The PSP Hath Landed ...In Tokyo, Anyway
and our man Mish'al was there...

Beat them back, beat them down, and beat them down some more!

That’s what it felt like this morning starting at 1AM in Tokyo, Japan. Though the U.S. has to wait until March, 2005 (at the earliest), every major electronic district and store had a line to get the new PSP. On a Saturday night, nothing is funnier than watching these people wait while you are in your party mode.

I saw the lines and said forget it! There is no way I am going to wait in that for a PSP. Especially since I haven’t really been too impressed with the DS yet. So my friends and I hopped around bars and stared in amazement at how nutty this PSP frenzy was. We finished our evening on the town, and went back to our respective homes for sleep.

Around 1PM, the Fanboy Planet Asian Bureau received a PSP in its arsenal. Don’t ask why. Don't ask how. Dr. Fate or someone else upstairs must love us. But not that I've scorned the lines and scored the toy anyway, does it really live up to the hype?

The PSP totally blows Nintendo DS out of the water in terms of style and sleek design. Then again, Nintendo DS should never have been made, since the Game Boy Advance is a fairly new product itself. Alas, that is another story all together. The PSP is truly a remarkable machine, but, even without comparing it to the DS, Sony does manage to fall short of something that could have been spectacular.

What? The graphics aren’t cool enough? No, that’s not it. Here’s a rundown after 3.5 hours of game play.

MAIN MENU: Every piece of print and copy I have seen has a blue screen as the main display color. In truth, not so. Instead, it's red, and it really looks ugly. Blue has pretty much always been the cool color, not cool/rad, but cool/ice cold metal cool. That’s the only complaint I have there. Sony actually intends for it to change color monthly, when really, they should just let us choose what we want.

On the plus side, the machine itself does do everything but say “Hey dummy! Turn on the wireless modem first! DUH!" On the downside, though Sony claims that you can play over the internet, the only game out so far with that possibility does not actually work. You can network with your friends, but only via direct connection, as long as they have a copy of the same game. As far as getting on the internet goes, the PSP's only function there is to download a system update.

MEDIA: Oh, this was not what I expected. The UMD thing they have looks like a small disc in a holder. Do not be fooled. It is not a regular little CD you can buy at Fry's and copy MP3s onto. The only way you are going to be playing MP3s is by buying a 256MB or higher memory stick DUO for pictures and music. The PSP only comes with a 32MB Stick (with the Special PSP1000K unit*) that will hold about seven songs, and that’s not if you want pictures and saved game data on it also.

The UMD itself actually looks like a MD in a rounded case. It’s great that your games don’t get scratched (though not a foolproof concept), but tedious now that they promised movies in this format. Sorry, Sony, there is no way in heck I will be re-buying movies in UMD format when I already get them on DVD. Actually, that is a comment I heard a lot today from people in McDonald's showing off their prize possessions.

The second surprise is the other movie format that they promise to offer, which is MPEG 4. Yeah, you can play movies from the stick, but “ooooooh, only Sony Cybershot made movies.” Sony will be helping out by providing a program called Image Converter 2 at an additional price later in the year. We poor saps who got it today must wait until tomorrow to get a preview copy that probably will be lame.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, rumor has it that only movies will be region coded by the PSP; games will be playable from any country. If that is true, then thank the maker! If it is not, then that’s just another mark on the don’t buy side. Simply put, if I am a world traveler and see a new game at an airport in Japan, and want to play it on the plane back to US, I am out of luck. I may be a minority, but I didn’t have to worry about that with the GBA.

GAMES: We only have seven games on it so far; the two I was hoping for are delayed for a couple of days: Metal Gear Acid and a Scrabble-type game. Today I got a 40 dollar Tetris-like puzzler Lumines (not worth it), and of course Ridge Racer (totally worth it for now). Everyone’s Portable Golf (translated poorly from Japanese) looks fun, but it was sold out.

So how did Ridge Racer stand up? It’s the Ridge Racer of the PSOne, with upgraded graphics and totally mind-blowing background music. Playing through the PSP network also is magnificent. We had three people test the networking ability. You set up as the host, and players lock in and real time head to head racing begins. Bye-bye split screen action, and packed with the analog stick on your left side, it totally gives a new meaning to the handheld driver game.

OTHER: Overall the PSP is a real sweet machine, but is it worth 280 some odd dollars? No, at least not now, and not with the selection of games it has. The battery life lasted about 2 hours straight out of the box, and that was pretty decent compared with others' experiences today. It is a power hungry device. The sound system alone probably takes 1/3 of the power, and then the screen light the other 1/3, leaving processing speed.

Absolutely no complaints for graphics and sound, though. In fact, they totally impressed me and get the highest points in my book, but the battery life may be a problem for some. I just wish it had a screen saver or something cool to look at when you are playing your MP3 songs. That would have been a cool feature they could have given us, but I guess they weren’t thinking too much. And maybe a browser for the internet? In short, the PSP gets a overall.

Graphics/Screen
Sound
Design and Looks
Battery life
Game selections
Media

Wait until next year when there are more games to choose, and probably more features to unfold. It’s really not worth the money now, just the bragging rights. Like the potential promised by the PS2, it's going to take a while for Sony to actually cash the checks their ads are writing.

* The PSP100K "Value Pack" comes with a carrying case (with a white strap) and white headphones. The carrier is a cool slipcase that fits like a glove. Just don't get it close to Velcro or it looks like your grandma's 60 year old sweater. Then there's that white strap. Come on! A PSP comes in either silver or black, so why a white strap? Someone got jealous of the iPod being a fashion statement, I guess, which at least explains the white headphones. Those also come with a remote you can use to play the MP3s. I need a translator droid asap for this manual, and some cotton swabs please. There are fingerprints all over my dang unit now. And also my PSP.

Mish'al Samman