Sony’s first foray into handheld gaming in 2004 hearkens back to a time when our beloved illusion machines truly pushed boundaries. They didn’t feel like three-year old technology reheated in modern plastic and marketing buzzwords, they felt like the latest and greatest — a time when gaming hardware was exciting regardless of the software running on it.
A time when Sony was paradoxically an incumbent rebel, both a relative newcomer to the industry and also its dominant force.
A time when game-box makers embraced technical ambition for technical ambition’s sake, style for style’s sake, and coolness for coolness’ sake.
And nothing embodied more than the PlayStation Portable — PSP.
This mysterious technology from Japan arrived on western shores in 2005, and offered an experience we recognised in a form factor we didn’t. That offer alone undoubtedly moved units, bolstered by a sturdy launch lineup. Metal Gear, Ape Escape, Tony Hawk, WipeOut, and Dynasty Warriors are just some of the 24 titles to grace its North American debut on March 25 2005 — five months or so after Nintendo DS hit shelves.
Two new devices, two wildly different propositions for what on-the-go gaming could be. Sony’s machine touted PS2 ports in its launch roster, Nintendo’s machine touted an N64 adaptation — both emblematic of their creator’s intentions and sensibilities in 2004.
And in many ways, still are now.
Odds are you only bought into or could only afford to buy into one of these sensibilities. You were either against the perceived gimmick of the DS, turned off by its monstrous grey shell, regressive Nintendo 64 visuals, and two-screen party trick. Or the PSP wasn’t for you because you ‘had one of those at home’ in form of the PS2. Handheld gaming, then, was either an extension of the traditional TV experience with the PSP or something novel in the Nintendo DS.
And the latter won handily. The Nintendo DS went on to outsell the PSP almost two to one, with approximately 150 million and 80 million sales respectively. It’s easy to see why, too: Nintendo DS was a hundred dollars cheaper in the US at launch and didn’t need a pricey, proprietary SD card — backed by a evergreen catalogue of Nintendo IP. But 80 million sales for PSP is absolutely nothing to scoff at, especially when brawling against a category-defining competitor with years of experience.
But that additional $100 is easy to justify for the spec bump the PSP brought to the table. The PSP walked and talked like it was a PlayStation 2 in your palm, a portable home to incredible facsimiles of the things on our televisions.
And that’s exactly what they were in many cases: facsimiles. Great ones, too.
Titles like Tony Hawk and Grand Theft Auto reinforced PSP’s reputation for being a ‘PlayStation 2 in your hand’. In reality, though, it was more of a PlayStation 1.75 that nipped at the heels of its television counterpart. It wasn’t Metal Gear Solid 2 on PSP, it was Metal Gear something colon something: Peace Walker, Portable Ops, Acid. Peace Walker, for example, lacked the Hollywood-esque interludes of its console brethren, with cutscenes replaced by comic book-style panels. Persona 3 on PSP wasn’t Persona 3, it was Persona 3: Portable and lacked the 3D overworld of its PlayStation 2 counterpart. Gran Turismo came sans series-defining career that even its PS1 ancestors boasted. Big IP often had an ‘almost, but not quite’ vibe on the PSP.
But for every experience that didn’t translate fully to PSP was an experience that did. Driving, fighting, and sports effectively translated as-is to Sony’s handheld: Ridge Racer, Midnight Club, Soul Calibur, Tekken, and Street Fighter all made console-level transitions to on-the-go play. Again, often something colon something — side pieces that meant fans could play big-name IP on the go without being forced to shell out hundreds of dollars on a new device to play the next mainline entry.
Except for one notable exception: Monster Hunter. A series that launched on and later abandoned the PS2 became virtually synonymous with PSP in Japan, and was perceived to be a handheld king maker in the region. Nintendo 3DS inherited that crown in 2014 with the launch of Monster Hunter Tri — forgoing a PlayStation Vita release entirely. Strategy RPG Valkyria Chronicles took a similar path, deserting its PlayStation 3 origins to become a PSP exclusive with Valkyria Chronicles 2 in 2010.
These side pieces on PSP resulted in creative and unique renditions free from the shackles of expectation. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus is a Metal Gear rogue-like with online play. Metal Gear Acid is a grid-based card game that sat on top of a Metal Gear look and feel — something I’ve rambled on about here. Square’s Final Fantasy Dissidia, a one-vs-one fighting-action-combat game stuffed characters from across the seminal RPG series on to a single disc — sans Disney silliness. Games that, while not world beaters unto themselves, meant the PSP has an eclectic mix of big, blockbuster IP imbued with an indie-sensibility — something that encapsulates the vibes of the PSP and Sony of that era.
Twenty years on, PSP feels peak Y2K. It feels like a relic of a time when the potential of technology felt literally infinite. If I could play Tekken 5 on the bus, if I could wander the streets of Vice City from an airport lounge, then greater, incomprehensible wonders must be to follow. Owning a PSP in 2005 felt like owning a piece of the future, hardware worth owning for the sake of it — in part because it felt like your money was helping to manifest the hi-tech horizon you couldn’t quite comprehend. PSP was ambition encased in plastic and polymer. Experiences that used to be trapped in a giant box of wood in the arcade now fit in your pocket and touted Wi-Fi, a digital storefront, and TV output.
