Hackers have figured out a way to make the PSP and PS3 version of Manhunt 2 from Rockstar be uncensored meaning that the game has been brought back to its original Adults Only rating state.

Hackers seem to do some amazing things and this is a perfect example of that. Manhunt 2 was originally given an Adults Only rating by the ESRB in North America, which kept it from releasing in July on the PSP, PS2, and Nintendo Wii platforms.

Rockstar had to go back to the drawing board and re-work the game to the point where they had to dumd down the violence a bit so that they were allowed to release it. They did so an yesterday on Halloween the game launched finally on the PSP, PS2, and Wii.

Now hackers have apparently found a way to remove all of the censoring by Rockstar. This reverts Manhunt 2 back to its state as an Adults Only game which will please many gamers who were not happy that the game was dumbed down a bit.

The Noobz team (www.noobz.eu), building on the previous Illuminati exploit, have released a new PSP firmware downgrader, which can safely downgrade any known PSP.

This is an amazing breakthrough, and gives the freedom to all PSP users to use legitimate homebrew software.

read more | digg story

Square Enix has decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Final Fantasy series by releasing the first two adventures on PSP.

Final Fantasy I and II will be available across the US on 26th June and 24th July respectively. The titles are currently unconfirmed for Europe.

These anniversary editions will be completely remastered for the handheld. New features include updated graphics, unexplored dungeons, 16:9 presentation, updated camera views and new character art.

Final Fantasy was released in Japan 20 years ago, and began what has turned out to be an immensely popular series, today totalling more than 75 million sales worldwide.

The first game tells the story of four adventurers summoned to bring the world back to a harmonious elemental balance, seeking out an evil entity that has created a rift in the structure of time.

Final Fantasy II follows four brave fellows once more, this time battling an evil emperor who has unleashed an army of demons to take over the world.

“So much has changed within the video game industry since the first console was launched, and Final Fantasy has always pushed the envelope, creating the most advanced graphics and immersive storylines possible,” said Shinji Hashimoto, executive producer for the games. “It is amazing to see how far Final Fantasy has come in the past twenty years, and we cannot wait to continue bringing fans more Final Fantasy titles in the next 20 years.”

First and foremost we recommend that you do not update your firmware to 3.50 if you wish to partake in the homebrew scene. Once more information is available on special editions, custom editions, or 3.50 downgrades we will post details here.

Details about the update:

To coincide with the recent Playstation 3 V1.80 update, which amongst other things added Remote Play ability allowing anyone with a PSP to access their PS3 over the Internet, Sony has now also released a new v3.50 PSP firmware update, adding support for remote play over the internet, and RSS Channel Guide has been added as a feature.

We understand that it may be difficult for Islamic kids to stop playing their PSPs just to complete their daily studies of the Koran. Malaysian student Ikhwan Nazri Mohamad Asran designed The Raise: PSP Islamic Content after seeing a similar version of the Bible.

“For some parents, when we talk about the Internet, all they see is porn, the bad things. When we talk about the PlayStation, all they see is gaming and spending too much time not studying,” Ikhwan said. “A mother can say, ‘Read the Koran first and then I’ll let you play games.’”

He created his service between classes with the aid of 10 student volunteers. The software will become available for the portable system after May 18 to download on Ikhwan’s site for free, instructions included.

Ever since the Sony PSP was released, industrious hackers across the nation have been working diligently to figure out new things to do with it. Here are some of our favorites:

Read E-books:

• Instructions from Team PSP
  
• PaperlessPrinter allows you to view a book as a jpeg slideshow
• Download free e-books at Project Gutenberg

Browse the web:

• Instructions at PSPHacks.net
• Also: Mobile RSS News Reader:

Play multiplayer PSP games using just one disc.

Make a DIY USB PSP charger.

One of the great things about the PSP is the awesome ability to use a web browser at any wifi spot you encounter. Well sometimes I want to see Youtube content to a freind but the PSP has a VERY old version of flash and because of this Youtube does not work under normal circumstances.

Now there is a way to view all you favorite Youtube videos on the go. A new site that has launched, and is still in beta actually, is set to make thing alot easier for the PSP user.

The only drawback is that you still need a PC to do this, yeah I know it sucks, but it is a step in the right direction.

