Josh Nichols

PSP hackery

Not satisfied with messing around seeing which Xbox games really work on the 360, I decided to do something much more nerdy: Hack a PSP.

I thought about maybe getting a GP2X instead since it’s way easier to run homebrew software, but after hearing about a new Silent Hill for the PSP, I went with the Sony.

Deciding which system to go with was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out how to hack it. Depending on what firmware it has determines how you’re going to downgrade it, or if you can even downgrade it at all.

I had a lot of trouble finding info on how to do it. I guess the PSP homebrew scene changes a lot. After a while, I managed to find pspiso.com and it’s tutorial section in the forum (membership required to view). It had a great post that outlined everything you need to do to get homebrew software running.

Note: There is a slight chance that messing with your PSP firmware can break it. Also, be sure you trust where you are downloading any software you decide to run on your PSP. There have been some viruses released that will break it. If you decide to do this hackery too, proceed at your own risk.

First I had to make sure I bought a PSP with firmware virson 3.03 or lower. If got one with 3.10 or higher: No hacking for me. Luckily there was a way to tell what firmware a PSP has by looking at the serial number on the box. I was able to find one that had a firmware of 2.71.

If I ended up with a firmware between 2.80 and 3.03 would have needed a copy of GTA Liberty City Stories that was unpatched. It has a save game exploit that allows the hackery. You can tell if it is the unpatched one by putting it in your PSP and checking if it has the 2.0 firmware update on it.

Next, I used a downgrader to get my firmware to version 1.5. At this point I could have stopped and would have been able to run all kinds of emulators and old PSP games, but I wanted to be able to play newer PSP games and run emulated Playstation 1 games. This involved flashing the 3.40 OE-A Custom Firmware by Dark Alex.

The update was successful and now I’m emulating all of my favorite classic games like this guy on Youtube. The games run great and at full speed. I tried a few PS1 games and they’re working fine with just a few glitchy moments. Oh, and regular PSP games work too. It’s soo cool!

Check out the video I made of it in action: