PS2 Emulator

[FongMan]

Hey is there any known ps2 emulator for Macs?

[yankeefan24]

a ps2 emulater? as in simulate a ps2. dont think that can be done. the ps2 uses blue bottomed discs (dont say they're blu-ray because they have been out for years). I highly doubt that any regular CD drives can read them. Then you also have the problem of the analog sticks, etc.

[ExoticFish]

the guy who made PCSX is working on PCSX2 (which, you guessed it, is a PS2 emu). i wish he had worked on the PCSX port for Mac a little more though. Although as far as I know PCSX2 is only for Windows and Linux at this time.

[howesey]

You can get them for Windows, unsure for Mac. However, they are illegal so I wouldn't ask here if I was you.

Expect a this thread to be closed by a mod, or get a ban. Tut tut!

[FongMan]

Yeh i know about for Win. and Linux. Alright well i guess better to just delete this thread then.

[Rocksaurus]

I'm pretty sure emulator software is legal. Playing backup copies of games or the originals on emulator software is legal. Downloading ROMs/ISOs you do not own is very illegal. There's no reason to close this post. What's a PS2 emulator for windows? I'd be very curious to hear how it runs. As far as I knew Dreamcast was the newest system to have an emulator...

[Sedulous]

Originally Posted by howesey

You can get them for Windows, unsure for Mac. However, they are illegal so I wouldn't ask here if I was you.

Expect a this thread to be closed by a mod, or get a ban. Tut tut!

Emulators are generally legal (not sure about places other than the U.S.). Sometimes they require ROMs that are not.

[Madmic23]

Emulaters are legal for the most part, just companies don't like them. I remember when Bleem came out, which was one the of the original Playstation emulators. Sony hated it and tried to shut them down, but since the Bleem programers had written all of there own software and hadn't used any of the code built into the Playstation, they were ok. Sony later bought the company though and shut them down.
I used it on my PC a few years back, and was amazed at how much better the games looked. And yes, I actually used my own Playstation game discs, which worked fine, even though they were black on the bottom. As for the guy who said that you can't read PS2 CDs because they're blue on the bottom, that's just not true. A CD can be just about any colour on the bottom and still be read just fine by any CD drive.

[colocolo]

Originally Posted by Rocksaurus

I'm pretty sure emulator software is legal. Playing backup copies of games or the originals on emulator software is legal. Downloading ROMs/ISOs you do not own is very illegal. There's no reason to close this post. What's a PS2 emulator for windows? I'd be very curious to hear how it runs. As far as I knew Dreamcast was the newest system to have an emulator...

Connectix made a great PS(One) emulator, virtual game station.

It only runs on OS 9 though, not even in Classic.

Edit: a little OT: what happened to emulation.net? I can't load it. Did it disappear?

[FongMan]

Oh ok, thanks. Well yeh there's one for the PS2 but it's only for windows and linux.

http://www.pcsx2.net/

[Rocksaurus]

Originally Posted by FongMan

Oh ok, thanks. Well yeh there's one for the PS2 but it's only for windows and linux.

http://www.pcsx2.net/

Most games run lower than 20 fps according to the site, still I'm kind of amazed there's one out. With Mac OS X on intel now porting this thing from Linux or even Windows fairly doable. So maybe <20 fps PS2 games will come your way soon...!

[FongMan]

Oh ok, well i hope so....don't really know anything about porting though

[Sdashiki]

Originally Posted by howesey

You can get them for Windows, unsure for Mac. However, they are illegal so I wouldn't ask here if I was you.

Expect a this thread to be closed by a mod, or get a ban. Tut tut!

why are some people on MR such goody goodies, every turn someone might whisper the word "pirate" or "download" or "p2p" and BAM someone has to say THATS ILLEGAL BOOOOO.

cmon give the guy a break, we are all here to be edumacated.

As for emulation.

AFAIK emulation is like a logarythmic function in terms of as the hardware to be emulated gets more and more complex, the software to emulate it becomes 10 fold more complex...

