The Great PlayStation Network Outage of 2011 first went down on April 20, 2011. North American, European, Australian and some Asian gamers went 24 days without any PSN services until they were restored May 15, 2011. They had to wait until June 1, 2011 to get access to the PlayStation Store again. Of course, that seems like nothing compared to what Japanese and other Asian territories have had to go through. Initial PlayStation Network services only first resumed there on May 28, 2011 and now, after over two months, the Japanese PlayStation Store is finally back online….

Yesterday (June 1, 2010) Sony revealed the new PSP Favorites line. The games featured under this branding are well known titles such as LittleBigPlanet, Patapon 2, and PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe. Sony is looking to go after the 12-14 age demographic with this program. Reaching out to the younger audience is just one motivation for the $9.99 price tag. The other motivator is reduction of piracy.

Now that 2009 has ended, it’s time to salute some of the exceptional game released we enjoyed last year. True, there wasn’t an avalanche of PSP games released, but many of the ones that did debut were high quality titles. Some of them may even be considered PSP classics when the system has reached its end and the PSP2 debuts.

Gamertell is ready to pay homage to what we feel are ten of the best PSP games released in 2009. They’re all familiar titles, many were even among the most popular releases for the system last year. So read on, and see 10 2009 PSP games that deserve special honors…

Video games are often berated for the lack of educational content found in them. They’re often considered a waste of time. But, if you look closely, even games that aren’t slapped with the edutainment label or feature educational material can be teaching valuable skills to the people playing them.

Gamertell’s put together a brief list of some video games that weren’t created with the developers aiming to educate the masses, but can end up helping players build some valuable skills. With some, the educational value is pretty obvious, but with others you probably could spend hours playing without even realizing you’ve learned something from it…

Starting today (May 14, 2009) until May 21, 2009, users can download their very own exclusive Chamber Apartment for free by visiting the Real Estate store in the Mall located in central plaza and download it.

The chamber is very spacious and includes four pits which you can switch between water falls or crackling fire pits just by stepping on a switch next to the pit. As you move around, there’s a face on the central tree that seems to follow you wherever you walk.

Before you leave the mall, visit the furniture store on the second floor for woodland-themed furniture such as dressers, shelves, chairs, tables and decorations for 99 cents each.

People who can’t hook up their PSPs to Wi-Fi should prepare to weep now. Sony has confirmed to Ars Technica that Patapon 2 will be a UMD-less release. Actually, people with small memory cards should probably start lamenting their fate as well – and start saving up for bigger memory cards.

Patapon 2 will be released May 5, 2009 in both the PlayStation Store and retail stores. People purchasing it on the PlayStation Store will pay only $15 and directly download the game to their PSP’s memory stick, while people who preorder or purchase it through a store will pay $19.99 and receive an empty Patapon 2 game box containing a voucher code to download the game from the PlayStation Store…

By now you may have heard and seen the Sony Europe press release which confirms that Patapon 2 is going to be available in Europe in either spring or summer, 2009. An interesting thing to note was, accompanying said press release was a box art image. A North American box art image, with an ESRB logo rating the game “Everyone”.

A quick look at Amazon after this discovering unveils a possible game leak. A listing for Patapon 2 shows not only the same box art, but a June 30, 2009 release date and $29.99 price. Amazon’s usually pretty accurate when it comes to box art and release date leaks, and this latest Sony press release saying spring/summer 2009 lends a bit more credence to the idea of PSP owners playing Patapon 2 in June.

The only (slightly) disheartening part is the price. The original Patapon cost only $19.99 when it was first released, and yet Patapon 2 is going to cost $10 more…

Patapon 2: Donchaka drops in Japan on November 27, 2008, Thanksgiving! What perfect timing – give PSP owners something to be thankful for. So it is no surprise that a demo of the game has appeared on the Japanese PlayStation store, ready to be downloaded with anyone who has a Japanese PlayStation store account.

I downloaded Patapon 2: Donchaka last night, using my Japanese PlayStation account and my faithful PSP. Its a fairly substantial download, coming in at 87mb, but it only took between 10~15 minutes to download and install the demo on my system.

The demo begins with a bit of exposition, showing the Patapons and Zigoton building a ship and crossing the ocean in search of “IT”…

So you haven’t had enough Patapon to curb your appetite? That’s fine because neither have I.

The land of Patapolis will need saving once again and we are just the deity it needs. As reported by 1UP, Famitsu magazine has confirmed a sequel to the immensely addictive PSP rhythm game…