It's a good time to have a PSP, especially with Pirates! and Sonic coming up. Unfortunately, mine was on the way out. Second-hand to begin with, the analogue controller and one of the buttons were playing up, and so I headed back to CeX to ask for a repair.

I though I was to be disappointed - upon noticing it was running a hacked firmware they tried to avoid it - 'flashing a custom firmware voids your warranty'. I pointed out this was rubbish, as it was a hardware problem, and that I wanted a repair, not a replacement. At this point they sent a message to the repair department, who responded 'just give him another unit'.

And so I now have a mint PSP, in significantly better condition than my old one. The only cost to me: a couple of hours flashing it back to 3.03SE. So now I've an as-new device running Super Mario. Spiffing. And blessings on CeX.

As the tits at Sony release firmware 3 for the PSP (with PS1 emulation support, if you're daft enough to own a PS3 and live in the US/Japan), I noticed my PSP has a old (pre TA-082) motherboard. And so it got the flash treatment - to Dark Alex's 2.71SE firmware.

This is very neat - no hacking around, just launch third party software from the games menu. Well worth the [minor] risk of a flash. There are, of course, two prerequisites - firstly, you need a TA-081 or prior motherboard. Secondly, firmware 2.71 or below.

For those who can't flash, however, at least Sid Meier's Pirates! is coming to the PSP in the new year.

On another note, what is with the inclusion of trailers on [non-rental] DVDs? We bought the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and not only does it have 2 trailers before the menu, but all the booklets included are just full of marketing rubbish. Is it any wonder people just pirate these things when companies try to screw all possible marketing revenue from you?

I am completely enthralled at present with Lego Star Wars II. Despite the number, this one deals with the original trilogy (i.e. no annoying whiney Anakin) and is an absolute blast. While one is tempted to discard it out of hand given the title (Lego? In Star Wars?) it does in fact turn out to be magic - a mix of action/platform, with 3D shoot-em-up segments, which really doesn't take itself too seriously. The only downside - the UK hasn't got the PSP version as yet, and no Mac release has been announced. Grr.

Even better, the PSP version is visually close to that of the PC version. Animation is (almost always) smooth and attractive. The game-play has enough variation to keep you interested, and with variations on the levels (play through in story mode, play through timed, play through with characters of your choice) there's quite a bit of replay value. The downsides - load times are not the best (par for the course on the PSP) and the fixed camera does mean that sometimes you can't quite see what you're doing - or where you're going, which can be painful if there's a hidden drop.

Otherwise - surprisingly fantastic, and very time consuming.