PS2 Emulations hits major milestones with PCSX2 2.0
PCSX2 version 2.0 has landed, and it can emulate 99% of the PlayStation 2’s game library
A new era of PlayStation 2 emulation has arrived, PCSX2 2.0 is here, and it delivers major improvements to the popular emulator. It has been four years since the release of PCSX2 1.6, the last stable version of the emulator. Since then, PCSX2 has changed a lot. Big picture mode has arrived! Emulator Plugins are no more, and both performance and compatibility have improved tremendously.
Now is a great time to play PlayStation 2 games on modern hardware. Currently, the emulator is available on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, making the most accurate PlayStation 2 emulator available to most modern gamers.
Major Performance Gains with PCSX2 2.0
Alongside the emulator’s updated UI, improved visual/audio support, and automatic game fixes, PCSX2’s performance has received a huge boost with update 2.0. Thanks to improvements to blending, features like “Fastmem”, and more, previously hard to emulate PlayStation 2 games now run well on modern PCs. In some cases, performance gains of over 10x are possible over version 1.6. That’s an insane level of advancement!
99% Game Compatibility
PCSX2 currently has over 99% of the PlayStation 2’s library listed as “Perfect” or “Playable”. Many of the emulator’s unsupported games use unusual accessories or make bizarre use of the PlayStation 2’s hardware. That said, pretty much all of the PlayStation 2’s best games are playable though emulation, with many being playable at higher resolutions and framerates than their original PS2 versions.
PCSX2 is available to download for free as open-source software. However, the emulator needs a PS2 BIOS to run. If you own a PS2, this BIOS will be easy to acquire. Note, that it is not legal to download a PS2 BIOS online. Like all modern emulators, PCSX2 isn’t a piracy tool, it is a game preservation tool. Users are expected to use their own PS2 BIOS and games with this emulator.
You can join the discussion on PCSX2 version 2.0 on the OC3D Forums.
