I bought my metallic blue PSP-1000 on a whim at Anime Expo a number of years ago. I went straight to the NIS booth. They knew me a little because my girlfriend was a tester at the time, and I told them that I just bought it and wanted any game just because I was anxious to play it. I asked which of their games they recommended. The woman helping me told me to buy a game from a different company.

I bought Aedis Eclipse, and it was okay. During the intro there was a typo. My girlfriend told me she had actually reported that one, but I guess it didn’t get fixed.

My favorite PSP game, and one of my favorite games ever, is also by NIS, although my girlfriend had nothing to do with this one. Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero has all the NIS humor and animation charm but in a challenging platformer rather than a SRPG. You start the game with 1000 lives, and that’s that. If you run out on the last level, too bad. Luckily I finished without running out of lives. I wish I wrote down how many lives I had at the end. I love the humor, and I’m a huge fan of big, gorgeous sprites. Platformers are also one of my favorite genres, so that helps.

Another fantastic game is LocoRoco. You tilt the world left and right by using the L and R buttons to roll the LocoRoco characters towards the goal. It’s very cute and charming, and I love the art style. The best aspect though is the demos. Besides a regular demo, there’s a Christmas themed demo and a Halloween demo as well. I played each of those on their respective holidays for years. Sadly, I haven’t played them the last couple years because I never have my PSP charged or even anywhere easy to find, but I still find them great holiday games.

I hope these two recommendations help someone to discover these games!

Originally posted at Select Button.