The SNES emulators, NES, etc all run pretty damn well everytime. Even on older machines. But get up to PS1 and N64 and some hefty new MAME roms, and you are talking some serious memory and computing power just to keep the framerate tolerable.

IMO anything past the N64 is always gonna be spotty in terms of emulation, sooooo many lines of code have to be written for newer consoles. Look at the Cell processor in the PS3, how the hell is anyone gonn emulate that efficiently?

So a PS2 emulator might happen, but it might not because who would use something that "works" but is so slow you cant play it?

Google for a Dreamcast emulator and it proves not everything will be emulatable.

[yankeefan24]

Originally Posted by Madmic23

…for the guy who said that you can't read PS2 CDs because they're blue on the bottom, that's just not true. A CD can be just about any colour on the bottom and still be read just fine by any CD drive.

didn't realize that until today when i put a disc i burnt into my computer and noticed that it was light blue on the bottom. then my question is, why did they decide to make them blue? is it cheaper? is it quicker to burn? or do they just want people to make the quick assumption that i made where cd drives could only read the silver bottomed-ones to stop emulators like this?

[TrenchMouth]

To an extent I can totally understand why someone would want an emulator for a classic game system, like the NES or Genesis and what not. They are old systems, not readily availible, and they run fine through emulation.

However, a PS2 emulator? How can you justify such a thing? It will run like crap for the foreseeable future, even if you do have a Quad G5. The controls will be crap, unless you find a way to hook up a PS2 controller to your Mac...And for the headache that the performance will give you, finding the games (illegally) on other than original disks, and overall amount of time you will waste...I would just get a used PS2 for less than $100. You know, that thing the games were designed to be played on.

Arguably, playing games on an emulator should be illegal. Sony, and all the other game companies make a larger profit off of software, and software royalties then they do the games. The reason software companies pay Sony anything is for the privilege of having the games playable on Sony hardware. If you emulate the game on different hardware (even if you purchased the game) you are essentially committing the software makers to paying for a privilege that isn't fulfilled...Does that make sense or am I nuts?

[penter]

Originally Posted by ExoticFish

the guy who made PCSX is working on PCSX2 (which, you guessed it, is a PS2 emu). i wish he had worked on the PCSX port for Mac a little more though. Although as far as I know PCSX2 is only for Windows and Linux at this time.

if im not mistaken PCSX2 is a project aside from PCSX, having a different creator and all. If i am, then i wonder why Gil Pedersen (PCSX creator) would stop development of the still not perfect PSX emulator to go to the huge and difficult task of creating a PS2 emulator

[Gav]

Seeing as you can buy new Playstation 2s for under £70 with controllers (NEW + BOXED), and second hand ones for about £40. Its really not worth the hassle.

You don't want an iBox now do you? (Search Youtube for iBox )

[mithrilfox]

Originally Posted by howesey

You can get them for Windows, unsure for Mac. However, they are illegal so I wouldn't ask here if I was you.

Expect a this thread to be closed by a mod, or get a ban. Tut tut!

Sony lost one of the more recent court battles over the PS1 emulator by Connectix. However, the cost of the battle brought the company to its knees, and Sony absorbed it, if I remember correctly.

There are a lot of reasons to get a PlayStation 2 emulator that aren't wrong. For example, my Japanese PS2 won't play American games, so when my wife and I go back to the US, we are artificially restricted from playing games that we legally buy with a legally purchased system. Many countries are considering, or are currently fighting region encoding because it is generally considered to be against general consumer rights. In fact, I believe Australia is making major headway to eliminate DVD region encoding within its own country.

There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to play a game legally purchased in the US on a legally purchased PS2 from Japan. I firmly believe it violates consumer rights. Therefore, an emulator would help me be able to do what I should have been able to do all along -- play all of my legal games on my legal system!

