Playing PS2 games on a PC

saluedo

Is there any way to play PS2 games on a PC direct from a disk? I have a decent emulator but just thought there must be a way of going direct from the disk and not having to find a BIOS.

Myrddin

The BIOS is required for the emulator itself, its nothing to do with the disc or iso image you will be loading. The emulator will need this to run, and will not be bundled with the emulator itself.

You will have to search the web yourself to find one, generally there will be one for each region of PS2.

Retr0gamer

You'll need a bios to play the games, no way of doing it without one.

saluedo

Thanks for that. It's killing me having the games but not being able to play them.

Overheal

should be grand too with a good enough PC. 2 yr old laptop can about competently emulate PS1.

Roar

hmmm... have been wanting to play shadow of the colossus again, but no backwards compatability in my ps3 makes roar a sad panda.

and i found a ps2 pad converter type thing at home the other day so maybe it's a sign to do it on the pc!

Myrddin

The BIOS files are out there and freely available if you know where to look. Obviously nobody here is going to link to them or say where to get them, but do your homework and you'll find them.

In terms of PS2 emulation - how far has it actually come? Are commercial games very playable now? I remember when I looked into it ages ago the emu's could only run some commercial software with limited capability.

Retr0gamer

One of my mates is playing some PS2 games via emulator and says it works pretty well.

TomCo

I tried playing Katamari Damacy on one of the more advanced emulators last summer. It was close to playable, but glitching and general weirdness stopped progress by the 3rd/4th level.

Would be interesting to see where the community is at the moment.

Mister Man

Can you do this with Xbox 360 games by any chance?

D4RK ONION

Not a hope in hell I'm afraid

K.O.Kiki

Mister Man wrote: »

Can you do this with Xbox 360 games by any chance?

Related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlMGQcxrlHU

Overheal

Mister Man wrote: »

Can you do this with Xbox 360 games by any chance?

afaik All of the emulation is done via CPU, which simulates Virtual Hardware. Youd need a pretty med to high grade processor to pull this off for a PS2. I dont even thing its possible for a 360 yet, no. Never seen one for xbox either, and Dreamcast was well ahead of its time.

Like I said, I can do PSX on a Dual Core CPU (2ghz) reasonably well, and most things are playable. But youd still know in the back of your head that it was acting sluggish if you put it side by side with a PSX console. For that matter, theres still a fair number of ancient cartridge games (Mario RPG, Megaman X etc) Which have just never, ever emulated all that well. ROMs frequently perform differently to their real world counterparts. Its why I went to the trouble of refurbishing an old SNES console.

Retr0gamer

You are a bit behind the times there. Mario RPG and Megaman X3 (I presume you mean X3 with the extra chipset that pulls off the polygon effects since X is perfect) have been emulated perfectly for a few years now. PSX emulation can be pulled off on processors less than 1Ghz quite easily and there's only a few games that cause trouble which can be fixed with plugins. I'm pretty sure there's xbox emulators and that they work reasonably well, I haven't been keeping track really, and there is a Gamecube emulator that can run Wii games perfectly and in 1080p on top hardware.

The 360 won't be emulated for quite some time. The architecture should be abig challenge to emulate especially with it having multiple cores since this always causes problems (just look at Saturn emulation, only possible recently at decent speeds and there's still lots of problems).

bugs

The chap who coded the 'pSX' emulator was working on adding ps2 emulation but since pSX hasn't been updated in a long time, its looking unlikely.

I've tried a few ps2 games, some work well (final fantasy 12), others are either buggy or unplayable, but ultimately its not quite as far a long as the older systems. Compatibility lists are available for ps2 specific emulators so you can get an idea what you can expect.

pSX does a good job of running ps1 games without having to mess with plugins or setup options. Granted its an attempt at running these games as they were originally meant to look, so if you like to increase resolution or add filters, look elsewhere.

Retr0gamer

Best PS2 emulator is still the PS2 slim

animaX

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Best PS2 emulator is still the PS2 slim

Exactly! Seriously, how much would it cost to pick up a second hand ps2 these days? Adverts.ie is littered with them

CutzEr

Not a viable option for many (including myself) in relation to ports etc.

animaX

CutzEr wrote: »

Not a viable option for many (including myself) in relation to ports etc.

What do you mean by ports?

tuxy

animaX wrote: »

What do you mean by ports?

Imports?

animaX

tuxy wrote: »

Imports?

Yeah that's what I thought. But imports can be played easily with a swap-disk or the harddrive-adaptor methods? God, they can even be played from a usb loader!

Retr0gamer

You are much better off doing the HD exploit or usb loader trick as well. Not only does it speed up loading times it also stops you getting laser wear which the badly made PS2 is very succeptible to.