Ys I & II Chronicles - PSP Game Review

Overall, the story, graphics, gameplay and all, it plays like Ys I. If you know the first game, playing the second one is easy. Perhaps, the only big addition is Adol's ability to use magic, which would be really handy in his perilous journey to defeat enemies that he will encounter. The sequel shows that you can still use the original recipe of RPG plus a few nice things, to give you something that really worth your time and money. RPG fanatics should have this game. Unfortunately, the lack of direction tend to hold Ys II back, although it won't break the game.

You may think that "if ain't broke don't fix it!".But it may not apply with Ys series, the Ys chronicles show that bringing a classic series to a brand new platform can be something good. The combination of original gameplay, fantastic retro feel and also superb soundtrack make it a must for any PSP owner.

How to Print Documents to PDF?

Since you know that it is possible to view JPEG images on the PSP, and that there are already a spattering of e-books in JPEG format available for the PSP , why not make your own e-books out of documents you have on your computer or can download from the Web?

The easiest way to create e-books is to generate a PDF. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X have different ways of printing your text files directly to PDF, and as PDF is essentially an image format, it is relatively easy to export the different pages of the PDF files into separate JPEG images for viewing on the PSP.

If you're on Windows or Linux, rather than spending all your money on Adobe Acrobat, you can grab a free copy of Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org), which, besides being a fully functional and free alternative to Microsoft Office, has the ability to convert files to PDF. But if the document you want to convert isn't an office or text document, you may still be in luck: if you can print it to a PostScript file, you can use the ps2pdf utility from GhostScript (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/) to create your PDF. To print to a PostScript file, configure a generic PostScript printer that outputs to a file rather than a USB or parallel port.

In order to make the pages of your documents easily readable on your PSP with plenty of zoom, I recommend setting the page settings for your PDF printout to 8 inches by 9 inches with 0.3-inch margins and a nice 12 or 14 point font. I have created a special page setting for my printer in Mac OS X that measures 8 inches by 9 inches with 0.1-inch margins around. In the actual document settings, I choose to give the document 0.3-inch margins. Using Mac OS X's built-in PDF support, I print the document directly to PDF.

How to View the Comics on Your PSP?

Once everything has been copied over, disconnect your PSP from your computer, navigate to Photo Memory Stick, and hit the X button. Select the WEBCOMICS folder that you created and hit the X button to view a list of the comics available. Select one and hit the X button again to open it up.

When you are in the PSP image viewer, make sure that you are set at 100% (hold down the Square button and move the analog stick up and down to zoom in and out), use the analog stick to pan around the image, and use the R trigger to navigate to the next comic or the L trigger to skip back to a previous comic.

Once you do this, it is pretty simple to do again in the future. If you are a coder, consider writing a script of some sort to automate the entire process.

This isn't something that needs to be done on a daily basis, but it is a great way to read the back issues of your favorite web comic when you are away from your PC and nowhere near a wireless access point. It can be a nice relaxing break from an intense Wipeout Pure session.

Also, make sure you check out several of the manga and other comics preformatted for the PSP that are available online.

How to Put the Comics onto Your PSP?

Now that everything is converted, you can copy the images using a PSP file manager such as iPSP (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/) or PSPWare (http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware). On Mac OS X, PSPware offers tight Apple iLife integration, so using iPhoto 5, you can simply create a PSP keyword and assign that keyword to all the images that you want to transfer to the PSP.

The 32MB Memory Stick Duo card that Sony includes with the PSP is just fine for saved games. But if you want to get into transferring JPEGs, MP3s, and movie clips to your PSP, the small 32MB card is just not going to cut it. If you think you'll be carrying lots of web comics around, a bigger Memory Stick Duo card is well worth the investment.

Connect your PSP via a USB to USB mini cable, and use your PSP file manager software to sync the images over to the PSP.

You could also manually drop the pictures off in the directory /PSP/PHOTOS/WEBCOMICS/ on the Memory Stick if you don't want to use software to manage your PSP.