Other places got their "defining moments of the PSP in 2006" features that include such (finally) notable handheld games as Loco Roco (hey - it is fun, and it does the PSP justice) and MPO, and features like PS3-PSP interconnectivity and (official) PSOne emulation. But, gamer perspective that may be, that's still a perspective from the high end of the gaming industry. The big boys. Well, the small boys wanna play, too. And that's where we come in.

We'd agree that 2006 was a year to remember for great games and exciting new frontiers. But there's two things missing in those big-boy lists that matter to our PSP community the most. Not just things, but outright icons. And we're putting them both in our #1 defining moment of the PSP for 2006.

Booster and Dark_Alex. You knew this was coming.

They both got DA BIG 3-0H firmly in their pocket now. We can imagine the riptide of euphoria that exploded on the 4th of December - remember, remember, the 4th of December/DevHook v0.51 came out. Cut a couple weeks later, and another cheer went up with the successor to the solid SE series, the OE 3.x custom firmware series. In particular, OE-B rocked the socks, the pants, the breath, the skeletal system, and half the mojo out of the scene with Popstation.

And let us not forget a neglected segment of the community to which the DA was able to reach out to. In particular - remember, remember the 27th of December/When TA-082s went down. All the way down to 1.5. (Of course we must also remember that sometimes a lot of this is actually a team and combined effort. The Oscar speeches of Booster probably wouldn't be complete without mentioning Noobz's efforts.)

I think what makes these milestones even more poignant is the background surrounding both Booster and DA. Booster kinda went MIA for a while, and everyone noticed the void. It was not until Dark_Alex himself mentioned that the boy's back on the scene (after going over to... the dark side for a while) that we had some signs of life. And speaking of Dark_Alex, we all remember an infamous day where some bozo decided to use his name to spread a bricker - and it really hurt the real Alex. (BTW, have we found that impostor yet? I can't keep the Madman Kilbaba brand boiling oil boiling forever!).

That Booster finally came back after all that time, and Dark_Alex pressed on despite everything, just made their respective achievements all the sweeter. It's like they never left, only better. (You know, we've got to come up with a catchy portmanteau of these two every time we have to mention them both in an article. How about Boo-lex? Darkster?) No argument: these are the guys who blaze the trail for the rest of the homebrew community to follow, knowing that the path has been cleared for them.

That's our list of defining moments for the PSP this 2006. How do you thank guys like Boo-Lex? (Okay, "Darkster" sounded waaay much better than "Boo-Lex." Do we need to set up a poll on this?)

(BTW: this isn't in any way connected to the QJ community's Best Of user submissions thing. This is just the observation of a QJ writer whose job gives him the chance to observe the scene and the community. Although it's dang well likely that Darkster will end up on EVERYONE's PDP-moments list.)