Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

The third coming of the PlayStation Portable landed in mid October as the PSP “Brite” in an Entertainment Pack consisting of the handheld, a 1 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, and a UMD movie nobody cares about. Two weeks later we don’t know yet how well it’s been selling, but we do know that so far it hasn’t been cracked yet.

That’s two long weeks of the brightest, most despicable PSP-hacking minds ramming their able heads against a handheld that, revision after revision of the previous two incarnations couldn’t stand up to them. The pandora battery trick doesn’t work any more. The little system apparently won’t boot older firmwares at all, avoiding the holes present in earlier systems. Yes the 5.00 firmware has been hacked for the 2000 and 1000 series, but the 3000 has been so impervious that the pirates have started doing things that, well, look a little bit like they’re starting to climb the walls in frustration.

One hacker swapped a PSP-2000 CPU into a 3000 to find that oops, the 2000 CPU doesn’t know how to output the signal the 3000′s interlaced screen requires. Talk about extreme measures.

Is it enough to bring more publishers on board this far into the handheld’s lifespan? Perhaps they’ll be emboldened by Nintendo’s decision to copy some of its feature set with onboard flash and a store for its upcoming DSi even though the DS has been ridiculously hackable for a very long time. Will the PSP keep standing up to the worst the cracking underground can throw at it? Only time will tell, but in the meantime I’ll keep using my regular 2000 model to listen to podcasts, watch video, and occasionally play a game or two with my standard 5.01 firmware.