BlackKnight

Either way, make sure you don't upgrade any further. Downgradable firmwares come in bundles when they are developed. For example at first you could only go down from 2.00 to 1.50. Then after a while it was everything upto 2.71, and now everything upto 3.03. Just be patient. All recent firmwares have been minor incremental ones- they have all been able to be decrypted the same way, and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a downgrader for 3.30/3.40 released in the coming weeks. If you don't want to bother trading in and ordering off eBay just hold onto the one you've got now and sit tight for a little while.

Sony is amazing... both PS3 and BluRay are the best tech out there, and Sony, up until, say, the last 12 months, had an extremely strong brand presence as well. That they flocked it up really pisses me off.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition The King of Fighters NESTS Saga

I was wondering which PR blunder the topic title was hinting at, but then I remembered that Sony has been screwing themselves across the board lately.

Not that Cho Aniki crap? That sh!t is still going...

Do other games work? Quick and thoughless answer: Use another image. Try ripping to a different format, say, ISO or BIN/CUE. I just guess this is the way because my SC works fine with no problems.

It can be compressed even smaller. This only further makes the case that it should've been bundled at least with FFII. My rant about the price was because I actually paid good money for this game. Everything from the same FMVs to the tiny size and all the way to the price make me feel like I got shafted.

Lol. Not that Im supporting American gun laws, but think about how many scandals we've had in Sydney alone where cops shoot an unarmed civilian under the claim 'we thought he had a gun'. Considering our gun laws its usually pretty funny to hear that.

SF Anniversary Collection works with 360 BC? What region is your game?

[4/19/07] Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition for PlayStation Portable Game: Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition System: PlayStation Portable Emulators: None The original Final Fantasy is a legendary title that has commanded countless ports and remakes since its original appearance on the Nintendo Entertainment System two decades ago. In celebration of the franchise’s twentieth anniversary year, Square-Enix is releasing the first two titles in the series for the PlayStation Portable. Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition is essentially the most recent in a line of remakes, but stands out as being the most proficient and best executed of the lot from both content and technical standpoints. Unfortunately it is ultimately just another rehash of FFI, so to those who have played the original or one of the myriad other rereleases, you may not find ample cause to pick this game up now. Conversely, players who have been groomed into the RPG fold by the likes of Final Fantasy VIII, will find much of the character, convolution and technical exhibition gone from this invariably aged game. What will likely be the most noticeable departure from the FF series of late to newcomers is the lack of character development in Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition. Instead of being thrown into the middle of a political upheaval, heated rivalry, love triangle or worse, the game opens with a bland ‘pick a team of four people and enter their names’ screen, typical of the console RPGs of old. Consequently, the plot in the first Final Fantasy is more concerned with destiny than any character relations or drama. The team you assemble at the outset are the fabled ‘Warriors of Light’ whose goal is to power-up magic crystals across the landscape to rid the world of monsters. Along the way, the band stumbles upon new weapons, magic and towns. Each town is pretty much a one quest affair- heal up at the Inn, buy whatever new things are being sold in town, and then head out to kill the evil wizard, recover the item or what have you. It’s pretty basic, but there is some nostalgia in seeing the first use of Fire, Cure, and Phoenix Downs in a game. Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition has, however, the updated thematic elements seen in other ports. Names and places have been slightly altered in some places, or completely thrown out in others. The kingdom where you first start out is called Cornelia – is was misromanised as ‘Corneria’ in the original NES version. I mentioned ‘crystals’ but even these were actually ‘orbs’ back in the day. Also the sprites, having been redrawn twice since the NES incarnation, bear only little resemblance to the originals. Fans of Final Fantasy IX will immediately notice that most of the cast from that game (themselves harkening back to the earlier games) are nigh identical here. The White Mage and Black Mage almost everyone will