Released in Japan in December 2004 and in Europe (except for a few countries) in September 2005, the handheld has been modified by a modder to do things it can’t do by default.

Two decades ago, the handheld market, then dominated by Nintendo with the Game Boy Advance (and its foldable SP variant), was booming. Nintendo innovated with the dual-screen and touchscreen DS (which sold incredibly well), while Sony entered the market with a more traditional, but more powerful handheld than its rival. This was the PlayStation Portable, or PSP, which was later made into a version without an optical drive (PSP Go) before being replaced by the PlayStation Vita.

The PSP had some great games (God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Ridge Racer, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, to name a few), but its technological limitations are now very noticeable. Macho Nacho Productions has tried to remedy this by implementing the most common mods on a single handheld. The original display has been replaced with a much brighter IPS display that eliminates ghosting, an HDMI port allows you to connect the handheld directly to a TV, and there are three image scaling options.

There is one drawback, though. There is no room for the UMD drive, so you can only play digital games. You can get around this by installing custom system software with a MicroSD card, so the PSP can do more with non-factory firmware that used to run PS1 games. And now that the official PlayStation Store has been shut down, modding can be used to put emulators on it, and without the PS Store, digital-only games can’t be legally run without tricks…

The failure of the PlayStation Vita (despite its unique rear touchpad approach!) has seen Sony abandon the dedicated handheld market, which is now once again dominated by Nintendo with the soon-to-be-replaced Switch. Perhaps Sony will consider making a new handheld.

Source: GameRant