dazeblog #4
A long entry about my PS Vita
I’mma tell you guys my full experience with the PS Vita from the very beginning and why I love the shit so much.
We’ve gotta start from when I saw the original PSP for the first time in (i think) 2008. It was my cousin’s and we was both in love with that shit.
It was a white model, one of the earliest they put out.
My cousin had a few games for it but the two I remember the most vividly was NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 & Midnight Club 3, Dub Edition. But I was more enamored with the UI and just the general feel of the PSP over anything else.
For whatever reason, I was raised in a mostly Nintendo household [me & my brother had the PS1 & PS2] but my cousin was in a Sony + Microsoft [he also had the OG Xbox & 360] one. At the time of my cousin having his PSP, I’ve had a GBA SP, a Wii and a DS.
So when I saw his PSP for the first time my mind was just blown away. Like, you’re tellin’ me, there’s really good looking games that I can play in my hand on the go? and it kinda looks like an iPod? I was a lil jealous, but what could I really do you know? But ever since that moment, I’ve wanted something really cool like that. I later got a 3DS + Dead or Alive Dimensions in 2012 but that still ain’t scratch that PSP itch I was lookin for.
Also In 2012, me & my auntie was some department store & I ran to the phone section to pass the time while she got whatever she was there for. And I saw something that caught my eye. It was an Xperia Play. And they had a version of Sims 3 to play around with, and I was blown.
Looks really similar to a PSP Go.
This was a while before high-tech phones became common place, so to see a gaming phone reminiscent of the PSP…that shit brought the itch back.
As soon as I was really gettin’ into playing Sims 3, my auntie said it was time to go n I was jus like “damn.”
Since then I’ve tried to get the PSP itch back by any other means. I hadn’t heard of the Vita yet, no one at my school talked bout it.
It wasn’t till around 2013, about a year after its initial NA release. I saw an ad on TV for IT. And the shit I was shown in the ad blew me away. PS3 Remote Play, higher quality games, AND 3G internet? Son. That shit was like a mind blowing thing for me. But what was fucked up was that I knew I wouldn’t get my hands on that shit. Remember when I said I got that 3DS in 2012? I knew not to ask for too much from my parents but at the same time I was content wit the 3DS too. I know I was like ~11 but I wasn’t gonna kick n scream bout it. I had that android tablet at the time too & I had a PSP emulator on it, so the itch was a little bit sated. But still…
Finally we fast forward to 2021. I’ve past my childhood, graduated HS & lived a decent bit of my adolescence. I was 19, starting my little stint of working warehouse jobs.
After I worked for Amazon, the first thing I got with their paycheck was an Oculus Rift S. VR was one of those things that I had an itch for too but never the money. So since then, while I was living with my mom, I made it a tradition for every job; my first check goes to buying a gaming item that I wanted but never had the bread for.
So I got my lil FedEx job in between college semesters, & as soon as that first direct deposit hit, I went straight to eBay. I knew what I wanted. That fuckin PS Vita.
Best purchase I ever made. You can get one for cheaper on eBay nowadays but I can’t unbuy this shit.
And man Vita really does mean life, cuz that shit saved me. I was in almost the worst shape (mentally) of my life. The pandemic hit, my “love” life was laughably bad, my GPA was at its lowest thanks to distance learning, and I was jus subjectin’ my self to menial jobs jus to earn & help wit the bills.
But the Vita got all that shit off my mind when I was playing around with it. It was everything I really wanted.
The one I got off eBay, didn’t come with the SD2Vita mod or a memory card so I got those a couple days later. After that, for the next couple months I went balls to the wall with piracy & modding.
Here’s some photos from when I first got my hands on it:
Using the system was bliss for me. It was reminiscent of the old android tablet I had + the shitty Boost Mobile android phones that I rooted + the PSP & Xperia Play. Just an all around treat. I was downloading games for the fun of it, I haven’t even touched P4: Dancing All Night till this day. It was just cool having everything at my fingertips. I almost felt how I did when I saw my cousin had his PSP in ‘08, but instead of wishing I had it, the shit was finally mine.
