There are now quite a few PSP homebrew games for you to play around with on your Sony Portable, assuming of course you have the Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories game and Fanjita and Ditlew’s eLoader (if you are running firmware 2.01+) or are lucky enough to have a PSP using firmware 1.5 (which has plenty of other methods for running games without the need for the eLoader).

The list of homebrew games for the PSP is quite extensive, and amongst a fair bit of rubbish there are some absolute gems, and some brilliant ports of PC games from a few years ago.

Now that I’ve had time to play some of the PSP’s homebrew games, I thought it would be a good time to list my (current) top 5 games.

If you are looking for some games to play on your PSP, and you are not sure where to start, try some of these. Note that some (marked with an *) will require that you own the original game on the PC, as thePSP version requires data from that install to work, such as the .pak files for Quake.

• 1. Quake*
• — Download Here
• 2. Attack of the Mutants
• — Download Here
• 3. Beats of Rage*
• — Download Here
• 4. Squarez
• — Download Here
• 5. Metal Slug (1 & 2)**
• — Download Here

*Note: These games require data for the original games to play.
**Note: This game requires the NeoGeoCD Emulator and the original Game Rom for Metal Slug (1 & 2).

PSP Homebrew Games in Detail

1. Quake

Quake is the first First Person Shooter to really move away from a sprite based 3D-environment. After games such as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, Doom was like a revelation to most games players. The PSP version is a brilliant port of the original game, can be played using the shareware version of the game off you PC, and now has full mulitplayer support over a wi-fi connection.

Perhaps the only downside to this game is the controls, as Quake really needs a mouse and keyboard to be fully apreciated.

2. Attack of the Mutants

A fantasitic PSP homebrew game, Attck of the Mutants (or AOTM for short) is a classic space based survival game where the aim is to survive the onslaught of enemy beings intent on destroying your spaceship. Classic shoot-em-up gameplay with quad-directional fire power, its plays really well on the PSP and is a game I keep coming back to, a game where the old ‘have one more go’ appeal drags you back time after time to try and beat that hi-score.

3. Beats of Rage

I’ve talked about Beats of Rage before, so I won’t go into to many details other than to say its a classic sideways scrolling beat-em-up ported to the PSP and continually refined and polished by the development team. If you ever played Double Dragon in the arcades, you’ll know what this game is all about.

4. Squarez

One word describes Squarez on the PSP, and thats ‘addictive’. The aim of the game is fairly simple, flay around the screen collecting the ‘good’ boxes while avoiding the ‘bad’ boxes, occasionally munching on the ‘bad’ boxes when you get hold of a power up ‘good’ box. All while zipping about the screen at an incredibly fast pace.

5. Metal Slug (1 & 2)

If you’ve never played Metal Slug, then the chances are you won’t be legally able to play Metal Slug on your PSP until the official version is released as part of a full Metal Slug compilation later in the year. If you have played Metal Slug, own a NeoGeoCD and have access to the game Roms, you’ll find the NeoGeoCD emulator for the PSP a superb piece of homebrew, and one which runs NeoGeoCD games at an almost unbelievable speed.

Whereas most emulators have some slowdown when playing games, the NeoGeoCD emualtor runs at pretty much full speed, meaning that games such as Metal Slug are incredibly playable. Given the lushness of the graphics on some of the NeoGeoCD games, this emualtor is one of my favourites, and Metal Slug one of my favourite games to play on it.

Metal Slug itself is a sideways shoot-em-up where you control you main character on foot or in some form of transport, wielding all manner of weaponary with which to shoot the enemy down with. Recommended.

Summary

So, thats my list of the top 5 homebrew games I’m playing on my PSP at the moment. What games are you playing to death, and find to addictive to put down?