What is adhocParty? Smarter people than me can tell you all about the service right here.

You’ve probably heard stories about the unbelievable Monster Hunter juggernaut in Japan, and how it’s reached the point that one in every five Japanese PSP owners are playing the game. Capcom has sold millions and millions of copies of the three PSP titles in Japan to date, and Monster Hunter 2G (which we confusingly call Monster Hunter Freedom Unite in North America and Europe) was one of Capcom’s biggest game launches in recent history. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is available digitally on the PSN, which is perfect for those of you who have just picked up the amazing pocket-perfect PSPGo or for those of you (like me) who are too lazy to get off the couch and hike down to the local video game retailer.

Personally, I’m a recent MonHun convert – in the last few months, it’s sucked me in like no handheld game I’ve ever played. My dedication to the game is comparable to the reaction I had to EverQuest and World of Warcraft: I just can’t get enough. A group of Capcom staffers have been happily hunting away since the release of the game, and we’re now all over 100 hours in on our characters, with the group in the Hunter Rank 8 and 9.

The best part of Monster Hunter is, of course, playing with other people. The secret sauce to MHFU’s uber-compelling gameplay comes in coordinating a group of four hunters, each bristling with diverse weapons and equipment and slaying tricksy beasties that range from a meager 20’ tall Yian Kut Ku to the overwhelming monstrosity that is Fatalis, a dragon so big that you have to fire cannonballs at his face just to get his attention. Finding other hunters in public places in North America can be tough – it’s not as easy as in Japan, where gamers are constantly thrust together in trains and highly concentrated urban areas. Unless you have a group of buddies that you’re hunting with regularly, it’s hard to randomly stumble across other players on the bus or waiting in line to buy a burger. And as a recent convert to the ways of Monster Hunter, let me tell you that taking on the high level G-ranked quests on your lonesome is a daunting and potentially PSP-hurling activity.

With adhocParty, you can now quickly and easily find other hunters. Download the adhocParty service from PSN (it’s free!), connect your PSP with your PS3, load up your game on your PSP and either start a room on adhocParty or join one that’s already established. Within no time, you’ll be able to find a group of dedicated hunters willing to help you with your HR quests and suddenly that giant G-ranked Rathian isn’t so hard to deal with. You can connect several PSPs to a single PS3, so if you have 2 or 3 fellow hunters hanging out in your dorm room or at your house, while another friend is stranded at a distant location, you can all still play. Way to keep the band together!

Since adhocParty runs on your PS3, you’ll be able to communicate with your hunting party in various ways. Yell through your Bluetooth headset (which I’m sure everyone now has, thanks to Call of Duty), or type away the controller keyboard or on a separate keyboard – just make sure to type fast if you’ve got a wyven munching on your face. Running quests on Monster Hunter can be challenging, so instant communication through the adhocParty service makes those all-important key quests even easier to complete.

Over on our own little community neighborhood – the seething and exciting world of Capcom-Unity.com – we organize regular online game sessions on Fridays afternoons. These Play Against Capcom Fridays have been heavy on the Street Fighter and Resident Evil matches over the last few months, but with adhocParty now live and legit, we’ll be hosting regular Monster Hunter Freedom Unite PAC events. Hell, with the amount of Monster Hunting done by myself (“Kramez”), Shawn “Snow” Baxter and Christian “Sven” Svensson, we’ll probably be running adhocParty sessions several times a week. Join up with our community and keep in touch and perhaps we’ll see you in the wild.

Did we mention that adhocParty is free? We’ll see you online this afternoon.

The game is in stores beginning Tuesday and I have to say that we’re very proud of it. When we were first asked to make a PSP version of LittleBigPlanet, we wondered how on earth that much physics was ever going to fit onto something so much smaller, but to be honest we’ve enjoyed the challenge and now have a whole new world of LittleBigPlanet to show for it.

A world that contains thirty-eight newly created levels across seven different environments, all ready for you to play and explore – in addition to the whole Play, Create, and Share experience that’s synonymous with LBP.

The process, however, has not been without its share of hiccups. We are aware that the game is not yet available on the PlayStation Store, but we’re currently working around the clock to get this issue worked out so keep your eyes peeled for updates this week. We appreciate you bearing with us!

We’d also like to thank Media Molecule for all of their hard work in coming up with the incredible world that is LittleBigPlanet in the first place.