start with are mirror-like semblances of Princess Garnet and Vivi Orunitier from FF9 respectively. High-end bosses of the Anniversary Edition have had their sprites retooled along the same stylistic lines as their appearances in future Final Fantasies. The Lich, Hades, Tiamat and more bear more overt visual connections than simple namesakes. These have been common throughout the recent remakes but are more pronounced on the PlayStation Portable’s superior resolution. Speaking of resolution, the brilliant 480x272 display shows no signs of stretching or skewing in Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition, suggesting the graphics were not only redrawn (or existing hi-res assets retooled) but reworked for the new widescreen aspect ratio. This is assuredly the game’s strongest selling point over previous iterations, but it also combines the unique content of the two previous efforts. A few years ago the PlayStation featured the first Final Fantasy as part of Final Fantasy: Origins whose special boasts were the high-resolution (if not high quality) full-motion video segments. These prevail in the PSP version, but are complimented by the bonus dungeons found only in 2004’s Final Fantasy I & 2: Dawn of Souls in addition to yet another bonus dungeon, this one a PSP exclusive. Sadly this is the extent of the gameplay bonuses. While there are graphical effect tweaks and such that may be noticeable only to the veterans, not a great deal else has changed since the 2002 Origins release, or even the WonderSwan release before that. As a side note, the beautiful arranged soundtrack from Origins returns with a few new themes, but is only worth minor mention. Extra content attempts to fill the gaps in some places. There is the now-expected bestiary feature, allowing you to review the stats of slain monsters, and an art gallery equipped with an illogical time-release mechanism that, so far, feels extremely unrewarding. To make things worse, the art unlocked hardly fits the visual style that the game has going for it otherwise. The facetiously difficult and labourious exclusive dungeon, ‘The Time Labyrinth’, is no more an exercise in masochism, if you ask me. One unexpected bonus, however, that was extremely pleasing was the inclusion of a fully English text mode. In addition to this option, Japanese can be selected with full use of Kanji, or all in Hiragana – no doubt a great suit of alternatives for all the budding Japanese amateurs who imported the game. Everything about Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition is acceptable to mildly-impressive until you consider the price. At $39.90USD for the Japanese version, or $29.95USD for the local release in June, the game is overpriced, firstly because this is a remake of an extremely dated game, but more importantly because every other time it has been rereleased in the last 5 to 10 years (depending on region) it has shipped alongside a remake of Final Fantasy II and bundled for less than $29.95USD. If you wanted to get really upset about this, you could even argue that the large number of Final Fantasy remakes as of 2007 have saturated the market – even more reason to make the price lower. There was also a missed opportunity to pack this game in with a bunch of collector’s items to help warrant the asking fee. A cheap soundtrack CD would have been an acceptable show of good faith, as seems to be all the rage nowadays. Square would almost certainly turn a profit no matter what sum they charged at retail, so paying out $30 for this as it stands (and another $30 for the Final Fantasy II: Anniversary Edition in a month’s time) is unjustifiable to me, and anyone else who thinks it through long enough. The bottom line is this; Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition is a very conditional purchase. It is without a doubt the best version to date of a classic RPG, and its pixel art and remastered soundtrack are still captivating. To be sure, there is enjoyment to be had. However, it hinges on expectations not being as high as they would necessarily be for a contemporary Final Fantasy, the player not having played through this game once (or perhaps more times) already, and the willingness to overlook the fact that the same game can be found as a bundle, and cheaper, on the PlayStation and GameBoy Advance. The only true advantage Anniversary Edition holds over its predecessors is the higher-resolution display. Whether or not that alone is worth the steep asking price is up to you. Story: 5/10 Graphics: 8/10 Sound: 8/10 Extras: 4/10 Overall: 7/10 Grade: B The grade would be higher were the pricing for the game not so ridiculous. As it stands, as remaking old games go, this is as well done as they come. There aren’t any artbooks, soundtrack discs or other paraphernalia to make this a celebratory collector’s edition, but the game itself is solid and looks and sounds better than it ever has before.

