New PS2 Emulator Appears to Be Imminent on PS5, PS4

Nice --would be cool if they add more-- how about Siren 2, Kuon, Fatal Frame 1,2,3(yes these were in PS3 but now for PS4/5 with trophy support), hell add in The Bouncer as well, I'd kill for the PS2 versions of FFX and X-2 they had the better high res faces during cutscenes..

Awesome, its amazing how poorly PS1 games have aged, but the PSP titles released so far have been pretty good, so id imagine the PS2 should be good also

Champions of Norrath and Summoner 2 here I come!

Oh thank god, the PS2 is the main draw for the retro offerings. Improved emulation means more viable games to add to the service. Although I guess PS2 support for RetroAchievements has made unofficial emulation the more fun prospect!

Let’s hope it’s true. A cool forgotten gem I’d like to see them include in PS Plus could be “Shadow of Memories”; I remember playing that as a kid and thinking it was super weird, but interesting too. I’d also appreciate having the Sly Cooper trilogy, which I know is available on streaming but it’s not the same thing imo.

just transfer all those ps3 psn digital games to ps4 ps5.

With Sony nothing is free.... chances are it will be part of a PSPlus price hike.

@get2sammyb the getaway games would be awesome. Screw licences

@get2sammyb I managed to platinum the Ratchet series through the streaming of the PS3 versions but they’re sort of terribly broken so the PS2 versions would be better. There’s honestly loads of games that were never topped by their later ports, could add the Silent Hill games, GTA San Andreas, Super Monkey Ball Deluxe etc. It’s a bizarre situation with that gen where multiplats sometimes played and looked better on Xbox or the Cube but the PS2 exclusives ported to the next-gen were often worse than the original versions. I’m sure somebody can correct me but if I remember right, there’s a story there about Xbox mandating DirectX over OpenGL, which I know GTA SA used for sure, meaning later versions just do not stack up against the original with things like the grass textures.

question is what will happen to the old ps2 games already on ps4 using the old emulator. will they be updated ? or will you have to pay for a new version

Fahrenheit indigo prophecy
Resident evil code veronica

I just wish they put some effort into their classic library. I'd love to buy some PS1 and PSP games but there's barely anything there to get.

Simpson hit and run.

Give me Ape Escape 3, ICO, Wild ARMS: Alter Code F and God of War 1 & 2 already, Sony.

Sonic, Mortal Kombat, Rayman, The Sims, Power Rangers, Harry Potter and The Simpsons.

Keen to see what games come up. I love the ps1 releases but tired of the drip feed. Also with disney releasing stuff like Toy Story 2 and Phantom Menace maybe we'll get ps2 games like Punisher, Simpsons hit and run, Nightmare before Christmas etc

I'am willing to bet that sony's own ips will still be the only games with trophy support unless sony makes 3rd party devs add them.

Burnout 3:Takedown!

Here's hoping for Burnout 3 Takedown and Dark Cloud 2

@MadCaptain2207 This just kicked me in the nostalgia - I loved that mad game!

I would love SOCOM and there was a game called Black which I loved back in the day too.

As a lifelong JRPG enthusiast, I can think of a good few. But I’d really need them to be given trophy support and that’s very hit and miss.

Assuming namco still thinks a xenosaga trilogy remaster wouldn't be profitable, this could probably be it's best chance of ever being playable on a modern system. Here's hoping for the impossible

And shadow hearts while we're at it

The terrible ps2 version of Max Payne on the store would massively benefit from this.

I hate to be ungrateful (proceeds to be ungrateful 😅) but I hope after this emulator Sony considers a PS3 emulator for PS5 at least as I doubt PS4 has the power. I dream of a single box that will be able to play PS5/4/3/2/1/PSP/Vita locally!

Hopefully this means PS4 will eventually get Wild Arms: Alter Code F, Wild Arms 4, Wild Arms 5, Grandia Extreme, Grandia III, Gungriffon Blaze, and Sylpheed: The Lost Planet courtesy of this emulation since Wild Arms are second party titles, and Game Arts & Media Vision actually supported the PS3 pretty well with PSOne and PS2 Classics!

Here's hoping for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 will come after their remakes were shelved 😮‍💨

Sounds cool, but for the love of dog, let us purchase them individually, like the PS1 games they've been sprinkling on there

@BrotherFriede As far as I know you can already play Dark Cloud 2, it's called Dark Chronicle - which I think is its European title.

