Sony's new PlayStation 2 emulator tested - and it's another disappointing effort

Sony is wasting PS5's emulation potential through poor upscaling, disappointing filters and a profound lack of care for its classic PS2 and PSP titles.

[darthv72]

Its getting better. Im pretty stoked about the rumors of PS3 games hitting the PS5 outside of PS+ streaming. Would love to insert a 3 disc into my 5 and have it download the digital version to play.

[Snookies12]

It shouldn't be "getting better". It should be top-tier already. There are so many emulators out there that do the job far better on PC's (even for low end systems.) Those are made by random people as a hobby. There's no excuse for a company that made the actual system to do the bare minimum with stuff like this. That goes for Nintendo as well, because apparently Perfect Dark is a poor emulation, too.

[_SilverHawk_]

Some people don't understand how a proper business wants to work. A lot of people don't want to buy a lot of ps2 or ps3 games and have them work 70 percent of the time or crash a lot or have a lot of issues. It's OK to get emulators for free that works some of the time with a bunch of issues but sony would like to make emulators that works all the time with minimal issues. Imagine the outrage if Sony releases 80 percent of the ps3 library on ps5 and millions of people are constantly complaining about how majority of the games are crashing or freezing after they purchased a few games.

[MrBaskerville]

Sometimes people forget that these emulators have been under development for ages by several people. while sony is probably just paying 1-2 guys to do the same thing in a fairly short amount of time on a limited budget. They should put more in it, but if they atleast can achieve accuracy, that's a start.

[babadivad]

There are PS2 emulators that play games better than the original hardware. How is it possible that Sony can't get this right? The only conclusion I can come to is, they don't WANT to get it right.

[just_looken]

I like these comments darth and everyone else its like again 0 people ever used a playstation 3 in its first year.

Playstation 14 years ago had the best ps2 backwards compatible machine back in the launch era i played my ps2 games online via ps3 and even had ps1 support.

Right now i can grab my motorstorm ps3 toss in a ps2 game and output 720p no problem or just toss in the hd tomb raider collection that is uncensored and runs better then the trash that was just tossed out.

The ps5 has worse backwards compatibility than a launch ps3 which is just fn sad

https://youtu.be/WLacSye8Eo...

My launch ps3 playing ps1 games
1080p ps1 from my ps3 straight from the disc
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

13years ago disc goes in you hit play
https://youtu.be/C87EHqBtI3...

Today its well look you can move the avatar and wow its almost 720i sony is a goat lets rebuy all my ps2 games digitally.Just like nintendio every new console you are off to rebuy the same titles

[__y2jb]

That's because the launch ps3 had a ps2 CPU and GPU built in. It wasn't running emulation.

[VariantAEC]

PS5 doesn't have native PS1-PS3 BC. That's the difference dude and if you knew that you wouldn't have written what you did.

Xbox made 718 to 740 BC Xbox and Xbox 360 games work for Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles over almost 15 years. Only 61 original Xbox games are available via Xbox's BC program the rest are Xbox 360 titles.

PS had over 200 PS1 games and 59 PS2 games available for download on PS3 according to Wikipedia and none featured any enhancements whatsoever. Now they have 76 BC games across 3 platforms (including PSP now) on PS5 and all of them are enhanced in less than 4 years time and yet PS' output is poor?

As for PC emulation, that wasn't made for free. Devs have accepted donations for decades and it took decades to make all these emulators. Even PPSSPP (plus or pro or whatever the official non-free edition was called) on Android cost money back in the day, that was their donation - along with donating directly on their website. Even so does PPSSPP or any emulator offer rewind like Syrup Engine does? Sure PC emulation can be completely free for you, but everyone acts like it was free to make and came up over a couple years. I was in college when PCSX2 was still a totally broken piece of s••• emulator barely able to run any games at all. That was about 20 years ago! PCSX2 still doesn't run every PS2 game right at default settings.

Many gamers lack perspective, unfortunately.

[MrBaskerville]

@VariantAEC

Exactly. it's like why can't these new releases do the same as an emulator developed for 20 years?

[Mr Logic]

@__y2jb

A CFW PS3 with 0 PS2 hardware achieves PS2 BC for ~65% of the PS2 library.

[JEECE]

Two bad the vast majority of consumers in 2006-2007 voted with their wallets against having a PlayStation that could play every physical PlayStation Disc from every generation. Imagine if we had actually supported the launch PS3 and shown that the premium feature of native backwards compatibility was worth a premium price. Now we all whine about the lack of BC and game preservation, but when the chips were down people gave up the ability to play their entire old libraries so they could play Dead Rising and Gears of War.