No way. Black is still king. The white Xbox looks like one of those toy rip-off consoles. Wii looks ok I guess, but still the blackness of the Xbox will be a huge factor in me getting an Elite over a Premium whenever it is I buy one.

The PSP is so versatile in that sense it is unfair really to compare it to anything else.

I swear all these costly non-software mods are put to shame by the OE series. By a huge margin as well.

Interesting comment.. I still loved the Genesis / Mega Drive even if I never bought any of the add-ons for it.

Yeh, Sony isnt very clear about the Network and what its all about. But hey, Id love to see it on my PSP aswell. Cant be all that hard to do.

Yeh, its a rort, but all the trade ins that GameStop and EB do are ripoffs. Australia - EB - PS3 $699AUD.... when you trade in a PS2 or Xbox with 20 games. Does this sound like a good deal to anyone?? Id really want a black 360 over a white one. Luckily I waited and will probably get the black one sooner or later. If I hadnt though, there is no way in hell Id take them up on an offer like that.

BlackKnight’s PSX on your PSP Tutorial Here is my tutorial for getting your PSX games working on your OE firmware-equipped PSP. There are only 3 easy steps- 1) Rip the game with Alcohol or another image-making program, 2) Make the ISO into an EBOOT.PBP file using PSX2PSP, another Popstation GUI or even the command line version that comes with OE firmwares, 3) Copy it to the PSP\GAME folder. Anyway this is the step-by-step version, with screenshots. Requirements 1. An Open Edition (OE) Firmware. Link. 2. PSX2PSP. Link. 3. Alcohol 120%. Google it. 4. Any PSX game disc. 5. A copy of HotShots Golf 2 from the PlayStation Network. I’m not even going to hint as to how to get that. Except by buying it, I mean. Step 1 – Rip the game with Alcohol 120% -First things first. Create a folder on your desktop called ‘PSXPSP’ -Put your game disc your disc drive. I will be using Guilty Gear: The Missing Link for this tutorial. -Open Alcohol 120%. -Click ‘Image Making Wizard’ -Select your disc drive letter and click ‘Next’ -Select the ‘PSXPSP’ folder in the left frame, choose a name for the image, and choose ‘CDRWin Image File (*.cue)’, then hit ‘Start’. -Wait for the image to finish ripping, then close Alcohol 120%. Step 2 – Make the EBOOT file with PSX2PSP -Unpack the PSX2PSP Zip to the folder on your desktop. It should now look like this; -Load the *.cue file you just made into the first field, and choose the ‘PSX2PSP’ folder in the second. The other fields on the left side are optional. Leave them as default if you like. The only thing that is important is the Game ID and Save ID. Basically the virtual memory card files that are created for each game are based on these values – if you made a bunch of PSX games using the same codes then they’d all share the same 15-block memory cards. -Optionally, you can create some images to go along with the game. They go in the fields on the right. Just as a guide, PIC1.PNG is the background image and should be 480*272. UNKNOWN.PNG (aka PIC1.PNG) is the transparent blurb that appears over it - this should be 310*180. ICON0.PNG is the little icon used for saving and loading - it needs to be 144*80. Here are some I made for Guilty Gear; -Anyway, if your PhotoShop skills are up to the task, by all means make these yourself. Or you can hit up sites like PixelStation for pre-made ones for a bunch of games. -If you do include these, put them in the fields on the right; -You can also preview what it will look like on your PSP; -Now go to your folder, on your PSP or on your hard disk, of HotShots Golf and find ‘EBOOT.PBP’. -Rename it to ‘BASE.PBP’ and then copy it to your desktop PSX2PSP folder, then into the ‘Files’ folder there; -Finally, hit ‘Convert’ in PSX2PSP; Step 3 – Copy it to your PSP -Okay, we’re almost done now. I’m assuming you have 3.30 OE-A (or 3.02 OE, 3.03 OE or 3.10 OE) installed already. It really couldn’t be easier - just follow the 3 or so steps listed in the readme and you’re good to go. -Copy the folder that has appeared in PSX2PSP according to the Game ID value you entered to your PSP. -It needs to be in ms0:\PSP\GAME\ -Now disconnect your PSP and go to Game > Memory Stick, and then locate your game’s icon; -Press X (or O). -If all went well, you should now have the game working on your PSP. Good luck - hope it works for you! One more thing to remember though - PSX game compatibility is extremely high, but still varies amongst 3.02, 3.03, 3.10 and 3.30 firmwares. If a game doesn't work on one, you may need to try it on another. Finally, the PSX2PSP GUI I used for this tutorial works with 3.10 and 3.30 - you may not have as much luck on lower versions. For those, use the command line tool that comes with the OE firmware package, or one of the older GUIs released for them. Alternatively, you could just upgrade... ATTENTION 3.02 OE-A, 3.03 OE-A & 3.03 OE-B USERS -If you are using one of these lower firmwares, you will also need to copy the 'KEYS.BIN' from your HotShots Golf 2 folder into the final SLUSxxxxx folder that you move onto your PSP. This requirement was dropped starting from 3.03 OE-C. Anyway good luck again and post any questions if you run into troubles.

I've just made one... I'll post as a new thread and let you guys move it or whatever as necessary.

I'm pretending I'm in the first frame but it becomes harder to convince myself each day.

Those sprites are just gorgeous. Can't wait.

Link This is being plastered all over the place. Pretty much a done deal now, although it was rumoured back in January by the Magic Box. So what does everyone think? I think its a super idea. Hopefully will pave the way to other things and puts me 1 step closer to buying a 360.

Very comprehensive review. Sorted out the doubts I had left about this product. Definitely will be picking one up along with a Kingston card as soon as I can.

Hahahahaa I didnt even notice that guy until you pointed him out. Gee he loved acting in that lol. If I had to guess which movie, Id have to say either Black Eagle or Karate Tiger. Those are the only 2 old ones of his I havent seen.

Most things are made for 1.50, so putting most in that folder will work. Rule of thumb: Homebrew that comes in 2 folders (folder, %folder etc.) = GAME150 Homebrew, demos etc that come in 1 folder = GAME303/GAME310/ whatever version uve got

The worst one Ive seen is his infamous scene in Kickboxer... spoils the whole movie for me and is gay and a half. What the hell was he thinking? Probably insisted those parts were written in himself. Newsflash Jean, your 80s disco crap stinks.