Last week I actually did dig out my UK launch PSP-1000 from 2005 (a gift from Games Workshop for being Design Studio Employee of the Year, I think to the bafflement of almost everyone in the department, not least me – at the time, I was the bloke who kept the websites running, after most of the US-based team had left on 2 weeks’ notice in March).
Not out of any particular nostalgia for the device itself, nor because I’ve seen anyone else with one. I just had a sudden hankering to play a Ridge Racer, and it turned out my PS3 is stuck in some kind of update loop.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well it’s held up. And by that, I mean this specific unit: over 20 years old, left in the back of a drawer for at least the last 10, but seemingly as good as new. The screen is obviously a bit dim by modern standards, but the battery still holds a charge for hours. If I treated a smartphone like that, I’d be afraid of it swelling to the size of a football and setting fire to the building.
By contrast, the DS Lite I found in the same drawer no longer recognises anything in either cartridge slot and the screens have developed a brownish gradient running top to bottom, although the clock had only drifted by ~40 minutes.
For me, that era of portable gaming coincided with a lot of travel for work, holidays, gigs and music festivals. I’ve probably spent more time playing games on those two consoles than I have on every mobile device released before or since put together.
It’ll probably end up back in the drawer sooner rather than later, but I had a fun Saturday evening working my way through a shoebox of UMDs, checking out save files mostly timestamped 2006-2008. And maybe I’ll finish another run through Jeanne d’Arc first.
I don't think I hve the same definition of "everyone" as the author.
Also my observation is that nothing that ever appear trendy on tiktok, instagram or youtube ever translate to real life. There are just an awful lot of super niche trends happening at the same time that only those in their respective algorithmic bubble are aware of.
I know of one person at work who uses one but that is about it. It could be a million people that have picked these things up, that is but a drop in the ocean considering how many people there are.
I do get it, I am sure there is a decent market for a new PSP like device with more modern processing capabilities but I am not sure if that would be a 10 million+ user kind of device. PSP came in right before online made a really large encroachment on game systems. Things like the PSP Go didn't fly because of that, nowadays it might do a lot better.
As an aside, I really liked the brief time I got to work on PSP software. From what I remember it was a fixed function GPU and a decent enough CPU that all felt really balanced for the time. After working on things like Gameboy Advance and a little bit of Nintenod DS, it felt like an ocean of possibility compared with those two. I'm sure if I was to go back to it now it would feel claustrophobic but at the time it was pretty comfy.
I bought a PSP on my first trip to Japan in 2008. I think it was around 30k yen. I remember the store I was at had used ones labeled with which firmware version they had, and I got a slightly more expensive one with an older firmware (3.4.0?) because it was one that had some vulnerability that involved a specially crafted save file for Lumines that allowed installing a custom firmware.
It was(/is) a great device for playing ps1 and snes games. It doesn't seem so special now that there are so many emulation focused handhelds, but at the time it felt really awesome to be able to play games like that on a plane.
If you don't mind paying a touch more you may as well buy a Vita. I got mine for $95 + shipping. You can boot into the PSP OS with Adrenaline (I really do miss the XMB), so it's a superset of capabilities, and you get that nice right analog stick. As far as being a dedicated device with actual buttons and minimal online connectivity it's all the same.
I bought one of these in 2004 and it really was a slice of the future. The screen was way bigger and higher res than anything I had owned prior, and the ability to jailbreak and run emulators gave it a lot more use than just UMD games.
I still have my original PSP 1000 which worked well until my daughter dropped it a couple weeks ago...
Yeah I'm surprised they had anything negative to say about the screen. It was incredible at the time, and still holds up well.
I recently dug mine out of storage and did a few quests in one of the Monster Hunter games, loading up an old save. It felt like I had barely put it down. My hunting log showed all the "recent" quests I had completed... 16 years ago.
It's funny seeing this article pop up as I've been exploring getting back into the handhelds as well recently.
My 9-year old has his old Gameboy Advance SP (those flippy things) but finding games for the GBA is just terribly expensive if you want physical. We're trying to avoid emulating or getting those 500-in-1 types of cartridges for ADHD reasons, but he wants to play Pacman which costs as much as a secondhand PS5 around here.
