Herein I shall detail my mad haxxor skillz, and how I was able to mod my PSP to make my AG craft go faster. Note that no actual haxxoring is required, no animals were harmed in this process, and the opinions expressed in the, yeah, whatever, you're not reading this anymore. Go ahead to the main article below if you're still interested.

Not too long after I'd gotten my PSP and Pure, I spent some time working out how to go as fast as I could. I figured it out, but I wasn't very happy with what I'd found out.
For whatever reason, it was decided in development that pitching down should make you go faster. Not just in Pure, oh no, in Pulse as well! Likely in HD too, but we can hope that saner minds have prevailed. 8 P
Anyway, here I was, wanting to go as fast as I could, but having difficulty steering while always holding forward. Then it occurred to me: I have a whole other directional input device I'm not using here! All I had to do was use the analog pad for "always pitch forward" and then I could use the d-pad for steering like usual! As a side benefit, if I needed to cancel that forward pitch (to gain altitude say) then I could pull back on the d-pad and cancel the forward pitch. The plan was solid, all I needed was to find a way to implement it! And thus, I created:

Jay's Speed Mod v1.0
It's a piece of tape.
Really, just a little piece of clear tape. Stick it over your analog nub while it's fully forward and stick it down. Go into TT mode (all starting grids are flat level) and you'll see your ship moving slowly forward without you touching the X button. If you're seeing any sideways drift in that movement, unstick and re-apply.

I shortly found two problems with this solution:
1) It tends to slowly unstick with time, so you get less and less forward pitch and eventually have to replace the speed mod. Luckily the material is highly cheap and plentiful. 8 )
2) Any other game in the world will have issues with the speed mod, so you'll have to unapply and reapply for any other game. Annoying.

So I could carry a small roll of tape with your PSP, but clearly there was a lot of room for improvement here.

Jay's Speed Mod v1.5
Two pieces of tape!
By using multiple pieces of tape, I was able to partially overcome issue 1. This solution only made issue 2 more prevalent however, and my PSP was starting to look pretty ugly in the bottom-left corner. Not a long-term solution. Something better must be had!

It wasn't too long before I had a major brainwave, and suddenly I had the perfect replacement for my now inferior speed mod version 1...

Jay's Speed Mod v2.0
By taking my high-end exacto blade to a common piece of plastic, I was able to fasion for myself a crescent-shaped little doodad that I could insert into the hole for the anlog stick, below the nub, to hold it in any particular constant position I desired! With the right raw materials (1 Bic pen cap, red because as any Orc knows, it'll be faster if it's red) and my highly-developed exacto blade skills (no, really, I've got, like, a +3 with exacto blades!) I quickly had a prototype! With some adjustments and testing, speed mod version 2 was fully operational. And a beautiful thing it was. It held my analog nub pointing full forward, I could put it in and take it out whenever I wanted, all was sweetness. Around this time I picked up Pulse and found out that while keeping up with the AI opponents was all I could do without a boost pad or a turbo normally, I was the fastest ship on the track with the speed mod installed.

This solution also displayed problems after months of usage:
1) It's a small piece of plastic that is made to be removable. It falls out easily and is lost even easier. I think the original speed mod lasted 4 months, during which I lost and re-found it 4 times. The final time I didn't re-find it. Surprising really, considering how bright red it was.
2) When it's uninstalled, what to DO with it? It's a small piece of worthless plastic to anyone but me. To me it's the product of a half hour intense labour and vital to my best times. I don't want to lose it, and I can't have it installed all the time. My first thought was to store it with the UMD in the case, but opening that case has to be done carefully or else you lose the damn thing, as I found out no less than 3 times. 8 P

So I made a new one (blue this time, the most common Bic pen cap variety) and pondered on how to improve my design. Shortly I had another idea! And this lead to the development of...

Jay's Speed Mod v2.5
I fasioned a new speed mod, this time out of black (to go with the black PSP of course, with my new modifications I figured this one would be permanent!), and this time with a bit of a "handle" on it. Drilling a hole through this little handle was difficult, but worked. Yay, 1/8" drillbits. Then, some black string through the hole, and the holder corner on my PSP, and suddenly I had attached the speed mod to the PSP!
This was the version of speed mod that I took to Vermont for the recent WWT. When Arnaud offered to put the Pulse DLC on my PSP I was certainly thrilled and handed it over quickly, and that soon lead to me having to tell the story to Isaac and Arnaud about what that silly little thing on my PSP was! 8 )
"It's my speed mod, it holds the nose down so I go faster!"
With all the excitement of the WWT, I think they forgot about it entirely though. 8 D

Anyway, this version of the speed mod definitely lasted the longest, but it's not quite the final evolution of the product. For you see, I found a problem even with this 2.5 version:
1) When uninstalled, the speed mod has an alarming tendency to catch on anything and everything possible. The string broke 3 times (and was re-tied twice) before I eventually lost it.

After much thought and consideration, and needing my damn speed mod back, I recently came up with...

Jay's Speed Mod v3.0
A somewhat smaller and "cut-down" version of speed mod 2.0, held in place with a god-damned piece of tape!

It seems there's no escaping the brilliance and simplicity of speed mod version 1! That simple piece of tape was insufficient on it's own, but combined with the elegance of a custom-built solution like speed mod version 2, the combination seems unbeatable!

So this is the current state of my speed mod, and so far it's holding up really well. I don't expect to develop the line any further, I believe it has reached the end of its own product lifecycle. With all R&D completed, I figured it was likely time to release my full findings. I have no doubt that others have come up with similar ideas/concepts/solutions (since it seemed pretty obvious at the time), but I doubt anyone else has persued it to the degree I have. 8 )

So, if you see me, and you've brought a Bic pen cap, I can fashion for you your very own Jay's Speed Mod if you want. And hopefully in the future an "even keel" will go back to being the fastest aerodynamic profile and we'll never again have need of the speed mod.

We can only hope.


Yes, I know this article would be seriously improved by pictures, but I don't have a digital camera, so we're all SOL on that one. Sorry. 8 )