Even software rendering is relatively manageable for those few picky titles that don’t play nice yet. While things aren’t quite perfect yet, there’s an impressive amount of compatibility. I’ve got quite a few PS2 games from back in the day and, as PCSX2 has steadily improved, it’s been fun to revisit those titles. Z-buffer improvements, for example, solve many text and HUD display issues while dithering support and blending improvements make things look more as they were originally intended. While there’s a fair bit of code refactoring and bug fixing, I’m mostly excited about some the accuracy improvements that have been implemented. The development hasn’t slowed since and there’s plenty to love in a recent progress report. Back in May, PCSX2 released its first new stable version in four years and, with it, brought countless improvements and fixes as well. While not completely perfect, it’s allowed for reasonably good emulation of titles for a long time and has gotten noticeably better on Linux as of the last few years. If you’re not familiar with PCSX2, it’s one of the oldest PlayStation 2 emulators around.

The open source PS2 emulator saw its first major stable release in years a few months ago and since then more exciting stuff has been under development. The quest for better emulation is never quite done, it seems.

Mac playstation emulator opengl