Hi everyone :)

Does anyone have experience with PS2 emulation on the PC? I am curious if it is even worth trying, if the games are actually playable. I'd like to try the legendary Ico :)

Btw, I have an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2,80 GHz and 4 GB of RAM.

PCSX2 works really well on my core2duo running at just over 3Ghz, some of the faster games burnout for eg runs a bit slow by default but you can turn on some hacks to remedy that.

Give it a go it's Ace!

Just keep in mind it is of questionable legality (if I recall correctly).

You need to get files from the PS2 that are NOT legal to share.

So make sure you are fully aware of how to extract those files from your PS2 so that you can play the PS2 games you legally own but would rather play on your PC for some reason :p

Hmm, good point... But unlike in US, nobody was really playing consoles in times of PS2 in here, so it's pretty much impossible to get them, or the games :-/ Anyway, I suggest we do not continue in this line of discussion :P

Thanks for the answers, I just wanted to know if a functional emulator actually exists, before I lose hours trying to set up something I find on google :)

I cant see problems, its totally legal play ps2 games if you own the original discs.
Time agoo my dreamcast die and i used my discs to play in the emulator on pc.

Ignoring the grey area of downloading the game image, the problem lies in the required BIOS image. Not exactly legal to gank one of those.

And generally, people who are looking to play with an emulator don't have ready access to the console of choice :p

Thats not exactly true. I've dabbled with the PCSX2 even though I already have a PS2, (in fact I had 2, a fat and a slim one, but the fat one broke... :,( ).

One of the main reasons, as far as I gather that people might be interested in the emulator, is that if they have a high spec PC, you actually get better graphics on the emulator.
(sometimes it makes the game look absolutely fabulous! :D)

(I personally want a proper xbox emulator, (not many people are working on one sadly...).
Despite the lack of exclusive, I do own around 70 games for it, (most of which do NOT work on my 360 (CURSE YOU MICROSOFT!!), and I am afraid that the DVD drive will eventually deteriorate to a point I won't be able to play any of my games))

Playstation 2 emulation is really working for some of you guys? It was so sluggish when I tried that I have decided to just keep my PS2 and my PC gaming as two separate worlds.

Yeah, I played Shadow of the Colossus, but there were a couple graphical glitches here and there that kind of ruined the experience for me.

I tried emulating Final Fantasy X on this pc (I have both a PS2 and an original FFX disc), but it went so sluggish I decided to just use the PS2 (which I tried to avoid using since I don't have a TV on my bedroom :P). I find it odd since this is a high end PC pretty much... Then again, emulation is VERY hardware intensive. I recall back in 2003-2004, even getting DOS emulation to go well was pretty hard, and DOSbox was very CPU intensive.

PCSX2 is really good piece of software and it's quite easy to get hold of 2nd hand or old PS2 games to create .iso files from.

Have tried this myself and it runs ok.

My processor is only a 2.4 quad core and it runs quite slowly with some games but it more than playable with others if you play with the settings.

Well I played Final Fantasy XII and it ran mostly fine (some FPS drops in some intense situations) on my few years old system. Only notable problems were that some town textures were missing (they worked in software mode but game was unplayable due to low FPS. Problem with my harware or hardware emulation? Dunno.) and there must've have been memory leak(s) as performance deterioted over time. Neither was a major problem really and only problem was adabting PS2 pad controlls to keyboard and getting used to them (had serious trouble with the special attacks but again not that of a major problem as I could kill anything without using them. It merely took more time whereas speacial attacks/combos could kill even bosses with single hit.). Should get back to it at some point (was only about thrid way thru the game). Stange thing is that newer version had worse performance no matter what I tried so I reverted back to r1888 I had been using before.

Oh, right there was slight sound problems as well.

Well, actually, using, or at the least making an emulator is pretty much gray legally I think. I never could force myself to read the WHOLE Lincese agreement of the PS, but it was very unforgiving for any kind of third party software. I don't remember if it mentioned emulating specifically, but I doubt they would happen to like the idea.


Before even starting, you should check wether the game would run at all! The PCSX2 website has a very useful compatibility list. Most games are playable by now, but best to be sure.
As for the emulation: Well it IS very uneffective, so you'll need a far more powerful machine for playing a graphically demanding game (don't be fooled though, graphically demanding games mostly use a hellish amount of processing time, a good graphic card is only needed if you want to play on increased resolution, and from what I've seen, the important part is the video memory). For example FFXII, Personas, etc. Old games, on the other hand might work with slower PCs. This is not neccessarily true though, so don't expect anything. It depends on how unorthodox the game's programming is (for example, it took the developers a very long time to get Tri-Ace games running, and Star Ocean 3 is kind of slow and you never know when it will just stop,) or so I've heard.

Also, don't forget to update the plugins for the emulator, or if the game is completely unplayable still, or shows some very strange graphical bug, then try to search around for compatibility issues with specific settings and plugins. Also, you can play around with hacks, and there are some (though less and less as the development proceeds) game specific hacks. If the game is not very unstable, glitchy, just slow as hell, then be sure to use speed hacks. They are a bit risky, but not that much as to avoid using them. If the game runs fine without them, then no need, but that is highly unlikely at the moment.

I say, if you have a PS2 that isn't on the verge of death, use it instead for now. PCSX2 works fine, but you'll have a lot of work with it and that doesn't guarantee that you will get your game working. I was not so fortunate, so I use it nowdays instead of poor PS2.

Ah, and you can use the plugin called "lilypad" and you can use a controller. If you have a dualshock 3 controller and say a 64 bit windows, then use motioninjoy (google).

For certain games (Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and others) PCSX2 runs very well even on my C2D T6400@2,00 GHz, so it's the way to go.

Emulation legality? Oh please, not this kind of bullshit again :-P

If ya want to go the "100% legal" way, just buy the original games, dump the disc image, then get proper BIOS image files. You can download the same version you got on your physical PS2, or dump it directly from the console (search around, I'm sure there are plenty of ways to do that almost effortlessly)...