We’ve now added our own sprinkle of magic dust and we’re thrilled to bring LBP PSP to the fans so that they can enjoy it anytime, anywhere. To raise the excitement level even more, here’s a look at our launch trailer, as well as some of the great reviews that have hit thus far…

LittleBigPlanet (PSP) Reviews

• IGN
• Game Informer
• 1UP
• Joystiq
• Push Square
• Crave Online
• PlayStation Lifestyle
• Game Shark
• Digital Chumps
• The Sixth Axis
• Games On Smash

Even if you’re not interested in hearing new details about Assassin’s Creed II, including Ezio’s Villa, customization, new features not present in the original, and PSP interoperability, you’ll want to stick around to find out your task for the Live By The Creed mission. Hint: it’s near the end of the video.

Jason Coker here, Producer of the new downloadable PSP title, Pinball Heroes, which is available beginning TODAY for download onto your PSP from the PlayStation Store for $3.99 each. So, what is Pinball Heroes? Well, the Pinball Heroes team loves pinball – go figure – and we also love the games that Sony Computer Entertainment publishes, so we figured, “Hey, what if we were to make pinball tables based on SCE titles?” We approached some of the internal teams here at Sony, made the magic happen, and we’ve put together a really fun mix of tables, both in the range of pinball game play types and in the titles we’re representing. Please take a look at the trailer below to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

There are four different tables available to download, which are based on High Velocity Bowling, Hot Shots Golf, PAIN, and UNCHARTED. For me, the coolest thing about Pinball Heroes is that if you dig pinball, you’ll really like any of the tables because of the diverse set of challenges that each one features, including an in-game trophy shelf, in-game trophies, online leaderboards, and an assortment of modes that keep the game exciting and fun. On top of that, if you’re a fan of the titles that we represent on each table, you’ll really enjoy the way we’ve incorporated the flavor of each game into Pinball Heroes. If you happen to be a pinball lover who is also crazy about the games we’re basing our tables on… well, you’ll be in PSP nirvana.

For example, the High Velocity Bowling table actually has a section that has ten pins set up that you can knock down once you’ve released the sweeper. In addition to your pinball score, the game will be tracking your strikes and spares as you advance through “frames” on those ten pins. On the Hot Shots Golf table, there are several unique “holes” to play. You’ll be challenged to knock down targets marked with a certain distance until the total distance gets you to the “green”, at which point you must knock the ball through an opening to the green and tap it into the hole. There are also wind conditions that will affect the ball differently on each hole, so bring your A game.

PAIN fans will recognize things like Fun With Explosives, PAINdemonium modes and the Manhole that can be opened as a ball lock. The UNCHARTED table actually tells the story of Nathan Drake’s’s adventures in the first UNCHARTED game, “UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune,” through a variety of modes that will test your pinball skills.

We’ve put plenty of familiar sights and sounds on each table and all in all, we’ve put together a really cool mix of pinball and the things that make our first-party games so fun.

For your convenience, you can play zoomed in so that the camera tracks the balls around the table, zoomed out so that you can see the whole table, or in portrait mode, which lets you see the whole table with the PSP turned sideways, so it’s a lot larger than the default zoomed out play style. Whatever your play style, there’s something here that will suit you.

So there you have it – Pinball Heroes – Coming to a PSP near you. I’m really proud of how nicely the Pinball Heroes tables turned out. Teri, Josh, Joe, Larry, and I look forward to hearing your feedback once you get hands-on with the tables because there are more tables in the works, and we want to make them as good as we can. Till then, break out your Tommy albums and get your Pinball Wizard on. We’ll see you on the Leaderboards. I’m the cat with the ill high scores because that’s how I roll. Get it? See, it’s a pinball joke because the ball rolls, and…ah, forget it. Pinball Heroes for the win!!

Compete in 16-player competitive multiplayer across eight custom maps and through seven new game modes, each with different objectives. A brand new ‘Leader Mode’ lets players designate a squad leader and spawn beside them to help progress to the objective points. Additionally, a new ‘Tug-of-War’ mode, allows players to drain points from their enemies to collect tickets.

Play locally in Ad Hoc mode, or with friends from around the world in infrastructure mode. When played in infrastructure mode, competitive multiplayer supports a number of expanded online community features including tournaments, clan challenges and ladders, voice chat and character customization.

For a more extensive look at competitive multiplayer, check out IGN.com for an exclusive hands-on reveal. SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 will be available in stores on January 12th.

