15 Best PSP Ports

Breath of Fire III came out on the PlayStation in 1997, and Capcom brought it to the PSP in 2005. You play Ryu of the Brood, set free by the workers of Dauna Mine, as he learns to understand his power. It was the first game in the series with three-dimensional graphics and voice acting, and it cuts your party down to three fighters, with a formation system that lets you arrange them for tactical bonuses.

The PSP version reached Europe in February 2006. The port showed its age. Some European reviewers criticized its dated presentation, and one blamed its long load times and slow gameplay. Even so, it is a long, old-school role-playing adventure you can carry around with you, and that was a rare thing on a handheld at the time.

The Takeover brings the 2004 console game Def Jam Fight for NY to the PSP, with more than 35 hip-hop artists and personalities, from Busta Rhymes to Snoop Dogg, fighting in brutal wrestling matches. It is the direct sequel to Def Jam Vendetta, and the only way to win a fight is by knockout or submission.

You create your own fighter and spend points at the local gym, which is run by Henry Rollins, to learn new moves and extra fighting styles. A created fighter can learn every Blazin' Move in the game, but only four can be ready at a time. Players still recommend it among the PSP's fighters, and it is one of the few games on the handheld where you can pick a fight with a famous rapper.

Gitaroo Man first came out on the PS2 in 2001, and this PSP port followed in 2006. You play U-1, who faces one opponent after another in musical battles. Besides timing button presses, you steer the analog stick to follow a line through a radar circle, which made it a strange music game even by PS2 standards. The original soundtrack comes from the Japanese band COIL.

The PSP version adds local ad hoc multiplayer and a new Duet mode, in which two players control Gitaroo Man and Kirah in two exclusive stages. After each level you get a rank, and good ranks earn items that unlock character bios. Players keep it on their lists of PSP essentials.

Underground 2 Remix takes the road trip from Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and adds four new city levels: Las Vegas, Atlanta, Kyoto and Santa Cruz, each with original goals. You join either Tony Hawk or Bam Margera on a World Destruction Tour through 13 single-player levels. It was a launch title for the PlayStation Portable, released on March 24, 2005, and Classic mode made the trip too.

The new levels were good enough to be reused. Santa Cruz, Kyoto and Las Vegas ended up in the console version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, and Atlanta came back in its Collector's Edition. It still shows up among players' PSP favourites, and it was a big deal to carry a full Tony Hawk game in your pocket.

Split/Second came out on PC and consoles in May 2010 and reached the PSP that November. It's a racing game set inside a reality TV show, in a made-for-TV city rigged to blow. You do not just bump rivals off the road, you can also trigger devastating events that drastically alter the dynamics of the race, using pinpoint timing to obliterate huge structures and towering TV set pieces.

Sumo Digital handled the port, and it added an extra track based on the Docks environment. The studio behind the original, Black Rock, was closed by Disney in 2011, so this was its last game. Players still recommend it to anyone who likes racing games.

Head On is a port of FlatOut 2. It has reduced visuals and less detailed destruction than the original, but it adds the Carnage mode and the soundtrack from FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage. It was the first time the series came to the PSP, and it packs in nine game modes, including 36 carnage challenges, destruction derbies, a party mode for multiplayer and the bone-crunching ragdoll stunt mode.

Bugbear, the studio behind the series, made this version too, so the crashes feel like the real thing. Racing fans on the PSP still bring it up, and it deserves a spot on more of the handheld's best racing lists.

Alpha 3 MAX is a near-faithful port of the 1998 arcade game, with minimal loading times and all its frames and sprites intact. It also brings in the extra characters from the Game Boy Advance version, plus Ingrid from Capcom Fighting Evolution, for 39 playable characters in total. The added characters get their own storylines and endings.

You can play it two ways. A-ism is built on the earlier Alpha games and gives you a three-level Super Combo gauge, while X-ism is a simple style based on Super Street Fighter II Turbo with a single powerful Super Combo. Players still name it among the PSP's must-have fighters, and it is the pinnacle of 2D fighting on the handheld.

Gurumin started as a Japanese PC game from Nihon Falcom in 2004, and the PSP versions are a port of it with the rhythm bar removed. Falcom is the studio behind Ys and Zwei, and this one is a lighter, fully voiced action game about a girl named Parin who meets a monster that only children can see.

