A tale of two portables. And four games.

The PSP and the PlayStation Network have come a terribly long way in the last year, and if their progress keeps pace, the PSP might supplant the DS as my favorite portable. I submit the following as evidence by way of anecdote:

Calamity befell me last week. And by “calamity,” I mean a minor annoyance that almost ruined my Thanksgiving Eve.

Giant Bomb posts a new Giant Bombcast each and every Tuesday. It’s one of the highlights of my week and something against which I compare our podcast often.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I noticed Wednesday, Nov. 25, that my iPhone hadn’t traded the Nov. 17 episode of the Bombcast for the Nov. 24 episode. Maybe I forgot to sync it Tuesday night, I thought, or maybe I synced before the episode downloaded, in which case the podcast wouldn’t have transferred unless I manually synced afterward.

When I tried again Wednesday night, I learned the awful truth: my iPhone wouldn’t sync at all, despite multiple reboots of the device and my computer. I would have to restore, a mostly simple process that involves wiping your iPhone’s hard disk, reloading the OS and reinstalling all of your applications and personal data. If all of your apps are backed up on your computer, it’s a no-loss scenario.

No, but what choice do I have?

But not all of my apps had been backed up. Based on the 38 that did make it, I’d say my phone stopped syncing apps with the computer in September or so. Which means I lost ROLANDO 2, the two GEODEFENSE games and a handful of other portable treasures for good. If I want them back, I’ll have to buy and download them again, and even then, I won’t have the save data and high scores I had logged beforehand. In a nutshell, that means I’ll probably never play those games again, let alone finish them.

See what I mean? Calamity! But the drama throws into sharp relief the wonderful (if expensive) experience I’ve had downloading games to my PSP over the last few days.

I’ve spoken on the podcast about my disappointment with the console versions of TEKKEN 6, a great game weighed down by cumbersome menus, terrible load times and the worst character-unlocking mechanic in the history of games. All 40 (40!) fighters are selectable from the start for versus matches and ghost battling, but to see their ending movies, you have to confront them in the game’s scenario mode, a poor man’s FINAL FIGHT that plumbs the depths of the franchise’s silly history and blasts you with hours of bad voice acting and storytelling. It’s a total nonstarter, and it’s part of the reason I traded the game in for MODERN WARFARE 2.

The PSP version of Tekken 6, now available on PSN, is a different story entirely. Though it loses most of the visual luster of the console versions, it does away with the load times, the menus and, mercifully, the scenario mode. In its place are Tekken standbys like (prepare yourselves) Arcade mode! Story mode! It loses the online matches — you can duel ad hoc only — but keeps the ghost battling, which significantly drives up your single-player experience.

The game runs at an uninterrupted 60 frames per second, and it brings over every character, every stage and all of the coolest dressup items from the console versions. There’s just astonishingly little sacrificed in the translation.

It’s so good, in fact, that I was persuaded to drop another $40 on SOUL CALIBUR: BROKEN DESTINY, the PSP version (more or less) of SOUL CALIBUR 4. It adds two great characters (fancy boy Dampiere and guest star Kratos), runs just as well as Tekken 6 and makes another great case for the PSP as a fighting game platform. I wish it kept the single-player stuff from the console versions, which are superior in this instance, but there’s enough here to keep you busy anyway.

So I’ve been playing those games like crazy. And then my highly addictive personality took over, and I started downloading stuff until I ran out of space on my memory stick.

LITTLEBIGPLANET, finally on PSN after a frustrating, weeklong delay, is still utterly charming. The level-creation tools are just as robust (read: overwhelming) as its PS3 cousin’s, the roughly 40 new single-player levels are inventive and laden with secret stuff, and the level-trading system shows promise. There’s still a central marketplace, as it were, for user-created levels, but rather than play them on the spot, you download them to your memory stick until you tire of them.

The levels created by other folks aren’t nearly as cool as some of the stuff that was available within the first few days of the PS3 version’s release, but we’re dealing with a smaller audience, I guess, and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for a few more weeks. Or maybe I should get off my butt and actually publish one of my abominations. After all, there’s a noticeable deficit of rocket-cross on the marketplace so far.

Then I got PIXELJUNK MONSTERS DELUXE, and the world stopped turning. This cartoony tower defense game felt like homework on the PS3, but it somehow just works on the PSP. There’s something about being able to pick it up and put it down at a moment’s notice that makes getting rainbows — the game’s version of perfects — much more engaging. At $20, it takes the PS3 content and adds another island’s worth of levels, bringing the total count to nearly 50. The value proposition is solid.

And because the game was relatively lo-fi to begin with, there’s nothing lost in the PSP translation. It’s as colorful and sharply defined on the portable as it is on the console.

Thankfully, that’s where I stopped. There’s a ton of stuff out there that I’m itching to grab (the DISGAEAs, MOTORSTORM: ARCTIC EDGE, RESISTANCE: RETRIBUTION), but I should sink some more time into these first. We also have GOD OF WAR 2 to finish for the podcast, and I have ASSASSIN’S CREED II for review.

I say all this to illustrate that PSN is now a dangerously easy and safe way to crack the PSP’s suddenly and increasingly solid library. Buying a digital version of the game gives you five re-downloads in case CALAMITY occurs. I’d like unlimited re-downloads for security’s sake, but five is better than the zero you get through the iTunes Store. Both the PS3 and PSP stores are attractive and easy to navigate, too. The iTunes Store becomes a little less intuitive with every iteration.

For the first time in many months, I love my PSP.