Almost everyone loves puzzle games, but the “Match 3 colors” concept has become so tired that we just had to tuck in into bed and put it sleep. On a quest to create a new color-matching challenge, Jason was inspired to develop a new game where bubbles of the same color fuse together into one upon contact, and grow, grow, grow until they pop.

As bubbles grow, on-screen space gets more and more crowded. If the bubbles don’t expand enough to pop, all that room gets filled and the game ends. However, if enough like-colored bubbles are combined, they burst with points, bonuses and much more on-screen space to keep on playing.

Bubble Trubble is a single-player game with two modes of gameplay:

• Survival Mode allows players achieve the highest score by matching and popping the increasingly faster onslaught of colored bubble clusters.
• Challenge Mode presents specific set tasks for players to enhance their skills, such as only popping certain colored bubbles or preventing bubbles from getting too big.

Creat Studios is very excited to present our next game for the PSP Mini program, and we are very confident that you will love Bubble Trubble. And remember…to avoid any Trubble, you’ve gotta burst your Bubble!

Thanks again to all of our fans, and please keep your comments and suggestions coming!

We’re one week out from the launch of LittleBigPlanet PSP and to celebrate SackBoy going portable, we’ll be teaming up with the Academy of Art University’s School of Game Design in San Francisco for a 24-hour LittleBigPlanet PSP Game Jam Session this Wednesday and Thursday. Similar to what we did with Parsons The New School for Design last year prior to the launch of LittleBigPlanet (PS3), students will demonstrate their keen artistic talents and create dueling game levels utilizing the easy-to-use creation tools of LittleBigPlanet PSP—but this time it will be all on the go! Each team of students will take their PSP through the streets of San Francisco looking at Bay Area architectural icons (buildings, historic landmarks, statues, bridges, etc.) for inspiration and ideas to incorporate into their level design. So, if you see our students running around the streets of San Fran tomorrow, be sure to say hello!

At the conclusion of the 24-hour period, each team’s game levels will be presented and judged by members of SCEA and Academy of Art faculty, as well as one of our LittleBigPlanet Game of the Year amateur level creators. The winning team will be announced the following day and will have their creations made available online once the game hit stores on November 17.

To get you even more fired up for LBP PSP, here’s another look at our Create trailer…

On the PlayStation Store:
In celebration of our birthday, we have two FREE costumes for our community. One new and one revisited – both available for a limited amount of time. How else would we celebrate the birthday of our launch, but with a slice of cake and a spacesuit? Be sure to drop by the PlayStation Store and download it this weekend.

Another celebration…Community Picks!
We’re not the only ones celebrating something special. Our friends at LittleBigPodcast are celebrating their 40th episode of one of our favorite shows. Check out this week’s episode, featuring guest appearances from Media Molecule themselves, along with answers to tons of questions from the community.

What’s new in LittleBigPlanet (PSP):
In case you missed it, there’s a new development diary on the LittleBigWorkshop all about PUZZLES. Plus learn more about some of the levels in the new adventure on the PSP.

LittleBigPlanet (PSP) on the PlayStation Store – Two week special!
We know a lot of you are waiting to hear about getting LBP (PSP) through the PlayStation Store, and more specifically, how you can get the cool pre-order costumes too. Well, here you go:

We’re pleased to announce that if you purchase LittleBigPlanet (PSP) through the PlayStation Network from 11/17/09 to 12/3/09, you’ll also get the six Sackboy costumes from UNCHARTED 2, Killzone 2 and MotorStorm.

So now you have two options to get LittleBigPlanet (PSP) plus these costumes – reserve your physical copy at any of our participating retailers, or be sure to purchase the game on the PlayStation Store within the first two weeks of launch.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy!

“Whats New” in LittleBigPlanet PSP
SCEE Cambridge has been hard at work developing a completely new adventure for Sackboy. We’ve asked them to give us some insight on the PSP version through a series of articles to explain what’s new.

