This is the best-selling game console ever, so you will find it has an absurdly vast library.

The Sony PlayStation 2, or PS2 for short, is a sixth generation (1998–2013) home video game console developed and distributed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released on March 4, 2000 in Japan at a retail price of ¥45,000. The console was later released in North America (2000), Europe (2000), and Australia (2000). The PlayStation 2 was the first PlayStation console to offer backwards compatibility for its predecessor's DualShock controller, as well as for its games. The console was discontinued on January 4, 2013.



The PS2 is fully emulatable, provided you have a decent PC, some games work flawlessly, better than the hardware, and the others work pretty well.

In RetroArch is a bit more complex than with classic 16-bit consoles or even the PS1 platform, but also the emulation itself is much more dependent on the availability of constant new updates in the current cores for even better results. If you wish to play PS2 games on RetroArch fully upscaled to higher resolutions, then you will require a decent specification PC with a strong CPU and GPU. But don’t let that put you off, decent performance can be achieved with modest setups too.

To play this platform trough Steam, you gonna need to import the PCSX2 (preferably) or Play! cores files to your main folder, as these are not native here. These cores on RetroArch requires the use of a PS2 BIOS files so it can boot up games, and you will need to search online to find it. Also, the RetroArch documentation for the PS2 gives details about the BIOS and other files required.

Note that emulating isn't magic, and the "core material" will be in 480p at best, which means that 3D\polygon-heavy games will benefit much more from those changes than 2D\sprite-based games. For every game you decide to emulate, check with the PCSX2 Wiki for more compatibility info and contribute your own if possible. It's also worthwhile to look up any widescreen or no-interlacing patches that may be available for your games. Many PS2 games utilized interlacing as part of their render pipeline and if this is not disabled the game will look blurry on a modern display.

Now, choose your classics, check here if it's playable on the emulators and just have fun!

Latest game list Update = 10/03/2023

Have you played these games? Have you tested and approved other games? Help-me create and improve this list!