RPI 3 and PS2 Emulator

VahnXDean

I've found some comments on old posts here and on some other sites of people asking if RPI 3 is close to run emulators of strong consoles like PS2, Gamecube, etc. Some people answered that RPI 3 is far from running emulators of these consoles and probably never will or at least will take a long time. Some other people said that RPI 3 have the power to run, for example, a PS2 emulator, but the problem is that the PS2 emulators are just too bad, leading to the fact that if the PS2 emulators were done better, it should run with not problem. What are your guys opinion? By the way, if i try to run a PS2 emulator on my RPI 3, what will happen? Anyone tried this? Will my RPI 3 just won't run cause the PS2 emulator is just too much for it? Or my RPI 3 will run it but probably will go into overclock/overheat/overwork and then get damaged cause it's beyond it's capacity? I was just curious about this

lilbud

No, the Pi3 isn't running anything past n64 on the home console side any time soon. You'd be better off building a PC to handle PS2 emu's or just buying a used PS2

PokeEngineer

@vahnxdean

It wouldn't even start.

herb_fargus

@pokeengineer wouldn't even compile.

SuperFromND

Closest bet would probably be attempting to port DamonPS2 similar to how Drastic was ported, since both Android and the Pi run on ARM architecture. However, ignoring the fact that DamonPS2 costs money at the moment, all of the models of the Pi (even when taking overclocks into account) are probably not powerful enough to run Damon at full speed, but it would at least be a curiosity.

spruce_m00se

@lilbud I looked into ps2, and I tried it quickly on an i7 with 16gb ddr3 ram and 1gb graphics. I quickly relaised it would be a long time for me to work out how to get it to run well.
Instead I hit ebay up, I got an xbox 360, p2s phat and 2 nintendo wii's for 20 GBP. all had bad lasers, I sent them to a buddy, he got the xbox and one wii laser working, and softmodded the ps2 with an internal hdd. I have a ps2 and wii 2 hdmi converter on the way and some game pads. All in all with shipping to the middle east it cost me around 120GBP for a working xbox 360, wii with all emulators on it and set up on a hdd, and ps2 with hdd. I think that was a better choice than spending weeks trying to softmod my wii and run a ps2 emulator. :)

VahnXDean

@spruce_m00se Hey spruce, i've just build my new PC during the black friday, a i5-8600k with a GTX 1080 and i will try some emulators on it. Did you have any problem with the configuration of your pc? Or the only problem was with the emulator itself?

PokeEngineer

@herb_fargus

I wouldn't even know... I have never tried before because I know it would be an useless endeavour.

drake999

I would love to see PS2 emulation on the Pi3 but I really don't think its possible on the hardware at playable speeds for the majority of games. If I recall correctly the PS2 CPU could do 6.2 GFLOPS worth of floating point calculations. The Pi3 CPU can't even come close to 1 GFLOP as far as I know. That metric alone is telling, though I understand it is more complicated than that. I'm sure it is possible technically to emulate PS2 on the Pi3, but not in any playable form.

matchaman

Impossible. Even a mid-end PC struggles with PS2 emulation. You'll need a modern gaming PC for that.

meg

I think some ps2 can run on Retropie, but only in 2d games. Wait till the next RPI 4 and stack it with PI3. I wish Saturn games would run properly.

fabio78

@meg no, it can’t. The PS2 architecture is complex and very costy hardware-wise to emulate, and only works properly in x86 architecture by brute force. The Pi is based on ARM architecture. Not even the Pi8 in 2025 will run it. Same with Saturn. Seriously, forget it.

PokeEngineer

@meg

If you really want to play games for those platforms, why don't you try to buy the actual systems.

zerojay

PCSX2 is the most advanced PS2 emulator out there today, however it is written for 32-bit x68 and does not have an ARM port. But even if it did, it wouldn't run at any usable speed. Play! is a newer PS2 emulator that is still in early days and has a better chance of running on an ARM processor but even still, there's not enough power to make it useful on a Pi 3 at all.

nitrogen_widget

I ran Gauntlet seven sorrows I think on PCSX2 well over a yr ago on a second gen i5 with a radeon hd 7770 video card just fine.
you just gotta play with the system settings.

however I just bought a working ps2 off ebay plus some light guns for some time crisis fun on a big CRT. :)

spud11

I've got PSX2 up and running on my Windows 7 PC. Using powerline adapters, I stream Metal Slug Anthology from my PC to my Arcade Table (Retropie RPi 3) using Moonlight. It was a bit of a challenge to set up but it works well with my arcade style joysticks. Search the forum and there is a thread which has a guide.

meg

@pokeengineer I've got 2 phat ps2 and 2 slims. I'm just saying cause the specs are somewhat similar to Dreamcast.

turnerl

Now that GameCube and PS2 are added to RetroPIe (x86 ONLY) I decided to install Ubuntu and RetroPie on my PC. i7 3770k and GTX 690 (not new hardware). It runs PS2 and GameCube perfectly with 10x internal resolution on GC and 3x Internal resolution on PS2. I highly recommend trying this out if you haven't already.

madmodder123

@spruce_m00se Soft modding your PS2 is badass, I put around 200 games on mine :)