The PSP sits nicely in the middle of timing, or at least it feels like that. Way more modern, easier to find games for, and way cheaper as well (more stock).
It feels like the PSP was one of the last handhelds that you could use offline, without having to mod or hack it.
As much as I love the PSP and want to read about a resurgence in popularity for it, this writing seems a bit labored. There's a bit of substance and a few nice photos in here, but I feel like I just read the same paragraph 5 times.
"It's not just this, or this other thing, it's another thing."
"It’s not always about playing through a full game, it’s about the object itself, what it says, how it looks, the feeling it gives off."
"Not as a replacement, but as an alternative."
"It’s not just a handheld. It’s a self-contained beautifully designed little bubble"
"You’re not browsing a library of endless options, you’re watching something because you decided to put it there."
"It’s not just nostalgia, and it’s not just retro collecting."
I don't think these fluffy statements contribute to the overall thesis, and it could be trimmed down a bunch. Not every blog post needs to be Jony Ive waxing on about the purity of the iPod. No shade, I appreciate the attention given to the device and community, but it's just a bit padded imo.
I could understand any other console or new Android handheld but PSP has to be the second most miserable console to go back to. Barrel jack charger, some of the worse sticks ever made, and infamous battery bloating. The only worse choice is the Game Gear.
A used Vita would be a good modern replacement (and not even that much more expensive) but even in their afterlife I guess it's still doomed to play second fiddle to PSP.
What's the reason to prefer the PSP over the Vita? Yes, technically the Vita has Internet but outside of downloading games via that it really isn't a distraction because it's so clunky.
I recently freed mine and have been having a great time with everything it had to offer while being so much more portable than anything mainstream sold now as portable.
Because the Vita was less popular everywhere outside of Japan, which makes that there are less units available and the units cost a few times the price of a psp second hand. (in The Netherlands the PSP is just under 100 Euro second hand, usually with 20+ game discs, a vita starts at 200 without any games and often without a charger)
A lot of people also still have a PSP just hanging around, less so with the vita.
It even got a WPA (AES even, but unfortunately only some unusual WPA1+AES mode at that) with a firmware update, so you didn’t necessarily need a second insecure SSID like you do for the DS (which is WEP only).
For years one of my best friends growing up didn't have Internet, and my only communication with him was when he would walk to the McDonald's for the Wi-Fi with his PSP. We would chat over MSN.
I recently got a PSP (along with a special cable that I can use to hook it up to my TV); there is a pretty strong aftermarket ecosystem for them.
I fondly remember loading up a janky version of MAME that only ran Pac-Man via the newly discovered kxploit on my PSP in ~2005. That sent me down a two-decades-long road of fiddling with so many devices, making them my own.
I have huge respect for the folks who spent countless hours freeing devices like the PSP from the control of the corporations that wanted them locked down. I think we'll need a lot more of that spirit in the years ahead...
I've seen the Sony PSP for about $100 or $200 on eBay. Along with cheap UMB disks and accessories. I'd rather have a Steam Deck so I could play modern games, though.
I mean a PSP is great, but in 2026 I'd rather go for a 2nd hand Android that can not just emulate PSP but a plethora of other platforms as well with much better performance and usecases.
Pair that with a 30-40$ controller extension like the Razer Kishi and you have a really powerful retro gaming device.
It will be missing the haptics, the original display, the small UMD drive loading noises and vibrations – all that stuff was part of the experience as well.
For example, it took me a wrong time to realize why emulated Game Boy Color games felt so “off” until I learned that the original display had such an extremely narrow color gamut that mapping the GBC display output to full RGB is completely wrong. The same applies to the DMG and its shades-of-green (not grey!) display with its absurdly slow LCD ghosting that needs to be accurately emulated to see anything at all in a few games that made very clever use of the constraint as a feature.
There are some good shaders these days that try to approximate all that, but it’s still just that: An approximation.
+1 to this point, I really wanted a PSP my entire childhood but never got one, bought one back in 2022 purely because of the memories I had of 4-5 of us huddled around the community (read pampered friend's) PSP.
