In early August - Square Enix revealed that Parasite Eve: The Third Birthday is being developed for the PSP. And IGN reported today that the project manager at Square Enix says that the 3rd Birthday’s scenario and design are nearing completion. So let’s check out what’s on offer:

According to project director Hajime Tabata, this PSP Parasite Eve sequel is going to be a true 3D gun action game…and a a “true third person shooter.” (IGN interview)

Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday Screenshot

Gamespot - who viewed the trailer at the August, Tokyo Sigma3713 party - report that they got the briefest glimpse of the plot. Apparently, the heroin, Aya, looks to be the only one who can save mankind from the “Twisted” by using a system called the “Overdive”. This seems to allow her to simultaneously be in the game and to look into the workings of the game system in order to defeat her enemies!

It will be interesting to see how that plays out. The trailer is not yet public - but here you see a screen shot of Aya in action.

Gamespot go on to describe the scene from the brief trailer they saw at the Tokyo party:

Aya is in a wedding dress and is walking up to the altar. A man suddenly appears from the chapel’s front door and starts shooting with a machine gun. Aya turns back and takes out a handgun to return fire, and her wedding ring flies off in the process. We see it falling on the ground, with blood spilling onto it a moment later….

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A recent survey on Bitfood showed that whilst PSP’s are used mainly for games (naturally), 50% of PSP’ers also use it to watch videos and to listen to music. On the other hand, only 12% use it for Skype (a sad loss of opportunity, here) and less than 15% use it to play Nintendo 64 games (another missed benefit!). We wondered whether this revealed a lock of knowledge rather than a lack of interest?

We know PSP’ers are smart so we figure they just don’t know they can do these things. So in the next few blog posts we will show how easy it is to use them.

But today we are going to look at how we can get PS1 games to play on our PSP

Catlemania on PSP!

The people over at Gizmodo have been hard at work putting together a tutorial explaining how this can be done. Now before we provide you with the link, just keep reminding yourself - as you follow the instructions - that at the end of the whole deal:

you can rip your old PS1 games and play THOSE on your PSP … and load all the PSP games you own onto it so you don’t have to carry around so many UMDs.

Otherwise you might be tempted to give up along the way. It is mind numbingly boring to do!

But some of those old games are classic. Take Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, for example - Gamespot describes it as

Quite possibly the best 2D action side scroller ever.

So now you can get these games to play on PSP. Here is the Gizmodo link. If you do it, let us all know - in the comments - whether you think it is worth doing.

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Talkman Travel was released in the US today and promises to be an interesting experiment for Sony.

According to the Sony promo, the Talkman Travel

* serves as an interactive pocket tour guide
* provides a list of roughly 150 pre-selected phrases tourists are likely to use on their vacations
*contains pre-selected photos archives …accompanied by detailed descriptions of their significance.

Can the functionality of the software impress adult travelers enough to excite them to include the PSP in their “must haves” for travel? Will traveling business Dad’s be tempted to swipe their kids PSP to test this program out?

Hmm … well the “pick up lines” that are included in the program suggests that Sony are targeting the traveling playboy (or playboy hopefuls)…so maybe not.

But the question that we feel compelled to ask is:

Is the jet seting playboy likely to be a PSP-toting traveler? or is Sony hoping to capture a whole new market segment (a la Nintendo Wii)?

These puzzles aside, if the Talkman Travel is as useful as the promotions suggest, it could be well worth trying out - at least, if you are heading for Paris, Rome or Tokyo which are the only cities the software targets.

Frankly the crew at Bitfood all agree that the graphics are disappointingly plain and unattractive. Hopefully Sony will upgrade them if the software proves popular!

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