Playing With Myself and Other People Too
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In my hands
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Cheap classics...
I was doing my usual; looking around second hand electrical stores for cheap games when I came across the following PS1 classics:
WipeOut 2097, Bust-a-move 2, Spyro The Dragon and Spyro2: Gateway to Glimmer.
So how much did I pay for these total classics well...
Only 2 have been released on the PSN Store so far and those are the Spyro games which I believe were taken down due to being buggy. Sony want to charge you about £3.49 per game. I bought them in reasonable condition for £1 each.
So for roughly the cost of 1 download I've managed to get 4 top games. These games are playable in 2 ways as well either on you TV via the PS3 or on the PSP via PS3 Remote-play.
I was addicited to WipeOut 2097 in my late teens, I managed to complete Spyro 2 many years ago with a friend and it took hours to collect the last gem we needed. Bust-a-move was always a finance drainer, when it was installed as an arcade cabinet in our college common room.
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PS3 Firmware 2.20 gone live
As I'd previously mentioned the new PS3 Firmware has been added to the system. As I'd previously mentioned it added quite a few video play back features including Blu-ray 2.0 (BD-LIVE) which allows for content to be streamed from the interweb via the PS3. I'm struggling to find out which discs actually are using this version and as I still don't have a HDTV I'm not likely to be fully testing these function. I did notice that it added an Option in the Blu-ray otption with regards to allowing the Disc to connect to the internet. There is also some emntion of Mostiquto noise reduction which is regards to digfital artifacts that occur with digital vido files due to compression. Divx has supposed to have been updated and now allows subtitles that are encoded into the file to be displayed. As well files over 2GB sadly the divx files that didn't work before still don't work now, but hey ho. There is now a function to allow you to chose where your sound is output in Remote-play either via the PSP or PS3. The PS3 option basically turns your PSP in to rather snazzy Remote device but is a bit useless, unless you have a rather swanky Sony 7.1 Amp that allows for separate zones to be created. Whilst on the subject of PSP you can now transfer playlist for pictures and music to the PSP along with your tracks which is far better than current PSP system of either storing them in folders using a PC to create the needed structure or having them all loose.
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More updates...
PS3 Firmware 2.17
A bit of a surprise this one but but as surprise that appears to do nothing. From what rumours I've heard it's to patch up a problem with allowing ISO (disc images) to be run from the HDD in a similar way to something that was possbile on PS2's. We are due 2.20 at the end of the month which is supposed to be packed with features and I'll update as soon as it's gone live.
PSP Firmware 3.93
Another slightly pointless update to the PSP and not the 4.0 version people were expecting. The only two things this adds is more support to PS1 titles and added Internet radio stations.
CoD4 has just received another patch which sadly hasn't fixed the server issues that were causing problems before but has added a rather sexy set of Kill cams to. This means that you can now see in closeup how you were killed, granades get followed into the targets, claymores show the direction of the explosion, RPGs fly straight in before exploding, as do 40mm grenades, airstrikes now get followed to the their targets from the bottom of the plane. This has also fixed the lag issue with scoped weapons, which were causing them to show on target but would actually be a foot to either side of what you were shooting at.
Sadly the issue with parties etc still isn't resolved but is more stable than it was.
They have also added the players met function so you can add people you've gamed with as buddies.
SingStore has had 2 major refreshes in the last month one with 34 English tracks and the other with 24. Still no where near the 300 promised at release but it is a start. Roll on May for the US release and we may actually have the 300+ tunes and dare I say Blue tooth mics? Again there seems to be stuff that has been included on previous PS2 discs with only a couple of exceptions. It does seem to be mainly male voal indie music which is great for me.
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PS3 returned to Sony...
My PS3 has been experiencing a few Blu-Ray games (BDROM) reading disc issues. Which has meant that last week I had to contact customer services. The machine was having trouble reading the discs and showing them in the XMB (PS2 type disc read errors me thinks). But would work occasionally. Very strange.
They were very helpful and offered to exchange my machine. The machine I was warned would be a reconditioned unit but that had gone through factory (new machine testing). All they wanted me to send them was the unit it's self including the HDD. This was done with a courier who exchanged my machine for a new covered in plastic machine. Which I'm blogging from now ;-)
They have been a few issues. As my machine had about 50 GB worth of data on it including games, saves, music, pictures and movies I needed to back this up. Sunday was spent looking for a cheap external HDD. Product review coming soon I feel.
The PS3 has a back up utility that sadly doesn't back everything up...
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This week I've mostly been...
Playing Tekken: Dark Resuerction online. It seems like the problems that were previously happening with lag making matches unplayable has been resolved. Last night I managed to have a Tekken night with 7 buddies only 5 were allowed in at a time but we all managed to have a good round robin set of games with one person currently inside the top 100 for the week. Ranking as a Shihan. I'm current a 7th Dan which is nice but still only in the top 400.
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PSP firmware 3.90 now live
As an owner of a phat PSP (PSP1000) I sadly only got Go!Messenger, whilst Slims (PSP2000) got Sykpe and GO!Messenger. I say got GO!Mess, but what I mean is that an icon now shows under Network that links to a website were supposidly this new application can be downloaded to a Memory Stick Duo. Follow the link and all it does is take to to a page that says coming soon, but no release date shown. There is a Q&A page but very little else. So until this package goes live I cannot give you a product test sadly. Eventhough I managed to get a real bargain on an Official Sony PSP headset. There was also a mention of added network game support? If anyone has a PSP Slim and has tested Skype please post a comment to let us know what it's like.
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Firware updates
PS3 ver 2.10 Wow if you've read the comment in the post below you'll see a list of some of the features. What I didn't know was that the update has an amzing effect on a PSP as you can now use Remote-play on PSP to play PS1 games from the PS3. This doesn't just mean the games bought from the PS Store but also any PS1 discs. I tested it using the PS1 games on the HDD. Then booted up Music 2000. I was playing the tunes I'd created on the software stored on my PS1 memory card that I'd transfered to the PS3. Not sure whether it was working properly but just having the ability to use it is an amazing feature. Also the backwards compatatbility has been updated which means that finally SSX: Tricky and On Tour now work. Sadly Tricky doesn't work in DTS, boo. Also Buffy still has same graphic issues. PSP ver 3.80 I've not noticed anything additional to what was mentioned in the below blog entry. If I discover anything interesting I'll let you know.
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