The dreaded kid is here, and he's out to make the women cry and the men feel bad about themselves. DreaDNoughT and kid101skater worked together to create the beginnings of a homebrew RPG on the PSP, called Dreaded Kid, and you get to play the titular child everyone fears.

As the two of them mentioned in a tip to us (Thanks!), it's their:

idea of a beginning to a really fun homebrew RPG game i thought of doing like 3 levels before i would release it and i also thought that if i don't make it to the beginning of April i would release it as it is.

features: a really cool menu system that remembers your options, 5 slot save game support, ability to turn on and off sound, and music and intro, and some playability.

The game itself isn't very long as of yet, but they are promising some additional features once they start working on it. For now, why don't you give it a try and see what happens. They've left two different versions to try out, one for custom firmwares, and another for 1.5 firmwares. For now, we've combined the two to make it easier for us to upload, but feel free to use whichever one in our combination package suits your needs. Enjoy!

Download: Dreaded Kid Beta

Mario comes back to save a platform other than his own in v3.5 of Mario Don't Drop The PSP (or else...). v3.5 differs from the last version only in that DreaDNoughT and Kid101skater tossed in a new "Speed Boost" feature, activated by Square, for Mario to run after hard-to-reach PSPs on the other side of the widescreen. Also tossed in for good measure is that Mario is now (kinda) animated.

That Boost bar is highly limited; every level-up, you gain 1/4th of the bar back. Still no enemies coming out from the side, as someone once suggested, but running after a falling PSP is hard work enough at the higher levels. Trust us: after a 9-to-5 of catching falling PSPs, dodging Flying Wiimotes of Doom (TM), and scooping crayons off our backsides, the only thing left on our list is trying to get home breathing.

Thanks for dropping the tip, joshrulez2!

Download: [Mario Don't Drop the PSP v3.5]

Now that kid101skater's got his computer up and running again, he got help from DreaDNought and Birdman, recoded the Deviant Flash application, and sent it out for PSP users to enjoy. Ladies and gents, here's Deviant Flash v2.

Compared to version 1 and the FW2.80 version, this one's equipped with more features. In addition to the usual gameboot and font flashing, Deviant Flash v2 also has the following new things going for it:

• All Wallpaper Flashing
• Enable/Disable Net Update
• Topmenu Plugin Flashing
• Bootsound Plugin Flashing
• Full Dump

According to kid101skater, Deviant Flash v2 works on 2.8, 1.5, 2.71 SE, 3.02 OE-A, and 3.02 OE-B. The standard warnings for anything that writes to flash apply though: check the readme and make sure you know what you're doing or you could brick your PSP. Also, remember what firmware you're using for flashing the topmenu plugin, as he mentions that it will make your life a lot harder - that or you'll hurt your PSP badly.

Before we give you the download though, one last tidbit for you. Here's a video of Deviant Flash v2 in its early stages. Happy downloading, and be careful!

Download: [Deviant Flash v2]

It definitely wasn't planned, but the homebrew community is rocking this holiday season! Day after day, we have witnessed the release of one great application to another. Of course, headlining the pack is the Custom Firmware 3.02 OE-A released by Dark_AleX himself. Then there was PSOne Emulation and even one Customizer.

Equally interesting is the report about 0okm's successful access of the NAND Flash memory on Firmware 2.80 PSP units. This prompted and renewed discussions on downgrading the ever elusive 2.80. Kid101Skater of DeviantPSP announced today that he just came up with a 2.8 Dumper. This is what he exactly wrote:

Well, I just did something big... I just completely dumped everything on PSP: the flash0, flash1, flash_lower.bin, flash_upper.bin, and more... FULL KERNAL ACCESS... U HAVE TO PATCH SFO.

Well, this development is definitely big. In case there is is someone reading this and doesn't quite get it, this application decrypts everything. That means, homebrew developers can now see how things work on 2.80 and ultimately manipulate it.  This, without a doubt, takes the community one step closer into downgrading 2.80.

Download: [2.8 Dumper with full Kernel Access]

kid101skater (aka Kevin) has made a Deviant Flash application for 2.80 firmware, and it's up for grabs here! HOWEVER, although this works with 1.50/2.71SE/2.80 firmwares, be very, very, very careful when you install this app, as it is not stable yet, and CAN BRICK YOUR PSP if used incorrectly.

Anyway, this app flashes the the files on the root of your memory stick, checks for those files, and shows an error message and reverts to the XMB if the file you want isn't flashed.

Aside from xLoader fw 2.80 support, this version doesn't have new features as of now.

Current Features:

• Flash a Gameboot
• Flash Font
• Flash 01.bmp

Features to Come:

• Ability to flash all Wallpapers
• Flash Dumper

Download: [Deviant Flash for 2.80]

Devious is a project in the beta stage from Kevin (kid101skater; if we remember correctly, he helped with the Mario Don't Drop the PSP project) and Tarek (over at Deviant PSP). Feedback from a lot of users is that this baby will be better than IR Shell if the improvements keep on coming, but there's still a lot of things that need to be done.

Some of you may already know about this project because Devious was released a while back (October 6) and an update was released several hours later to fix some bugs. As it says on Kevin's post: "I decided to stay up all night last night and work on this. I added some great features. BIG thanks to DreaDNoughT for helping me even more getting this running and with the coding." (You might remember DreaDNoughT's HvS and other games.)

For those of you who want to beta test this, here's what's in Devious beta 0.5:

• only tested on 1.0 and 1.5 does need kernel
• MP3 player
• USB support
• options (shows battery info as of now)
• multitask (you can listen to music while doing other things)
• you can now exit features by pressing both triggers
• exit gui via start - takes a min
• a couple bugs but it will get worked out
• known bugs: sometimes crashes when going back to MP3 or USB for a second time

Download: [Devious beta 0.5]