Purchasing a PS Vita really depends on your game tastes and affinity to handheld gaming. The level of integration seen on the Vita has never been done before on a handheld.  It is so far and away better than any other handheld gaming device ever that it’s hard to imagine playing anything else that came before it. I’m a huge handheld gamer, embracing the Game Boy and leaping for joy over my day one purchase of the original Game Boy Advance. I’ve bought every handheld machine available on release day since GBA. Vita is by far the BEST day one handheld purchase I’ve ever made.

That said, it’s not for everybody. Some folks won’t like handheld gaming. Some won’t like the games available. Some won’t like some of the day one nit picks.

The bottom line

If you fancy yourself as a handheld enthusiast, you owe it to yourself to buy a Vita immediately.

Sony’s Official List: Blue titles
Tested to work via PS3 transfer:  Black

PSP Titles

PlayStation Minis

Download: http://bit.ly/vita_wallpapers (This is a zip file of all images in PNG format and is easily transferable to PS Vita via content manager)

If you’d like to download them directly to your PS Vita, visit my wallpaper gallery or Flickr set.

Enjoy!

You can find more in my PS Vita wallpaper gallery as well as many more PS Vita wallpapers for all your favorite games.

MLB 12 The Show

Strange that a sports game is highly anticipated?  Read on as to why. Being a life long San Francisco Giants fan finally paid off in 2010 with the Giants winning their first World Championship since 1954 and the only championship title I’ve witnessed in my lifetime (No thanks to Dusty Baker in 2002 World Series).  I’ve always been a huge fan of video game baseball, starting with the Intellivision classic “Major League Baseball”.  Back in those days there were no stat engines to keep track of your players or franchise modes. I was so enthralled with the game that I kept track of statistics on paper over the course of multiple seasons.  To this day, no video game was as much fun playing against my older brother or my father than Intellivision MLB.

Through the years I’ve played all sorts of video game baseball, from classics like RBI Baseball, Baseball Stars, Bases Loaded, Triple Play, and one of my personal favorites, MVP Baseball.  MLB 12 The Show comes from a breed of baseball developed over the years by the fine folks at SCEA San Diego Studios.  I’ve played several previous iterations, both on PS3 and PSP.  This year, MLB 12 The Show will be released on the new PS Vita along side it’s big brother on the PS3.  As a rabid baseball fan, this is huge news.  Both games will be able to share save files so I’ll be able to take my franchise or Road to the Show players from my PS3 on the road with me on the PS Vita.  This is truly a dream come true.  Given the power of the Vita over the PSP, MLB 12 will be very close in feature set and functionality as the PS3 version so playing on Vita shouldn’t fell like a crippled experience as it has in the past on PSP.

Street Fighter X Tekken

In the 1990s I was a fighting game junkie (I still am). I’d spend rent money on Japanese Sega Saturn fighting games, typically from NCSX (Yeah, I imported from NCSX before you ever knew you could). As my roommate and wife can attest, strange boxes from Japan would sometimes show up costing over $100 for a single 2D fighter. Never heard of X-Men vs Street Fighter or it’s amazing follow up Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter? These were almost arcade perfect console ports, only available on Saturn due to it’s amazing ability to play 2D games with the use of a 4MB RAM cart.  Years later I sold my collection of import Sega Saturn games and I’ve regretted that ever since.  There should be no doubt as to why I’m anticipating SFxT, especially the PS Vita version.  While I do enjoy UMvC3, I feel as if the SFIV series is more to my overall tastes in fighters nowadays.  I’m excited by new additions like fighter customization with gem system, progress right?

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

I’m a big fan of the Starcraft universe.  I’ve read a lot of the books, obviously played the games a great deal.  I can’t wait to play as Sarah in the Zerg campaign.  Blizzard takes great care with their Starcraft franchise and I have no doubt this expansion will nothing but quality.  And as per tradition, no official release date yet.

Diablo 3

Diablo is a fantastic game franchise.  As someone who has enjoyed previous games in the series,  I’m looking forward to playing D3 with great anticipation.  Blizzard has learned a great deal from World of Warcraft and I’ve seen lots of WoW polish added to Diablo 3.  I think this is a good thing as D3 is clearly more of an online action RPG instead of the offline style it has been in the past.

Halo 4

Halo may be “overused” but I do enjoy the story and universe.  Halo has come a long way since the day it was revealed to the world at Macworld 1999.  I’m a huge Bungie fan.  I’ve played every Bungie game ever made and have been playing Bungie games on Mac long before Xbox or Halo itself.  Myth is still one of my favorite games of all time.  Even with all the shake ups over the years with Xbox, Microsoft, Halo, and Bungie I’m still interested in the core Halo franchise.  Let’s hope that 343 can deliver a great Halo game.

Dragon’s Crown

Being old school, these 2D brawlers really excite me.  Throw in RPG elements and Vanillaware being at the helm, call me super excited.  2D goodness on PS Vita and PS3.  Cross game play.  Action RPG style like their previous title Odin Sphere.  It looks absolutely gorgeous.

The Last Of Us

The Walking Dead meets Uncharted.  Naughty Dog is the best game story tellers of this console generation.  The Uncharted series is a huge success and by far my favorite adventure game series of all time.  I’ve played all of the games and I’m saddened each time they end.  My most highly anticipated game by far is their next franchise, The Last of Us. I can not wait.

Tengaport has a great little diagram that shows what the finished product should look like from the inside. I’ve directly linked to it here but he made it so I can not take credit for it.