Here is how to watch all you favorite YouTube vids on the go.

1. Find a video you want to watch, in this case I will point to a video I made of me playing Outrun 2006 on a dual monitor setup direct feed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTkazvfVtLk (yes I know I suck LOL)
2. Go to http://vixy.net/ and copy and paste the URL (web address) into the provided space
3. Select the mp4 format (iPod/PSP)
4. Hit the convert button and wait for the conversion to take place
5. when it is done you will be taken to a download page, but the PSP can not download these videos with the URLs this site spits out, so we use a trick go to http://lix.in/ and copy and paste the download link into the space provided, you can’t miss it… no I mean it, and hit “Protect Link”
6. you now have a short PSP freindly url you can use on the PSP web browser to download the newly converted video
7. click all links needed to get back to the download page and hit save on the PSP and then make sure you save to the /VIDEO folder of your PSP
8. after a bit of a download your video is now on you PSP memory stick ready to watch anywhere you take you psp to

Enjoy your new ability to take Youtube with you on your PSP

The Noobz team, Team C+D, and Dark_Alex are well known names amongst PSP fans. They are the leaders of the homebrew community in many ways. They are the ones that make downgrading possible, and emulation available. These guys are the gods of cracking Sony’s code and the masters of homebrew programming. The BBC recently had a chance to sit down with these superstars in a tell-all interview. It’s really interesting to read their stories and opinions on piracy. Check it out.

Computer hackers have scored a victory in their battle against Sony and the way the company controls its PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld games console.
Sony sells its PSP with built-in software, known as firmware, which controls how the console operates.

The firmware locks many of the PSP’s capabilities, preventing enthusiasts from writing their own programs, known as homebrew, and running them on the machine.

It also disables its ability to play some films which are not bought on special Sony PSP disks.

But last month three hacker teams - Noobz, Team C+D, and a group led by PSP hacker Dark Alex - co-ordinating their efforts over the internet, found a flaw in the most recently released version of the firmware - version 3.03.

Using this flaw they devised a way to unlock all PSPs, regardless of their age or the firmware running on it.

This development has been a cause for celebration in the PSP homebrew community, but caused alarm at Sony because unlocked PSPs can be used to play pirated PSP games.

“The problem experienced here is not with homebrew applications, but with hackers who pirate commercial titles,” a Sony spokesperson said.

“Sony have never been in touch with me, so I am confident that what we are doing is legal” - Fanjita (David Court), PSP Hacker. “Piracy is illegal and we strongly oppose any acts which either aide or profit from it.”

But the hackers say piracy is not what motivates their teams to unlock the PSP.

“My aim is to enable as many people as possible to run homebrew programs,” said Fanjita, a member of the Noobz team. He added: “Everyone has the right to do what they want with their own hardware. Piracy does upset me, and because what we are doing opens the way to piracy it’s harder to justify it morally.

“But our stance on piracy is clear, and we hope to be role models. Sony have never been in touch with me, so I am confident that what we are doing is legal.”

Hackers unveiled

Fanjita - real name David Court - is very different from the popular hacker stereotype of the socially inept teenaged geek working all night in his bedroom.

A married man of 34, he is an accomplished professional programmer who writes server software for large telecommunications companies for a living. He spends an hour or two a night hacking PSP software in his Edinburgh home, and is also a martial arts enthusiast.

Dark Alex fits much more comfortably into the hacker mould.

A student from Spain, his hacker moniker derives from his real name, Alejandro, and a liking for all things gothic, he says. His interests are Japanese Manga comics and cats, but PSP hacking is his main hobby.

“I think it is up to users to make the correct decisions about how to use my software.” - Dark Alex, PSP Hacker. “It takes up a good part of my spare time, more or less what some other people may spend watching TV,” he said.

“I mainly do it because it is fun to research the internals of the operating system of a machine made by a big company. I am also against DRM (digital rights management - a type of electronic copy protection) in any of its forms, and against restrictions that make a device unable to show its true potential.”

Not just pirates

Dark Alex said that although his work makes piracy easier because it enabled PSP owners to play copied games, this was not his responsibility.

“I think it is up to users to make the correct decisions about how to use my software,” he said. “I believe in the presumption of innocence, unlike the media companies.”

