I’m not dead!

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You can’t keep a dead handheld down!  In addition to the eventual long-awaited long-delayed release of Trails in the Sky Second Chapter by Xseed, there are at least two more RPGs on the horizon for the “dead” PSP.  This time, it’s yet another set of releases by Gaijinworks – Victor Ireland’s outfit.

On their front page at this writing is this question:  “What RPGs are Next for PlayStation®Portable?”, ad a picture of two blank PSP game boxes – one with a blue question mark and one with three orange question marks.  It’s probably safe to say that one of the releases is Class of Heroes 3, as Gaijinworks has already published Class of Heroes 2.  What’s the other game?  We will supposedly find out this week,  For my part, I’m hoping that it will be something other than a dungeon crawler.

 

 

Cool! A new music service!

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From PS Blog:

We know how important music is to our community of gamers, and this partnership combines the best in music with the best in gaming. PlayStation Network users will enjoy the convenience of linking your accounts to Spotify, making it easy to sign-up with your existing ID and subscribe to Spotify’s Premium service. You can also use Spotify while playing games

Sounds pretty cool!  For some Vita games, having stuff playing in the backg…

The new service will launch initially on PS4 and PS3, as well as Xperia smartphones and tablets.

Wait.  The service launches on every current Sony system except the Vita?

spotify_psAnd Sony’s dropped Youtube and Maps from Vita, too.  Sigh…

Sony, stop breaking stuff! Only I get to do that in Minecraft!

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So I’ve been having a blast … or rather, a tumble into lava, playing Minecraft on the Vita.  It’s cross-buy with the PS3, so I’ve been exporting my save to the PS3 to play on the big screen at home, and exporting back to the Vita to play when on-the-go.  PSN connectivity issues aside, it’;s been working well.  Until Sunday.  Suddenly, saves don’t upload.  So, I can play my world at home on the PS3, but no more Minecraft on-the-go.

And it’s not just me.  Plenty of others have the same issue.  With the PS4<–>Vita connectivity too, according to some Googling.  Cross-save is a great feature, though if it breaks suddenly, it’s worse than nothing.  Now my Minecraft world is trapped at home!  And I bought the game for the purpose of playing both at home and on-the-go.

Command-line encoding for the PSP with FFMPEG

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I’ve updated to a newer Xubuntu Linux on my laptop, and have installed the real ffmpeg for video encoding, since Ubuntu’s fork has an annoying tendency to crash during encodes.  That means I had to play around with command-line options to get video files compatible with the PSP.  Here’s a command line that seems to work well for ffmpeg 2.5 (current as of right now):

ffmpeg -y -i INPUTFILE -flags +bitexact -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -s 480x272 -r 29.97 -b:v 384k -acodec aac -b:a 96k -ar 48000 -f psp -strict -2 OUTPUTFILE.MP4

This will convert INPUTFILE to OUTPUTFILE.MP4 for playback on the PSP, with medium video quality.  if you want a better picture, increase the number after -b:v.  For better audio, increase the number after -b:a.  You can alter the resolution if you like by changing what comes after -s.  As is, the video is encoded at the native resolution of the PSP.

If you’d like a thumbnail to go along with that video, then use this:

ffmpeg -i INPUTFILE -f image2 -ss 5 -vframes 1 -s 160x120 OUTPUTFILE.THM

Enjoy!  The resulting video files will play on more than just the PSP.  They should also work on the PS3, Vita, modern phones, etc.

Sega 3D Classics recommendations (3DS)

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I’ve bought some of the Sega #D classics for the 3DS.  Here are some quick thoughts/recommendations:

  • Space Harrier:  If you’re into “retro” arcade games or just fast-paced arcade games in general, this is well worth your $6.  Best version of Space Harrier I’ve seen outside the arcades.
  • Super Hang On:  Another retro arcade game, and another worthy purchase.  Gyro controls are surprisingly fun with this title.
  • Galaxy Force 2:  Fun, but this game will chew you up and spit you out.  Expect to die.  Excellent use of 3D – probably the best 3D in all the classics released so far.
  • Sonic:  it’s Sonic 1 from the Genesis with minor 3D enhancements and the spin dash.  Get this if you want digitally-available Sonic 1 on your 3DS instead of on your phone.
  • Ecco:  Ecco’s definitely an acquired taste.  This is the Genesis version with minor 3D enhancements.  Get if you love Ecco already, otherwise try one of the other classics.
  • Streets of Rage:  Pretty fun (though very basic) beat-em-up.  3D’s actually quite useful in this game in showing where you are relative to enemies.  A one-hit-kill mode has been added if you feel like just blowing through all the stages.  This one’s great fun, but we really need Streets of Rage 2 … now!

OLED vs LCD … the battle continues

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Over at GameFAQs, there’s endless squabbling over the new Vita models, now that the new Vita no longer comes with an OLED screen.  How big will the hit on picture quality be?  Well, I don’t have a new Vita 2000 to test, but here are a couple of pictures showing how the Vita’s OLED stacks up against a PSP Go and a PSP Street (E1000).  Click the images for full-sized versions

PS Vita (top) versus PSP Go (bottom)

PS Vita (top) versus PSP Go (bottom)

Now to add another contender, the PSP Street:

PSP Street (top) vs PS Vita (middle) vs PSP Go (bottom)

PSP Street (top) vs PS Vita (middle) vs PSP Go (bottom)

Fuel for the fire …