French PSP modder Flasher gave us something flashy today with his new PSP DualShock 2 hardware mod. It's not finished, but so far, it's already looking hella good. Details and pictures after the jump.

Like whoa: two terrabytes of data storage?! What the hell are you gonna do with all that? Read 'em and weep 'em buckoes. Sony and SanDisk have announced their joint development project which will expand memory stick formats to proportions yet unheard of.

PlayStation Store Europe gets another obligatory update today with a excessive load of isometric puzzlers headed towards gamers in the region. Today's update highlights one of Sony's more unique titles released - Echochrome (PS3, PSP). Check out the complete list of downloadable goodies for this week in our full article.

David Hecq, a certified gamer who writes reviews and does other things video game journalists have on their to-do lists, is running for mayor of a small town in France. He's the president of AFRS (Française de Revendeurs Spécialisés, an association of video game retailers), runs a gaming website, yet still has time to play politics.

Check out the full article for more details!

It's no secret that Japan still loves Sony, and recent hardware sales prove testament to that. Even so, Nintendo's consoles are yet to slow down as the Wii and DS dominate the market. Microsoft's Xbox 360 continues to struggle with limited interest for its games outside the RPGs.

Recent figures from Media Create show that PlayStation 3 sales went up 20%, having sold 11,914 last week. The PlayStation 2 before it is still alive with units sold at 16,316 after experiencing a 26% increase.

Ninty's Wii doesn't fall behind, selling 8000 more than the week before last and keeping its steady lead at 73,919. Microsoft had 3154 Xbox 360 units sold for them, which is pretty much how the box performs over the land of the rising sun all the time.

On the handhelds side, DS recently sold 157,435 from 164,000 a couple of weeks back. Nintendo's other babies, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Micro are still kicking, selling 179 and 377 respectively. The PSP trails as 38,305 units made their way off the shelves.

 

Coder dickydick1969 of Pimpware.org just released homebrew application Peejay MIDP. This project was actually started way back November of last year with the release of Peejay v0.1 which allowed PlayStation Portable users to run Java on their handhelds.

Likewise, Peejay MIDP is a program that lets users run MIDlets on the PSP unit. MIDlet, just so you know, is a Java program for embedded devices. In simple terms, these are games and applications running on a mobile phone. The program runs, among other things, SNAKE and the demo java jad packages of the SUN J2ME (Java 2 Platform Micro Edition).

dickydick1969 noted that the right and left shoulder buttons activate the right and left menu buttons  common to Nokia phones respectively. The developer also mentioned that more of the native functions of the said platform will be implemented in the future.

Download: Peejay MIDP v0.2

Pocket Gamer UK knows about the thin grey line we walk on with each and every homebrew and hack done by the dedicated programmers out there in the scene. To that end, they've put up a pretty good list of places to get free stuff for your PSP, and all of it's completely legal.

They've got a couple of haunts in mind in addition to the Sony freebies from their different stores. You can pick up movies and music from places such as BBC online and Atom Films. You can also grab some free comics in the form of PSP-formatted Ctrl-Alt-Del issues and the NYC2123.

There's also a host of emulators and homebrew you can grab that's completely legal, such as Zx-81's numerous homebrew projects, the map browser known as WorldView, and Java4PSP, "a cooperative project set on bringing the Java Micro Edition platform in its entirety to the PSP."

Of course, they missed a couple of fun things, like the free wallpapers and themes from Scion, and the hundreds of lovable podcasts out there for the listening public, but that's okay. We've got those covered for the PSP-packing public to read about, anyway.

Square Enix's remake of the micro-managing Final Fantasy Tactics is coming along quite smoothly. And to extend that adjective, their re-rendered animations are running as smooth as ever also. The official site for FFT: The Lion War has been updated with some new stuff. For one thing, the Flash site has finally opened its "Story" and "Characters" tabs. To those who have played this game on the PSone, you might think that they don't have anything new, but if you look closer...

   

On the Characters section, they've brought in profiles for Ramza, Delita, and Ovelia. Good luck with the Japanese, but might we avert your eyes to something more visually appealing? Clicking on the "more image" button below the selected character's picture will bring up a 3D render of that character! Just use the mouse pointer to rotate the pseudo-3D animation around.

It might not be much for some of you, but for a gamer who's played the game a handful of times (yet not once beat it), it's quite refreshing to see these characters go quasi-cel-shaded 3D. There's a "Read" link below; use it wisely!

It's been a very long time since we've heard from the NewOlds dev group, but now one of their members, mICrO, contacted us to announce that the group is set to release their first title for the PSP and Windows: Pollo Pollo! (Okay, we're presuming that this is their first group title, whereas the last time we heard from mICrO, it was probably a personal release of his; but we digress).

Pollo Pollo! is a chicken-themed version of Puyo Puyo, just as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is the Sonic-themed version of the same game, or Kirby's Avalanche is the Kirby-themed version of the same game (hence, the "Pollo", si hablas español). The full functionality of the basic Puyo Puyo engine is retained here: Story, 1P-vs.-CPU, and 2P mode (although we don't know and they didn't say if the 2-player is off the same PSP or multiplayer between two PSPs, which means ad-hoc at least...).

This announcement from NewOlds comes complete with a YouTube-uploaded trailer (of course, being YouTube-uploaded, the res you're looking at doesn't reflect the res of the actual game on the itself, they say). NewOlds will release Pollo Pollo! in "early 2007."

It has been called "the most playable game in the world" and is now making a comeback in our handhelds of choice - Sony PSP and Nintendo DS - in the form of Micro Machines V4. This game from Codemasters promises to gives us all-out fun, racing gameplay. Just yesterday, it has landed on United States shores and are now available in major retail stores across the country.

Choose a vehicle for mayhem between sport cars, street racers, stock cars, 4x4s, beach buggies, lowriders and muscle cars and race through racing arenas like the breakfast table or around the rim of the bath. Aside from pushing the pedal to the metal, you also pick up a variety of weapons you can use to get ahead in the race.

Download: [Micro Machines V4 Weapons]
                  [Micro machines V4 Promotional Video]