A creative's best work is born from constraints. It's why PICO-8 exists for people nostalgic for that specific olden era. I think the PSP could make a fantastic target for meatier handheld-focused games that put design first, as many of its second-tier games did. Lots of great strategy, platforming, and racing. A beautiful wide-screen with just enough resolution, just enough horsepower to drive it with rich, saturated 2D and some 3D, and a basic enough control scheme to rule out the lame tech-demo category of 3D action games. I cannot describe how much WipeOut, Namco Museum, and Tactics Ogre time I had on my PSP.
I didn't quite get the point of this comment, there's no denying any of it, actually I wholeheartedly agree with you, but what I was saying wrt practicality of playing PSP games.
You can of course buy that device, but from personal experience the novelty doesn't last very long and then it just becomes just another device in the drawer graveyard. Also no one's really making new PSP games anymore? so the novelty of the PSP remains in its construction and the software; which becomes limiting as time goes on.
The joystick, buttons all tend to break or stick after 20 years, replacements may or may not be easy to come by for most, so it just makes more sense into building your own retro game device that supports PSP emulation among others.
And the PICO-8 has produced some impressive projects, such as UnDUNE II (https://liquidream.itch.io/undune2) which reimplements the old Dune II game (which started the entire RTS genre). Yes, within the PICO-8's constraints. I loved Dune II, and while I don't plan to pick up a PICO-8 just to play it, I love that this exists.
Last week I actually did dig out my UK launch PSP-1000 from 2005 (a gift from Games Workshop for being Design Studio Employee of the Year, I think to the bafflement of almost everyone in the department, not least me – at the time, I was the bloke who kept the websites running, after most of the US-based team had left on 2 weeks’ notice in March).
Not out of any particular nostalgia for the device itself, nor because I’ve seen anyone else with one. I just had a sudden hankering to play a Ridge Racer, and it turned out my PS3 is stuck in some kind of update loop.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well it’s held up. And by that, I mean this specific unit: over 20 years old, left in the back of a drawer for at least the last 10, but seemingly as good as new. The screen is obviously a bit dim by modern standards, but the battery still holds a charge for hours. If I treated a smartphone like that, I’d be afraid of it swelling to the size of a football and setting fire to the building.
By contrast, the DS Lite I found in the same drawer no longer recognises anything in either cartridge slot and the screens have developed a brownish gradient running top to bottom, although the clock had only drifted by ~40 minutes.
For me, that era of portable gaming coincided with a lot of travel for work, holidays, gigs and music festivals. I’ve probably spent more time playing games on those two consoles than I have on every mobile device released before or since put together.
It’ll probably end up back in the drawer sooner rather than later, but I had a fun Saturday evening working my way through a shoebox of UMDs, checking out save files mostly timestamped 2006-2008. And maybe I’ll finish another run through Jeanne d’Arc first.
I don't think I hve the same definition of "everyone" as the author.
Also my observation is that nothing that ever appear trendy on tiktok, instagram or youtube ever translate to real life. There are just an awful lot of super niche trends happening at the same time that only those in their respective algorithmic bubble are aware of.
I know of one person at work who uses one but that is about it. It could be a million people that have picked these things up, that is but a drop in the ocean considering how many people there are.
I do get it, I am sure there is a decent market for a new PSP like device with more modern processing capabilities but I am not sure if that would be a 10 million+ user kind of device. PSP came in right before online made a really large encroachment on game systems. Things like the PSP Go didn't fly because of that, nowadays it might do a lot better.
As an aside, I really liked the brief time I got to work on PSP software. From what I remember it was a fixed function GPU and a decent enough CPU that all felt really balanced for the time. After working on things like Gameboy Advance and a little bit of Nintenod DS, it felt like an ocean of possibility compared with those two. I'm sure if I was to go back to it now it would feel claustrophobic but at the time it was pretty comfy.
After the PS Vita I doubt Sony will try their hand again in the traditional hand-held market. PS Portal seems pretty nice too.
Why not? Steam deck and nintendo switch certainly were.
And the PSP, unlike both of those (and the steam deck clones) was the right size to be played everywhere.
