You install it using Homebrew, point Folderify at an image file using a simple Terminal command, and it spits out a macOS-style folder icon with that image on it.

I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed.

➝ Source: github.com

After tinkering around with Nintendo DS flash cartridges, I decided to upgrade my handheld gaming setup with a PlayStation Portable (PSP). This is a console that passed me by during its run. It was released at the tail end of high school for me when I had moved on to mostly PC gaming. I had a friend with one, but never spent any time on it myself.

What drew me to the PSP, though, was how easy it is to install custom firmware and readily available, inexpensive microSD to Memory Stick PRO Duo adapters. The PSP isn’t particularly great at dealing with high storage capacities — as far as I can tell, 128GB is the maximum — and it can sometimes take several seconds to load the game, video, or music list when there’s a lot of items on your card. But it’s worth it to have so much content available on the system at any given time.

Once I got the custom firmware installed, which only takes about five or ten minutes, I was able to start loading it up with games, emulators, video, music, and plugins to customize the experience.

I’ve only just scratched the surface of the plugins that are available, but what I have at the moment feels like it fills all the gaps I had with the system. I’m currently using the following:

• Game Categories Lite — this plug-in allows you to sort your games into categories instead of displaying them in a big long list. I have mine setup with folders (displayed as separate memory cards in the system) for PSP games, PlayStation games, emulators, PSP Minis, homebrew, and utilities.
• XMB Item Hider — let’s you hide items within the XrossMediaBar. Since the PSP has been discontinued for so long, many of the items in the interface don’t work anymore or are cumbersome to access because the system doesn’t support WAP or WAP2 Wi-Fi networks. Hiding them helps to clean up the interface.
• PRXShot — adds the ability to take screenshots using the note button or a button combination of your choosing.

As far as video and music is concerned, I mostly added those to test it out. But I’ll probably keep some amount loaded on it. The media doesn’t take up too much storage space and it can be used as a good fallback if there was ever a scenario where I wanted to preserve battery life on my iPhone away from a charger. Or, when paired with an HDMI adapter, the PSP might become my go-to entertainment device in hotel rooms when traveling — rather than tying up my iPhone or iPad for that role.

The PSP supports a pretty good range of audio formats, so you could probably drop whatever you have on it and it’ll work without any trouble. But for the sake of consistency, I converted a handful of albums to 256kbps MP3 using MP3 Encoder.

Video is a bit more tricky. I used Handbrake for the heavy lifting, but the old preset that used to be built-in to the app is no more. I downloaded an older version of Handbrake, which still included it. But after importing that preset into the latest version of Handbrake, the resulting videos wouldn’t play on my PSP. I had to craft my own preset after some research online, which seems to do the trick with everything I’ve thrown at it so far.

Unlike the Nintendo DS, the PSP is actually quite good at emulating older systems. I’ve been playing through Super Mario World over the past few days and played through a bit of Rocket Knight Adventures, too. Aside from a couple of graphical glitches on the Super Nintendo emulator, everything’s run smoothly.

There’s a sea of emulators available, but I have the following installed, which seem to be the best of the bunch and support the systems I’m actually interested in emulating:

• SNES9X TYL for Super Nintendo
• PicoDrive for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega CD, and 32x
• UO gpSP Kai for Game Boy Advance
• NesterJ AoEX R3 for Nintendo Entertainment System
• MasterBoy for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Sega Master System, and Game Gear
• DaedalusX64 for Nintendo 64

The Nintendo 64 emulation is pretty rough — most games don’t seem to work at all. But it does okay with Super Mario 64 and some other popular Nintendo-made games that I plan to play at some point.

I’ve also toyed around with some of the homebrew games available for the system. Celeste, Minecraft, and Cave Story are high on my list of what I’d like to spend a reasonable amount of time with. From what I’ve seen on Reddit and various message boards discussing the system, they are often mentioned as some of the best homebrew games available.

I’ve only found a single homebrew utility that’s worth keeping on my system, though. PSP Filer, which is a file management application. I’ve used it a little bit for moving and deleting files, but it’s primary utility for me is to change the timestamp on games. The PSP doesn’t have any mechanism for sorting games, it simply displays them in the order they were added to the system. With PSP Filer, you can change those timestamps to sort your games however you’d like.

I was initially planning to sort games alphabetically, but that is a lot of work to do by hand. So instead I’ve settled into just keeping the games I’ve been playing recently at the top of their respective category list. That helps keep them easy to find and quick to launch.

One of the greatest features of the PSP is it’s ability to run PlayStation games — as long as it’s packaged as an eboot, the PSP can run it. I’ve already reached 100% in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and started Crash Team Racing, but I plan to play through Spyro the Dragon next.