Another reason is one that is happening to me now: no TV. My TV crapped out on me, and all we have is a microscopic TV from the late 80's. If you squint hard, you can see what's going on. My nice large computer monitor works fine, however, and it works at much crisper resolution, making all my PS2 games look nicer.

Additionally, many people are consolidating their media into as few packages as possible. Being able to watch compute, watch TV, rent and watch movies, and play your games all on your computer is very convenient and efficient.

Basically, emulators are generally NOT illegal, as has been ruled by the American court. Additionally, there is nothing particularly illegal about the process aside from the possibility that someone without a PS2 will use the BIOS, or that the "computer" version of the BIOS may be illegal even if the person owns a PS2 unit; technically, you'd have to copy your own PS2's BIOS yourself, according to current US copyright laws. For example, you can make a copy of your favorite CD for backup, but you can't download it from someone else and use that as your copy, because you didn't copy your own CD.

A lot of complicated issues, but simply saying emulators are illegal is wrong. Additionally, there are a lot of good and legal reasons to want to use one.

[Littlewizkid]

I Own A PS1 and PS2 and I want an emulator for them.
Why?
Because I can take my games with me on my laptop instead of leaving them behind everywhere I go. Our laptops do mostly the same thing as every other electronic. I feel we should have one or two electronics that do everything, not hundreds of electronics that only do one task.

[MaTUC]

http://pcsx2-mac.quant0r.com/

PCSX2 for Mac , I think you can't download it yet. It works under X11.

Stay tune on it..

[vhannroy]

Originally Posted by yankeefan24

didn't realize that until today when i put a disc i burnt into my computer and noticed that it was light blue on the bottom. then my question is, why did they decide to make them blue? is it cheaper? is it quicker to burn? or do they just want people to make the quick assumption that i made where cd drives could only read the silver bottomed-ones to stop emulators like this?

the reason they made the disks colored was because they thought the laser would read it better with it being darker. As for emulators being illegal that is completely false. If you look at the leading ps2 emulator for pc it makes they tell you to use the bios from your own console. That is right the one you purchased. If you are playing a game that you do not own then that is illegal. Come on the games a dirt cheap for something like the ps2 even for a poor college student like myself…I am still looking for a ps2 emulator for my mac just because it has better processing power than my pc that dose have an emulator on it . I read something about using bootcamp to install the pc version of the ps2 emulator. I do not know if this will work or not but am going to give it a try and get back to you.

[Thomas Harte]

Originally Posted by Sdashiki

AFAIK emulation is like a logarythmic function in terms of as the hardware to be emulated gets more and more complex, the software to emulate it becomes 10 fold more complex...

The SNES emulators, NES, etc all run pretty damn well everytime. Even on older machines. But get up to PS1 and N64 and some hefty new MAME roms, and you are talking some serious memory and computing power just to keep the framerate tolerable.

IMO anything past the N64 is always gonna be spotty in terms of emulation, sooooo many lines of code have to be written for newer consoles. Look at the Cell processor in the PS3, how the hell is anyone gonn emulate that efficiently?

This isn't entirely true. Emulators for things prior to the Playstation tend to need to work at a very low level. Software back then was expected to directly address the hardware and to have the full run of the system to do anything it liked. Since the Playstation, console software has generally been written in a comparatively high level language (like C or C++) and is usually required not to talk directly to the hardware, but to call to supplied library routines to perform hardware tasks, like the way that a game for OS X draws 3d graphics by making OpenGL calls which the OS then figures out.

That has allowed emulators to take a different route; from the Playstation onwards it has been perfectly valid to write an emulator that recognises the system calls and performs them in native code. Then the only thing you need to do as an actual translation is the code that would have run on the CPU, but once you've abandoned the need to be cycle perfect in timing you can do that as a dynamic recompilation task. So you end up with a situation very close to running native code that makes native API calls. There's some overhead involved in managing and caching the translations, but it's a very different task to the way the SNES/Mega Drive and earlier are emulated, so on a completely different spectrum in processing terms.

Intel Macs do the same sort of thing to run PowerPC applications.