[quote name='drone8888']When I got my p$p on launch day, I thought the world of it. Now, it collects dust, besides the occasional Lumines/Lumines II game. So, I honestly don't recall how much onboard RAM it has... nor do I care to give $ony another cent by Google'ing the h/w specs.
Point is, I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near as much that a PS1 game would need.
SO..... you'll need a dedicated 1GB Memory $tick to play just one game at a time I would think. As PS1 games were roughly 600MB if I recall correctly, not to mention the multidisc games obnoxious storage issues.
Therefore the OP has just proven how much $ony hates you all, as they rape the shit out of your wallets. Good post, very nicely slandered.
Still have a Merry Christmas.... I hope you get 6 1GB memory $ticks

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Wow, both ignorance and laziness in one post. No waiting. Since when did Google charge you for searches or pay somebody merely for being the target of a search? It works the other way around. google wants to be paid for giving prominence to comemrcial interests in search results.
The PS1 had a small fraction of the memory in the PSP, which is 32MB. Many time more than enough to emulate the PS1. Not enough to store the verage PS1 game but why would you want to do that? Oops, I let the battery run down and lost the whole thing. Yep, that would work great. Even in the case of old ROM games that can be enitrely contained in memory, you're going to want some form of offline storage.
PS1 games came on CD-ROMs supporting up to 650MB but that is not a useful measure of the games' size, only the upper limit for a game on a single disc. PS1 one games can be very small, as seen with Ridge Racer where it was possible to load the game, remove the CD and put a music CD in to be played alongside the game. (PS1 CDs usually had 500MB or less to improve load times by avoiding the slowest tracks of the disc.)
In the case of multi-disc games there is a lot of duplication between discs to avoid having to revert to an earlier disc. In a thre disc Final Fantasy, for instance, you only ever need to change the disc twice. Once you've gone to the second disc the first one is never needed again to continue the game. This is achieved by having the constant elements of the game duplicated on each disc. Rather than 1500MB of data the real total for the game is more like 800MB. Easily within the realm of a $20 1GB Memory Stick.
There is a lot that can be done to make PS1 games a lot smaller on the PSP. It means more work on the game and a more sophisticated emulator but I suspect Sony is working on those. THe technology has been demonstrated in other emulation circumstances, it's just a question on whether the market value is there.
Nearly all of the audio in PS1 games is store in plain uncompressed Red Book standard format. A 400MB game can have over half of its bulk taken up by such audio files. Converting that to the MP4 format the PSP supports natively can reduce those files to less than a tenth of their original size. similar improvements can be made to FMV portions of the game. It all hinges on whether the owner is willing to make the investment in producing the new data files for use on the PSP. Retroactively putting MPEG-4 support into a PS1 game can make it a fraction of its size on the original CD.
That Memory Stick is entirely reusable. Those huge games like FFs tend to be the sort of thing you play once and never again. At which point something else can go on the Memory Stick. Most games of the sort that are likely to be carried in quantity tend to be much smaller. Some great PS1 titles are under 100MB. At the same time Memory Stick capacity for the dollar is growing. 4GB units will be down to $50 soon and 8GB units will be under $100 by next Xmas season.
So the passage of time makes the PSP a better value by making large amounts of rewritable storage affordable. If you don't like the PSP or the prospect of portable access to old PS1 games for very reasonable prices (excepting the need for a PS3), that is your problem. The economics of the offering is very effective for those who do have the interest, especially if they were already inclined to buy a PS3. Is it perfect? No, but nor that be claimed for the competitions offerings. Each has strengths and weaknesses.