PC Gamers Rejoice, Almost Every PS2 Game is Playable For No Cost

As someone who adores the classics with an extensive physical collection of retro video games, emulation has always been a bit of a mixed bag for me.

Emulation can very quickly become piracy if it’s not done right, but when you follow the right pathways it can unearth thousands of hidden gems, each one polished with the latest PC hardware.

Before we go any further let it be clear that downloading a game ROM and using it with an emulator is piracy, and illegal. What’s not illegal is using your own physical copy that you’ve bought yourself and using that to upload a ROM onto your PC.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s jump into some good news. Nearly all PlayStation 2 games can now be run on a PC, through the emulator PCSX2.

I grew up on the PlayStation 2 and while I did own some of the must-play games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Shadow of the Colossus I tended to have the most fun on the weirder, lesser known games.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (yes that’s the full title) is one such game, as was Godzilla: Save the Earth and Rocky: Legends.

I could lift these games off my shelf right now and plug in my PlayStation 2, but if I’m only going to be playing them for around an hour at most to relive some nostalgic memories, why go to all of the trouble?

Fortunately PCSX2 now supports, via Overclock3D, 99.5% of PlayStation 2 games, making it the perfect option for those who have their own collection of games and fancy a trip down memory lane.

Aside from just running the games the emulator also modernises them, mainly the visuals and performance. The graphics tend to look a bit crisper but not enough to ruin the overall aesthetic as those games obviously weren’t made for such technologically superior displays. PCSX2 also boosts the performance significantly, so less time waiting on loading screens.

Just this week, the team behind PCSX2 released PCSX2 2.6.0; their latest patch that’s taken almost six months to finalise bringing about improved performance for those using the emulator.

It’s worth checking out if you can legally enjoy it, and it’s actually encouraging me to track down copies of other PlayStation 2 games I played as a kid but sold as I grew up, in addition to titles I never got around to playing as a child or an adult. Car boot sales here we come.

I know the purists out there see emulation as a sin, and I think I’ll always prefer playing on the original hardware, but as long as it can be done legally it definitely has its perks.