The real star of the show, though, is the PSP games. They show what the system is capable of and there’s a huge library of games that I’ve never played before. I’m most excited about these:

• Tony Hawk’s Underground 2: Remix — I love Tony Hawk games. I’ve played the PlayStation 2 version of this one, but the PSP port might actually be the definitive release. It offers everything the PS2 version has, but also includes some additional levels that weren’t available on other systems.
• Burnout Legends — I’m not too big on racing games, but despite that, Burnout 3: Takedown was one of my favorite games on the PlayStation 2. Burnout Legends offers all of the best parts of that gameplay on a handheld.
• LocoRoco — I remember in the late 2000s, whenever someone would discuss the PSP, this was one of the first games they’d mention.

I’ve had a ton of fun on the PSP over the past few weeks and I hope I’m able to enjoy the system for quite some time without losing interest. Between emulation, homebrew, PlayStation, and games developed specifically for the system, there is a massive library available. It feels like a handheld version of one of my favorite consoles of all time — the PlayStation 2 — and that’s high praise.

If you have a PSP bouncing around in a drawer somewhere, it might be worth digging it out, installing custom firmware, and enjoying one of the greatest handheld gaming systems of all time.

I was doing some cleaning last month and came across my old Nintendo DS Lite. I bought it back in 2006 to play games like Pokémon HeartGold, Animal Crossing: Wild World, and Brain Age. If I remember correctly, I only played it regularly for two or three years — it ended up in the cabinet under our TV, which is where it was when I found it again.

I go through these cycles with video games, which I mentioned on Mastodon a few weeks ago. I’m currently in the stage where I’m declaring the DS Lite as the best game console ever made. It’s not, of course, but it is really good. Especially when you consider what all it’s capable of thanks to the homebrew community.

I mentioned the R4 Gold flash cartridge that I bought for it already. I’ve been using the setup mentioned in Anton Retro’s video on the subject. Although I’ve simplified it quite a bit — I’m only using Lameboy for Game Boy emulation and S8DS for Game Gear and Sega Master System emulation.

There are other emulators available for the Nintendo DS — notably jEnesisDS for Sega Genesis, nesDS for Nintendo Entertainment System, and SNEmulDS for Super Nintendo — but they don’t run all that well. It’s a much better experience to just try and find ports of the games you want to play for another system that the DS can run better.

In addition to emulation, though, the R4 cartridge is also able to load Nintendo DS ROMs. Now I can play all of the games I own without having to swap cartridges. The games run just as they were running off of the original cartridge — I haven’t found any downsides at all.

Most recently, I’ve been playing Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land, but I’ve also enjoyed the Newer Super Mario Bros. ROM hack quite a bit.

When I first bought the R4, I was planning to run Game Boy Advance games through it , too. But I had some trouble with the emulator available — GBARunner2. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get any games to run on it. Maybe this is more for DSi or 3DS owners, I guess.

Instead, I decided to get a flash cartridge specifically for Game Boy Advance games — the EZ-Flash Omega, which comes with a separate shell so it can sit flush inside the DS Lite. The shell itself doesn’t hold up as well as I would have liked — every time I pulled it out of my DS, the front and back of the shell got out of alignment and I had to wiggle it all back in place.

I used a bit of super glue to try and keep it together better, which worked, but now it doesn’t sit as nicely in the cartridge slot as it should. I have a replacement shell coming from a different vendor that I hope I’ll have better luck with.

This seems to be the best Game Boy Advance flash cartridge on the market, though. And it works flawlessly. You can even load games with add-ons that let you use save states and cheats. I’ve mostly spent my time playing Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, but also plan to play the homebrew game Celeste Classic when I get a chance. And I’m sure I’ll end up playing a generation three Pokémon game as well.

I’ve had a lot of fun playing games on the DS Lite again. The hardware still feels good. It isn’t as capable as my Switch, of course, but I love how small it is by comparison. And even after sitting unused for all those years, the battery life is solid.

There have been a lot of new handheld emulation machines released over the past year or two. I follow a small number of gaming channels on YouTube and it seems like every few months one of them is reviewing a new one. Notably, there was the recent release of the Analogue Pocket — it’s such a slick piece of hardware.

I’m quite happy with my Nintendo DS Lite, though. It won’t run newer games and it’s emulation is basically limited to older, portable consoles. But that’s perfectly fine for me. I haven’t really paid attention to new games since the mid-2000s and access to the Game Boy Advance and DS catalog brings me just about as close to “modern” gaming as I need. At least until I get to the next step in the cycle of gaming.