I don't care your remaster, redesign, rerelease, re-, re, re, re... Sony. Just sell me PS2 emulator, and games leave on me. My PS2 shelf is full of discs.

Heres hoping that shadow hearts finally gets released after being rumoured being one of the early games before going poof because of the spotty old emulator, but then again Dino crisis hasn’t showed up yet so who knows

Champions of Norrath 1 & 2, Legacy of Kain series, Evergrace, LotR: The Third Age, Ring of Red, Summoner, Shadow Hearts would all be welcome additions.

Evergrace mainly because its that game i remember having when I was younger but being very confused by at the time.

If emulators have been added to the iOS store, why can't we have them on the Playstation store

Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect

That is all.

Good for anyone interested. Personally, I can't stand ps1/ps2 graphics. NES graphics are fine, though.

It won’t happen because of licenses, but damn give me GT4!

@Swizzle You definitely can, it's in my backlog bought and ready to eventually play!

They need to work on a PS3 emulator.

Streaming PS3 games absolutely sucks. PCs can emulate PS3 very well these days and they own the IP and should have privileged access to sources.

@djlard that's a good idea, but what if they charge £70 for it?

@nessisonett Recently set up a MiniPC with Batocera for exactly that. Plays PS2 bang on and managed to get most of the big WiiU titles running acceptably. 78 quid for the machine and having a right blast with the achievements. Building a cabinet or it's going in the camper I think.

@Vivisapprentice ps1 still has some very replayable survival horror games, racing games and of course jrpgs. Action games haven't aged well since most games didn't take advantage of the dual shock.

@Vivisapprentice also, if it's the visuals you mean give duckstation a shot. With wide-screen hacks, upscaled Res and geometry correction the games partially look like PS2 in HD. Ridge racer and wipeout for example.

Make the PS5 pro backwards compatible with PS2, PSone. I will buy it in a heartbeat.

I would love if Sony can get Shadow Hearts, Haunting Ground, and Rule of Rose because the price of physical copy for these games are ridiculously high. Shadow Hearts at $100+, Rule of Rose almost touch $1K, and Haunting Ground at $400-500.

Ar Tonelico would be awesome

Drakengard pleeeeeeaaaaaase, do it.

I just want the first 2 Infamous games on ps4/5. I've only ever been able to play them through psnow and it was horrible.

N.i.c.e its about time.ps2 got a lot of excellent games.we will see.word up son

Sadly looks like it'd be still be more cost effective to get a good working order CECHA00 PS3 and use GSM to do upscaling. Sure, you don't get rewinds and save states but to be fair it'd probably work out cheaper in the long run assuming the PS3 doesn't nuke itself and die of GPU failure.

As the hardware PS2emu binary on PS3 doesn't encrypt it's memory cards (the software emu used for PS2 classics does, although it's easily defeated) you can backup and/or tinker with your saves easily if that's your thing.

To me still a better deal than dropping a fair amount of money annually on PS Plus Premium, as I paid £180 for my CECHA00 PS3 and that's just under what two years of Premium costs if bought in 12 month increments, plus you can play almost the entire PS2 library as compatibility is about 99%, and obviously any and all PS3 titles that never got ported to PS4/PS5, which is loads. No cloud streaming lag either.

Basically the best solution still dates back to 2006. I've been playing Burnout 3 among others that you can't get from PS Store (music rights on all the 2000s era songs are probably the issue) with it upscaled to 1080i for HDTVs. The original PS2 with Component and therefore the version of it built into the original PS3s (Component or HDMI) can be forced into 1080i mode, among others, which can look really sharp and clean when combined with running a game's native progressive mode if it has one (for whatever reason 480p upscaled to 1080i via GSM homebrew looks a lot sharper than the PS3 using it's own inbuilt PS2 scaling to do 1080i/p).

Dandy. Sony needs to do two things with this:

1.) All those PS1/PS2 classics we bought digitally on PS3 need to be restored to us and playable on PS4/PS5.

2.) Let me buy the emulator on PSN so that I can use my PS1 and PS2 discs that I already bought.

These two things are far too consumer-friendly, so I seriously doubt they happen.

The Xenosaga trilogy please.

About time, their existing PS2 emulator is dreadful. Personally I don't even care about save states and rewind, just having the games play as good as they did on the PS2 would be a step forward for them

Grand theft auto liberty stories and grand theft auto vice city stories.cold fear.scarface the world is yours.black.maximo.onimusha.etcso many ps2 games.word up son

@zekepliskin Sadly, you're right. The other option is of course emulation. The 95nm RSX in the launch PS3s is so fundamentally flawed that a system expected to last more than a few years after repair should have the 'Frankenstein' RSX repair done to it.

