Episode 3 – Plane Distractions

Plane Distractions (September 22, 2005)

Jenn’s going to San Francisco! This is a quick interim episode dedicated to the ways she’ll kill time on the plane with her Nintendo DS and PSP with the ScummVM and 1.50 firmware. Think of it as a teaser until full production can resume when she gets back. (5:44)

NOTICE: These almost as old as dirt OpenAlpha episodes have the original show notes below meaning plenty — if not all — of the links have been broken thanks to the decay of time and souls. Be warned!

Files: WMV (29MB) | H.264 (11MB) | MP4 (14MB) | iPod/M4V (27MB)

Show Notes

Checking the PSP Firmware:

From the PlayStation Portable’s Home menu: Settings > System Settings > System Information.

Connecting the PSP to your PC or Mac

A PSP USB cable can be picked up from any electronic goods store for
around $10 or for more if you purchase it as part of a larger accessory
pack. Once the cable is connected to both the PSP and the computer,
navigate from the PSP’s Home menu to Settings > USB Connection. This
is the same way you’d connect the system if you wanted to transfer
movies, photos, and music or just back up your game saves on your hard
disk drive.

PSPBrew.com – for any Homebrew Program Needs

One of the many places to grab these emulators is from PSPBrew.com.
You can create custom self-extracting packages to unzip directly to
your PSP, ensuring that everything gets transferred correctly. Just
head to their Brewpack generator, select the ScummVM, and generate the
.exe to extract to your connected PSP.

The ScummVM and You

ScummVM stands for the ‘Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion
Virtual Machine’ and it offers almost 100% compatibility with classic
LucasArts adventure titles as well as a few from other developers. For
a more detailed explanation of the whole ScummVM project, check out
their official FAQ.

The ScummVM lets you play the adventure games you already know and
love while in widescreen on your PSP. The project’s main page has a
list of compatible games as well as a breakdown of the files
that need to be transferred to the Memory Stick PRO Duo. You will
likely require a larger card than the 32MB unit the PSP comes with. The
required files from a floppy version of Day of the Tentacle, with
limited voice acting in cutscenes, only needs 13 MB while the files for
Full Throttle, which features voice acting all throughout, takes up 477
MB.

Remember which folder you copy the necessary files into since you’ll
need to access it when loading the games into the virtual machine. It’s
easiest to create a single-name folder inside the ScummVM Games folder
for each individual game to avoid conflicts between similarly named
files. This makes loading games into the ScummVM a breeze since you
only have to select Add Game > (ex: fullthrottle or monkeyisland)
> OK to make it easily selectable next time you want to play.

While playing the games, the R trigger accesses the ScummVM menu to
save states and the select key is used as a keyboard. A full keyboard
will be added with a future patch, but the ‘0? key gets the job done
for now. Don’t forget to keep your instructions manuals since they
contain the keys for the original copy protection that will be needed
at some point during the adventure.