Hey minna, I’m back for more updates before I head to bed. I promised to blog about some happier stuffs didn’t I? Anyway at such a sophisticated age like this, I’m sure many of you definitely have either a portable music player or gaming handheld, or maybe even a portable digital assistant aka PDA. Anyway I’m proud to announce, I finally bought my first portable gaming/video/music handheld which is the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) (my Nokia Taco doesn’t count btw, it’s more like a phone than gaming handheld to me), got it sometime after CNY was over, about 2 weeks ago. Pretty much splurged my whole ang baos on it, costs me $688 for the whole bundle consisting of the PSP Value pack, Martins Field Screen Overlay Plus and one PSP game (I got Lumines). And that is not all, cos practically Sony only included a 32MB Memstick Pro in the original package that can’t save shit other than serving for those game saves purpose. So I also got myself a brand new Sandisk 512MB Memstick Duo Pro for storing music and videos for another $130. *rolls-eyes* So all in all I actually spent about $818 for all these, zzz how’s that for a new year start, talk about spending recklessly heh.

Though it was an expensive investment, honestly I had to say it was quite a worthwhile purchase. Firstly, I was actually looking for a dedicated MP3-player, and secondly, PSP not only serves as a portable gaming handheld console but also functions as a portable PDE that plays music and videos. So while I was contemplating whether to get an Apple iPod Mini or Creative Zen Micro for that matter, it suddenly struck me that I could actually buy the Sony PSP to kill two birds with one stone. Afterall my Taco (Read: Nokia N-gage) was giving me some irritating problems with its music function; sometimes it simply refuses to skip to the next track after a track has played finished, or sometimes the player will just hang after looping a few songs, which is utterly irritating while listening to music on-the-go outside. So after I got my Sony PSP, I got rid of my Taco soon by selling it off for $250, so you could say I recuperated abit of my money that went into the PSP. Anyway Willie from Mega Multimedia was nice enough to give me a discount for e whole package, cos during that week the Value Pack would cost you $699 without e Martins Field Protector, with just one game bundled. So I actually got myself quite a good bargain, thanks to him. And also thanks to my Sony PSP, now I finally don’t have to endure boring moments while commuting via MRT or bus rides. *elated*

Anyway talking about the Sony PSP, Lumines is a totally fun and addictive title. It’s a music-puzzle genre kind of game created by Tetsuya Mizuguchi (creator of ‘REZ‘ & ‘Space Channel 5‘ and also the upcoming NDS title ‘Meteos‘) featuring music from veteran japanese band/DJ/composer Mondo Grosso and a relatively new japanese singer Nobuchika Eri, who has a vocal quite akin to Mika Nakashima’s in my opinion. You can check out the game’s official site here. Feel free to sample some of the game’s fantastic BGM from that website and also find out more about the game itself. This is the kind of game whereby you could just play for fun like Tetris, simple yet addictive. The game’s music is totally catchy and gives you a very good momentum and tempo getting into it, which makes the gaming experience awhole lot more fun and great. This kind of game is totally different from commercially-driven games featuring those common genres so often plagued in the game industry now. Still don’t get what I mean? How often do you see games that emphasize on music via the tempo to bring you into the game, enriching the game experience via a different way, yet keeping the gameplay simple, but fun and addictive, and appeals to all kinds of diff ages? There’s no hero nor heroine here involved to save the world, no violence or gore, no kick-ass or complicated mind-twisting story-plot to suck you in, yet the game has just what most of us are asking for, interesting and fun gameplay with mind-blowing catchy music to boot with. I haven’t gotten very far with this game, so far only unlocked a few skins, but I really appreciate its simple yet fun concept. I’m not intending to get those common commercially-driven games that you can easily get to play on current-gen consoles like Dynasty Warriors or Ridge Racer for that matter, sure they do have nice and impressive graphics, but I would appreciate more if a game has the kind of gameplay that innovates and appeals to me rather than just some mindless button-smashing next-gen graphic tech demo. There’s another PSP game I wanna get soon, which is SCEI’s PSP launch title ‘Dokodemo Issyo‘, which is basically like those kind of having a pet-tamagotchi kind of interactive game rather than a ‘true’ game, but oh well blame me for been a crazy fanatic over Sony’s adorable game mascot, Toro-chan. (^ ^)”

