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What are firmware upgrades for PSP?

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What are firmware upgrades for PSP?

Old 01-10-06, 10:54 AM
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What are firmware upgrades for PSP?

I know this might sound ignorant, but I have no idea what firmware upgrades are for PSP. I think I d/l version 2.5 last night, but I also know that most of the posts here seem to try to go around the upgrades. I've read some posts where people won't buy a game because of the firmware upgrade necessary. What the hell do these things do and why would I care if all I want to do with my PSP is play games?
Old 01-10-06, 11:25 AM
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Firmware upgrades basically add new features to the PSP. Great for the average user. HOWEVER, they limit your ability to do homebrew and have loaders on your PSP. Some use them for illegal purposes of course...like ISO running. I think most homebrew will work with version 2.0, but I'm still running 1.5
Old 01-10-06, 11:38 AM
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Also, most games REQUIRE the most recent firmware edition to be played. Grand Theft Auto:Liberty City Stories required 2.0, Raw vs Smackdown required 2.5, etc. In these cases the firmware upgrade is built into the game disc. There are ways around upgrading in some cases (but probably not in your case since you have 2.5). If you're not interested in homebrew it shouldn't be an issue.
Old 01-10-06, 11:40 AM
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Think of it as upgrading your OS on the home computer. You have Win98, but in order for you to use Adobe Photoshop CS2 you need WinXP. Some people are content with using Photoshop 4 on their Win98 instead of upgrading.

Old 01-10-06, 11:54 AM
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Thanks for the explanation, I've been playing Smackdown Vs. Raw for almost a month now, so I probably already had 2.5 then. In that case, I have no idea what the PSP was doing.

The next logical question for me is, out of curiosity, what is the primary use for homebrew (as long as the answer is DVD-Talk friendly)?
Old 01-10-06, 12:05 PM
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Originally Posted by bravesmg
The next logical question for me is, out of curiosity, what is the primary use for homebrew (as long as the answer is DVD-Talk friendly)?
Well, there are a lot of legal homebrew things you can run on your PSP. Things that have been ported: Quake, Doom, ScummVM (plays old Lucas Arts style adventure games, one of which has been made freely available), there's some weird drum machines, from scratch versions of tetris, bejeweled, pacman,etc... You can even run VNC, Windows98 and I possibly some form of linux!

But I think the main use for homebrew is video game emulators. The emulators aren't illegal, but chances are, any roms you play on them are.
Old 01-10-06, 12:42 PM
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Yeah, they have emulators for NES, Genesis, NEO GEO...many more. Won't say how or where to get them, but they are neat to have. I may upgrade eventually. Maybe after a few price drops for some games.
Old 01-10-06, 01:47 PM
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I bought a second PSP, and kept my launch PSP un-upgraded.

However, I haven't had time to get a lot of homebrew. I had no idea about the release of a ScummVM port - what title did they make available?
Old 01-10-06, 02:01 PM
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Originally Posted by MrKen
I bought a second PSP, and kept my launch PSP un-upgraded.

However, I haven't had time to get a lot of homebrew. I had no idea about the release of a ScummVM port - what title did they make available?
I believe it was Beneath a Steel Sky. I haven't had a chance to mess around with scumm yet. One of these days, I'll buy Day of the Tentacle off ebay and give it a whirl on the ol PSP.

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