Brew Your Own

Having bought a PSP, I find myself wishing dearly that Sony wouldn't act like such a spectacular dick as regards homebrew.

I realize that a large portion of homebrew consists of emulators which allow people to play 20 year old games that nobody in their right mind would purchase anymore. Personally, I don't give a shit that large corporations are pissed off because they aren't receiving money from someone else's labor in perpetuity. Boo-hoo.

Honestly, though, I really don't care all too much about the battle between whether or not playing the original NARC now falls under "fair use" -- I'd rather be not playing NARC.

What I'm really looking for, homebrew-wise, are interesting, useful little freeware apps. In particular, I'd like to see a simple music program, something akin to the MTV Music Generator (don't laugh, it was surprisingly flexible and the control scheme felt natural) - maybe something like this, though I won't vouch for that file until I check it out. Hell, with a decent microphone attachment I could use it as a sampler.

What I'm looking for is something exactly like this. Annoying site to navigate, but the feature set is spot the fuck on. BAM! Mile Zero, why have you not mentioned this before? I care not if you own a PSP.

The PSP Sequencer looks like a necessary acquisition as well. Dammit, now I have to hunt down a reasonably-priced 2 GB mem card.

I'm also checking out the Portable Meditation Engine (second from the bottom of the page). This is pretty much your standard binaural generator, complete claptrap, naturally. "Entraining" brainwaves and rubbish like that, but I'm a sucker for nonsense. And tones. Fear my enlightenment.

You can find some mini office suites, as well, and AIM style programs (which I'll probably check out once the keyboard attachment drops).

Or take a look at LUA SMOOVE, a tile editor, which could be cool functionality for a very indie developer (warning: you need a version of Lua Player to run this program).

There are a few other interesting apps, most of them in rough stages. I can't help but feel that some projects get delayed every time Sony decides to update its firmware in order to shut out the homebrewers, even though the update will, inevitably, get cracked. In a way it's like the Cold War - that same stupid back-and-forth arms race; Or maybe the encryption/decryption struggle during WWII. Whatever.

I guess that, to gamers, supporting homebrew is a no-brainer. Whereas for an executive whose whole job is to sniff out money, homebrew smells like a loss.

As for emulators . . .

Colecovision? Intellivision?

That's just a gross misuse of nostalgia.