Once I got my gaming fix, fulfilled from the vita the next thing I did was try to incorporate it more in my lifestyle beyond a thing I play games with.
First was for music.
First thing I tried with it was loading my songs onto it and running it into an SP-404 (using a tape emulation effect), then my interface & recording it back into FL Studio using “Edison”. I’ve only done it for my 2021 track “halfhearted” in particular, every other time I attempted this method didn’t really make much of an impact for me to keep doing it, because it truly was a bit of a hassle to get everything together. After that, I figured I was better off using it as a back up mp3 player whenever my phone or AirPods died.
Feels a bit like a foreshadowing moment for what I did later with the Vita. But I digress…
Then after that, I started using the Vita’s back & front cameras for photos & videos. Just capturing whatever caught my eye. Loved ones, favorite places, new places, concerts, the city, all thru the lens of my Vita. It feels like I’m looking thru life as the kid I once was when I’m looking @ these pictures. I know that inner-child shit is a psychological thing & not a actual being but man, my inner-child must be happy as shit.
That stuck for me more than anything, cuz the photos came out really nice. I know its a thing nowadays for people bring their DSi’s & 3DS’s to concerts, but I do it with my Vita cuz it looks way better, quality-wise, to me & gettin pics off them easy for me. I can literally email them to myself if I got to with this, its rly jus that versatile.
Speaking of concerts, some of the concerts I filmed wit this include: The Drain Gang show @ Knockdown Center, quinn’s first show w/ saturn, pinkpantheress @ LPR, jane remover’s NYC show w/ Anamanaguchi & Tim Reaper & Dwarde’s b2b in LA.
Finally we come to what I might be most known for now. The PS Vita Sampler.
I always intended to make a separate entry for this but honestly, I’ll jus give y’all a brief synopsis on the “what”, “why”, “& how”.
So back as a kid I always wanted to make video games. I was learning about game engines n shit of the like. First I played with Construct2 on my momma’s work computer. But then I learned about Unity. I was fuckin wit Unity a lot. I used it to make interactive lil projects for my classes later in HS & got A+s everytime. Then when I started becoming a touring DJ, I was thinking to myself: “damn, I want a lil soundboard to play with on stage but I don’t wanna shell out hundreds for a new sampler.” Then it hit me. I have a Vita, virtually an Android device with a 3.5mm jack that I was playing music out of.
First I tried to make the shit with a Linux VM for whatever reason, I think that’s what I first saw when I did some research online. Then I saw this guy’s video:
I took the bits and pieces I needed from that video and started making the first few iterations of the sampler:
Loaded up some sounds, mapped them to buttons for the touchscreen, & changed up the UI for the sampler which brings us the current iteration I use today:
Unfortunately for some, I don’t see myself releasing this project for a long time for a variety of reasons:
It’s way too personal to me, it’d feel like I was giving up my offspring almost. It’s something that’s truly unique to me & and I don’t wanna compromise that.
It’s desperately unoptimized. I was never a good coder, or developer and this project shows some faults due to my inexperience. It takes long to load. It’s not modular, I have to make a new version to add new sounds every time, so for a person that’s not familiar with Unity it could be a bit of a headfuck if they wanted to add new sounds.
I don’t have a Unity license to release it. I’ll pirate anything any day of the week but if I learned anything in my life it’s that big developers don’t fuckin play when you’re using their software, unlicensed, to make profit.
But nonetheless, I’mma keep working on it. For me.
I’ve also been asked if I’d port it to the 3DS. Prolly never. This is again a personal thing for me and I’m sure there’s better alternatives on the 3DS. + that touch screen is too small for what I made + requires a stylus to work properly which is kinda impractical if you’re a DJ. You got better alternatives to that too, y’all got phones lmaooo
That aside, I hope you guys enjoyed reading about my love & history with the PS Vita as much as I enjoyed writing and reliving it.
