Newly translated: the story of PS2 backwards compatibility
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I started playing Densha de Go Sanyo Shinkansen and was wondering why the camera was juddering a lot, but on closer inspection the game has very aggressive dynamic resolution scaling at times. I don’t think I’ve noticed it so obviously on a PS2 game before, forgot some PS2 games swapped resolution on the fly.
This doesn’t happen often, but there are areas on the line where it’s very obvious. The video I took showcases one of them.
Interesting to hear from the guy that wrote the emulator. It’s pretty impressive to me how much compatibility they achieved and from my perspective at the time it made my PS1 completely redundant.
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My ps1 laser is dead, so I’m only playing those games on my PS2 now.
Been on a Tekken kick lately and I picked up the much maligned Tekken 4. Enjoying it so far (as a casual) and damn if this game doesn’t look sharp at 480p. Lucked into one of the few 480p PAL titles with this one and am disappointed there’s not more compared to what NTSC players got.
Yeah, Tekken 4 tries to take the series in a different direction. I like the overall presentation, but it does suffer from some competitive issues, as there’s really only one character (Jin) that was picked in tournaments. And he was pretty easy to use.
Add that in to the uneven walls / ground that caused combos to be unreliable and it wasn’t their best effort. This game would have greatly benefitted from online patches.
They did take the learnings from it and eventually implement them in later games, but the sequel to this was basically a revamped Tekken 3, and the series hasn’t really departed from that template since.
I wish developers would take more risks on their bigger franchises like Tekken 4 nowadays, but I don’t blame them for avoiding that.
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Hello,
I’m new to the game console collection, I would like to know which of the 2 PS2 models is the best.
The latest big model SCPH-50004A (V11) or the first slim version SCPH-70004 (V13)?
Knowing that later models of the Slim removed the R3000A chip, I would not take them.
Thank you.
Are they your only choices? You want to know the best out of those two?
It depends how you’re going to use it, I suppose? I use a slim and it works for me.
From what I understood, these are the last 2 revisions which include the R3000A chip. If you have a better model in mind I want to know him well 
It is for collector use. With this famous R3000A chip, the PS2 will be able to read 100% of PS2 games and not 99%.
I prefer original PS2s over slims for a few reasons. Biggest thing is I’ve had slims with the toploading mechanism scratch my discs. But of course they have the hard drive bay which is useful for running OpenPS2Loader if you want to do that.
I’m guessing you’re in a PAL region? Personally I think it’s better to get a modded NTSC unit (ending in 0 o 1) rather than get a PAL unit as the PAL units can’t do 60hz PS1 properly. Of course then you can’t do 50hz PS1 games properly but uh who wants that.
Yes PAL for me. If my information is correct, games also load faster with the hard drive than with the DVD? This is another advantage for the fat model.
My PS1 games will be played on a PSOne and not on a PS2
My question is more to know what is the best PS2 model to have to be able to play PS2 games in the best possible quality. The models after the SCPH-75000 to replace a chip that used the PS1 games but also some PS2 games (some bugs with some PS2 games), that’s why I excluded it from the models to own (Even if it remains a pity).
For the best quality possible you would want to play from the internal HDD as the loading screens and even loading of assets sometimes is faster than playing from disc, and the FAT is the easiest way to do it, but I think there’s some mods for the slim that requires soldering which can enable their internal HDD capabilities too, but it’s way more of a hassle than just getting a FAT and a Network Adapter.
If you prefer to play from discs the slim is the best option as the lens are not as prone to failing, and there’s higher chance that you get one that’s been used less than a FAT would be. I’m not really familiar with the PS1 CPU differences in PS2 consoles revisions though.
What @poptart said about PAL PS2 models isn’t quite the full picture.
If you get a 3900x model in a PAL territory that board revision has a clock synthesiser instead of a clock oscillator - meaning that with homebrew (PS1VModeNeg) you can force PS1 games to boot in true NTSC 60hz.
My current setup on the OSD menu I have four additional options:
- Games which boots OPL from the internal HDD.
- Play PlayStation 1 Disc starts up PS1VmodeNeg which then waits for me to insert my PS1 disc.
- File Manager Boots into ULaunchElf file management utility
- Network Transfer This boots into an FTP server so I can transfer new games via my PC without removing the HDD.
I also have a NTSC 750x PS1 with a PSIO installed that I use for PS1 but I love having the option to play PS1 games with bi-linear texture filtering on the PS2.
I’m just going to second that modding a network adapter to work with a SATA Hard drive (or buying one of the 3rd party adapters that has sata built in) and using FreeMcBoot to play your games off a hard drive is the way to go. This is all easier with the larger model PS2s. It can be done with a slim but involves soldering and a lot more work than just getting a freemcboot memory card.
I say go with SATA since its easier to get a new hard drive in a decent size. I went with a 1 terabyte one for my PS2, and am using about 600 gigs of it, with all 128 games of my PS2 collection ripped to it.
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I think the coolest move is to use a slim PS2 (built in network adapter) and use FMCB to boot games from your network or a NAS. Depends on how much you use a wired network I suppose!
Anyone have a favorite wireless PS2 controller?
I find network loading to be great for testing patches etc before transferring them over but the limitations of the Ethernet port cause problems with video in quite a few games.
As for the best wireless controller that’s easy: The Logitech 2.4ghz Playstation 2 controller is excellent, although the Dpad lets it down somewhat. In a rare example of forethought I picked up two of these new on clearance for $15 and I’ve treasured them ever since.
I recently finished Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, and it did remind me, even though the PS2 was closest to other hardware that generation than we had ever seen up to that point, there really is still something special to be had from a game made from the ground up for a specific console.
The game just looks beautiful despite not really pushing any visual boundaries for its time, and as is usual for games like this, a well pitched art direction and good craftsmanship are the primary reasons for it.
Due to the PS2’s rather small texture memory of 4MB, and Capcom still keeping pixel art alive through to the early 2000s, many of the game’s textures are clearly comprised of specially drawn pixel art made to look excellent at the game’s rendering resolution. Couple this with the cel shading manga aesthetic and everything just exudes detail despite its relative simplicity.
Had the PS2 had more texture memory no doubt would designers have used downscaled art assets instead of pixel art, which may have ironically produced a murkier look to the game’s environments.
Another case of less is more.
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Would be cool to see this expanded to work on all dvd player software, so that I could burn ESR+FreeDVDBoot backups that just work on any unmodified PS2.