PC gamers celebrate as almost the entire PS2 library can be played on PC
PC players will be delighted to hear news that almost every game in the jaw-dropping PlayStation 2 library is now available to play for 'free', allowing you to access thousands of classics again with some extremely attractive performance enhancements.
One of the best parts of gaming on PC is the flexibility that it gives you, as not only are you not locked to a single storefront resulting in far more competitive prices, but you can also access every game ever released on the platform, free from generational breaks.
There are still plenty of titles that historically never made their way over from consoles to the PC world though, as it's only really in the last decade or so that the two have mostly co-existed, yet there is a way that desktop owners have been able to access many of the classics locked to PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox hardware over the years.
Emulation is a pretty of a complicated topic to broach as many people do tend to associate it with piracy and illegal downloads — especially as publishers like Nintendo have spent a lot of time and money to take down resources that illegally share its games.
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However, there is nothing innately 'forbidden' about the process of emulating a game, and it only becomes a question when considering how you access those games.
As long as you're using your own physical copy of a game to upload a ROM to your PC, it's completely legal to use emulation software such as PCSX2 to access PlayStation 2 titles, giving them a whole new life.
As shared by GAMINGbible, the popular emulator has been working on support for the 10,000 plus PS2 titles over the years, and it has recently been announced that 99.5 percent of the total library is supported via the emulator.
This means that you'll be able to play the ROMs of most if not all of your favorite games from the system without any issues, and you'll even be able to take advantage of your top-tier hardware for performance improvements in a lot of cases too.
While you can access iconic titles like GTA: San Andreas through Steam, something like The Simpsons: Hit & Run is locked to the now-retro consoles despite fans requesting a remake for years, yet you'll be able to access it through emulation providing you have your own ROM.
If you've recently played and loved the remake for Silent Hill 2 it might be worth giving the original version a go to see the differences, and you should also check out the first and third games in the series too before they inevitably receive a remake.
Regardless of what you opt for, it's well worth giving a go if you have a pile of PS2 games lying around your house that haven't been touched in years, as there's nothing better than a nostalgia trip to remind you quite how great these titles were back in the day.