Unfortunately the service is about $500 for the reputable places I've seen offer it - and that's if you already have the broken console. For that price, you can get an off lease SFF PC with a competent i7 CPU, a low profile GPU, a solid state drive, and an 8-Bitdo adapter for seamless DS4 functionality. You'd have yourself an excellent emulation PC, especially neat if you added an optical drive. Not hard to set it up so that you can just pop in your discs and launch them.

@IntrepidWombat For some titles they did do cross generation Classics - Bully springs to mind as you can get it as a PS2 Classic on PS3, or the same on PS4/PS5 via backwards compatibility (a PS5 is playing the PS4 version of the PS2 game emu basically). It doesn't really play any better than the original PS2 game running on a hardware compatible PS3 with the PS2 custom chips inside. And also PS3 and PS4 versions are seperate purchases, pretty sure.

None of the PlayStation versions are as good as the Xbox 360 version which is the expanded Scholarship Edition and runs at a stable 30FPS with better visuals due to the excellent Xbox backwards compatibility, or better still a hacked version of the PC port of the same which can be forced to 60FPS pretty easily with very few issues.

@tameshiyaku

Nah, just more the controls, 3d games designed to be controlled with the d pad just don't play well in this day and age hence why the psp titles have aged better

@IntrepidWombat Yeah you have to shop around to get a "low mileage" Us/Japan launch PS3 but it is possible. I got one with less than 50 days uptime which is low, and it had an easy life which I know because I opened it to clean and change the thermal paste and it was super clean inside, very little dust. Basically it was always used to play karaoke games which are very low stress on the RSX especially.

Custom firmware is a godsend because it allows you to raise the base speed of the fan from boot in both PS3 and PS2 modes - stock is 20% which is very bad if you launch PS2 games from a cold boot as it fixes the fan speed rather than working on a temperature based curve so the RSX can roast in the 80°c range, something custom firmware allows you to get around by setting something more sensible like 40% for PS2 mode. Mine rarely gets above 67°c for PS3 games, and rarely above 60°c for PS2emu mode.

I agree the other way is to get a gaming PC rig and offload the upscaling to a decent graphics card, the improvement in PS3 emulation on PC is impressive but comes at a price, obviously. ISOs running from an SSD on either PC or PS3 can drastically drop load times so that's a good move too.

@Vivisapprentice agree on that. That's why the games with pre rendered backgrounds or top down camera still work today unlike things like Spyro or Syphon Filter.

@Sevenifity its alot more difficult then you think, a lot of the devs that did port over ps3 games to ps4 pretty much said they had to rework the game from the ground up to get it to work. pretty much because the game was based off of the custom hardware that sony used to go with back then.

@AhmadSumadi
Man, I loved Champions of Norrath!

I'd play Ico again.

@SirRealDeal Yeah, why hasn't that been remastered, a la SotC?

I'd play Stuntman again.

All i ask is to be allowed to play the colony wars trilogy either upscaled or remastered. One of the best space combat series ever and seriously under appreciated.

If we could buy most major Ps2 games without streaming I would be all over that

@MattBoothDev Playing them without streaming would be a huge upgrade

@MadCaptain2207 i loved shadow of memories, i remember unlocking every single ending. Did you know the writer of that game did another game called Time Hollow, but i think it's only on DS.

@PuppetMaster i sold my PS2 when I had so few games left to justify keeping it, as a lot of them had gotten so rare that I wasn't too bothered about that I kept selling them! The last few included Shadow Hearts 1.

My wishlist would be -

Shadow Hearts 1
Atelier Iris 2
Escape from Monkey island (even if i do have it on pc)
Timesplitters 2+3

Im sure there's more of course

Better late than never, I suppose.

X-Men Legends II pweas 🥺

Dogs Life.
Amplitude.
Rise to Honour.

@lessthanleo £78 to get up to Wii U working is a bargain!

@BecauseBecause I didn't know that...! I looked up the game after seeing your comment and it sounds like the writer was still messing around with the whole alternative time concept. Thanks for sharing, I love this kind of videogame trivia haha

@djlard Same. I traded in my PS2 to buy a PS2 Slim but then I never bought the Slim and I have a shelf full of PS2 discs. I’ve tried a few of the PC emulators over the years but it’s not the same. Don’t think I’d pay to buy the games again but I would pay for software to play all those discs on PS5. They should make that a selling point for PS5 Pro, it plays PS2 discs.😎

Too me it's too little too late. I had high hopes for the emulated older games but they only games were classics Sony titles and almost no third party games. I suspect the ps2 emulator will be the same.

