As of Dec. 4th, Sony has released 5 PS1 games via Playstation Network. If you have upgraded your PSP to firmware 3.01 (btw, there is DevHook 0.51 available, if you want to keep your 1.5 firmware and emulate it). You’ll currently need a PS3 to download these games (one expensive cradle as you might call it), till Sony integrates the Playstation Network client to PSP directly.

Once PSP is hooked to PS3 via USB, you can go into Playstation Network and you can shop for the games. Each costs $6.99 CDN, which is not too bad. I got Tekken 2, Hot Shot Golf 2 and Syphon Filter. The most painful part is the download, Tekken 2 took several hours to download and then install. You first download a 100 Kb license file then you download the main game which ranges from 150 (Hot Shots Golf) to 550 Mb (Tekken 2). And I thought I had a 6Mbit connection. Somehow, either Playstation Network is congested, or something else is going on. After the download completes, it will install it automatically to PSP. I highly recommend putting the PSP into charger, as the process will take a while.

After all is done, it is smooth sailing, you go under Games in PSP and find your new games. They can display 4:3 or 16:9, the manuals are digital, so you can see the original manuals for the games and the emulation is good, it even includes the good old PS logo and sound during the boot 🙂

I think Sony is on the right track. Once the PSP client is ready for downloads, it will help PSP sales a lot, but for now you’ll need a $600 cradle