I bought a PSP on my first trip to Japan in 2008. I think it was around 30k yen. I remember the store I was at had used ones labeled with which firmware version they had, and I got a slightly more expensive one with an older firmware (3.4.0?) because it was one that had some vulnerability that involved a specially crafted save file for Lumines that allowed installing a custom firmware.
It was(/is) a great device for playing ps1 and snes games. It doesn't seem so special now that there are so many emulation focused handhelds, but at the time it felt really awesome to be able to play games like that on a plane.
If you don't mind paying a touch more you may as well buy a Vita. I got mine for $95 + shipping. You can boot into the PSP OS with Adrenaline (I really do miss the XMB), so it's a superset of capabilities, and you get that nice right analog stick. As far as being a dedicated device with actual buttons and minimal online connectivity it's all the same.
I bought one of these in 2004 and it really was a slice of the future. The screen was way bigger and higher res than anything I had owned prior, and the ability to jailbreak and run emulators gave it a lot more use than just UMD games.
I still have my original PSP 1000 which worked well until my daughter dropped it a couple weeks ago...
Yeah I'm surprised they had anything negative to say about the screen. It was incredible at the time, and still holds up well.
I recently dug mine out of storage and did a few quests in one of the Monster Hunter games, loading up an old save. It felt like I had barely put it down. My hunting log showed all the "recent" quests I had completed... 16 years ago.
It's funny seeing this article pop up as I've been exploring getting back into the handhelds as well recently. My 9-year old has his old Gameboy Advance SP (those flippy things) but finding games for the GBA is just terribly expensive if you want physical. We're trying to avoid emulating or getting those 500-in-1 types of cartridges for ADHD reasons, but he wants to play Pacman which costs as much as a secondhand PS5 around here.
The PSP sits nicely in the middle of timing, or at least it feels like that. Way more modern, easier to find games for, and way cheaper as well (more stock). It feels like the PSP was one of the last handhelds that you could use offline, without having to mod or hack it.
Seems like you want a custom cartridge
They exist, e.g. https://www.coolspotgaming.co.uk/products/custom-game-boy-ad... ( I haven't used this service )
This seems like a good mid point between a $500 cartridge and having no friction between games
It matches the current "2K aesthetic" revival. Probably the last device that fully incarnates that specific time frame.
You can commonly see it in major fashion adv campaigns, with models using anachronistic Sony CD Players, digital cameras and recorders.
As much as I love the PSP and want to read about a resurgence in popularity for it, this writing seems a bit labored. There's a bit of substance and a few nice photos in here, but I feel like I just read the same paragraph 5 times.
"It's not just this, or this other thing, it's another thing."
"It’s not always about playing through a full game, it’s about the object itself, what it says, how it looks, the feeling it gives off."
"Not as a replacement, but as an alternative."
"It’s not just a handheld. It’s a self-contained beautifully designed little bubble"
"You’re not browsing a library of endless options, you’re watching something because you decided to put it there."
"It’s not just nostalgia, and it’s not just retro collecting."
I don't think these fluffy statements contribute to the overall thesis, and it could be trimmed down a bunch. Not every blog post needs to be Jony Ive waxing on about the purity of the iPod. No shade, I appreciate the attention given to the device and community, but it's just a bit padded imo.
I could understand any other console or new Android handheld but PSP has to be the second most miserable console to go back to. Barrel jack charger, some of the worse sticks ever made, and infamous battery bloating. The only worse choice is the Game Gear.
A used Vita would be a good modern replacement (and not even that much more expensive) but even in their afterlife I guess it's still doomed to play second fiddle to PSP.
What's the reason to prefer the PSP over the Vita? Yes, technically the Vita has Internet but outside of downloading games via that it really isn't a distraction because it's so clunky.
I recently freed mine and have been having a great time with everything it had to offer while being so much more portable than anything mainstream sold now as portable.
Because the Vita was less popular everywhere outside of Japan, which makes that there are less units available and the units cost a few times the price of a psp second hand. (in The Netherlands the PSP is just under 100 Euro second hand, usually with 20+ game discs, a vita starts at 200 without any games and often without a charger)
A lot of people also still have a PSP just hanging around, less so with the vita.