All of it before iPhone, all of it before app stores.
The technological ambition that defined Sony in the early 2000s was also the albatross around the PSP’s neck. The same medium that allowed it to store gigabytes of data — Universal Media Disc — and the chip driving those home-console visuals absolutely chugged battery. PSP might be to blame for our willingness to accept to three-hours of juice on handhelds, a standard maintained by Nintendo, Valve, and just about every handheld manufacturer since. A far cry from Game Boy and Nintendo DS, which would coast through ten hours of play on a single charge. Like those devices after it, the PSP perhaps felt more like a portable console than it did a handheld gaming device — for better and for worse.
It paid the price for that ambition in performance. Pick up any given PSP game today and you might its frame rates aren’t quite what you remember, with many being marked by a distinct choppiness. PSP’s attempt to keep up appearances of being a portable PS2 meant to had it go into debt to do so in a manner of speaking, with games like Metal Gear Portable Ops locked at 20 frames per second, made tolerable only by its smaller screen. But even now, I can’t help but see it as an earnest attempt to keep up with its older brother under the TV — a sign that developers were a bit too ambitious for the PSP’s own good. Cries of poor optimisation in games today don’t quite feel fitting here because developers just wanted to push the possible on a device with 250 times less RAM than today’s smart phones.
What didn’t propagate to other handheld manufacturers, thankfully, was the PSP’s proprietary SD cards. You couldn’t buy standard SD cards to save game progress, you had to buy Sony’s. It’d be a nightmare for preservation too, if not for the invention of adapters that enable standard SD cards to work with the PSP. But its battery, like its control nub, like its proprietary SD cards, were seemingly a price worth paying to experience the future — or so 80 million people thought.
And the thing itself just looks incredible: sleek, shiny, widescreen, and absolutely tiny for a device packing so much polygonal power. It’s easy to understand how the DS might feel like a bit of a children’s toy, a folding plastic novelty where you stab the screen with an equally plastic pen.
That’s not to say the PSP’s design wasn’t without its drawbacks. It’s a device that promised near-PlayStation 2 experiences without PlayStation 2 controls — no second analogue and only one set of shoulder buttons. It explains why fighters and racers played so well — because they didn’t need either. But shooters like SOCOM, Coded Arms, and Armoured Core 3 distinctly suffered in their handheld conversion without meaningful camera control, often resorting to face buttons to emulate a second stick. It’s a miracle, really, that something like Peace Walker played as well as it did — a sign that developers were determined to deliver portable near-home-console experiences without the complete toolbox to make that happen. An admission Nintendo later made on its revision of the 3DS with its second analogue stick-nub thing.
But the device’s ambitious, shiny exterior masked Sony’s secret war against custom firmware. Hackers modified the PSP’s firmware to boot illegitimate (see: pirated) games from an SD card. UMDs for major releases often included a new version of the PSP firmware, forcing players to replace their current pirated firmware to play the new game. But that same capabilities is likely, to an extent, what’s kept the PSP’s fandom alive today. Sony’s legitimate digital store front retired from active service in 2021 — 17 years after its Japanese launch. Even now, you can continue to download games you’ve purchased previously.
I’d say that these so-called firmware wars have become a pillar of the PSP’s legacy among anthusiasts.
But the legacy that was undoubtedly a pain in Sony’s side in the early 2000s — and its profit margins — has allowed the device to persist decades later. It means the PSP can be a slice of Y2K in your pocket without UMD battery drain, without needing to carry 20 disks: one device and all the games you want. You can either pick up a piece of pure Y2K and time travel back to 2005 or you can Frankenstein your device into 2025 with custom shells, USB-C battery charging, IPS screens, and bigger batteries.
That same customisation and pirating might explain why Reddit’s PSP page has over 180,000 subscribers — not nothing for 20-year-old piece of kit that the average person couldn’t even name if they saw it. Its invariably posts are about game recommendations, pictures of pimped-out PSPSs, and chats about a 20-year handheld being their daily driver.
That 180,000 says a lot, too, because there’s just so many alternatives. The Vita is an obvious replacement for the PSP — but with it the vibes are lost. Vita isn’t quite Y2K because it’s a bit too refined, a bit too polished, and chronologically, a bit too late for the Y2K vibes. PSP on Vita feels like playing good old games on a modern device. Vita is the superior pick for playabilty, performance, and battery life — but not for nostalgia and vibes. Devices by manufacturers such as Anbernic and Retroid effectively conquered PSP emulation years ago.
And even with Vita and emulation within arm’s reach, many of those 180,000 people still choose the PSP because there’s just something about it.
It’s because even with its dodgy battery life, tanky framerates, and noisy UMD drive came the promise of progress — a sense that if PSP was possible for just a couple of hundred dollars, then virtually anything was. The PSP was probably somebody’s moon landing in their own small way: a sign that humanity can accomplish incredible things with a just bit of silicon.
It was more than just a gaming device, then, it was a promise that the future’s going to be alright. And sometimes — just sometimes — it’s nice to be able to pull a piece of that promise from your pocket when the future is feeling far, far, far from alright.
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