Knight Legend, from Chaos-Gamerz, has just released the latest iteration of an evolving PSP game called World of Chaos. World of Chaos was first announced several months ago and since then has been working on the game, and a very early build has just recently been released. We missed the first release of this game, however we are here to cover this one - slightly better than the previous. For those unaware of the game you play Knight Legend himself (appearing as our favorite Zelda character, Link). You can navigate Knight around the screen and attack, that's pretty much it for now. Apart from the previous public beta, this build has improved on the sprite's movement and features a new menu.

The game isn't much right now, however the author has some high goals with this game series he is creating. I was personally stunned by this game, mainly for one reason - no copyright infringement. In the past we have seen several games use copyrighted sprites and names, however this game does not fall into this category. The author uses legal sprites (Public Domain) and we hope that other inspiring developers do the same so no one has to play "police". With that said, enjoy this very early build of a long-awaited game!

 

Download: World of Chaos: Chap 1 - Public Beta v4.5
Discuss: PSP Development Forum

   

It seems that we've slowed down a bit on theme releases, however there are still a plentiful amount of creative minds out there that continue this hot trend. Having been through the unveiling of custom backgrounds (before firmware 2.0) and customized eboots, it's nice to see the PSP finally "fully" customizable. Today we feature two complete themes and two working-in-progress (WIP) theme for your enjoyment.

   

Mime, from our forums, has recently finished two versions of his Naruto Ultimate Theme. Naruto, a popular anime that has recently emerged in America and is still going strong in Japan has gathered a large following and has even emerged as a game on the PSP in Japan. Mime has done a great job in incorporating the village headbands as the main icons and varying sub-icons for the Network and Game section in version 2 of the theme.

Version 1 of this theme features only a few non-headband icons while Version 2 features different icons under the Network and Game tabs. The themes also both feature custom coldboot wave, text and sound. So whether or not you choose v1 or v2 is all up to personal preferences of the headbands or not, but both look great nonetheless. You can look at the differences in the release thread of this great theme here and make your decision.

You can read about undertaxxx's PSP Restyled Silver Theme, and AndroidKaita's Orange Theme after the break. These two themes both alter the original PSP XMB's icons to their liking, one even attempting to clone the PS3's XMB icons as they appear to be slightly different from those of the PSP.

Download: Naruto Ultimate Theme v1
Download: Naruto Ultimate Theme v2
Download: PSP Restyled Silver Theme
Discuss: PSP Mods & Media

 

StrmnNrmn has just released the most-anticipated 9th release of Daedalus. This writer literally ran to find his PSP and its charger when he heard about the release of this wonderful N64 emulator. The second you get into the game, it becomes apparent that this emulator has come a very long way since the initial release. For comparison, I went with Super Mario 64 and tested out the framerate.

The second Mario pops out of his beloved green tube, the game seems to be running at full speed (not quite there but very close). With sound enabled, it seemed to lag slightly; turning off the sound, though, makes it seem to run extremely fast. I cannot give any framerate counts as there were no visible FPS counter, but it is indeed at a playable speed...until you get into a level.

I immediately entered the infamous bomb stage and went running around and noticed a slight speed increase but not by much. The graphical glitches in the game all seem to have been rid of without any loss in speed.

StrmnNrmn has worked extremely hard on this release and I think we all owe him a huge "thanks" for continuing his development on the N64 emulator. Sony has already beaten us to a working PSX emulator, but hopefully we can get Mario on the PSP at full speed soon enough to show all our friends that Sony and Nintendo can once again work together! The general, noticeable changes in this release include:

• Speed is faster
  
• New UI
• Audio
• Various graphical fixes

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Note: Here at QJ.net we do not support piracy, those found linking to ROM files or how to obtain them will be banned. Please keep the comments civil.

Download: [Daedalus R9 for 1.00 Firmware]
Download: [Daedalus R9 for 1.50 Firmware]
Download: [Daedalus R9 Source]
Discuss: [Daedalus R9 Discussion Thread]

UPDATE: By Chris Coker.

You may have noticed that we've updated this article title from "Ready At Dawn Hints That God Of War Is Headed To PSP" to what you see currently. The reason is simple, we just want to make it absolutely clear that we haven't received any sort of official word that God of War is in fact headed to PSP. All we've got in response to our query was the following response: "We haven't announced anything yet but I can tell you that it's really cool and will blow people away. Keep an eye on our website in the coming weeks." In other words, let's not get too carried away with excitement, whatever RAD's got cooking, you can bet it's going to be something special, Kratos be damned.