[just_looken]

@VariantAEC
@ disagrees

They had software/hardware emulation on the launch ps3 console it depended on what you got the ps3 slim could also do ps2 games if modded.
https://youtu.be/BkHBEpiF9F...

My point stands we had all the ps2/ps1 backwards compatible over a decade ago that was way better than the crap on the ps5.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Oh that's sad I'm more like let's play ps2 emulator on PC tbh

[ApocalypseShadow]

Hit piece. Part of IGN Network huh?

This isn't PC. Where years of time was spent from gamers and garage developers, to make old school games look decent beyond the consoles they played on using emulation. You would think these PC graphic whore critics would know this.

It would be nice to make all old school games look great. But PS5 is not a PC. And Sony isn't going to spend their time on emulation when they mostly spend their time making new games, new content and supporting 3rd parties and indies that make new games. Be happy that PS5 is playing some of the old ones at all. Could have been none.

[VariantAEC]

Sony isn't spending much time on this. They seem to have contracted the developer Implicit Conversions to handle these BC ports to PS4 and PS5. If PS spent the time to do this themselves I'm sure they could do the same or better. The thing is this isn't native BC. It's just like Xbox and Nintendo emulation now; all in software. I am hopeful that PC is working on native PS3 BC, but I'm not going to hold my breath for it.

[Einhander1972]

These guys are full of crap, this is propaganda, A literal attempt to convince people PlayStation Plus isn't a good value.

The emulation looks good and plays great which is the important thing.

[Tacoboto]

Read it here, folks.

PS gamers should be blessed with low quality efforts, because... Wait for next E3.

[Hypertension140]

It's not a low quality effort, they added trophy support, save states, rewind, controller configurations per game, Microsoft doesn't offer any of that. All of these features for only $10/5 is more than worth it.

While I agree that the low resolution is disappointing, at least the games run solid and are bug free, im surprised Digital Foundry didn't talk about that.
They they instead brought up the performance issues of the PSP emulator, like they refused to say anything positive whatsoever.

[just_looken]

wow trophy support stop the press they added trophies.

Also btw microsoft with the xbox had achievement's decades ago they started that trend there old games from 360 have it day one. Were as sony not until end of 2008.So toss in your 360 disc play your xbox game get the achievement if that is your thing.

Or on playstation 5 toss in oh wait you can not toss in old disc's anymore forgot you guys like it rough now.

The bug free again 2006 we had that on the playstation 3 you and many many others are thanking sony for a inferior product they once had along with rebuying games.

[VariantAEC]

Low res? They're higher resolution than PS2 HD ports. Didn't *DF also mention that in this clip?
Everyone acts like this is all standard in emulation but it isn't. Most of these are mods and some just managed to work their way into the overlaying emu software which is why most emus offer per-game settings profiles.

No emulator is perfect we only hear about the pluses and never about the drawbacks.

Many console warriors are comparing PS5 BC to Xbox BC and I'm remining them that https://www.xbox.com/en-us/... shows only around 650 original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games were enhanced. Sounds great until you realize Xbox lists over 5,000 games as part of their BC program. Making matters much worse is only 39 of those enhanced games are original Xbox and Xbox 360 games... yeah... 39 not 390 just thirty-nine games!

PS5 already has 76 enhanced classic games (excluding PS4 games that are better when played on PS5).

See PS5 has true BC and Xbox Series consoles have Xbox One BC. True BC or native BC is debatable on Series consoles because many Xbox One games still required patches on first run to play which PS4 games did not need just to run on PS5.

Of MS' BC offerings most improved games are Xbox One games not Xbox and Xbox 360 games PER MICROSOFT XBOX themselves! So PS' official BC starts looking better. Additionally Nintendo has more games through VC on Switch than PS does, but most are 2D titles are are very easy to emulate. Nintendo's issue is forcing players to check in every week to play offline. You never really own Nintendo's BC games where PS allows you to buy them outright.

The only other real plus of Xbox's BC offering over PS and Nintendo is that you can play any supported BC game if you own the game disc and have an Xbox that can read discs and it's better than paying per game because some games aren't available to users who don't have the disc through Xbox's very convoluted BC system.

In the end the most complete native BC on console was on PS3. Will we ever see BC as good as PS3 on console again? Probably not, sadly. But PS is actually putting in a good effort now, though it looks insignificant next to Xbox's library of 718 Xbox and Xbox 360 BC games (again only 39 of those were enhanced) and Nintendo's own drip feed of ancient 2D games they rereleased over and over again since the Wii Virtual Console days.

