This proved harder than I thought though due to the fact that I had so many games that I loved on the system.  I especially found it hard due to the fact that I played the system mostly for multiplayer, but I did not want to leave out great single player games.   So then I thought, I should do 2 lists:  Top 10 Multiplayer and Top 10 Single Player.  This helped, but was still too hard to narrow down, so I came up with another set of rules.  To be on the list the game couldn’t have been re-released such as Street Fighter 3: Third Strike or Sonic Adventure, and it can’t have superior sequels on later systems such as Virtua Tennis or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.  In other words, the lists are not just plain “Top 10” but “Top 10 Reasons to Still Have a Dreamcast.”

I want to be able to do these lists justice and give a brief review of each game involve so this was a much bigger undertaking than I intended originally, but it will be worth it (in my opinion).  Unfortunately due to school and technical difficulties…….  OK, OK…  School and Batman: Arkham Asylum (yes, I am still playing) it is not totally finished right now.  Look to have these lists in the next day or two (I might split the two lists into 2 posts to make them a bit more timely).

So here are my thoughts: The PSP launched quite a few years ago and has not quite taken the market by storm as they thought it would. Sony felt that with their powerhouse Playstation 2 being the #1 system on the market if they were to make a portable Playstation that was much powerful than their competition (Mainly the Nintendo DS) that they would rule all. But that did not happen. Sales were lackluster, and a lot of the games were just quick and dirty ports of the games that they already had on the Playstation 2. Things have improved though with a lot of quality titles being released. The problem was that more and more of them were coming from Sony and not too many other companies wanted to support it. Then there was a very noticeable trend that the systems would sell, especially after a remodeled version of the system came out, but software was still not selling. So if people were buying the hardware and not the software, what were they doing? Downloading the software and hacking the system to let them play the games for free. This is why games are going the digital distribution route, and Sony is going so far as to completely eliminate the UMD disc drive from the system in the upcoming PSP Go model. There are downloadable games already, and have been for months, but come the launch of the Go later this year, Sony is promising that “almost all” of the PSP library will be available for download from both Sony as well as third party companies such as Capcom and Konami.

As I mentioned, they are already being downloaded onto the PS3, but there is no way to play them, it is purely storage. So now, what if you could play them. Sony already has component video cables available for the PSP 2000 and 3000 models so you can hook up the PSP directly to your TV, but then you’re still using the PSP as the controller and you have to be as close to the TV as the cord allows. So now, what if the PS3 could let you play as comfortable as you do any other PS3 game with that same great Dual Shock 3 controller. There are people out there that own PSPs, but don’t buy many games for it because they feel they only play it on the go, and they do not travel as much, why not give them a reason to play at home. If a game supports multiplayer, you now essentially have two systems, you have the PSP and the PS3 so you have 2 player gaming right there in your living room again. Now people will want to buy more PSP games because they have more options on when and where they can play.

For those of you saying, well, if they have it on the PS3 why would they need to buy a PSP if they don’t have one already. A very valid point. How I see it is that if they didn’t already have a PSP, at this point they probably weren’t going to buy one anyway. It is an uphill battle Sony is fighting so that’s just a sad truth. They may not have the sale of the hardware, but at least they are going to sell more software. Also, there may even be a small crowd that plays the games and goes “wow, I didn’t realize the portable games were this good on a PSP, maybe I really should pick one up.” They could easily transfer saves over from the PS3 to the PSP as well so they could start a game on PS3 and continue on the go.

I am sure this is a technological roadblock to get it done too, and not just Sony trying to prevent lost PSP sales. I have no doubt that it’s not as simple as going “ok, flip a switch, release a patch to PS3 and it works.” I do not think that even in the homebrew scene that there is a PSP emulator for PCs, but if anyone were to get an emulator working, it would be Sony. The PSP is basically a slightly less powerful Playstation 2, which all PS3s up until last year could play the games for, so I’m sure it is something that could be done. Also, this patch doesn’t even have to be a firmware upgrade… I understand that programmers would have to be paid money for their time to make this work, so Sony could sell the “PSP Player” in the Playstation Store. If they can get people to pay $25 for cables to hook it up to their TV, why not charge the $25 to get the emulator as well?

I asked around in my circle of friends, all with different thoughts on portable gaming, or even Sony themselves, and they all felt that it’s a no brainer and should be done. Some said that although they don’t have a PSP or PS3, they could see how that would be an attractive feature to have. If they did own them, they all said they definitely would use the feature, more so than they would with the cables because they would feel more comfortable using the PS3 controller. The one thing that varied between them though is the price. Some felt it should be free, some felt $25 was OK, some felt maybe only $15. No one really seemed to think that $40-50 would be fair. So there is the trick Sony needs to figure out, what should they charge. I say Sony figure this out because it could really bring in a lot more money, and they could use another bullet point for their Playstation 3, especially after losing Playstation 2 support. Afterall, Microsoft does not have a portable system to tie with their Xbox 360, why not use that to your advantage to sell more Playstation 3s. The holidays are quickly approaching and the economy isn’t getting any better. Get on it Sony, makes us fans happy.

What are your thoughts? Agree, disagree? Leave comments below.

