PlayStation 2 emulators

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PlayStation 2
PS2-Fat-Console-Set.png
Developer Sony
Type Home video game console
Generation Sixth generation
Release date 2000
Discontinued 2013
Predecessor PlayStation
Successor PlayStation 3
Emulated

The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a sixth-generation console released by Sony in 2000. It became the highest selling console of all time with over 160 million units sold.

Emulators

Name Operating System(s) Latest Version Active Recommended
PC
PCSX2 Windows, Linux, macOS 1.4.0 (stable)
SVN
Play! Multi-platform Builds
DobieStation Windows Git
hpsx64 Windows 0232
Emotionless Windows Git
orbum Windows Git
Mobile
Play! Android, iOS Git
Damon PS2 Android Aptoide

Comparisons

PCSX2
The first and only PS2 emulator currently worth using. That said, it is very underwhelming in the accuracy department, with thousands of bugs and graphical glitches. However, since version 1.4, the emulator is capable of playing 2455 games without any major glitches (regardless of speed) and playing 56 games at a non-playable speed or with major graphical or accuracy glitches. Check the Game Problems FAQ for the most difficult titles.
Play!
Can run quite a few commercial games but is still pretty far behind PCSX2.
DobieStation
Can boot or reach the menus on numerous games and some go in-game, designed to be fast, accurate and easy to use. An Android port is planned. Making rapid progress
hpsx64
Can also run quite a few commercial games, but probably less so, and at slower speeds, than Play!. It also emulates and focuses more on PlayStation emulation.
Emotionless
Can not run commercial games or homebrew yet, aims to have clean, readable code that is both portable and scalable, dormant for quite some time, but had some activity lately.

Emulation issues

Despite a large interest in PS2 emulation due to its sizable collection of games, it is still one of the hardest consoles to emulate for a number of reasons.

First of all: many people believe that since the main CPU (Emotion Engine) runs at a clock speed of 294Mhz (299Mhz on later revisions), it would make emulation easy on recent hardware. But this is not the case, because the clock speed of the emulated CPU is not necessarily indicative of the ease of emulation. Specifically, the PS2 CPU contains a multitude of custom sub-components and chips such as the FPU co-processor, 2 Vector Units, IOP, SPU2, Graphics Synthesizer and SIF which together work asynchronously to comprise the 128-bit Emotion Engine. In order to emulate them perfectly with correct timing requires an enormous amount of power. Moreover, the PS2 just like PS1 uses the MIPS architecture instead of standard x86 code, thus making emulation slower.[1]

Another big problem is the emulation of PS2’s own floating point unit (FPU) because it doesn’t follow the IEEE standard. To keep it simple, just changing a couple of numbers will cause glitches to occur to the game’s graphic (VU) and logic (EE), resulting in things like broken AI, odd behaviors or graphical bugs. While PCSX2 allows for the option of either clamping/rounding on both VU and EE as a solution to fix these glitches, it remains by far not the most accurate way to emulate the PS2 FPU.[2][3]

To conclude on the problems with PS2 emulation, we come to hardware rendering. The PS2’s graphics pipeline acts very differently from modern GPU cards and emulating it in HW mode with any degree of accuracy is difficult. This is due in part to the versatility of PS2, fact that it doesn’t use fixed shaders, or that even the games themselves do not use a consistent formula to achieve different graphical effects. Various type of emulation enhancements like display resolution scaling leads to the typical “black lines glitch” because of the use of a non-integer resolution. While the OpenGL backend on PCSX2 greatly improved on many of these issues, most games still require “software rendering” to fix many common glitches, which in turn slows down the emulation. Although Games using mip-mapping (Ratchet & Clank, Ace Combat, etc...) and games running on the Snowblind Engine are playable in OGL HW mode with minimal problems on high-end PCs.

In summary, it is not possible to achieve close-to-perfection PS2 emulation with actual PC hardware, and even if it was possible, the results would most likely be unplayable. The PS2 is simply a very complex machine that even game developers struggled to work with.

EyeToy

The EyeToy is a device similar to a camera or a webcam. It's an accessory developed by Sony and manufactured by Logitech. It is used in some PS2 games to interact physically through motion detection. The EyeToy can be used on PC with unofficial drivers. It also works natively with the PS3.

As for now, there are no emulators that can play EyeToy-only games or EyeToy enhanced events and modes in other games. You can find more informations about said games on this PCSX2 Github issue.

USB Plugin

Some PS2 games are using an USB adaptater to two jack microphones. The Singstar series continued for the console successors was using theses microphones. Steering wheels are also supported by USB.

While PCSX2 isn't benefiting from a working USB plugin in it's original release, Jackun, a PCSX2 plugin author, made a USB plugin that support microphone in most games and even steering wheel for racing games. The plugin is still updated nowadays. A compatibility list of the working titles with this plugin can be found here.

External links

  • PCSX2 Wiki - For checking if your games work and any fixes, tweaks, or settings you should know beforehand. The wiki is very outdated and unfinished, so personal testing is usually a must.
  • PlayStation 2 DataCenter - Tons of PS2 related things. Emulator files like plugins, game manuals, game configurations, and many tutorials are just some of the things you'll find here.

References