because it just means that Sony's hand is forced and everyone who wants to play homebrew code has their fun ruined. Let's face it - nobody really wants to use this to "back up" their games. They want to steal them.

[fistfight @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I have to call most of y'all out right here. Nintendo is in fact still making money off a lot of their games (via gba reprints, using collections to drive pre-orders), as are activision, sega, and others. And the revolution I'm sure is coming out with some business model to sell the old games. So if you're really opposed to emulating games that companies are expecting to make profits off of, you really shouldn't play ANY emulated games. In the end though, I wonder if this will hurt or help sony?

[Soir @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

#17 (Sean):

The UMD_Run software is supposed to go around that so you don't have to update the PSP since it launches the game without reading the .SFO (where the req. is).

I'm getting my Coded Arms from Lik-Sang soon and I'll see if it works to avoid the update.

[Chiablo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

As soon as there is a universal boot loader, I will buy a PSP. I really really really dislike loading times and from the sound of this, it reduces loading times to be almost tolerable.

I loved how on the PS2 it took 5 minutes to load the opening menu of Bust-a-Move, then another 5 minutes after I hit "Single Player" to bring up the character selection window... then another 5 minutes to load the actual game.

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

D@mn fine DRM Sony. You managed to stop the game piracy for what...a whole 7 months after the release of the PSP ?

True, they will lock it down again. I still think they should have just given us UMD burners. Yeah there'd be piracy but at least they probably would have made some money off the drives and blank media.

And as we can see...there's piracy ANYWAY...

Then again the expanded (if questionable) capabilities and the hype surrounding them will probably stimulate PSP sales, which is probably a good thing for Sony if they do successfully lock the PSP down again forcing people to pay for their software once more.

I think I'll just stick with my Zaurus C1000 for the time being... At least it has a keyboard and a REAL web browser...but then I'm not the gamer I once was...

[alienhead @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

This inst the homebrew launcher. Its a different launcher made by a different group. home brew = cool. piracy = will kill psp.

[JJ @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

#24:

That's an interesting aspect. I can attest that it worked very well for Microsoft.

I know quite a few people who bought an Xbox solely for XBMC (Xbox Media Center). And these are professional babyboomers who wouldn't be caught dead with a PSP, or a Gameboy for that matter, in their hands. Those people also tend to not have a computer in their living rooms (where most people keep their big screen TVs).

And with the release of XBMC (and the Xbox exploits), it turned out that the whole 'easy streaming solution' thing wasn't such a niche market afterall.

Over time, these people bought games (say Halo 2 because of all the buzz, Madden for a little pre-Superbowl game or some other game to keep the relative's kids busy when they come over).

And these people would never have been exposed to the Xbox or even considered buying one if it wasn't for a piece of homebrew software.

So, what I am saying is that homebrew software can be quite an incentive to buy a video console. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with piracy. And I still maintain, that there should be a way for legitimate homebrew software to get cryptographically signed by Sony.

[boynamedsue @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

I'm happy to buy games for the PSP, i've already got 4 and i'm not interested in downloading the images.

But i love my NES emulator almost as much if not more. so if i have to pick between upgrading my firmware to play GTA: Liberty city stories, or keeping my emulators, i'm gonna kick it old school till someone figures out how i can have both.

[Harrison @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Although I am happy that some one figured out how to hack the firmware and also finally figured out how to boot UMDs on MDs, I am very sad because I know that this will get out of hand. People will soon have all the games on the net, and I have a feeling something bad is going to happen, like the PSP failing, and games will stop being produced.
Unless Sony can get AUtomatic Updates a must for all systems.

[Damian Yerrick @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

There's a right way to pirate and there's a wrong way to pirate. The wrong way is to take the copyrighted game program and make it boot from the Memory Stick. The right way is to write an original program with the same behavior but using none of the same code. Go to Google and look up Luminesweeper or Verticube.

[Johny Wayne @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

The screen on the PSP isn't really the best. Playing the SNES, NES, and Genesis emulators in modes other than their normal aspect ration warps the pixels. It really, really looks messy. No doubt about it... the PSP has the power and potential. But the screen is optimal.
http://www.analogstereo.com/amp_mcintosh_mc275.htm