As you may know if you’ve been following my blog, my Wii recently stopped working and I had to send it back to Nintendo to get it repaired. Now, it was my fault it stopped working (had it in a TV stand right now to the heat producing PS3 and Xbox 360) and Nintendo’s customer service was top notch and got the system back to me quickly, so no complaints there, but unfortunately they were unable to keep all my save data. This lead to something that I found Nintendo should update soon… but probably won’t.

I may have been bummed out about having to start all over again in all my games, and my fiancee was upset that her perfectly created Mii was gone, but in the end I’d live and have fun recreating and unlocking everything again. The real problem came in when I realized that all the games I had download for the Virtual Console and WiiWare service that were on an SD card were no longer playable on my system. The copy protection that Nintendo uses only let’s games purchased for that system to play on that system. Nintendo transfered the license over, they would not load off the memory card which meant that I had to redownload all of them. After taking the time (which was a while) to delete everything off the card, it then took me over FIVE HOURS to redownload everything all over again. Again, this isn’t totally Nintendo’s fault, but still annoying. What I do think needs to change though is how they are all stored. What I mean is that part of why it took me 5 hours is because I downloaded games in a specific order so that they would appear, or so I thought, in that order on the memory card. After downloading everything in that order I found that the Wii decided to just throw the games in a random order on my SD Card and therefore I should have just downloaded them in the order I downloaded them originally to save some time. I had even reordered them manually partially, but then when I downloaded my next game off of the WiiWare service, it had just mixed them up again.

All of this could be avoided with a nice update from Nintendo that allows some soft of sorting/viewing options. I know it took forever for Nintendo to even update the system to allow for launching off of the SD Card and they felt that it was not important, but I know I am not the only person who owns a Wii that has more than 2 pages worth of downloads. The number of games I own as well as others like me will only grow as time passes and they continue to release games weekly. They seem to have no problems letting us have all kinds of sorting options when looking through the store to pay for the games, why not get something similar on the system. I’m not asking for much like list all my action games, sort by number of players, or publisher, I just want something similar like group by system or put them in alphabetical order. I don’t feel that is asking too much, and as I said before, I’m sure I am not alone.

Anyone else here, have you run into anything similar? Is this something that would benefit you? Am I just wanting too much? Should I just shut up? Let me know, post your comments below.

NOTE: This was a brainstorm I had before the PSP Comics were announced, but felt I should get it out now that it is more previlant, and as you can see it affected how I wrote the rest of the article.

The Amazon Kindle has been out for a while now, with multiple versions having come out at this point (I believe they are on the 3^rd version now). They basically want it to be the “iPod of books” but one thing that I think is holding it back is that it is black and white only. Now, for most books this is not an issue since it is all text, but sometimes there may be an illustration here or there and they also carry magazines on the service which usually have photographs to go along with the articles. Something I have been thinking about for a while that would be good is for a full color version to come out (I’m sure it’s an expense thing at this point) but it is even more of a great idea to get it out now that the PSP has announced that there will be digital comics coming to it. Sure, they already released The Cryptics (see my review for it) that came out forever ago, but nothing else has come out and now Sony has signed a deal for Archie and Marvel to release comics.

Now, why does a digital comic book reader sound familiar to you? Well, I thought about it while hearing about the Kindle, but then I was taken back to the 80s classic movie, Big where they actually come up with it for an idea. So I guess I’m not as much of a genius as I thought, but it goes to show you how forward thinking they were in that movie To this day it hurts me to watch them ruin all those good comics in that scene.

The PSP cannot compare to the screen size of the Kindle though. When reading/watching comics on the PSP it has to be panel by panel and that can sometimes mess with the flow of the comic, and can ruin the effectiveness of a good “splash page.” With the Kindle it’s the size of the comic so easier to read and has more of the “feel” of reading a comic. Another benefit that the Kindle has is that it is not just using Wi-Fi (At least in the newer versions) like the PSP, it uses 3G to download wherever you are. This means that you can be wherever and get a comic right to your Kindle. You can get a subscription, Wednesday rolls around (any good nerd knows this is new comic day) and now your Kindle downloads the newest issue of Spider-Man and it’s right there. No waiting until you get to the nearest wi-fi hot spot or get home.

Comics also have a very rich history, so barring any legal issues, why not have not just the new issues, but old ones available as well. Trade Paperbacks are popular in book stores, and collectors like to own every issue. I have seen DVD-ROMs sold in stores that have “Every issue up until XXXX” sold in stores like Best Buy that have semi-complete collections of Spider-Man, Captain America, and others. These are to be viewed on your PC or printed out, not quite as portable. With a comic Kindle you could purchase all these issues and have them available whenever you want. While not as prominant now, I remember as a kid that old “*” showing up all the time in dialogue of comics and at the bottom of the panel it would say “See Issue 147″ or whatever the case may be. Why not make it so you could “click” that star and it takes you right to that issue. Don’t have that issue in your library, “here’s how to purchase.” They could get so much money in from that.

Now maybe some of these features will come to the PSP, and I think it’ll be a great service (although I’m interested to see how popular it’d really be), but I think a Kindle could reach even more people and be an even better solution. This is just my opinion, and maybe I’m crazy, so what do all of you think? Are you a comic reader? Will you be getting the PSP comics? Would you get a Comic Kindle? Leave some comments below.