You know, I could easily answer this question by saying Dark_Alex and Booster, pack up, and head on out the door. But that, boys and girls, would be cheating. Besides, custom firmware and DevHook are but gateways to a world of bedroom developers, underground coders, and otherwise small fry in an ocean of big boys, all worth exploring, demoing, playing, encouraging, and at times critiquing. And "only" 4GB of space on the Memory Stick. "Only" indeed. Hoo-hah.

3.03 Downgrader and HEN is yet another key to the kingdom. More PSPs able to enjoy homebrew (but please, no piracy, I have a conscience to keep), but still up-to-date in terms of loaded features. What follows is a short list of the homebrew I've run across in QJ that I've found interesting, attention-grabbing, useful, and otherwise fun.

This isn't one of those Top Five or something lists; this is too personal a perspective for that. It's possible, however, that some of these are on your Top Whatever lists, too. Hey, you've got to have your perfectly good reasons to keep HEN lying around in that Memory Stick...

And for 3.10? Eh, give it a bit of time (maybe even less...).

gpSP (Exophase). The moment this hit first the forums, then the download site, people were left glass-eyed, stupefied, and speaking in tongues at its ability to run GBA games at full speed, a weakness of prior GBA emulators. gpSP had its own weakness, too, one being compatibility through the GBA library, but updates kept up to improve on that.

Download: [gpSP v0.9 for TA-082/HEN-D users]

Pimpstreamer (Dickydick1969). It IS a cheaper alternative to purchasing LocationFree. Sure, it doesn't beat watching it on a wide-screen TV, but you can't take a widescreen TV with me to the can... or the dinner table... ot the kitchen... or the study... (I wonder if all of that Wi-Fi flying around the house will fry one's brain...)

Download: [PimpStreamer v0.77]

48-Hour Pong. Not because it's Pong, but because it's 48 hours from scratch. That's dedication for you. And lately, it seems that everyone's interested in breaking speed records. I actually still have the game in some old MemStick somewhere...

Download: [48-Hour Pong Rev D FW1.0]
Download: [48-Hour Pong Rev D FW1.5]

Callisto (Weak, Pimpot, rmedtx, Markospex, and Klesk). Old-school shooter. Looks good, plays good. Please. Need I say more? (The only thing missing are atrociously gut-busting dialogue and I don't care how many bases I have, all of them ARE belong to them.)

Download: [Callisto v0.2]

OE-B+ Popstation. I will say the following sentence, you might probably agree, and it might actually be true. "You have rediscovered the value of your extensive PSOne library." *Cue Final Fantasy victory theme* And connected to that: Autopopstation (TheAceOfFire). Yeah, I've read all the comments that mention I could do things straight off Popstation, but hey, I grew up with a GUI.

Download: [Autopopstation 4]