I remember the first time I ever read about Ad Hoc Party thinking about how useful and cool it would be to have the free app on the Playstation Network that lets you play Ad Hoc only games with your friends over the PSN. Being a brilliant idea and extremely useful it naturally didn't come out in America until a year after the Japanese release.



Ad Hoc Party has been out for well over six months now and many a game of Monster Hunter as been played. But what about the rest of us? The non Monster Hunter players? Last month Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker was released world wide and players across the globe have discovered that the game was built around co-op game play. From the mission select screen you're asked whether you want to to play Single or Co-op which has led many people to ask if the game supports infrastructure mode. Sadly it doesn't.  For those of us with the Playstation 3, a wired internet connection and the PSP we can play online over the PSN! This is the way the game is meant to be played.

Getting started is a little cumbersome at first. So I'm putting together this guide for my fellow Metal Gear Fans and anyone else that wants to play an Ad Hoc only game online with their friends. This guide will also work for many more PSP games. You can check wikipedia for compatibility but note that the list hasn't been updated recently.


First thing to note is that your Playstation 3 must be hard wired into the internet.  The PSP is communicating with the PS3 via  their wireless connections so the PS3 has to connect to the internet via an ethernet cable.  Everyone with the 20gb PS3 gets the bone as it doens't have built in wifi.

Log into the PSN on your PS3 and head to the PSN store.

Download and install Ad Hoc Party.

When you've launched AHP you will see four options: Start, Go to, Search for Game, Information.

Turn on your PSP and load the game you want to play, for this example I'll use MGS Peace Walker, and either go to Host a mission or search for a hosted mission.

Once the game on the PSP has entered the wifi mode go back to the PS3 And AHP.  Select Search for Game.

The PS3 should then show the name of your characters profile, acknowledging that it's found your PSP game.

Now go to Start and click X.  You'll be taken a screen that shows a circle with an A in the middle.  A is the server and the circle is made up of a bunch of little rectangles with numbers.  Those are the rooms on the server.  Pick one that's populated but not full.

Once you're in a room you see a little white stick figure.  You can use the left analog stick to move a cursor around the room.  If you click X a menu will pop up and let you set up a little house.  That little house is where you host your game.

People will enter the room and you can start the game as soon as there's a second player or you can wait for more people to join.  You can also use the Ps3's Blu tooth or wired headsets to chat.  Inside your little house there will be a chat room for players without headsets.  I however recommend using a headset.  I personally use my USB headset that I use to record my podcast with.  It works.  And for games like MGS Peace Walker you really want to be able to communicate with your team mates.

 I'm also going to embed the video I posted on my youtube channel just incase you hate the archaic method of communicating through text.