Credit to Tengaport

I used a spare USB extension cable, electrical tape, wire cutters/splicer, and a pair of scissors. I actually cut my USB extension cable to make it shorter, it started out at about 6 feet long. Way to long for traveling, I wound up cutting it down to about 10 inches.  Do make sure to leave yourself some wiggle room as I used a lot of extra space trying to splice the tiny wires.  After you cut and splice the cabling you should have something that looks a lot better than what I have.

Cut and spliced cable.

Be sure to tape off the ends correctly.  The male end gets the white and green capped off separately with some electrical tape.  The female end gets the white and green cables spliced together then capped off with electrical tape.  If you cut the cable in half like I did you’ll need to join the red and black cables each together separately with electrical tape. So, that’s male red to female red and male black to female black. After you’re done you should have something that looks hopefully better than the below.

Wires joined, ready to be bundled together in more tape

After taping it all together with gobs of additional electrical tape you can now join the USB extension with the PS Vita USB cable and plug the extension into your USB charging device.  Presto, now you’re playing with POWER!

Finished product charging PS Vita via Mophie

So far I’ve successfully tested this mod with a Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation, a MacBook Pro USB port, and an iPhone USB charging block. You will not be able to sync data when using the extension cable.  It will only supply power as the mod removes the data sync functionality. DISCLAIMER: I make no warranties on this mod or claim to have created it. I’m simplying documenting the steps I did to perform the mod.  You perform these steps and mod at your OWN RISK.  I am not responsible for you destroying USB extension cables or worse, your PS Vita or charging device such as a computer or what have you.   CAUTION: Do NOT use the modified USB extension cable with anything but a PS Vita or PSPGo.  Those two devices are designed to look for this type of cable and you may destroy other devices if this cable is used.

You can view more photos of the mod on Flickr.

Sources:  Danny Choo & Tengaport

Appendix notes:

If you’re uncomfortable performing this mod, there is one additional option I’ve discovered.  You can use a Nook Simple Touch USB charger or a Nook Color/Tablet USB Charger with the standard PS Vita USB cable.  This will charge the PS Vita either when powered on or off.  The Nook Simple Touch USB charger is very small, having a smaller profile than a standard iPhone USB charger.

Custom Start Screen

Setting up a custom start screen is very easy but hard to find at first.  The option to set a custom start screen is inside the “Photos” app on the PS Vita.  Once inside the app and you’re viewing a photo, click on the ellipsis icon (…) and select “Use as Street Screen”.  Simple right?

Settings menu for photos

If you want to ever go back to the default start screen (why would you!) you can do so from the “Settings” app and selecting the “Format” option.  There is a “Restore Start Screen Image” option available.

Format menu

If you’re looking for some custom wallpapers and start screens for your new PS Vita be sure to check out the gallery I’ve setup to collect them; PS Vita Wallpapers.

PSN Panels & Avatars

Panels are a neat new feature exclusive to the PS Vita.  You can set this up via the Settings app,  selecting “PlayStation Network” and then “Account Information”.

Account Information

Once you select the “Panel” option you’ll be presented with quite a few different graphical choices.  There are panels for some of Sony’s most classic RPGs like Wild Arms and Rogue Galaxy.  Other panel choices include Hot Shots, Papaton, and nature themes.

Panel menu

Those of you who are new to PSN can also choose an Avatar that will represent you while using your PS Vita.  The avatar will be shown through out the Vita interface as well as inside specific games.  There are many categories to choose from.  It does not appear to currently support custom PS3 avatars; only those can be selected via a PS3 at this time.  Your custom PS3 Avatar will carry over to the Vita.

PSP Features

The PS Vita has the ability to play PSP games via software emulation.  SCEA has supplied a list of “officially supported” PSP games. In my experience there are many games not on the official list that do actually work but that is a post for another day.

While playing PSP software on the Vita you’re able to change a few settings including Bilinear Filtering which smooths the game and helps with text display in PSP games.  This is also the menu that will allow you to map the Vita “Right Stick” to be used within a PSP game.  This is very helpful in games that require a button based camera such as shooters. Holding your figure on the Vita front touch screen for a few seconds will bring up the PSP settings menu.

PSP settings

PS Vita Quick Settings Menu

When using the PS Vita you’re able to bring up a settings menu that allow you quick access to change the systems brightness, background music or the mute internal/external microphone.  Hold down the PS home button for a few seconds to bring up this menu.

Vita quick settings

PS Vita Charging

Charging the Vita is challenging due to how the system receives a charge via USB.  I’ve posted about this previously and Danny Choo has a great mod for those of you looking to perform USB charging on the Vita with any USB charging device.

Trophies

For those of you with a PS3 and a Vita will notice that when viewing trophies on the Vita, you’re able to see both Vita trophies and PS3 trophies separately and together.  However this is not the case when viewing trophies on the PS3.  You currently can not see any trophies or trophy lists for Vita games on a PS3.  Your trophy count does increase however and will increment when using a PSN profile card.

#Vitabook

The LiveArea for every PS Vita game supports an activity log or feed. The feed contains activities that either you or someone on your friends list has completed within the game. These activities aren’t just for unlocking trophies but also things like you can see above; in game accomplishments and other tasks or feats.

Vitabook

The really neat feature here is that you can comment and “like” each listed activity. It’s basically “Vitabook” in real time. Truly #gamechanger stuff.