Mom...I ran this through a spell checker first. :)
So...I am yet again unable to resist such impulses and thus decided last night in quick haste (that's real quick), before I changed my mind, to test out the emulation capabilities of the PSP. I was, luckily, able to obtain a PSP with a 1.5 bios which allows the kxploit technique to work. This allows homebrew apps to function on the PSP. Based on comments in forums and on the web I had a good chance of NOT getting one but certainly a better chance than if I had waited until later since Sony has released 1.51 and 1.52. So I acted on it. All in all, it has left me in quite a bit of a quandary.
As it turns out, in my acting on my impulse, I was able to procure the last PSP in stock at the local Best Buy, meaning there next shipment will probably have 1.51 on it.
I installed and tested the NES, SNES, GBA, and MAME emulators. NES and SNES work pretty well, however the current version of GBA emulator (VBAPSP .003) ran quite slow and as I understand it also has a limitation on the size of the cart that can be loaded. It also has no sound. Mind you, I'm surprised it actually works seeing that it's been all of 4-5 months since the initial release of the PSP so I am very impressed. Unfortunately, it isn't currently up to the speed or sound requirements to support the needs of my little girl. Thus...my quandary.
I imagine that the speed of the GBA emulation on the PSP will come up to par, as it is they appear to be fairly direct ports of the currently popular emulators and I imagine they aren't taking any advantages of the hardware optimization available in the PSP. On the flip side of this, I'm curious if anyone expects the GBA emulator to be able to run game carts that are 32MB or greater seeing as there's only 32MB of memory on the PSP. I also imagine an entire cart has to be loaded into memory. So, the quandary is...do I hold onto the PSP now that I've obtained a 1.5 version that can run these homebrew applications and hope that the GBA emulation scene improves (or that Sony has some good children's games coming out for the PSP...unlikely) or do I return it? Of course, being a PSP it's certainly more than any 4 or 5 year old child needs. Some would think I'm crazy buying this for just my daughter but then who are we kidding here. This is for her AND for me.
I'm set on the GBA I think. I've got enough investment in it now that it should last my little girl quite some time. As for the PSP, I don't know whether I should hold on to it and just watch the scene or return it and move on, especially since Calista may not use it as much as she can the GBA. There's a time frame involved on the whole GBA vs. PSP as far as she's concerned because we want something she'll be able to bide her time with in the long hours we may be spending in the hospital when the little one is born at the end of July.