C'mon, Ape Escape 3, so I can have the whole trilogy on my PS4!!!

the old medal of honor and james bond games

What about ps3? I want to play classic Top Spin, not the actual game that is a *****.

@MrBrownSword i forgot about dogs life!

I used to run a videogame shop, and this kid came up to me and asked "excuse me, how do i poo?" And I said "uh well, it just comes naturally!". He looked puzzled, "nooo, i bought dogs life off you last week!"

I liked that game, but the music was incredibly annoying so I'd mute the game on replays and play some music!

I'd probably keep an eye out for games with good reputations that I somehow missed back in the day. It's nice to have some retro options available so I can keep avoiding all the current gen live service crap.

@trev666 my guess is that they’ll just leave those titles alone since they are already available.

A shame racing games have licensing issues. Imagine getting trophies for Gran Turismo 1, 2, 3 and 4, I'd be in Gran Turismo heaven

My #1 most wanted game since I discovered I could buy PS2 games on PS4 has been SSX Tricky, one of the most amazing games made. I would cry if they add it with trophy support- it is an all time classic ❣️

Man I LOVE to see the two Getaway games get posted with trophy support of course

@get2sammyb What licenses issues are you referring too?

@BecauseBecause I managed to buy a copy sometime last year, still sealed up.
It was very surreal opening a brand new PS2 game in 2023.
Inside were Dogs Life stickers along with adds for old clamshell phones and a subscription leaflet for the Official Playstation magazine.
It took me way back!

@Beerheadgamer82
It'd be like they're brand new again.... I've got a PS2 slim set up in my conservatory so I do still have a go on GT4 every now and then.
It's the absolute pinnacle of Gran Turismo's single player experience in my opinion.

@get2sammyb @trev666 I bought a bunch of the PS2 games that they made for PS4. So the emulation is really bad and they probably will stay that way? Are they any better on PS5?

@Gamer_X The PS1/PS2 classics can be purchased without the need to subscribe btw.

Click bait award 2024. I wish game journalists could learn what an emulator actually is. Having a version of an old game that has been modified to run on modern hardware, does not an emulator make. A true PS2 emulator would be a stand alone program that we'd load up then put PS2 discs into our PlayStations to play through the emulator. Best case would actually be an emulator added to the PlayStation OS.

I know it's a pipe dream, but I would like to see any of the good but expensive PS2 games available. Shadow Hearts, Haunting Ground, Steambot Chronicles, Wild Arms Alter Code F, etc.

@MattBoothDev Still cheaper than new (working) PS2 machine.

I hate see Disney releasing retro games that i don't care about, i want Marvel vs Capcom Saga please.

@MrBrownSword Agreed GT4 certainly is the pinnacle of GT single player career. All numbered Gran Turismo titles career mode have their own depth to them but GT4 came from a different planet depth wise, took it to a different insane level

As a big Star Ocean fan, although I’m thankful we have a port of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time on PS4 and PS5, I will admit that it would be nice to see an improved emulated version of it. Save states and rewind could count as good quality of life improvements for the classic PS2 game. And while I didn’t encounter the game crashing on either my PS4 or my PS5 other than maybe a couple times, I have heard that for other people the port of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time crashes for them frequently, which is worrisome.

I hope we can possibly get a new PS2 emulated port of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time on PS4 and PS5, mostly so that hopefully the crashing issues can be fixed, but also for the other benefits of the modern emulated titles Sony releases nowadays.

As of right now, I’m super happy that all 6 mainline Star Ocean games are available to play on PS5 and PS4. Considering it’s more of a niche franchise, I honestly never thought I’d see the day when all 6 of them are available on a single platform. If they can release an updated version of Till the End of Time on PS5 and PS4, then modern PlayStation will be the perfect place for fans of the Star Ocean series.

As for other potential PS2 games I might like to see on PS4 and PS5:

• Radiata Stories
• Tales of the Abyss
• Drakengard
• SSX 3
• Gran Turismo 3
• Gran Turismo 4
• The movie tie in game for Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

@Martijn87 Yes! Oh my goodness; that would be a dream come true! I still have all my PS1 and PS2 discs in pretty good condition. I doubt it’ll happen, but wouldn’t it be absolutely amazing if it somehow did?

