PS2 Appreciation Thread | The Greatest Sequel Ever Made

If I may ask, how much did you pay for the Shadow Hearts games? They’ve been pricey whenever I’ve seen them locally.

They weren’t cheap but I got Covanent for $50CAD and From the New World for $40CAD and used the 15% off coupon on ebay to bring that down a bit.

I dont have the first game cause I think the price is way too much.

New World I kinda put in it’s own separate thing. Also don’t forget Koudelka, the real first game in the series.

Seems like a series that has kinda just slipped by.

Yes, the resolution was programmable. You can use the homebrew app GSM to play around with this.

I’ve just played Downhill Domination for the first time. It had been on my Amazon wish list for years.

As a lover of Excite Truck this is really up my street. Can’t wait to get some multiplayer going.

Did someone say Excite Truck? EXCIIITTTEEEE!

I need to check this out - I love Excite Truck. Easily one of the best racers of the time.

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EXCITE! What a game. I replay it in full every few years

Just to set expectations: Downhill Domination does not seem to be quite as good at this point in my playing (6/24 on Super Career). Or maybe I’m not good enough at it yet? But it’s good. And it’s multiplayer.

I’d like to see it speed run, or watch an experienced player. Off to YouTube I go!

Good sounds good enough to me. I’ve been looking for new arcade racing games to play. Discovered the (not so old) Driver San Francisco this year and came away seriously impressed. Stuntman: Ignition wasn’t so good though…

Shame Monster Games hasn’t made an original racing/flying game for Nintendo since Pilotwings Resort.

I loved Driver SF on 360. 60fps! a really nice game.

Am I right in thinking that I can’t get progressive scan 480p on my PS2 over component if the game doesn’t support it? My TV has very good deinterlacing but I’d love of I could play DD in 480p.

I understood that Monster now focus full-time on NASCAR games (they’d done some in the past) and are no longer a third-party Nintendo team.

A nice DD review: http://videogamecritic.com/ps2de

You are right since most PS2 games can’t do 480p, only like around 200 PS2 games can. Best you can do is with 480i over component.

OK, I do think Downhill Domination is as good as Excite Truck. It’s very close.

On one hand it’s missing that Nintendo je ne sais quoi, and the music and voice-overs sick so much I’ve turned them off.

But on the other hand, now that I’m getting good (19/24 through Super Career), I can see that the quite frankly brilliant level design encourages the same sort of risks, insane jumps and “tree runs” that make Excite Truck so great. The levels have a lot more going on, too. Often they are huge/long and not repetitive. And it seems to be 60fps.

If you get yourself a modded memory card so you can launch FreeMCBoot you can mess around with the homebrew software “GSM Mode Selector” it has the capability to force some games to 480p that don’t support it but not all games accept this software workaround so your mileage may vary

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Sorry I should have said… I’ve tried this, with little success.

Is there no danger to trying this? It seems kind of bad to push the system to output a higher res on a particular software title than what the devs programmed.

No danger at all.

The chip is designed to be programmable. In fact each game programs it to the resolutions it needs, mostly standard PAL/NTSC. But some games use different resolutions, a bunch offer 480p (hold X and Triangle as game loads) and Gran Turismo even offers 1080i. DVD playback uses another. PS2 Linux supported VGA resolutions.

So, all GSM does is offer a menu to choose from settings for all the resolutions that have been discovered to date.

That said, some games just won’t work correctly running in resolutions other than the one they were designed to. Whilst other games run just fine.

Is there a wiki somewhere for GSM settings? that’s probably the most painful part, being given 200 options and experimenting to see which ones don’t crash. I’ve been playing through Disaster Report using GSM at 480p recently, it’s great :slight_smile:

What version of GSM? The latest/last version 0.38 simplifies things by just giving you all the proven modes.

0.2x was the version with total user customisation resulting in a gazillion options and horrendous user interface.

Using latest OPL Daily, built in GSM. There’s still 10+ resolutions to try, and in combination with “mode 1/2/3/4” etc, it’s just a big time burn to figure out.

Actually I was referring to standalone GSM. But the one built-in to OPL is effectively the same.

Well, sure, but if you’re not running a VGA/HD display then really you know which mode you prefer. I mean I just try 480p and if it doesn’t work I just leave it as Auto.

Or am I misunderstanding the problem?

My PS2 is connected to my LAN so I just choose “download defaults” for each game and that takes care of the modes. They’re downloaded from Open PS2 Loader Compatibility List - Games which is the most up-to-date resource.

I have a PS1 Multitap, which works fine on my PS2 slimline to play Crash Team Racing.

But I need a PS2 Multitap to play some PS2 games with 4-players. I understand the PS2 slimline had different/deeper controller port location so not all Multitaps will work. Any recommendations?