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Let's talk launches: Playstation Portable (March 24, 2005)

Green Yoshi

Member
I bought the PSP with Ridge Racer on launch date, September 1st here in Germany, from my first civil service salary. One month later I bought GTA Liberty City Stories. Amazing system. First device I used for downloading and listening to podcasts. It was indeed ahead of its time and featured a lot of things, that are now common in smartphones. Watching Hollywood movies on Video-UMDs in DVD quality on the balcony on vacation after sunset was great. My only complaint is the missing second analog nub. PS Vita fixed this issue.

And because I had registered my PSP for a free Spider-Man 2 Video-UMD I won a digital camera and a camcorder one year later because I had participated in a contest for all peole who had registered their PSP. Both were then worth 800€ each.

My favourite game is Daxter. A really good platformer by Ready At Dawn.
 

Iacobellis

Junior Member
Besides a few functionality differences here and there, the UIs were extraordinarily similar. PSP used XMB just like PS3.

This. The XMB was pretty much Sony's software design language for most of last decade and up until a few years ago. The PSX and certain BRAVIA televisions used it as well.
 

Quake1028

Member
Here was my launch day haul. Well, half of it. I bought my brother a PSP, case, and some of these same games. Super expensive day but was so happy.

J3WbTRN.jpg
 

Trunx28

Member
The only console I've ever imported. Played it the first time on an imported one from a friend. Ridge Racer blew me away. These were the days of Lik Sang .. and the wait for the package to arrive was excruciating! But worth it: Imported it with Ridge Racer and played the hell out of this game (good thing was that I've never played an older RR title before, so every track was new to me).

My PSP collection is quite big now, even got a huge bunch of Video-UMDs (even the King Kong DVD/UMD Special Edition and all existing Harry Potter UMDs).

Top 5 must have games:
Ridge Racer 2 (as much as I love the first one, RR2 is the complete edition for any fan)
Jeanne D'Arc (never had it in Europe so I played it on my PSP go ..)
Resistance
Crisis Core
Lego Star Wars (the best trilogy with the best lego home console conversion, still playing it on my iPhone)
 
I bought my first PSP about a week after launch; picked up Metal Gear AC!D, Ridge Racer and Wipeout... The system absolutely blew me away; as sweet as the Vita is, the PSP was the last portable system I fell utterly in love with...

and I've been a portable whore since I bought my first Gameboy in September, 1989 to drag around on the band bus... I've literally purchased every portable game system launched in North America within weeks of launch since Gameboy. Some of those systems thrilled me more than others (the Lynx, then the TurboExpress, both just blew my mind... and the Nomad was awesome as well), but for shear wow factor, nothing ever really felt as good as the PSP. It was like holding the future in your hands; it was just so full of promise!

In the end, I think the iPhone (or smartphones in general) had as much to do with it's demise as the excellent DS library and the ease of piracy on the system did, but it was a perfect storm of problems that the PSP just couldn't over-come... I'm grateful for Sony's lack of understanding regarding the real issues though; I don't think they would even have bothered with the Vita if they'd fully understood the way handheld gaming was migrating to other devices...

Still love the PSP... I've got maybe eleven or twelve of the systems around the house... Truth is, my love of handhelds has led to rather extensive handheld systems collection (it was featured in issue #49 or Retro Gamer, and has grown considerably since)... Here's a post with some pics of most of my PSP collection from the PSP Collector's thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=109244958&postcount=186

Do I still play my PSP? Yep... I rip everything to memory card nowadays but I still prefer it to the Vita for many of the old PSP games. It's just a great handheld and I'm sure I'll have one loaded with games within arm's reach in the nursing home when I get there...


Launch day for me was all about making sure I didn't get stuck with the Canadian Gretzky bundle that EB was forcing on some people.
Actually, the only set available in Canada at all for the first four months was the Gretzky bundle, unless you bought just the machine itself from the Sony store, I think... and those were in short supply... (besides, the Gretzky bundle gave you decent Sony headphones and a memory card, so it wasn't actually a bad deal)...
 

JamboGT

Member
Went to the midnight launch, had already paid so was just picking it up, the PSP, Ridge Racers, WipEout Pure and Lumines, a fantastic trio of games, was delighted with it.
 
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