The PSP has Internet connectivity too, no?
It even got a WPA (AES even, but unfortunately only some unusual WPA1+AES mode at that) with a firmware update, so you didn’t necessarily need a second insecure SSID like you do for the DS (which is WEP only).
Vitas are way more expensive and hard to find
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For years one of my best friends growing up didn't have Internet, and my only communication with him was when he would walk to the McDonald's for the Wi-Fi with his PSP. We would chat over MSN.
I recently got a PSP (along with a special cable that I can use to hook it up to my TV); there is a pretty strong aftermarket ecosystem for them.
There are so many great PSP games, and it's so easy to just throw in your pocket and play for a few minutes here and there. I love my PSP!
I fondly remember loading up a janky version of MAME that only ran Pac-Man via the newly discovered kxploit on my PSP in ~2005. That sent me down a two-decades-long road of fiddling with so many devices, making them my own.
I have huge respect for the folks who spent countless hours freeing devices like the PSP from the control of the corporations that wanted them locked down. I think we'll need a lot more of that spirit in the years ahead...
Kids just find out how retro games are so much more fun than modern games.
It's one of the devices I really regret selling.
Fake trendspotting for views.
I've seen the Sony PSP for about $100 or $200 on eBay. Along with cheap UMB disks and accessories. I'd rather have a Steam Deck so I could play modern games, though.
I mean a PSP is great, but in 2026 I'd rather go for a 2nd hand Android that can not just emulate PSP but a plethora of other platforms as well with much better performance and usecases.
Pair that with a 30-40$ controller extension like the Razer Kishi and you have a really powerful retro gaming device.
Sure, but it’ll feel nothing like the actual PSP.
It will be missing the haptics, the original display, the small UMD drive loading noises and vibrations – all that stuff was part of the experience as well.
For example, it took me a wrong time to realize why emulated Game Boy Color games felt so “off” until I learned that the original display had such an extremely narrow color gamut that mapping the GBC display output to full RGB is completely wrong. The same applies to the DMG and its shades-of-green (not grey!) display with its absurdly slow LCD ghosting that needs to be accurately emulated to see anything at all in a few games that made very clever use of the constraint as a feature.
There are some good shaders these days that try to approximate all that, but it’s still just that: An approximation.
That's a valid point ngl
But there's something quite nostalgic about holding the console you had as a kid and going down a good old happy memory lane
This only works if you had it as a kid. At the very least, you have to be old enough to have had it as a kid.
+1 to this point, I really wanted a PSP my entire childhood but never got one, bought one back in 2022 purely because of the memories I had of 4-5 of us huddled around the community (read pampered friend's) PSP.
s/old/young
A creative's best work is born from constraints. It's why PICO-8 exists for people nostalgic for that specific olden era. I think the PSP could make a fantastic target for meatier handheld-focused games that put design first, as many of its second-tier games did. Lots of great strategy, platforming, and racing. A beautiful wide-screen with just enough resolution, just enough horsepower to drive it with rich, saturated 2D and some 3D, and a basic enough control scheme to rule out the lame tech-demo category of 3D action games. I cannot describe how much WipeOut, Namco Museum, and Tactics Ogre time I had on my PSP.
I didn't quite get the point of this comment, there's no denying any of it, actually I wholeheartedly agree with you, but what I was saying wrt practicality of playing PSP games.
You can of course buy that device, but from personal experience the novelty doesn't last very long and then it just becomes just another device in the drawer graveyard. Also no one's really making new PSP games anymore? so the novelty of the PSP remains in its construction and the software; which becomes limiting as time goes on.
The joystick, buttons all tend to break or stick after 20 years, replacements may or may not be easy to come by for most, so it just makes more sense into building your own retro game device that supports PSP emulation among others.
And the PICO-8 has produced some impressive projects, such as UnDUNE II (https://liquidream.itch.io/undune2) which reimplements the old Dune II game (which started the entire RTS genre). Yes, within the PICO-8's constraints. I loved Dune II, and while I don't plan to pick up a PICO-8 just to play it, I love that this exists.
Really? I still own a psp, but the Steam Deck ate all other handheld for me
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