There were many quite legitimate reasons why you might want to copy a game you own from its original disk, Dark Alex said.

“You can transport a number of games on a single memory stick, which is very convenient, and the games actually load faster. And most important for me, these games can actually be modified, allowing users to customise their games,” he said.

“I’ve seen great things done in this area, like people changing the music of games, or making full translations into their own language.”

Breaking the code

Whenever Sony releases a new version of its PSP firmware, the three hacker teams compete to see who can decode and examine it first.

They then collaborate to see if they can find any way of unlocking it.

This task has been made harder in recent months as Sony has introduced a new and more secure motherboard in the latest PSPs, and because Sony’s firmware has become increasingly sophisticated in response to the hackers’ efforts.

“When each new version of the PSP firmware comes out we can see that Sony are putting in countermeasures against the things we have been doing,” Court said.

In this case it turned out that a well known mistake in the way a PSP game called Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was written provided the hackers with a suitable “exploit”.

By loading the game it was possible to get access to a restricted part of the firmware called the kernel, and an oversight on the part of Sony’s firmware writers then allowed the hackers to run a special program of their own devising.

An upgraded ‘downgrade’

This “downgraded” the PSP to an earlier version of the firmware which allows homebrew to be used.

PSP FIRMWARE HISTORY
2.00 Added a web browser, 4:3 video playback, MP4/AAC playback, and photo transfer support
2.50 Added Locationfree streaming, copyright-protected video playback, and WPA wi-fi security
2.60 Added RSS support and WMA playback
2.70 Added support for Adobe Flash in the web browser
3.00 Added Playstation network/Playstation 3 support and camera support

The drawback of this early firmware is that it won’t run the latest games, but this problem was quickly overcome by Dark Alex, who wrote his own firmware, called Dark Alex’s Open Edition, with the help of a fellow hacker known as Booster.

With this firmware installed, the PSP is completely unlocked, but also has all the features of the latest firmware.

Within days of the release of the Noobz team’s downgrader and Dark Alex’s Open Edition firmware, Sony updated its firmware, fixing the flaw which makes unlocking possible.

Anyone buying a new PSP with this firmware installed will be therefore be unable to unlock their console - at least until Noobz, Team C+D and Dark Alex and his crew find another exploit and the whole cat-and-mouse game played by Sony and the hacker teams repeats itself.

via BBC.co.uk

It’s been a while since I’ve played with my PSP. Recently I got my hands on the Sony Location Free Base station and decided to try out the LF Player on the PSP. To do this I needed to upgrade my PSP’s firmware, but I did not want to lose my homebrew, otherwise all of my LUA apps, and other software would stop working. I’ve decided to figure out how to use DevHook to emulate a new firmware, and while I was expecting a long and complicated process, it was actually really simple to do on my PSP.

This is due to the hard work of a lot of developers, and I applaud their efforts for making it to this point. A user on PSPUpdates has posted a simple tutorial detailing the process. What it does is pretty slick… You need to download 3 things. The normal PSP Update PBP, DevHook, and a script that will extract the update file and make it usable in DevHook. In less than 5 minutes I was running an emulated PSP Firmware 3.01.

I was able to get the locationfree base station streaming to the PSP after manually linking the two using Sony’s Setup mode button. When the base station is streaming to the PSP, the LF LCDTV just goes black. No message is displayed to let you know what’s happening and why the video signal has been lost. Apparently you can only stream to one device at a time. Pretty Lame.

The video quality to the PSP wasn’t great, watchable, but not for a long period of time. The sound wasn’t very good, but I think that was because the sound on my cable box was too low. I cranked the PSP to it’s max volume and it was not loud and sounded very tinny.

Bottom line, the LCDTV + Sony base station works great, but the PSP player is not very useful, and the 1 stream limit needs to be increased, I’m not sure if slingbox has the same limitations, but I think I’m going to give that a shot next.

Also, you may want to take a look at PMP, which will allow you to stream media from your PC to your PSP. It works quite well, and the video quality is not bad. They have just released version 1.02 which includes even more GUI improvements and lots more. This is a much better streaming solution for your media.

