For the first time in 9 years, I held my PSP in my hand. It still feels – almost… too small. My hands can wrap around the body of the machine once over. The screen, the controls, the buttons, all of it feels and looks smaller than I remember, but as the PSP switches on, a familiar twinkling tune places and the plastic mechanical whirring of the UMD in its compartment sounds; it’s almost like I’m 8 again.
As I played through the games I’d found I realized; the games weren’t necessarily revolutionary. They’re almost laughably mediocre when you compare it to the multitude of rich colours in Riot Games’ League of Legends, or the realism that Sucker Punch Productions employed in their 2019 game, Ghost of Tsushima. The methodical gameplay in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is in sharp contrast to Ubisoft’s old work with the PSP, with the games being slow paced.
The PSP had something so endearingly nostalgic about it in the way it catered to a large audience with G rated games like Ape Escape and M rated games like God of War: Ghost of Sparta.
For the first time, you could carry a console around that had a sharp, bright screen, telecommunications capability, and GPS functionality alongside multimedia features like audio playback. The PSP was fun, it was portable, it had small, nearly weightless discs (UMDs) you could carry anywhere, and although it’s clunky but today’s standards, it was; at the time – slim.
The PSP; during its lifetime – was essentially the annoying, less popular cousin to Nintendo’s DS.
Come, 2014 the PSP was finally shelved for good, with the last UMD producing factory shutting down two year later in 2016. However, Sony left us with a series of games that we could enjoy over and over on a tiny handheld console; and here are the best games that you could play on Sony’s PlayStation Portable, as an eight year old with bad bangs, wearing a a bucket hat and camisole shirt over a dress.
TOY STORY 3:
Toy Story 3, as is obvious – was based on the movie of the same name, and followed the same story line, however it had very simple controls, and employed fun, bright colours that children games are known for. The 3-D environment was beautifully recreated on the PSP, and therefore was a good game for younger audiences who were just beginning to play. The controls however were quite flawed and rendered the game nearly unlaying should you not get used to it.
APE ESCAPE: ON THE LOOSE:
Have you ever wanted to physically assault time travelling monkeys with a Stun Club and then capture them with a net so that they wouldn’t change the course of history itself? Well, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s 2005 game Ape Escape: On the Loose is for you! You play as Spike, the red headed protagonist who tries to capture all the monkeys on a map with an array of gadgets. With a wide range of maps; each of which are unique – Ape Escape could’ve been a great game, owing to its fun, and bizarre premise, however the video game is plagued by terrible camera action, and slightly infuriating controls.
TONY HAWK’S UNDERGROUND 2 REMIX:
Tony Hawk’s game series is known for how fun it is in terms of its soundtrack and unique gameplay, and Activision’s team did a phenomenal job porting the game from console over to PSP. The issue with THUG2R was essentially that it was the same as the console version and therefore wasn’t anything new and shiny, and would’ve been almost boring to anyone who’d played the game over on the PS2. However, the game was still grungy and showed why TH’s series remains such a cult classic, It was dare I say… rad?
FIFA 09:
Back when EA Sports wasn’t re-releasing the same game every year and charging people the full price over and over every year or integrating micro-transactions into a game via loot crates, they were truly pushing the boundaries of sports games. EA successfully managed to shift over a game that should’ve failed on such a small screen, all the while adding new animations. The gameplay was still clunky, and the graphics still fuzzy, however EA made do and made the game feel as realistic as it possibly could give how far the gaming industry had evolved thus far.
GRAND THEFT AUTO: LIBERTY CITY STORIES:
Rockstar Games is as close to a household name as one can possibly get to in the gaming industry, with hits such as the Red Dead Series and the GTA series, and Liberty City Stories is no different to its predecessors in the GTA series. With familiar character such as Toni Cipriani and 8-Ball, Liberty City Stories acts as a prequel to GTA III. The tasks in this game were much easier and nearly one dimensional, but still retained the classic flavor and bite that the GTA series is known for.
TETRIS:
Yes. The same Tetris that was released 36 years ago. Tetris has stood the test of time with its colorful blocks that interlock until a full row is made, but PSP’s Tetris had a tracker on the start screen would show you how far you’d progressed, a statistics tracker, an in-depth reward system AND 12 different variants each of which had 15 levels in it. The only issue with it perhaps was the fact that they didn’t use the original Tetris theme 🙁
DAXTER:
Another household name, Naughty Dog, are known for their hit games the Last of Us series, and the Uncharted series, and the Jak and Daxter series is no different. The game has fun “dream sequences”, the idea of engaging in combat with your enemies with a fly swatter and bug spray or flamethrowers at later levels. It all seems to be too much; but in Daxter, Naughty Dog made it work with smooth controls, and snippy humor.
TEKKEN 6:
The Tekken series is the brainchild of the same company that made classics like Pacman, Dark Souls and Gundam, Bandai Namco, so it is a no brainer that Tekken would also in one way or another establish itself as a successful franchise. Tekken 6 had stunning graphics at the time, and a fun soundtrack to go. Its controls were sharp, and precise unlike some of the games on this list. A obvious omission in this version of the game though was the fact that you could not watch the iconic replays of your finishing moves once a fight had ended that Tekken is known for.
GOD OF WAR: GHOST OF SPARTA:
The second God of War game on this list, Ghost of Sparta was completely different to the games thus far in the sense that the graphics were more stunning than one would expect from the PSP. It still had the grit that the God of War series had on console however it still bought something new to the table with its nearly unflawed storytelling, and gameplay that had been catered to the PSP. The controls were sometimes finicky, but the game itself was brilliant
- METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER: As a 17 year old I used my Casio graphic calculator to play the very first Metal Gear game from 1987, and at 18; this year – I finally got around to playing the 18th instalment of the Metal Gear series, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Coming from legendary developer Hideo Kojima and produced by Konami. The game is the only PSP game to have received a perfect 40/40 score from Famitsū, and for good reason too. The game bought the Portable Ops, camouflage, and bonus missions all while using the simple controls of the PSP. Unlike some of the games in this list, Peace Walker wasn’t a port to the PSP. It was a fully-fledged, standalone game that built upon the pre-existing MG games. Peace Walker may have well been hailed as the best game of the entire series however it didn’t receive the same acclaim of critics from the general population owing to the PSP’s rapidly descending popularity at the time.