No Nonsense Review: Geronimo Stilton in The Kingdom of Fantasy PSP

What you are seeing is my own copy which I got eBay and shipped from England. In case anyone ever asks you, games from Europe do work on an American PSP. 

So who is this Geronimo Stilton and why does he have his own game? 

According to Wikipedia

In the series, the title character is a talking mouse who lives in New Mouse City on Mouse Island. A best-selling author, Geronimo Stilton works as a journalist and editor for the fictional newspaper The Rodent's Gazette. Has won Nobel prize two times.

He has a younger sister named Thea Stilton, a cousin named Trap Stilton, and a favorite little nephew, nine-year-old Benjamin Stilton. Geronimo is a nervous, mild-mannered mouse who would like nothing better than to live a quiet life, but he keeps getting involved in far-away adventures with Thea, Trap, and Benjamin, and sometimes Aunt Sweetfur. The books are written as though they are autobiographical adventure stories.

The work of an Italian author under a pseudonym, the series has become the most popular children's book series in Italy and the books have been translated into 35 languages.

Papercutz obtained the rights to publish English translations of the graphic novels of Geronimo Stilton. These retain some of the original names of the characters that were changed in the storybooks translated by Scholastic. For example, the English translations of the graphic novels by Papercutz continue to use the names "Patty Spring" and "Pandora", while the storybooks by Scholastic changed these names to Petunia Pretty Paws and Bugsy Wugsy, respectively.

...and he has his own site Geronimo Stilton.com

To the answer why 2 games, cashing in on his popularity. 

So how his the gameplay?

Although made for kids, it is a fun and utterly delightful game filled with puzzles, and mini-games. The writing and the voice acting are solid. It doesn't talk down to anyone and hell if someone like me loves this game, anyone of any age will be delighted by it. But not hardcore gamers.

Here is a trailer so you get a better understanding of the gameplay.

Fun fact in 2013 this game and it's sequel Geronimo Stilton and the Return to The Kingdom of Fantasy was available here in the US on PSN and still is. Although it is cheaper to actually get a physical copy from eBay than pay the $15 PSN wants, I paid $12.49 for my copy and that did include shipping. 

Overall

8/10

Little Big Planet PSP Online Then vs. Now

Some interesting turn of events has happened with Little Big Planet PSP. It turns out a lot of those free costumes and other things that were available when the PSP version of PSN was still online are back, including the patch, which Sony said would to fix some bugs within the game. But right now it seems the only way you can use any of this is on a PS Vita, including downloading a copy of the game, costumes, materials and even stickers. Now get this most of them are FREE, only a handful of items you still have to pay for such as 2 levels, some costumes and even a couple of theme packs.

Speaking of which I really don't think the LBP community back when the PSP was popular was even that active, to begin with. I may have set things up right before the game servers went down. Except for 6 fan-made levels, there was nothing else. Hardly even worth the effort, as all the levels are just too easy or just plain never end. I did download a save file which did include a couple of home made levels, but they were nothing short of terrible.

On the other hand Little Big Planet Vita even after being available for 6 years and some thinking it's servers were gone. Is going through a revival itself, I own a copy of that game. Once I installed the Online patch and found more than 20+ costumes available for free on PSN which are seemly available only if you have both, as you have to download them through the game itself. But that isn't all LBP fans, there are the 142 fan-made levels you can play and download, the 5 FREE Creator Packs Sony has made available. Plus you can play against other LBP fans online, I found at least 20 to as many as 40 the 2 times I checked.

In addition, there is a DC comic level for sale at PSN

Even though I do own a psychical copy of both games. I may pay for the download of the PSP version to see what Sony is up to, even those in the Vita community are wondering.

PSP Save Cheats

I know some including me have talked about the Gameshark PSP or some such cheat device. But a lot of devices are limited including the Gameshark which has to be activated by a site that is no longer is there unless you can find the program already installed on an old PC...which is very unlikely. Save Cheats are a different matter, they can work on all models on PSP, and all firmwares including custom firmware.

What are Save Cheats exactly, you know how PSP games create a game saves. But let us be honest not all of us including me are great at all the games we buy and need a little help sometimes. One of the first ones I ever used was for the Sega Genesis Collection. I simply went to Gamefaqs did a title search and there it is. Under the title 4th one from the left, it says Saves, click on it. Simply download the save you want, unzip it and place the folder in the Game Save folder on your PSP and you are done. But what have you done? Simply open up the entire game without ever playing it before. 99% of all the saves stored on Gamefaqs are exactly that. They unlock everything, and to my knowledge, you can only do this on the PSP. I may be wrong about the PS3 and other Sony consoles but I have never tried.

Are there any downsides to this? 1% of the saves don't work for various reasons. Otherwise, they are safe to use and you can get to whatever you want now without waiting.

