The PlayStation Vita recently hit its 11th birthday in Japan, with Sony's PSP now able to buy its own beers at 18! The amount of joy they have brought millions of gamers mean neither are going away quietly.
Both remain much-loved devices, even though official support has long since fallen by the wayside. And among social posts and forum comments, we see a new generation of gamers picking them up second-hand to fall in love with PlayStation's portable family. They quickly become part of this great community (as long as Twitter keeps going!) that support and share this ongoing story.
First, a quick recap of 2022's chapter. The first year of post-support Vita life, and we still managed to have a fantastic time, with a trickle of games from all sorts of places:
- Android direct ports of the likes of Dead Space, Mass Effect, Fallout 2 and Fahrenheit among others.
- Dreamcast emulation releases via Flycast bringing a bunch of great titles that look great on an OLED including Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, House of the Dead 2, Metropolis Street Racer and NBA 2K.
- Minecraft Enhanced sneakily improving on the Vita's own version of the block builder.
- Homebrew releases including Agnostico and the upcoming Purified showing what can be done (and how much love there still is for the Vita).
- And, finally, sneaking into 2022, the PSP's Ridge Racer 2 retweak for PS4/PS5 shows there's still value in that system's amazing library.
The Vita still rocking in 2023
And on into 2023, we go, with the first news of the new year. A new and simpler homebrew/firmware tool in the guise of Henlo. Load your Vita browser and enter "deploy.psp2.dev" in the address bar to easily install Henkaku, permanently install Enso and all the other mods you need for happy homebrew.
Mix that with VitaDB Download and we have a way to install all the mods needed for each app, with automatic updating, all without wading through the mines of Vitashell and endless FTP-ing. It all seems to work pretty well, and brings fast-and-slick access to all the latest fun.
Add a fully working PSP to your Vita, every emulator under the sun with RetroArch, Flycast for Dreamcast games and we have a very powerful cocktail of entertainment. And in the same way there are people still developing for the Spectrum, C64, Mega Drive, Game Boy and so on, people are keen to explore the potential of the Vita.
Diving into the archives
All the new stuff aside, the Vita's decade of game is still there with most titles still available, and there are so many I haven't played or completed. Finishing Axiom Verge after years of dropping in and out was a cheeky highlight for me in 2022, and I look forward to completing a bunch of other gems from my backlog.
Then there's collecting new games, I don't have the money to splash out on over-priced collectables, but if the odd bargain comes my way, happy to snap a few up. Spider Man, Madden, and a few more leap to mind.
