PSP Custom Wallpapers

By Dan Birlew | Posted July 6, 2009 in Tips and Tricks | 1 Comment »

PlayStation Network releases in recent months have had me repurchasing my favorite PSOne classics so that I can play them on PSP. I’m talking about games like Resident Evil Director’s Cut Dual Shock, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and many more. While it would seem cheaper just to hook up the ole PSX or PS2 in order to play them, I really enjoy the convenience of portability. I’ve found that with the PSP, I can play games in the same room while my wife enjoys a movie on TV, whereas playing on a console requires me to go to a different room, attach said console to a working TV, and be lonely.

If you (as another PSP owner) have ever used the Saved Data Utility to look at your game saves, you’ll probably notice a big difference between your PSP game saves and your PSOne Classics saves: The PSOne titles don’t have any wallpaper. (And the PSOne game icons are pitiable at best.) I decided to see if I could customize my PSOne downloads by adding wallpapers and icons. While I didn’t have any luck modifying the games themselves, I was able to customize the look of my save games.

Here’s what you’ll need in order to add custom wallpapers and icons to your game saves:

• A PlayStation portable.
• A save file from a PSP or PSOne Classics game saved on a memory stick.
• Either A) a USB 2.0 Male to Mini-male cable, or B) a memory stick reader for your PC.
• Image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or the horribly-named GIMP.

First, play the desired game and create a save file. Then connect your PSP to your PC with a USB cable, or remove the memory stick and insert it into a card reader connected to your PC. Navigate to PSP/SAVEDATA and find the folder where your save data resides. Unfortunately the folders are named according to the game ID number. For instance, Final Fantasy VII’s folder is SCUS94163. PSP game save directories begin with a U, such as Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles being ULUS10277. So you’ll probably have to open each folder and click on the ICON0.PNG file to see which game is which.

As you can see from digging around in your PSP, the icon and wallpaper files must be in .PNG format, with the extension in uppercase. Now find some artwork you’d like to use as your wallpaper and your icon. For the wallpaper, resize and/or crop the artwork to 480×272 pixels and save it on your harddrive or desktop as PIC1.PNG, in all capital letters. Then resize or crop your icon image to either 80×80 or 144×80 and save it somewhere on your PC as ICON0.PNG. (That’s ICONzero.PNG)

Now copy your icon and wallpaper to your PSP memory stick in the PSP/SAVEDATA/gameID folder. Disconnect your PSP from your computer, or reinsert your memory stick. Browse to Game/Save Data Utility and press X. Then scroll down to the game save. Your custom icon and wallpaper appear!

Here’s some other custom wallpapers I made (click the images to download the zips, including game ID directories):

Tags: Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, PSP, Resident Evil, Wallpaper