PS2 Emulater for PC

H

Headcase

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2009
Messages
249
So I've heard quite a bit about these emulators for the PC. I understand how they work and what not, but what I'd like to know is where to land one any way possible, and how to make it work; Getting games, making them work, etc...

Anyone shed some light on my ignorance?
 
If talking about emulation is not illegal on these forums, I could help you out. It isn't that difficult at all, I can tell you that. The only issue I see is that emulating that system requires a very powerful computer, far more powerful than the PS2 itself; it is quite a difficult platform to emulate. I have a Core i7 920 desktop with a Geforce GTX 285 and I believe that still cannot fully run the emulators at 100% speed, but I haven't tried an emulator in a while. A multi-core processor is highly recommended as well as a fast GPU.
 
The only PS2 emulator your should look at is PCSX2. It is well updated and their forum provides a lot of help to get games running. Be warned, not all games will work and some will work with issues. The emulator requires a lot of patience from you and you have to be willing to adjust settings for every new game at times.
 
I have not had much experience with PlayStation 2 emulators, but really the only show in town is PCSX2. It can emulate the majority of games, and many games that run do so well. It's dual threaded for now because of the synchronization within PS2 hardware and the developers have not quite grappled with spreading the workload beyond 2 threads, so a very fast, highly overclocked dual will buy you more here. The graphics plugin also takes advantage of DirectX 10 as well.

As for games, just go to a local GameStop or other used game store. PlayStation 2 games are for the most part cheap and plentiful if you know where to look. If you seek to acquire games in other ways, I don't condone it nor will I share how to obtain them even if I did know.

Just do some looking around on Google, there are plenty of faqs to get you on your way, and pcsx2.net also has some faqs and a game compatibility list to get you started on what works and what does not.

Hope this helped you!
 
PCSX2, got it. I'll find it and DL it, and see what I can get out of it. I know that it's rather illegal, so let's not go into depth anymore. I was just wondering. Thanks guys. xD
 
PCSX2 has made a lot of strides in getting optimal performance over the past year. I currently use it to play my PS2 games as my Capture/TV Tuner card crapped out leaving me without PS2 access.

100% compatibility is not guaranteed as the game devs use some wierd tricks in order to get their games working on the console, which when implemented, is not emulated at all or emulated with a performance hit. Some games like Suikoden 3 may seem to be a non-demanding title but the way the game itself works, may end up running at 30fps on 3.0ghz Core 2s. Modern games like Persona 4 can actually be run at close to 60fps without extra configuration. I use these two games as examples as I completed both of them on the emulator. Suiko 3 can run at 60fps but requires some configuration to the emulator that may cause garbage or jumpy animation.

I've actually gotten very interested in the project itself over the past few months as it really tackles some really interesting ideas in computer graphics and architecture. I do occasionally compile my own versions using the SVN releases on their Google code page. The best way to looks for faqs and guides and check their messageboard. I'm not going to discuss on how you get your BIOS or where to get games as those topics are strictly illegal.
 
Very general discussion of emulators is alright, but any linking to pages that provide copyrighted material with permission of the content owners, and you'll get a nice love note from a moderator. ;)
 
Oldie said:
Very general discussion of emulators is alright, but any linking to pages that provide copyrighted material with permission of the content owners, and you'll get a nice love note from a moderator. ;)
Click to expand...

That's all I was going for. No links or copyrighted material. Just the 411.
:)
 
Oh yeah, another thing of note is that even downloading the BIOS for the PS2 is illegal and the BIOS are required for the emulator to run correctly.

If you own a PS2 I think it is legal to rip your BIOS from your machine but I have no idea what is involved in that :p
 
mr_zen256 said:
Oh yeah, another thing of note is that even downloading the BIOS for the PS2 is illegal and the BIOS are required for the emulator to run correctly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I figured as much. I know this is risky business here, so I'm treading lightly, and not stepping in anything.
 
I suppose if you really wanted to step on the legal side, why not purchase a cheap PS2 and thus I guess you could legally download the BIOS for the emulator. Just as if you own the game, you can legally emulate it as well.
 
Not gonna go into the semantics of emulators and ROMs, but from my experience a kickass machine is absolutely essential to run many PS2 games at an acceptable performance. Even my i7 920 powered machine @ 3.4GHz chugged when I was running the "then latest" build of PCSX2 a couple of months ago (heh, gotta save up for a water-cooling setup :D). Also the last time I checked, sound performance seemed to be a major hinderance as some elements, like music, would either play as static or not play at all.

Despite that, I'm glad to see that there's a community out there dedicated to cater the PS2 to the PC (hell, Sony still hasn't quite figured out how to fully emulate it on their PS3 without resorting to implement physical hardware). Still waiting on an Xbox emulator; I'm surprised there isn't a full fledged one already as it's based on the x86 architecture.
 
The best part of playing around with pcsx2 is running old games at much higher resolutions with AA turned on, really makes older games look rather amazing.
 
Aluadan said:
The best part of playing around with pcsx2 is running old games at much higher resolutions with AA turned on, really makes older games look rather amazing.
Click to expand...

This. Although some games don't like non-standard resolutions. Running FFX at 2048 resolution made it look so smooth, never seen FFX look so good.

As for why there's no Xbox emulator; What would you play on it that hasn't been ported to PC already? Sure, there are some games, but probably not enough to motivate a team to code a decent emulator.
 
If you are interested in regular Playstation games, epsxe is the best emulator. Pretty much every game works and can be played at full speed.

On another note, Dolphin is a pretty good Gamecube emulator.
 
Aluadan said:
The best part of playing around with pcsx2 is running old games at much higher resolutions with AA turned on, really makes older games look rather amazing.
Click to expand...

Sometimes it's even a requirement. I tried playing FF12 on an original PS2 (fat one) connected to a 46" Plasma HDTV and I could literally feel my eyes begin to bleed after an hour or so. Some cutscenes (in-engine sections, I suspect) had the worst jagged edges I have ever seen. Regular gameplay wasn't too pretty either. It made things very nearly unplayable, which is why I'll continue playing this game using PCSX2 instead :)
 
Anyone know if the Xbox 360 RockBand 2 guitar with Windows receiver can be used in tangent with PCSX2 & LilyPad?
 
So based on my stats in my signature, subbing out a 4850 for the 3870, would my system be able to run it on 1280 x 1024? And if so, with what graphics? Half AA, Tri AF?
 
I use pcsx2 on a 3.5ghz pentium dual core with 9600gso and 8gb of ddr2

It runs...alright. A lot of tweaking got it to run better. Still, games for some reason run slower than they are supposed to (framerate is fine, the games themselves run like 30% slower than they should in real time). Sound is totally crap. But at least its a PS2 emulator right?
 
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