Original Article:

We have just received word from Ready at Dawn's CEO, Didier Malenfant, concerning the rumors that smash hit God of War is making its way to the PSP, and it has got me jumping out of my shoes already. Whether the game is God of War or another title for the PSP has yet to be fully determined, but with David Jaffe and Ready at Dawn promising great titles, I'm pretty confident in God of War ending up on my PSP shortly.

When asked by QJ whether or not God of War will be headed to the PSP, Mr. Malenfant replied, "We haven't announced anything yet but I can tell you that it's really cool and will blow people away. Keep an eye on our website in the coming weeks."

Most of us are probably aware of the previously sparked rumors of God of War appearing on the PSP, but this new one specifically mentions God of War rather than an unknown title. Several months ago, David Jaffe, the man behind God of War on the PS2, announced that he's working on an emotional game for the Playstation Portable.

So, will this PS2 blockbuster make its way onto a platform that seems to lack such games, or is it just another one of those dead rumors that we like to pull out of nowhere? Stay tuned to QJ as we continue to cover this rumor's development until David Jaffe's game is finally announced (cross your fingers for God of War!).

The Noobz team (with help from Mathieulh and Dark_Alex) has just announced and released an improved version of Dark_Alex's 2.80 downgrader with 2.80 HEN support as well! Previously, HEN was only usable on firmware 2.71 but the Noobz team has worked their magic and ported it to firmware 2.80. So, a downgrader and a homebrew enabler in one announcement, what a nice present!

Apparently, a lot of people have been bugging for a stable, secure, and easy downgrader for 2.80 firmware. Well, the Noobz team never ceases to impress us and has released just that!

Using the recent 2.80 downgrader and the generic downgrader from Dark_Alex, the team has been able to create the "best" 2.80 downgrader. The great part about this downgrader is the fact that it uses the original 1.50 eboot file in order to downgrade, which will decrease the hassle of obtaining the 1.50 dump files. For all those TA-082 and TA-086 users, this downgrader will still work on your PSPs.

The Noobz team has also bundled a new homebrew enabler for the 2.80 firmware, eventhough the last one was only on 2.71. This 2.80 HEN will allow users that are afraid of downgrader to execute homebrew on their 2.80 firmware (TA-082/86 supported). There's always a risk in downgrading if you do not follow the instructions, so please follow these instructions if you plan on downgrading -

1. Install the HEN files, by following the details in the readme.txt file.
2. Test that HEN is working fine, by running one of the bundled sample applications - e.g. the cube demo.
3. If you have a TA-082 or TA-086 PSP, run the "TA082 IdStorage Changer", via HEN, to patch your registry before downgrading.
4. Get a copy of the v1.5 upgrade EBOOT (e.g. from here) and copy it to the /psp/game/UPDATE/ folder on your memory stick, as UPDATE.PBP.
5. Start the"PSP Update ver X.YZ" program via HEN, and follow the instructions.
6. Congratulations, you now have a v1.5 PSP! :D

Great work Noobz and Dark_Alex's team! May the PSP community continue to thrive as you all help us! Also, big props to Fanjita for making an excellent chicken in a hard hat, his developer skills are rubbing off on his artistic talent now! Show your gratification for these great developers by saying so below in our comments; I'm sure they would appreciate it!

Download: [Homebrew Enabler (HEN) for Firmware 2.80]
Download: [TA-082 Easy Downgrader]

Dark_Alex has just released his newest revision of his custom firmware for the PSP, Revision B of 3.03 Open Edition (OE). Seems like Dark_Alex has been more concerned about the PSP consumers than Sony is, issuing tons of new firmware updates (only updatable on 3.03 OE which was made possible by using firmware 1.50), so be sure to give him a huge thanks! With full resolution support for MP4-AVC videos (previously limited on Sony firmwares), you can now enjoy all your videos at "DVD quality" like it was meant to be. Having used PMP Player (which supported 480x270 resolution), this update adds the functionality directly into this new update.

