Retro Gamer Celebrates 20 Years Of The PSP

The latest issue of Retro Gamer looks at the 20th anniversary of Sony’s first gaming handheld – the PlayStation Portable.

The creators of high-profile PSP games like God Of War: Chains Of Olympus, OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast and Sonic Rivals explain what made Sony’s handheld so special and why it’s still worth playing two decades after its release.

“Being able to play games such as WipEout alongside more traditional handheld games, albeit very polished ones, like Lumines was a game changer,” says Phil Rankin, who worked on the aforementioned OutRun and Virtua Tennis: World Tour.

“For God Of War: Chains Of Olympus, our goal was to push the experience to a higher level, with improved graphics fidelity, larger levels, more NPCs, and complex interactions,” says Rachid El Guerrab, who went on to reveal that Chains Of Olympus was one of the first PSP games Sony allowed to run at full power (previous games were restricted to save battery life). “If I remember correctly, our framerate would have been [roughly] 22fps without it,” he continues.

In addition to charting the rise and decline of Sony’s remarkable handheld, issue 262 also covers the history of Ape’s quirky Earthbound series, charts the 40-year legacy of Ultimate’s Knight Lore and speaks to Mike Montgomery about the many games by The Bitmap Brothers.

Retro Gamer is the world's biggest - and longest-running - magazine dedicated to classic games, from ZX Spectrum, to NES and PlayStation. Relaunched in 2005, Retro Gamer has become respected within the industry as the authoritative word on classic gaming, thanks to its passionate and knowledgeable writers, with in-depth interviews of numerous acclaimed veterans, including Shigeru Miyamoto, Yu Suzuki, Peter Molyneux and Trip Hawkins.