Hacking the PSP Blog

Lumines II's title song unveiled

After the devilishly catchy Lumines title song, Mondo Grosso's Shinin' - which often causes violent rows in the CVG office when attempted to be played aloud - we're a bit miffed by the sequel's erm, 'happy' front-runner.

Titled 'Heavenly Star', the song is performed by a Gorillaz-style virtual pop-act, Genki Rockets, using a fusion of different female voices, an expert-miming model and lyrics written by Mizuguchi-San himself. The music video is a bit like A-Ha's Take on Me, with a pencil-drawn singer prancing around rainbow-arched fields and comet-filled skies. The video will play in the background of Lumines II when Heavenly Star rolls round.

Advertisement:

document.write('');

Here's what Mizuguchi-San had to say about Heavenly Star in our recent interview:

"So the girl in the video, she is 17 years-old. She doesn't exist in this world; she's a future girl. She was born in outer space and she's never touched on this planet yet. This is kind of the big love song for the Earth; she's always dreaming of what kind of place Earth is. She knows the history and info from the high-tech, high-res media, but she's always dreaming about the real experience; wind on her face; rainbows - 'what is a rainbow?'. It's a kind of fresh, lovely song. (laughs)"

You can watch the full video now over on You Tube

Andy Robinson
September 29, 2006

Source: CVG

Dark_AleX's Homebrew Enabler updated to Rev.C! Now load all your user-mode homebrew in 2.71!

Dark_AleX and Mathieulh have formed a formidable partnership which doesn't look like it will slow down anytime soon. And yet again, Dark_AleX has updated his ground-breaking piece of work, the homebrew enabler for FW 2.71. The big feature in this latest version is the ability to launch static ELFs. To those who've just joined us, all the current homebrew is basically compiled as a static ELF. Up to this version, it was not possible to launch them, which meant that any homebrew which had to be run on 2.71 had to be re-compiled keeping a few guidelines in check.

With this new update, you can run almost all your user-mode homebrew. Here's the full changelog:

• User mode static ELF's are now starting to work. Tested with SNES TYL 0.3 (user mode version), PSPMaster and  CPS2PSP 1.0 (user mode version). Kernel mode static ELF's are still not supported, they are a very odd case in 1.XX of kernel code loaded to user memory. Kernel Homebrew for 2.71 has to be written with a user main ELF/PRX that load kernel PRX's. Note that the homebrew must be in a true PBP, not KXploited!.
• User mode PRX's could load other user mode PRX's, but kernel mode PRX's couldn't load user mode PRX's. This is fixed.
• Patched the firmware to allow it to understand the old SFO format(avoiding the error of data is corrupted).
• Added a small win32 binary that will give you a hint about if a homebrew can work or not in the current release. Note that this is only a hint.

Also remember that this version will happily run on the TA-082 PSPs, so everyone can join in the fun! If any of you have already been using an older version of the homebrew enabler, there are some specific instructions which you must follow to upgrade it:

"To update from HEN revision A to B, hard reset your psp (to make sure that hen is not running). Then copy the new files to the memory stick and run the tif. The new files will be automatically updated."

For those who're gonna be doing this hack for the first time, the instructions are included in the readme. Make sure to check it out before doing this hack. Since it modifies the flash, you have to take care. It has already been tested many times, and it will work properly. If you're still scared, you can even use the homebrew enabler as a Devhook mod. The files are included in the same file.

Finally, it has been known that some sites have been modifying homebrew for their personal glory. We have received word from Mathieulh that editing the files can possibly corrupt the eboot, or in worst cases, brick your PSP when using it. To make sure this doesn't happen, please download this file from either Dark_AleX's site, or from our download site linked below. We have the original file, directly, from Mathieulh's IRC channel and you can be rest-assured that our file is clean and safe. So without further ado, here's the download link below. Enjoy!

Download HERE (Acquired from Dark_AleX's site)

Source: PSPUpdates

Leaked Best Buy Strategic Planning Calendar?

A user from the NeoGAF forums by the name of Mrbob has posted a supposed copy of Best Buy's Strategic planning calender from their Planning Seminar for Playstation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 and PSP. The Playstation 3 and Wii section of the slide mentions the dates that the Kiosks will be in stores as well as dates for marketing strategies. So IF this is true the Playstation 3 kiosk should be rolled out on October 20th following with the Wii 's kiosk on October 29th.

It also looks like that when the PS3 and Wii hit it will make the 360 get "pushed" back to shelf display although they are adding an HD-DVD drive to the display. The only text that sticks out for the PSP is the start of the "Play Beyond" wireless marketing campaign. Just a reminder that this is in no way official and the only way to find out if it is true is to wait until the dates listed above. So go ahead and check out the image above by clicking the thumbnail and when the dates come in late October check your local Best Buy to see if the kiosks are there.



Source: PSPUpdates & NeoGAF