Download PMP - the PSP Media Streamer/Player Solution here

Hacking Wireless Networks With The PSP
Is the PSP spurring a new generation of safety concerns?
August 24th, 2006
By Robert A.

One doesn’t often associate a child bearing a portable gaming console as a potential hacker, or, worse, a terrorist. We often disregard the PSP as a multimedia tool sincerely used for promoting happiness: watching movies, playing games, and listening to music. But how about using it for infiltrating top-secret clearance level data at some of the US’s most prestigous intelligence agencies? The PSP has all the prerequisites. If homebrew programs can be made to emulate Nintendo 64, send phone calls, utilize GPS protocols, and more, with the measily, yet powerful 333 MHz CPU, what’s stopping terrorists and malicious individuals from sending a child, armed with a PSP bearing a homebrew password brute forcer, to walk by the FBI Edgar Hoover building in Washington D.C. (who’s wireless networks reach the public sidewalk alongside the building), and gather data which could be used to thwart the government which protects us? Is this one of the reasons why Sony wants to stop homebrew? There are so many possibilities.

This brings me to my own story. The other day, I parked my car on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., killing some time before an event I was about to attend further down in D.C. I whipped out my PSP, while sitting in the car, and pleasured myself to a round of Tekken: Dark Ressurection. Mind you, it was nearly dark outside, and the lights in the car were off. Roughly ten minutes into my game, I noticed a certain figure standing outside my car. I quickly shutoff my PSP, turned the lights on, and rolled down the window. To my surprise, it was a police officer. He asked me what I was doing at that very moment. Now, of course, I am an adult, and an adult playing a PSP in the dark, inside his car, on the busiest street in D.C. is pretty awkward, one would think. So I replied and explained my situation, that I was early heading to a nightclub, and wanted to feed my addiction to a new game I had just bought. He didn’t buy it. Not one bit at that.

Maybe it was my sketchy behavior, I was excited for the night, it was a long and tiring week, and now I had to deal with the fact that I might get in trouble for something, knowing how police have a knack for finding trouble. He immediately yelled (not politely) at me and forced me to put my hands in the air, step outside the car, and place both hands on the side of the car. He then proceded to pat me down and handcuff me from behind, and then asked me to sit down on the curb. He peeked inside my car, with flashlight in hand, and thoroughly searched my car (lucky I didn’t have my 6-pack next to me, as I originally planned to bring along). He picked up my PSP as evidence of “unusual behavior” and left to his car. There, I would assume, he traced my tags, performed a background check, and called in an additional police cruiser. He came out, and by now, the second cruiser had arrived with two additional men; they all came towards me. I was deeply interrogated. Why I was parked in front of a federal building at this time at night, why I tried to hide the item in my hands when the police officer had supposedly been yelling at me from the outside of my car, before I noticed he was outside, and what the ‘real story’ was. I started laughing, I knew nothing better to do at the time; these people thought I was a terrorist. They probably thought I was using the electronic device to decrypt confidential passwords, try to detonate some sort of triggered bomb, or something along those lines. Whatever the case, they let me go as they could find no real reason to arrest me, and I was relieved. Was that right there reasonable doubt? Did those police officers have the right to approach me like that? To this day the thoughts and words of that night still skim through my brain.

Now, I don’t want to make this article a rant against the criminal system we have. I’m actually, in a way, pleased that these officers had thought about such malicious potentials from the handheld; this is what makes the US safe(r). What I really wanted to get at was the true possibilites of the PSP; there is really nothing stopping anyone with malicious intent to be in my exact same position that night, utilizing a homebrew password decrypter/brute forcer/MD5 decryptor/mini-rainbow table setup/wireless bomb detonator rather than playing Tekken. Had I been sitting in the car with a laptop on my lap, it would have been many times more suspicious. A portable device equipped with wireless capabilities and the ability to launch custom, unsigned code, coupled with a small form factor is capable of anything. The terrorists and hackers of the next generation could be simply walking down the street and hacking away, using their concealed PSP to port scan and find a way to penetrate a victim’s wireless network, and essentially, gather sensitive information.

How safe are we? Could the PSP pose as a tool for the next generation of hacking? Is this potential one of the things that Sony is trying to protect us from by pressing firmware updates, and, eliminating the ability to run homebrew? Is the PSP really a toy?