The Vintage Gaming Network

Due to how young Playstation 2 emulation is there are not currently any emulators that are capable of fully running retail titles at full speed. One emulator, called PCSX2 is capable of running some retail games, and homebrew demos. However, even though PCSX2 is easily the best Playstation 2 emulator available for any platform, and the only known emulator to run retail games, the speed of this emulator is still quite slow (on today’s PCs). PCSX2’s emulator compatibility isn’t overly high either. However, the mere fact that Playstation 2 emulators exists, and PCSX2 is even capable of running retail games is an amazing accomplishment, especially when you see the tech specs of the Playstation 2 listed below. All emulators below are considered works-in-progress. Due to their development stage many of these emulators may exhibit stability issues with commercial titles. The Sony Playstation 2 was released at various times in the year 2000 around the world, with Japan getting the system first was in the generation with the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube. Many consider the Playstation 2 to be the most successful of the three. One of the best things about the Playstation 2, and one of the things that caught my interest when this console was released was the ability of the Playstation 2 to play all of the previously release Playstation (PSX) games. The graphics were very similar to the previously released Sega Dreamcast, but the Playstation 2 completely crushed the Dreamcast when it came to popularity, games, and sales, which eventually led to the Dreamcast being discontinued and Sega withdrawing from the hardware market. The most popular game of all time for the Playstation 2 is surprisingly not Gran Turismo or any of the Final Fantasy games, but rather Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. One Playstation 2 emulator, PCSX2 is capable of running San Andreas, abeit at very slow speeds. Of course, I loved GTA:SA as well, but played it on my PC instead, simply because the graphics and sound were superior to the Playstation 2’s. The Playstation 2 has the following tech specs:

• CPU: Emotion Engine 300MHz, 128-bit INT, 128-bit FP, 24KB L1, 16KB Scratch, 8KB VU0, 32KB VU1, 450 MIPS, 6.2 GFLOPS, 66M Vertices/Sec, 2.4 GB/s Internal, 1.2 GB/s Graphics, 3.2 GB/s Memory
• Graphics: Sony GS 150MHz, 1.2G Texels/Sec, 32-bit Color, 4MB (48 GB/s), 1.2 GB/sec Bus
• Sound: SPU2, 48 2D Voices, ADPCM, 2MB
• Data: 24MB (2.6 GB/s), 16MB (81 MB/s), 4.7GB Discs, Expansion 56K Modem Ethernet:

Playstation 2 Emulators