No Nonsense Review: Lego Batman The Video Game PSP

Literally the best Batman game I have ever played.

Overall

10/10

No Nonsense Review: Blazing Dragons PS1

I have always had this thing for "Point and Click" games, and recently I downloaded a bunch of them and place them in my modded PSP.  Blazing Dragons is something unique, it's both fast-paced and fun, at least partially created by Terry Jones. No complicated puzzles here, no overly complicated clues. The items you need are easy to get, even the trickiest one takes less than 1 minute to acquire. The game is fairly straightforward, I think it's even better than the Discworld games which I have been playing for years.

Overall

9/10

No Nonsense Review: Scooby Doo! Who's Watching Who? PSP

As hard as it some may find this hard to believe up to this point I have never played a Scooby Doo game before and frankly really didn't know what to expect. But after playing it for a while I think I know. If you are looking for a game that hunts down clues, gathering evidence frankly Scooby Doo! Who's Watching Who? isn't it. At its heart, it's a fair action adventure game where you gather up clues in the shape of Magnifying Glasses as you work your way through the levels via 3 mini-games. There are interviews with suspects of course. The level design is good, you have to think through the levels. The standard enemies you face aren't all that bad. Health restores items namely Scooby Snacks are everywhere and so are save points. I almost forgot when you finish a mini-game you have to have to go see Velma, in order to analyze your clues via 2 different mini-games. But let us not forget you need a certain number of clues to pass each level so unless your an expert in this game, you will be playing them more than once. In order to go to the next level where you are more or less playing the same sort of mini-game yet again.

So is this game any good? I rate it good, but nothing exceptional. Good for the casual gamer and Scooby Doo fan. But not hardcore gamers, you will find this too easy. The game was rated E for Everyone after all.

Overall

6.5 / 10

UPDATE!!!

I just found out there is a DS version

After looking at this gameplay footage I think I rather play my PSP version.

TV on UMD: Viewtiful Joe

           

                                                                   Original Run

                                                  October 2, 2004 to September 24, 2005
                                                  Total Number of episodes 51

Plot

Following the games' storyline, movie lover Joe and his girlfriend Silvia enjoy a seemingly normal trip to the movies to see an action flick starring Joe's idol, Captain Blue, when suddenly the leader of the evil Jadow force reaches out of the screen and takes Silvia into the movie. Joe is forced to follow her by Captain Blue's mecha, Six Majin (renamed "Machine Six" in the English anime, and "Six Machine" in the Spanish dub), and meets Captain Blue in the flesh who grants Joe the power to become an action movie hero in his own right called Viewtiful Joe.

Media

Viewtiful Joe was produced by animation company Group TAC. The producer for the video game franchise, Atsushi Inaba, and his team gave Group TAC its character designs for the video games, as well as original character designs for the animated series.

The English version of the anime features voice acting by Jeff Nimoy, Philece Sampler, Mona Marshall, and Wendee Lee, among others. Bob Papenbrook, under the name John Smallberries, voiced Captain Blue for the show's first twenty-one English dubbed episodes. Papenbrook died on March 17, 2006, due to complications from a chronic lung condition, making Viewtiful Joe his final piece of work. He was replaced by Paul St. Peter for the remainder of the dub.

The U.S. broadcast began with the fifth episode, with the first three episodes not being shown until a month later. The show's pilot was localized in the United States by Phuuz entertainment. A few censoring edits were made to the English dubbed version of Viewtiful Joe. In Brazil and Spain, the show was aired completely uncut. In the English version, the name of Joe's flying machine, Six Machine, was renamed in the English dub to Machine Six. There is speculation that it was renamed because its original name sounded close to the phrase "sex machine". Also, Six Majin was renamed to Robo-Six. Joe's middle finger was edited out in his henshin transformation sequence. Silvia's super hero alter ego is renamed from "Sexy Silvia" (which was also used in the games) to "Go-Go Silvia". Sprocket's jumpsuit is always zipped up completely, though it was originally unzipped (showing large amounts of cleavage) and one of her signature moves was to zip it up. This move was eliminated in the dub by cutting out the scenes, resulting in Sprocket having much less screen time than in the original.

Although it was released on DVD, I could only confirm 8 three episode volumes were ever released. Meanwhile, only 1 three episodes UMD was ever released. In North America, Geneon partnered with Kids Foot Locker to promote the show by including DVDs with purchases at the shoe retailer.

                                                         Bonus UMD Insert

No Nonsense Review: Lemmings PSP

It's Lemmings on the PSP, it's Lemmings for gosh sake!!!

I don't know how to say this any other way, if your a fan of Lemmings great, if not avoid. If you never played the game before...like me. Have no idea what you have to do, all I can say look up a set of instructions if you want to play. As for the rest of this avoid.

Overall

2/ 10