PSP News

In the blue corner we have The Greatest of All Time. In the red corn... screw it. We just can't bang the mega clichéd phrasing out. What we can do is tell you we'd back Chun Li's thighs of granite in any semi fair fight. That, and we can also inform you that you should vote for The Fighting Game of the Year at this month's Golden Joystick Awards. Full details inside.

We really enjoyed this year’s UFC game, UFC Undisputed 2010, when it came out on PS3 and 360, and today the portable iteration finally comes out. THQ and developer Yuke’s slimmed down the MMA extravaganza for the PSP and launched it today...

Here's a video recently dug up by Capcom Unity, originally used to promote the PSP's Ultimate Ghosts 'n' Goblins release in Japan. It's still in Japanese, but you'll figure it out thanks to the recently added subtitles. Whereas many trailers will focus on the most action-packed moments in a character's business, this clip goes another way. It turns out that in the fifteen years between Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts and the reappearance of series hero Arthur the Brave Knight... not much happened. And if you think that's a boring time for players, just think how hard fictional characters have it out here in the dull-ass real world...

Here's a video recently dug up by Capcom Unity, originally used to promote the PSP's Ultimate Ghosts 'n' Goblins release in Japan. It's still in Japanese, but you'll figure it out thanks to the recently added subtitles. Whereas many trailers will focus on the most action-packed moments in a character's business, this clip goes another way. It turns out that in the fifteen years between Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts and the reappearance of series hero Arthur the Brave Knight... not much happened. And if you think that's a boring time for players, just think how hard fictional characters have it out here in the dull-ass real world...

The June 4/11 issue of Entertainment Weekly,which subscribers received last week, features a massive cover story on the 100 best characters of the last 20 years, a list that - almost surprisingly - contains a few game characters, including Master Chief and Lara Croft. As far as we're concerned, though, the crown jewel of the rather massive list is entry 93 (on page 91), titled Game Boys, which gives the single spot to Uncharted's Nathan Drake, God of War's Kratos and Grand Theft Auto IV's Niko Bellic.

As a gamer, you might think it's blasphemous to shunt three prominent, beloved characters into one remote-seeming entry. But you won't care once you see the page, which features an amazing photo of the characters' voice actors - Nolan North, T.C. Carson and Michael Hollick - dressed as microphone-wielding versions of their respective roles...

In a perfect world Saturdays would last for 72 hours, scoffing cheeseburgers would give you heat vision and Naughty Dog would be developing the new Uncharted for Sony’s NGP. Unfortunately, we exist in a world where Monday mornings last precisely half a millennium, burgers lead to coronary bypasses and Drake’s portable adventure is being handled by Sony’s Bend studio. Fret not, though, as the internal SCE team has plenty of experience working on PSP. Find out why Naughty Dog isn’t handling development duties itself inside…

So the dust of the PSP2/NGP's announcement has settled and all around is stillness, save for the gentle whistling of the wind and the soft howl of distant marketing coyotes. That, and the rabid clamouring of gamers thundering over the horizon, bellowing for some proper gameplay footage and for me to stop the contrived yet poetic metaphors.

And they're right to do that clamouring. For whatever claims your press release touts, whatever lumps of fancy-named silicon you have under the hood, and however many times you carelessly spout hollow twatspeak like "revolution" or "paradigm shift", your console doesn't really exist until it has a decent amount of game content to show off. And now the PSP2 (oh come on, Sony, you know that's what you'll default to) has.

Does it live up to the "PS3 in your pocket" claims made by so many excitable giddy-goats? No. But superficially at least, it's not far off. Is that enough to make a successful handheld? It remains to be seen. Have a look and lemee know what you think.