PlayStation 3 Back Catalogue Can Be Played For Free, Comes With Legal Warning

The first public build of RPCS3, arguably the best PlayStation 3 emulator, has finally been made available to download – and it’s free.

For those who aren’t technically minded, RPCS3 will allow you to run PlayStation 3 games on PC effectively, but it does come with one major legal caveat.

Emulators are legal, but you cannot use them with pirated software.

Any games you feed into RPCS3, you will need to outright own. As you’ll be transferring PlayStation 3 games onto a PC, that means you’ll need physical legitimate disc copies of any games that are of interest to you.

Needless to say, you won’t find those in many retailers these days; secondhand sites will be your best port of call if you don’t already have an extensive retro gaming collection. Yes, the PlayStation 3 is retro these days.

Downloading a game ROM and using it with an emulator is piracy, so please do stay within the confines of the law folks.

Revisit the classics

It’s a nice way to revisit some classic PlayStation 3 titles for those who are willing to give this a go.

It’s literally as simple as downloading RPCS3 and running your owned discs through it, unlocking a bunch of old favourites to play on your PC in the process.

RPCS3 is totally free to download; the only cost involved is whatever you may spend on picking up additional secondhand physical PS3 games.

You can also purchase games through the PlayStation Store if you do want to venture down the digital route; a full guide to using the emulator is available on the RPCS3 website.

By All Accounts, It Works Remarkably Well

I haven’t given the emulator a whirl myself as I can’t really say dabbling which such things is really for me.

The good folks at DSOGaming have though, reporting that RPCS3 works very well.

The site’s John Papadopoulos notes that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception are both playable, as is God of War 3 which they claim runs “better than ever”.

Metal Gear Solid 4 reportedly retains a few glitches, with the demanding Killzone 2 also experiencing some drops.

Clearly, there’s still some work to do to fully optimise RPCS3, but this is a great start.

I’m sure you have your own PlayStation 3 favourites you’re hoping to revisit. If you do give this one a go, just make sure you stick to the rules outlined above.