You'll have to have 3.03 OE-A already installed onto your PSP in order to update to OE-B. Installation is easy as pie, just drag the PSP folder (found within MS_Root of the download) to your PSP's root directory and run the update eboot from your PSP's game directory like any other OE update which will only take a short duration since it is only flashing a few files onto it, not the entire firmware. Here's the newest additions to the world's greatest PSP firmware (at the moment) -

• Patched the firmware to allow decrypted mp4-AVC videos to play at 480x272 resolution.
• pic0.png was not shown in psp isos. Fixed.
• The speed functions were not dummied after setting the speed. This could cause the few games that set the cpu speed not to run at the selected speed in the recovery menu.
• Changed the structure of the program to have more free ram in game mode.
• sysmemp.prx removed, systemctrl.prx splitted into systemctrl.prx and vshctrl.prx
• Docmaker also now allows for 1000 png (images) to be used rather than the previous 100
  

Download: [3.03 Open Edition Revision B]
Discuss: [Forums]

Glynnder, from our forums, has just informed us that the first release of his LUA Development Kit is available for download! Just when you thought Lua couldn't get any easier to develop with (I've been thinking this for over a year since I first saw it introduced on the PSP), but I was proven wrong. This development kit is aimed at allowing developers a basic interface for their development of applications and games as it provides lua code snippets and common commands that don't have to be re-written, just point, click and click again and you can instantly have a single line (or more) appear on your screen.

This is the first release of LuaDevKit and is only an Alpha build, so do not expect much out of it at the moment or for it to be perfect, however Glynnder is aiming for this program to evolve if the response is supportive, so just send your regards and say "thanks" in the official release thread here at QJ! It's a great all-in-one interface that uses Java, so you'll have to have a java client of some sort, which most of you probably already have on your computer

You can also visit the website for this evolving project for constant changes and new releases and we will cover them as they come out as well! This project looks promising and I enjoyed the friendly interface that it provided me as I opened up the application and immediately started inputting some lua snippets and then instantly previewed it in the bundled PC Lua Player! Good work Glynnder and hope you can make this a viable app for all lua developers!

Download: [LuaDevKit v0.1 Alpha]
Discuss: [Official Forum Thread]
Visit: [LuaDevKit Webpage]

After having several people look at the changes (written in Japanese), I have finally obtained a usable translation of this new PSP Filer release from our not-to-distant developer Mediumgauge. PSP Filer is a file management program for the PSP like File Assistant but boosts some features that File Assistant does not. This program is slowly receiving gradual updates to its overall support and features and is currently a very stable program, one of which was used in a recent development over file assistant (as it was not compatible). This new version boosts the following changes (Thanks CrUmp for the translation) -

• The UMD ripping speed has been improved.
• Fixed the bug which hangs system when the UMD ripping is canceled.
• Displays UMD ripping speed in detail.
• Displays the media recognition procedure and the messages at the UMD ripping moment.

Thanks AZeyC for the tip!

Download: [PSP Filer v2.4]

Charnold stopped by our forums to spread the word of a new PSP Dungeons release. Just when I thought the year couldn't end any better than it was, I was proved wrong. PSP Dungeons is one of the greatest 3D games for the PSP, knocking those Quake 2 fellows off of their stoops (never did finish that now did they?). PSP Dungeons started out as a dungeon/map exploration game, but has emerged into everyone's favorite FPS game on the PSP, possibly beating out some retail competition I would say.

In this new version, several things are added and changed, but the most important addition is the Mac version of this game is now available, now allowing you to play it on the PSP as it was intended to be played, or both the PC and Mac if you do not have a PSP at hand. This new version also adds some "snazzy" in-game music, although it may seem repetitive, it sure beats not having any music in it at all! This new version of PSP Dungeons 3D has the following added -  

• A Mac version
• In-game music
• Weapon damage / enemy life can be changed
• Level selection in the main menu
• Renders more texturecolors than the last versions (the engine can now convert to pixelformat 4444, 5650, 5551 and 8888)
• Textures not loaded into vram are rendered much faster than in previous versions
• Mipmaps can be switched on/off per maptexture
• Now possible to install several mods parallel on the psp (Dungeons folder name can be changed)
• A new level

Downlaod: [PSP Dungeons 3D v0.7]
Download: [PC Dungeons 3D v0.7 + Mapmaking files]
Download: [Mac Dungeons 3D v0.7]

Art has updated his thread in our forums to reflect his most recent X-Flash update, v18e. X-Flash is a firmware modification program for PSP's with proper firmware/file access. It was originally developed for Art's (the developer) personal use, but has been expanded into the most accepted firmware modification application for the Playstation Portable. With X-flash, one can do several flashing-related chores, including spoofing your firmware version to 13.37 (also known as 1337/leet).

In this new version of X-flash, Art has added a TA-082 motherboard checker, warning the user that they can not use this with their PSP's. Art has also fixed part of the information screen selection for firmware 1.50 PSP's. You can read all about X-Flash and its features in the discussion thread and in the readme included with the download. A compatability list of functions with working firmwares can be read in this thread.

Note: This program writes to Flash, so be aware that using this program may brick your PSP if not used correctly, please refer to the FAQ or readme for more information.

Download: [X-Flash v18e]