“Diary Entry – Nuts and Bolts…and Motors, Strings and Magnetic Keys – What Makes LittleBigPlanet (PSP) Tick” by Jon Torrens, Designer

What’s unique about LBP is that all the behind-the-scenes machines that make the game work are actually created using the tools available to players in edit mode, and are in the level somewhere (just not where you can see them). For example, in the mini-games we have things that have to get faster and faster, like the giant wheel you run on in the China mini-game. The best way for us to do this is to have a little vehicle that moves slowly towards a switch that uses the speed setting. Need something to happen faster? We just speed up the motor bolts on the vehicle. Need something to happen halfway through the game? Stick a magnetic key on the vehicle and a magnetic key switch on its track. The brilliant thing about this is that you have a really simple diagram of what happens in the game. You don’t have to think ‘Well, the time for the wheel to reach top speed is 90 seconds, and I want the player to have to deal with bombs at increasing amounts, so I’ll put bombs dropping on the player at 40, 70, 85 and 90 seconds, you can just place key switches along the track.

A technique we used for repeating sequences was simply having a big disc with a magnetic key on it that rotated past magnetic key switches on a static block behind it. We could move the magnetic key switches into any sequence without having to calculate the exact values required, and to change the overall speed of the sequence we just changed the speed of the motor bolt that made the disc rotate. This might sound technical, but if you’re making a slightly more sophisticated level – like, for example, one with emitting blocks that Sackboy has to run across, or a series of sound effects that plays a tune – then comfort yourself with the knowledge that you have exactly the same tools that we had, and with which we managed to make all those lovely story levels you’ve been playing. Okay, there are quite a few of us, and we had a fair amount of time, but it’s all there for you to use. Aren’t we generous?

For more stories from LittleBigPlanet (PSP) head on over to LittleBigWorkshop.com to read more…like “What’s the Story“, “Prizes and Physics” and more…

LBP (PS3): Game of the Year Edition – User Spotlight
In this week’s spotlight, we learn more about Tommy, PSN ID x-nobody-x, and his level, “The Tails of the LittleBigCrytal”, in the LittleBigPlanet: Game of the Year Edition.

Community Picks!
Our fansites continue to find standout levels online…here’s more to play over the weekend (when you’re not trick-or-treating, of course).

**QUICK CORRECTION** – Last week, we showed off a great new vehicle pack and some of you couldn’t find it…attribute that error to my nimble fingers and whoever invented the keyboard and put the F next to the R. So check out “TSFRJ”s new level pack which he recently updated.

LittleBigLand.com picks:

• Level Name: A Journey
• PSN: syroc

The title of this level says it all, because it truly is a journey through different worlds. It has many different themes but they all blend in so well together. The author of this level has used all the sounds and music in such way that it completely fits the scenery and adds a lot to the whole experience. This is a amazing level that is well built with some good platform action.

• Level Name: Back to the Savannah
• PSN: marquise126ace

Building a level that has the look and feel from a Media molecule story level is hard and before i saw the “Back to…” levels from marquise126ace i thought it was impossible to create such a thing. But he has managed to create levels that have that Media molecule look and feel, if i didn’t know any better i would have said that this is a story level. Back to the Savannah is basically a sequel to the Savannah story levels, the plot of the story is that the Gibbon king needs to speak to you urgently but you have many dangers to survive before you get to him. If you like the Media molecule, Savannah story levels (and who doesn’t like those) then this is a level that you do not want to miss.

For more check out some other fansites like LBPforum.net, LBPcentral.com and of course our own LittleBigCommunity site, LittleBigWorkshop.com.

New to LBP?
Just joining us? As our community continues to grow with new members, we thought it would be good to steer your way to some LBP goodness:

FREE STUFF

• (again) HURRY and get the Halloween Costume for your Sackboy – available for 1 week only
• Download the LittleBigPlanet (PS3) demo on the PlayStation Store and give the game a spin….BTW, the LBP PSP demo is coming soon too.
• Download the Norse Mythology pack (for LBP PS3) @ SonyWonder.com – scroll to the bottom and click the Sony Partners Page.
• Pre-order LittleBigPlanet (PSP) at our participating retailers and get 6 FREE Sackboy costumes!

FUN STUFF

• Since Halloween is here, check out the Monsters Kit DLC on the PlayStation Store

However, while many games tend to be all about defeating a zombie infestation, we think it’s about time that zombies get to feast properly on human brains. Prepare your weapons and sharpen your teeth because you’ll be up against the whole humanity and not a single individual should escape!

Zombie Tycoon lets you take ‘control’ of a hilarious zombie horde in order to achieve complete world domination. Doing so will require a lot brain throwing, building trashing, mascot bashing as well as equipping some of the silliest loot ever conceived.

We are really proud to say that, just in time for Halloween, Zombie Tycoon will be available as a PSP mini title on the PlayStation Network for just $7.99.