And if they somehow found a way to support PS3 discs as well (although that might be the hardest one of all for them to do, regarding the PS3’s unique architecture), oh man. That would also get me to buy a PS5 Pro in a heartbeat!

The getaway and the getaway black Monday hopefully

@BecauseBecause I would keep those PS2 copies if i were you. We still not yet have port / remaster of:

• Xenosaga eps 1-3
• Shadow Hearts / Covenant / From The New World
• Front Mission 4 & 5
• Ace Combat 0, 4, & 5
• Tenchu 3
• Onimusha 2, 3, Dawn of Dreams
• Ratchet like tons of them
• ICO
• Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4
• Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria
• GOW 1 & 2
• Suikoden 3, 4, 5, and Tactics
  And more PS2 games that probably Sony or 3rd party wouldn't bother to port / remaster for current gen console >.<

I've wanted Clone Wars 2002 to be available for a while now. I haven't come across an Xbox copy yet.

Otherwise eh anything big or small whatever is possible to make supported.

Or just PSP versions.

Listen. Okay? Just... if anything, include these games and we're square. Please?

Ratchet & Clank series
Silent Hill 2 - 4
Ape Escape 2 (USA) and 3 (Since Konami is finally being nice)
Dragon Quest VIII (With QoL updates, maybe??)
Crash Twinsanity
Marvel Vs Capcom 2
Timesplitters 1, 2, Future Perfect

@AhmadSumadi off course with no bugs 😉

@Sevenifity they've reserved it for ps6

@MattBoothDev reserved for ps6. They do these very slowly

@IntrepidWombat then how can they milk us?

I assume the downloaded PS2 games will take up a good amount of space? Hopefully they will be available to purchase outside of paywall premium subscription. Still annoyed that Nintendo shifted their retro games offerings to a subscription paywall with no option to purchase.

@get2sammyb Getaway is is a Sony game right? What about licenses? Did I miss something?

@djlard I have two, a Phat with the (official) network adapter and a SATA drive and a slim with a dodgy disc drive 😁

@MattBoothDev I've lend mine to a friend, but forgotten which one... 🤦

I hope that prompts for more games to be ported. God hand and the drakenguard games would be great.

@MrBrownSword Amplitude yaaas!

I'll still keep my PS2 console even if they did because of the slowness of getting them on the store due to all the licensing rights and red tape. I think games that are 20 years old should be excluded from such a thing

@GrimWillows No, Killzone did not have a full on remake and they did not lose the assets. They were found prior to the PS3 "Remaster". It's just an "HD" port. Not a full on remake at all.

I think Ridge Racer V is realistic. Namco already put out Type 4 (PS1) and RR2 (PSP) just recently.

And it would be my dream release tbh.
Too bad third party releases never support trophies on the PS1 releases. Maybe they change that for the new PS2 run.

EVERY SILENT HILL PS2 GAME OMG. Yes, right through to Downpour thank you very much. They’re the sole reason I still have my silver PS2 Slim. 🙀🌟

@itsfoz Black was awesome, I barely remember anything other than how much fun I had playing it and how hard it was… would be really interesting to see how it’s aged having forgotten so much

I take it you can use your own original disks like Xbox.

@PuppetMaster for the Ratchet games, you can play the original PS2 games via the PS3 HD Collection they did, which is a very good way of playing them... But then you need a PS3 😐

@MattBoothDev I still have a PS3 but i can't find the PS3 HD collection on my local stores. Looks like the only way to get it is through ebay or amazon.

@PuppetMaster ... There's another way. PS3 has since been abandoned so homebrew is an option.

I think you can still buy it on the store on PS3 as well.

I would like to see YU-GI-OH capsule monsters come to PS4/PS5

I wonder if that means we could put PS2 discs into the PS5 and play whatever we want.

Great news, I hope this means we could see Wild Arms 4 and 5 on PS4/PS5.

And maybe a PS5 version of WA3.

Would love a PS3 emulator as well but I guess that's too difficult.

It sounds great but, I doubt there will be any new digital games available that have not been available on the ps3. And most classics ps1/ps2 games have been remastered for HD consoles so I do question the value of what is likely to be a limited selection of ps2 games. If a wide selection of ps2 titles were available including titles that are not available digitally or a remastered version then I would be very interested in the ps2 classics. What I personally want to see on the ps+ premium tier are the ps1/2 Tales of games along with the Xenosega trilogy.

Dynasty warriors 3 Please !!!