“Excellent write-up! SBCGaming is one of the communities I miss most and I love your breakdown.”

Thank you! Sorry you’ve had to give up some communities, but it is nice that you’ve stayed strong and landed here in stead. I do share each retro handheld review I do on here, so you’ll see them over time as a (terrible) consolation prize! I have the TRIMUI Brick Hammer Pro U, the Retroid Pocket Nova, Anbernic’s RG 55G1 and…one more I forget still coming to review, too :)

“Should ‘Pro’ denote an upgrade? Probably; but things are really hinky in the electronic parts department, and a more comfortable playing experience is likely worth it to some.”

I think that is the finnicky part. No one really finds this a ‘Pro’ upgrade, but for what it does (especially PSX on this for me), it is a beautiful and fun time :)

Thanks for reading through and enjoying it. I appreciate it!

Thank you so much, you’re right! I appreciate it, edit has been made :)

(and sorry, weird thing to get wrong!)

I think the trigger sound is so funny. For some it is the literal devil (me), for others they enjoy the sound of it working (you), the nice thing I’ve found is two layers of kapton tape in there make it what I prefer. So there are options!

I’d love the PS2/Original Xbox (even X360) era games on my lap…

PS2 and some original Xbox games are doable! Take the Retroid Pocket 5 or 6 for example. My 6 I reviewed played at the screen’s limit without breaking a sweat (5x upscale), and the Odin 3 Max I reviewed managed upscaling to 4K on the Elite chip. Original Xbox games are a mixed bag though, emulation development for that platform is very far behind PS2 or GCN. Sadly :(

(and thank you, as always for reading along! I appreicate it so much!)

I use my Brick Hammer almost daily! I love that handheld so much, to me it might be the perfect premium feeling device.

https://gardinerbryant.com/hands-on-with-the-trimui-brick-hammer-metal-perfection/

I reviewed that one some months back!

Of the two, if you are happy without sticks and a smaller screen (you need good eyes!), then the Brick Hammer is the better of the two.

That said the Brick Hammer Pro U will be on its way to me to review soon, so I’ll see how they did with the metal body and twin sticks with their very first Android effort soon enough :)

Thank you so much! I’m so glad you enjoyed it!

Time for you to get it back out, maybe get a new adapter card for that micro SD, and then enjoy some games again!

(And yes, dead easy. Just copying two files over, not even ‘all the stuff’!)

Go get it out!

I think PSPs are super viable, even today. I use mine more than two of the retro handhelds I have which run 16GB of RAM. Looking forward to how you find it regardless though, after such a long time of not using it

I’ll recommend RetroDECK for emulation on the Steam Deck!

https://retrodeck.net/

You’re welcome!!!

Have fun!

Technically it is, but there’s a huge scene of influencers who have set up shop on there and run their own businesses. There’s a bunch who run ads, but you pay a crazy bit of money on top of what you’d pay on Aliexpress, just because they hope to rope in people who don’t know any better!

And like I said, if Etsy is more your scene, there’s a bunch there last time I looked!

You can even run GTA 3 (rebuilt in the Liberty City Stories engine) on your PSP-1000 if you’d be so inclined after jailbreaking!

I interviewed the folk behind it (Barcode Studia) a little while ago, and they made sure that not only was the game emulateable but playable on every PSP model, including the PSP-1000 :)

https://gardinerbryant.com/rewriting-liberty-city-an-interview-with-barcode-studia-on-rebuilding-gta-iii-for-psp/

Yes, there’s a bunch on Aliexpress (I’d probably recommend there over anywhere else, since their prices are the most reasonable and you get the same thing everyone does)

Etsy also has a bunch, as does Instagram. But again…you’ll be paying slightly more there

Yes, absolutely no difference! It works just the same :)

Thank you so much!

…mostly for turning a blind eye to what is obviously just a giant and elaborate excuse for me to write about the PSP again!!!

I got lucky buying this white one for roughly $33 USD :)

Don’t lament your silver though! They’re so beautiful, and all those marks it has just shows the history of it in your possession!

:)

A few weeks ago I wrote about taking a chance on a cheap “junk” PSP-2000 from Japan, replacing its faulty charging port, and ending up with one of the nicest handhelds I own.

Quite a few people here on Lemmy reached out afterwards asking about jailbreaking, or just sharing that they planned to buy UMDs for it. I guess this article is my answer (or maybe just yet another thinly veiled excuse to write about my favorite old handheld…the PSP) to that.

Rather than another super technical wiki, I wanted to write a bit of step-by-step with just pictures of all of it. I cover installing ARK-4 custom firmware, setting up a microSD card, loading games, movies and music, a handful of homebrew recommendations. I really, really love Sony’s PSP. I think as far as industrial design language goes, you just can’t beat it.

So if you’ve recently picked up a PSP, are thinking about picking one up, or have one sitting in a drawer gathering dust, I hope this helps you give it a second life!

And if you don’t want to read through, then ask me here and I’m more than happy to recommend things to you.

Maybe this is just a ‘thing’ I don’t understand (super likely), why are you censoring ‘gamers’? Or any word on Lemmy? Being a mod here, I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you follow our rules, you don’t have to censor any word you’re using like you have to on TikTok.

So my latest article is something that’s been on my mind for a while: the people still making physical games feel genuinely special, the lack of physical games going forward (looking at you, Sony), and what everyone lost with the old-old ‘big-box’ PC gaming era.

I just try to take a look look back at the era of PC gaming, manuals, maps and all the little extras that made opening a new game part of the experience. How “physical” has changed in recent years, and a handful of developers, publishers and community creators who are still putting real care into physical releases today (including RowanFN, whose work creating custom manuals and inserts I had the chance to cover last year)

If you’re interested in game preservation, collecting, or simply miss the days when a physical game was more than just a case and a download code (shitty shitty GTA VI discovery), I hope you’ll enjoy the read. It might be a bit of a…watch-me-go-off-on-tangents article, but it is still important in a way. I think.

Hey, that’s me!!!

:)

The warning from the german team was not ignored, as far as I understood it, but just arrived too late while the newsletter team was already sending the mails.

Nope, it was blocked. They asked, were told this is wrong and knew why.

The reason you had it delivered in Germany is because your email preferences are set to English. They only skipped Germany by blocking the German language. They knew it was wrong, avoided the German language and set it to everyone else. Rather than hitting backspace once or twice.

A jab at Sony’s recent announcement with completely ditching physical games!