As a birthday/Christmas gift to myself, I finally put in an order for a PSP 3000. I’d been putting it off because first, they hadn’t come out with a black one yet, and second, I was nervous after reading the reports of scanlines and interlacing issues.

However, I figured that since I’d never owned a 2000 model, I wouldn’t know the difference. And besides, no one else seemed to notice until that one guy made a stink about it. Before that, everyone raved of its beauty.

I was hoping that once the 3000 model had been released, stores would start installing them into their demo kiosks, but no such luck (maybe they’re also waiting for the piano black Core bundle?). I knew that ultimately, I would probably be getting the 3000 model, however in the spirit of “caveat emptor”, I wanted to best understand what I was getting into.

Then I saw this video of Final Fantasy: Dissidia:

Major kudos to whomever captured and converted this video, because it’s the clearest I’ve ever seen. Depending on the clarity of your monitor, you can actually see the scanlines in the video. So I feel I can assume that this is a fair representation of what I’ll actually be seeing once my PSP is in my hands.

I gotta say, I don’t mind! The scanlines are noticeable, but everything else going on in the picture compensates well for it. At worst, it looks like you’re viewing the action through a screen door, but for now it’s forgivable. If this were a computer monitor or TV screen, I wouldn’t tolerate it, but for a portable video device, maybe it’s safer that there be something maintaining that “fourth wall” so that I’m not too distracted.

I’ve pre-ordered the black version of the Ratchet & Clank bundle, which means I have about two weeks to wait until I get to play with my new toy. Times like this are what make me feel like a kid again!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.