I had to test and yes, you can indeed play games with the PSP’s IR Remote. Given it can send only one button at a time, I wouldn’t recommend it though… pulling off Ratchet’s Hyper Strike (Jump then Square) was difficult enough haha
@cat is the right part an universal TV remote? that's pretty cool
here’s the furthest point you can get to in Crash 2 with an IR remote without the “load game” skip or just quitting to the warp room