Picked up GTA:Liberty City Stories for the PSP today. Great game – if you liked any of the other GTA games you’ll love this. One warning – it gets of to a very slow start but then the missions start to pick up. Another warning – the soundtracks included in the game are mince which is something of a letdown as the GTA games have become renowned for their use of music.
However Rockstar have included a custom soundtrack feature which allows you to play your own tracks from the PSP’s memory disk. Way! The problem is this feature won’t play mp3’s from the memory stick – you need to use Rockstar’s software (download from IGN) to convert music to their format and transfer that to the PSP. An added twist is that the utility will not covert mp3’s to their own format – only music ripped from a bought music CD using their utility can be used. Boo! There is another way…
Codemasters also had a custom soundtrack feature for their Toca game on the PSP. They also used a utility to convert music to a PSP format – the difference is that their utility allowed you to convert mp3’s from your hard disk as well as music CD’s. Therefore:
1) Download the Codemasters utility – ftp://downloads.codemasters.com/upgrade/Codemasters_EACSetup.zip
2) Make sure you have a game save for GTA on your PSP memory disk
3) Install the Codemasters utility on your PC
4) Connect the PSP to your PC in USB mode.
5) Goto the folder PSP and then SAVEDATA – look for the name of your GTA gamesave folder. For me it was ULES00151S0
6) Now you need to create a new folder in SAVEDATA that holds the custom soundtracks. Using the name of the game save folder remove the final S0 and add CUSTOMTRACKS – create a folder using this name. So for me my GTA music folder is called ULES00151CUSTOMTRACKS. Note that is a new folder – NOT the game folder renamed. For Vice City name the folder ULES00502CUSTOMTRACKS.
7) Fire up the Codemasters utility on the PC, select mp3’s from the hard disk or a music CD, select the custom tracks folder created above and convert your music.
8) Once converted, goto the custom tracks folder and rename all the files from *.toc to *.gta
9) Fire up GTA, select custom soundtrack in audio options and enjoy your own music.
It’s ironic that Rockstar, a company who have made money out of glamorizing drug trafficing, prostitution, stabbing, shooting, car theft, killing of innocents and now gang violence, have taken the moral high ground and limited their software to bought music only. You really have got to laugh.