I’ve spent the past week experimenting, tweaking, cursing and crashing in my attempts to run a solid PlayStation 2 emulator on the PC. I come to you after my brutal journey with the fruits of my labor, hopefully making your imminent adventure far more enjoyable and infinitely less frustrating.

Why would anyone want to emulate PlayStation 2 games on the PC?

Simple: PS2 games look better than they have ever looked. They look better than the original PlayStation 2 and they look better than the PlayStation 3’s built-in emulator, available only earlier models. Why do PS2 games look better with PC emulation? Because you can use the power of your video card to render games at super-high resolutions. For instance, I’m currently playing Final Fantasy XII at 1920 x 1080 with x2 Anti-Alias at a steady 60-frames-per-second! It looks freaking sweet.

Here is a little proof. The first image shows Final Fantasy XII as it looks running at its native resolution while the second image is enhanced emulation. Note the crispness of the emulation shots, while the standard PS2 version is full of jaggies and pixelation.

Click Image for Full-Size View

Native Resolution

Emulation

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The Pocket Retro Game Emulator is saddled with a lame name, but the specs sure are impressive and the $99 price-tag is just about right. What’s it do? It plays all games for the NES, SNES, GBA, SEGA Genesis and NEO GEO. Better yet, no third-party emulation software is needed as it can play any and all ROMs you throw at it.  But wait, there’s more! This bad boy can play movie files, audio files, can view JPEGS, read E-books, record your voice and even has a built-in FM radio. That’s a hell of a package for $99.

Want specs? Course ya do!

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There’s one little problem with releasing a console that isn’t particularily powerful: it will be emulated on the PC at some point. It’s been a long time coming but a team of hackers has successfully managed to get the Wii OS to run on a PC platform, an act that ensures full-scale emulation of the Wii, and accompanying piracy, will be here shortly.

The project is called Dolphin, which you can find by heading here.