It reached North America in February 2007 and Europe a month later. A 3DS version followed in 2016. The difficulty modes change more than enemy strength: Beginner mode removes the environmental hazards, and Crazy mode only lets you hurt enemies with critical hits. Players call it a silly, light-hearted action RPG that doesn't get enough love.

Unchained is the portable version of Mortal Kombat: Deception. It has every character from the GameCube version, plus four exclusive to the PSP: Blaze, Frost, Jax and Kitana. Every fighter has a vast arsenal of moves, with weapons and fatalities. The arenas are multi-tiered and full of death traps, and there is a free-roaming adventure called Konquest next to the regular fights.

The PSP also got its own Endurance Mode, where you fight an endless wave of opponents, plus silly extras like Chess Kombat and Puzzle Kombat, which is Tetris with a twist. You can even take on another player over Wi-Fi. Fighting fans still put it on their PSP lists as well.

Dark Resurrection is the PSP version of the arcade update of Tekken 5, with the full roster, the additional characters and the customization options from the arcade. Namco began the series in 1994, and it was one of the first fighting games to use 3D animation. Critics have widely credited the series with raising the standards of fighting games. Eighting built this port for the PSP.

There are arcade, story, practice and ghost battle modes, and you can play a friend locally and even share character data over a wireless connection. That made it a proper Tekken to take to a friend's house. It still turns up whenever players list the PSP's best fighters.

Test Drive Unlimited came out on the Xbox 360 in 2006, and the PSP version followed in 2007. You visit car dealers to buy new vehicles or take them for a spin, and collect and trade performance parts to customize each one. The roads run across more than 1000 miles of Hawaiian highway, modeled after the island of Oahu.

Melbourne House built the handheld version for Atari. You win races, challenges, missions and tournaments to earn credits for new cars, parts, homes and garages, which makes it feel more like a life than a race. It later got a sequel, Test Drive Unlimited 2, in 2011. Players still call it one of the great PSP racers.

Coast 2 Coast builds on the OutRun 2 arcade game from 2003 and features 15 cars, the most of any OutRun game. Some of them can only be unlocked on the PSP by connecting it to the PS2 version, which is a lot to ask for one car. The new models include the F355 Spider and the Ferrari F430.

Sumo Digital developed it for Sega, and it includes all the stages from previous versions of OutRun 2, plus challenges and multiplayer. It is an updated mix of OutRun 2 and OutRun 2 SP, and the ninth release in the OutRun series. Players keep it on their lists of PSP racers, usually near Burnout Legends.

Chinatown Wars began on the DS in March 2009 and reached the PSP that October. The DS original used cel-shaded polygons with black outlines to give it a comic book look, a first for the series. The PSP version drops the cel-shading for a more classic look, turns the touch-screen minigames, like drawing tattoos, into simpler button prompts, and adds extra missions and exclusive radio stations.

Buying drugs from suppliers and selling them to dealers to make money proved controversial when the game came out, though critics still gave it acclaim. The PSP version supports only two players in multiplayer. Players still rank it among the PSP's must-plays.

The Warriors came out on the PS2 in 2005 and the PSP in 2007. It's based on the 1979 movie: a street gang is wrongly accused of killing a rival gang leader, and every gang in New York comes after them. The game expands on the film's plot, with the first half covering events from three months before the film. Rockstar Leeds made the PSP port, working with the original team to make it easier.

Several cast members from the film came back to voice their characters, and finishing the story unlocks an arcade game that borrows heavily from Double Dragon. The actor who played Cyrus in the film, Roger Hill, later sued Take-Two and Rockstar for using his likeness without permission. It remains a regular in players' PSP favourites.

Persona 3 came out on the PS2 in 2006, and Persona 3 Portable is an enhanced remake of it for the PSP. Besides the option to play as a female character, it adds two new difficulty levels. The battle system is also updated to be closer to the one in Persona 4. The PSP version reached Japan in 2009, North America in 2010 and Europe in 2011.

The PSP version also slips in a Persona 4 cameo: one of the women in the Operation Babe Hunt scenario is Noriko Kashiwagi, a teacher from Persona 4. Players call it a masterpiece with a great soundtrack. It was good enough to come back on Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox in 2023.