I've finished several titles on my PSP now, and am still loving it; don't understand those who say there are no good games for it, there are dozens. OK, it's not like the PC where there are hundreds or even thousands of good titles, but then PSP hasn't been around as long and isn't nearly as ubiquitous. For what it is, there's plenty of decent entertainment.

I am currently playing Castlevania The Dracula X Chronicles which is a Konami game originally released in the 1980s. And boy is it hard. I am only just over half-way through it and it must have kept me occupied for about a month on my bus ride home from work and at other odd times too (PSP makes number twos so much more productive).

The game is very unforgiving. You have to score very highly to earn an extra life; you only start with three and usually don't amass enough points to get another. There's no health regeneration, and health pickups are few and far between in the levels, as well as being hidden. Plus, you can't save wherever you want; there is a quicksave function, but once you reload the game the quicksave is deleted. Dying frequently means being kicked back a long way and losing your progress.

I guess, in the days of coin-op, that it was in the interests of companies to make their games so hard, to maximize the amount of cash people fed in. Now that PC and console means we can all play at home (though there is still an arcade gaming sub-culture that's still very much alive), people demand a different approach to game design. But this is a real blast from the past. There I was thinking to myself, oh, it'll be fun to play some old-style platform scroller, but in fact, while it is fun, it's also damn tough.

Indeed, Castlevania has to be a candidate for the hardest video game I've ever played, because you have to be more or less perfect throughout. If you make more than a couple of mistakes you might as well just reload the level, because you're not going to make it through. Now that I'm just over half-way I think I'll go on and finish it, but it's as much the challenge as the enjoyment that's driving me on at this point.

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Finally beat the thing! Woo-hoo! Except that after the credits rolled the last level, although unlocked, doesn't register as completed, so I don't have the proof. Still, who needs external validation eh?