Something's brewing

There's something of a growing Homebrew cult for the PSP out there on the internet. 

Now homebrew does not, as one might expect, mean rancid beer brewed in the cupboard under the stairs from a cheap kit that was purchased from Boots, the drinking of which may permanently cause loss of eyesight.

No, homebrew is a collection of games and applications (and also, there are quite a lot of emulators: Spectrum emulators, Game Boy Advance emulators, SNES emulators, etc, etc) that are coded up and made available by enthusiasts and are not licensed in any way, shape or form by Sony. Because they are not endorsed or licensed by Sony they are therefore, by definition, far more exciting, interesting and desirable than any licensed product.

Now initially, when I got my lovely, shiny PSP from Sony, homebrew was all but unobtainable for people in European countries.  You see by the time we got our hands on the lovely portable console in this continent, Sony had all but spoilt the homebrew party by updating the firmware that shipped with the product.  In short, homebrew would run on no version of the firmware higher than 1.5.  Bugger.  So although I read about it with interest, it never really affected be and, by and large, so impressed with the power of Sony's uber-gadget was I, that I figured that I wasn't really missing much..

But then there are some really clever chaps out there on the other end of the internet..
One chap, who goes by the name of Fanjita, has now cracked the limitations placed on PSP owners by Sony and has effectively made Homebrew software available to all..  Well, as long as you own a copy of "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories" (which, to be fair most PSP owners will have a copy of anyway).

Fanjita's homebrew loader, installs itself as a Grand Theft Auto saved game, and by loading the saved game through the game engine, opens up a loader that can run the majority of homebrew applications out there.  This is all fantastically clever (I have seen it working first hand, even if I've yet to take the plunge myself), and it is a very elegant way of launching the software (although it does make me wonder if he's getting a nice kick-back from Rockstar games for using that particular title).

So over the weekend I intend to sample a little of this homebrew, as it all sounds frightfully interesting.  If it all works then it'll just add to my praise for what I already consider to be the finest gadget released in the last two years, unsure as to what words of praise I'll have left by then (I have already used most of the superlatives at my command), but I'm sure that Dog's Danglies goes no way near to describing how cool the PSP actually is.