[* DG -> DF no other edits]

[BrettAwesome]

No no. You got it backwards. Next E3 is when the Xbox will finally crush PS 😂😂😂
😂

[just_looken]

Right how dare xbox allow us to get a $5 ebay game too play on our xbox one with 0 issues boo right?

We need that $500 ps5 a internet connection and then buy a digital ps2 game to run at the same res but with tacked on crap no one cares about.

[Einhander1972]

But you haven't even seen the emulator for yourself.

The games look and play great.

And while I don't even agree with the video the previous emulators have had numerous updates since the new service launched. Again I don't even agree with this video but this is the very first set of PS2 games, I can guarantee you that this isn't the end of either the games being added or the emulator version.

[MASTER_RAIDEN]

We can sit here and talk about PlayStation and it’s disposition as a business all we want, but the results speak for themselves.

It’s crazy that billions of dollars are spent on games that continually miss the mark for a multitude of reasons, but when it comes to features that customers actually want, we’re seen as “entitled gamers” because we expect those features to work well. No one asked for a $300 million dollar remake of a single game when more than 20 years of classics remain totally inaccessible.

[VariantAEC]

If gamers wanted this... they would have purchased the BC PS3 more than the non-BC PS3. PS gamers voted with their wallets over 13 years ago now. Xbox and Nintendo didn't even give their customers an option, but in Xbox's defense they currently offer the largest library of BC games via emulation and if you own those game discs you can play the emulated versions at no extra cost.

In fact Nintendo comes out as the bad guy here because they don't even honor prior digital purchases which PS actually does. If you purchased all these BC games on Wii Wii U or 3DS you will pay for them again on Nintendo Switch by way of their subscription services. PS honors PSN Classics purchases from the PS3 era. I know I got some free BC games before upgrading to PS+P games that I purchased over a decade ago were upgraded at mo additional cost. I don't need to keep PS+P to keep many of the rereleased classics which is better than Nintendo's offering.

They all have their ups and downs including PC console emulation, but these are all the available options and ultimately console gamers opted not to pay for and use BC by and large. That's why PS removed it (aside from the fact that removing PS2 HW from PS3's motherboard shaved $180 off the manufacturing costs).

[X-23]

I recently played that Ghosthunter game via the emulator it was my first time using it and I enjoyed it, didn't seem bad at all honestly ... I'm sure it varies with games, but I think it holds up pretty well. Seems a little like he's just being overly critical, but that's just my opinion.

[gold_drake]

is it tho? cause ive seen comparisons with the ps3 remaster titles and they look really close.

but, DF are a bunch of hateful weebs when their people start to actually talk. this is not new.

[VariantAEC]

Indeed I watched Mystic compare Sly Cooper across PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS5, and wouldn't you know it, but the PS5 version looked the sharpest and ran as well as the PS2 version.

All these games are ported by Implicit Conversions who uses their own Syrup Engine to repack these games as their own emulated versions. Yeah, I wish PS had their own emulator like they used to (which were effectively perfect software emulations), but it's clear that no one actually values BC as much as they claim. If they did they wouldn't worry about PS5 costing more to have BC but as usual PS already had that option and people chose the non-BC PS3s, which encouraged PS to abandon BC.

[gold_drake]

i think they should have been more aware of their BC compatibility with their consoles.

i love playing older games amd go back to play them and sony just, u know.

they didnt rly care all that much until now.

[Einhander1972]

No, this is b.s. the games look great especially considering how big TV's have gotten. My original PS2 was hooked up to a 19' TV as I recall.

[anast]

The physics are dated.

[Einhander1972]

It also has less grass.

[anast]

nice

[1nsomniac]

Wow. Sony apologists out in force!

Just blatantly ignore any evidence provided as well as.. well, the blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain cell.

[Tapani]

Emulation is extremely illegal where I am at so I have two PS3s phats, one for spare parts and one that works. I always buy a new laser once the previous one dies, and order another one as a back up. I have changed 3 times the laser reader, and a couple of times motherboard and other parts. PS3 is pretty easy to navigate if you watch a couple of youtube videos, so it is relatively easy to maintain. My PS1, PS2 and PS3 collection consists of games that are not available via digital, and also a collection of non-released games in the West such as Dragon Quest V remaster on PS2 (which is one of the best games ever made.)

[jznrpg]

I have 2 working PS3 fats. Was thinking of buying one more for just in case. I have a massive collection of games from PS1-3. I’d love for PS5 or PS6 t be totally BC but until something is I have my fats!

[TheNamelessOne]

Works just fine on PC.