And as always, I’m a sucker for tech-gadgets, so no doubt that Sony PSP’s design just gradually sucked me in like nothing from the very first glance I saw it, even from online web pictures. There’s just this thing about the design, so glossy and classy. I bet Sony’s R&D dept must be laughing at Apple right now, since after the launch of PSP, most online sites are comparing the PSP to the iPod, design and features wise. And also not to forget the PSP sports a 4.3″ high-resolution (16:9 ratio widescreen) TFT LCD manufactured by Sharp in Japan, great for gaming as well as portable videos. You must really see the screen quality for yourself to believe, watching videos on it totally rocked, and I can’t emphasize enough how good Sharp makes LCDs. Imagine been able to indulge in some portable animes/movies goodness while on the go when you commute, or when you are feeling bored outside. Even Creative’s own Zen Portable Media Center pales in comparison to the Sony PSP, don’t believe me? I will provide the pictures later, you will judge for yourself. So far I have tested and did some video encodings, was able to store 2 high quality episodes of Initial-D Fourth Stage anime (encoded at 768kbps for video bitrate and 128kbps stereo for audio bitrate) and about 25 songs of MP3 onto my 512MB MS Duo Pro. Quite impressive if you ask me, though I figured I would have been better off with a 1GB MS Duo Pro instead, so I can store more anime or even full movies without worrying about running out of space for more of my MP3 songs. So the 1GB MS Duo Pro purchase was kinda inevitable, will be getting it soon hopefully. As for other accessories for the PSP, would most likely be getting a nice and durable portable pouch for it as well, perhaps Porter? Haha this is getting insane. *sweats*

Ok enough of the long-winded talk, time to present you people some decent pictures of the PSP. I haven’t taken my own pictures yet so I would leave that till next time, for now just enjoy the pictures I have found off the web.

From top-left to bottom-right. Tapwave Zodiac2, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and Nintendo GBASP. Notice the Sony PSP has the biggest and widest screen resolution out of the 4 handhelds? Not to forget the best quality too, sporting a maximum brightness level setting of 200 CD/M2.

From this picture, we could clearly see the difference in LCD quality between the Zodiac2 and the PSP. You make the judgement.

From this picture, we could see that the movie playback on the Creative Zen Portable Media Center was certainly lacking of contrast compared to Sony PSP’s playback of the same video. Though worth mentioning, is that according to both handhelds full specifications, the Creative Zen Portable Media Center can only support encoded video bitrates up to no more than 800Kbps, while to my knowledge the Sony PSP can support up to 1500Kbps for supported video bitrates. (in MPEG-4)

Haha another random parody pic. Found this off some tech-blog, apparently the guys were trying to diss the NDS fans. Ok I’m gonna be impartial here. The Nintendo DS is brilliant in its own rights and has quite a number of innovative games based on the touch-screen function, totally adds to the gameplay coolness factor. Also not forgetting its backwards-compatible with GBA games, so all the more it should appeal to Nintendo gamers. I’m definitely gonna get a NDS in future, there’s so much GBA games I wanna try as well as those innovative NDS titles. You could buy one now for under $300, so I’m gonna wait till it drops to around sub-$200 range before I splurge on one, no hurry.

Ahh, I just have to introduce him to you people. He’s no other than Ken Kutaragi, the respected man behind SCEI who innovated and invented the Playstation-line products. Without him, there wouldn’t have had any PSone, PS2 or PSP that existed on this world for that matter. He doesn’t look like some old geeky ohji-sama (Read: old-man) does he? *lmao*

And here’s a random parody pic to round off the night before I head off to bed. Lololol don’t ask me where I took this picture, I was heading to Ichibantei for dinner when I saw this funny and obscene words outside some walls so I took a quicky snapshot with my Nokia 7610. Alright that’s all folks, oyasumi nasai minna!