PCSX2 is an open source Playstation 2 emulator. It's purpose is to mimic the the PS2 hardware, using a combination MIPS CPU Interpreters, Recompilers and a Virtual Machine which manages hardware states and PS2 system memory.
Project Details
The PCSX2 project has been running for more than ten years. Once able to run only a few public domain demos, recent versions enable many games to work at full speed, including popular titles such as Final Fantasy X or Devil May Cry 3. Visit the PCSX2 homepage to check the latest compatibility status of games (with more than 2000 titles tested), or ask your doubts in the Official forums.
Nov 12, 2009 - Hey folks, I have a brand new computer and I'm trying to get it to run my PS2 games. However, I have several errors. After the message saying I.
System Requirements
- Minimum
- Windows/Linux OS
- CPU: Any that supports SSE2 (Pentium 4 and up, Athlon64 and up)
- GPU: Any that supports Pixel Shader model 2.0, except Nvidia FX series (broken SM2.0, too slow anyway)
- 512MB RAM (note Vista needs at least 2GB to run reliably)
- Recommended
- Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit) with the latest DirectX
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.2ghz or better
- GPU: 8800gt or better (for Direct3D10 support)
- RAM: 1GB on Linux/Windows XP, 2GB or more on Vista
Note: Because of copyright issues, and the complexity of trying to work around it, you need a BIOS dump extracted from a legitimately owned Playstation 2 console to use the emulator.
Note: PCSX2 mainly takes advantage of 2 CPU cores. As of r4865 PCSX2 can now take advantage of a 3rd core using the MTVU speedhack. This can be a significant speedup on CPUs with 3+ cores, however on GS limited games (or on dual core CPUs) it may be a slowdown
MAME is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The intent of this emulator is preservation; the ability to play games is considered a 'side-effect.' MAME supports thousands of classic arcade games, although not all of them are playable. As of version 0.162 MAME absorbed its sister-project MESS (Multi Emulator Super System) which means it is also capable of playing games for classic game consoles.
Although MAME is a 'command-line' application, as of version 0.171, you will get a simple 'DOS-like' menu when you open it where you can do the usual things of selecting games and changing the configuration. If you do not like this menu, there are a few other options: the MAMEUI port (which, as the name suggests, adds a Windows user-interface to MAME) or frontends. As MAME is also available as Libretro core, you could also use RetroArch as frontend.
A lot of arcade games were coin-operated, so when you start a game you might wonder: 'how do I insert a coin?' The answer can be found in the input configuration, but let me spoil it for you: keys '5' to '8' on your keyboard insert coins for players 1-4 and keys '1' to '4' are the start-buttons for those players. So for single player, insert coin by pressing 5 and start the game by pressing 1.
How to get MAME ROMs
For legal reasons, this site does not contain nor link to ROMs. But MAME is an exception, as the 'ROM site' in question is none other than the Internet Archive (archive.org). You can find the game ROMs, BIOS ROMs and all other files needed to play games in the MESS and MAME collection on their site as both direct downloads and torrent files. Be aware that a complete collection can take a lot of disk space (over 50GB, and you need double that to extract the archive that holds all the ROMs). After downloading you can place game and BIOS ROMs in the 'roms' subfolder inside the MAME folder.
MAME handles ROMs a little different in that you do not have to unzip every individual game. MAME can open them as ZIP files. The reason for this is that arcade ROMs tend to consist of multiple files.
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Download MAME
These are the official versions by the MAME team.
File | Platform | License | Date | Size |
---|---|---|---|---|
MAME 0.214 | Windows (64-bit) | Freeware | Sep 27, 2019 | 71860 Kb. |
MAME 0.214 | Windows (32-bit) | Freeware | Sep 27, 2019 | 71413 Kb. |
Download MAME ports
These are unofficial ports of MAME.
File | Platform | License | Date | Size |
---|---|---|---|---|
MAMEUI 0.214 | Windows (64-bit) | Freeware | Sep 27, 2019 | 59619 Kb. |
Download MAME frontends
These are alternative frontends for MAME.
File | Platform | License | Date | Size |
---|---|---|---|---|
IV/Play 1.8.2 | Windows | Freeware | Sep 7, 2017 | 951 Kb. |
Emuloader 8.8.1 | Windows | Freeware | Aug 18, 2019 | 16942 Kb. |
Download support files
These files provide additional information and capabilities to MAME.
File | Platform | License | Date | Size |
---|---|---|---|---|
mameinfo.dat 0.212 | N/A | Freeware | Aug 4, 2019 | 3102 Kb. |
Cheat.dat 0.206 | N/A | Freeware | Feb 8, 2019 | 1931 Kb. |
History.dat 0.211 | N/A | Freeware | Aug 29, 2019 | 8465 Kb. |