PSP - Retrospectively Speaking Feature

Fragile, smooth, slick, stylish, wowâ?¦.big screen, just some of the descriptions aired around TVG Towers back in December 2004 when our first PSP arrived in the office (read our initial verdict here.) Rumours of UMDs flying out of the machine if the PSP was held at a certain angle, dead pixels that would ruin the experience, and a battery with a life-span shorter than a bar of chocolate on a hot day were all concerns at the time. Would Sony's first handheld machine cope with the constant stresses of regular use?

Nine months on and TVG can report the truth about living and working with PSP, and far from being the tempestuous relationship that could have been if all of the listed concerns had arisen, it has been an eye-opener. UMDs flying out of the system? Nope. Dead pixels ruining the PSP experience? Well, there may be a few, but they rarely distract let alone ruin a game. Short battery life? Only if you consider four to five hours of straight playing 'short', though it really depends on how often the PSP accesses the UMD information. None of the major problems cited in pre-release horrors have surfaced, and that's not as the result of having flukey PSPâ?¦there are currently three in TVG Towers that are played regularly and there has never been a problem with them (except for the time that Chris dropped his PSP and nearly passed out from holding his breath in shock.)

One slight problem that has been encountered in the last nine months however is that the PSP doesn't like bright light and can prove to be very difficult to use when sunlight hits the screen. It can be a bit of an inconvenience especially when you find yourself on a train or outside with little shade, but there are several products available that boast about solving the problemâ?¦apparently.

Although until recently there was only a few games in our PSP library, the fact is that between Lumines and Ridge Racers we have been kept pretty occupied, although Everybody's Golf and Virtua Tennis World Tour seem to be getting a lot of attention at the moment. Trust us when we say that the machine was a damn useful thing to have back in May during the ten-hour flight to Los Angeles and back - it flew quite quickly (time that is, obviously the plane was flying.)

Ad hoc Wi-Fi works perfectly well and there have been plenty of occasions during the past few months when blood sweat and tears have been caused by on-going grudge matches in Lumines and Tony Hawk's Underground 2: Remixâ?¦in fact the only lag occurred during a few matches of FIFA Football. Some of the games out there can be a bit and miss much like but it isn't the first time that new console will launch with a few duff titles.

The advent of version 2.00 firmware for the PSP has further expanded the repertoire of the system thanks to the addition of a web browser (remember that TVG is now available in a PSP exclusive format - check out totalvideogames.com/psp via your own v2.00 updated PSP), and after checking out some UMD-Videos, we can honestly say that PSP is one the most versatile pieces of equipment to arrive on the market in yearsâ?¦if only Sony could have made the thing out of a material that didn't quite attract as many fingerprints, PSPs are almost always covered in prints.

Looking back over the last nine months there aren't many days when the PSP hasn't been picked and played a few times, and with a line-up of titles such as Rockstar's GTA: Liberty City Stories one of many titles set to appear on the platform in a second wave of titles there is plenty of things to be excited about. True enough the PSP seems to be floundering in Japan a little bit (how much of that is down to Nintendogs we wonder), and it will be interesting to see how well Nintendo can hold off the Sony onslaught after a six month period of DS dominance.