Play PS2 Games on PC using PCSX2

Image Credits

Playing hardcore games is every PC users' dream and I have not seen anyone who hates games at all. But is some conditions a gamer might hate a game because of a single reason and that is platform racism. Superb RPG games like God Of War and others are not available for PC platform natively but you can play any Play Station 2 game on your PC if you have a good PC. This has been made possible by a small application named PCSX2 which lets you play Play Station games on your PC as if you are playing them on Play Station. I have found many people who eagerly want to play their favorite Play station game on PC but they end with some kinda errors with their PCSX2. Keeping it mind I have also created a demo video to how you how to configure PCSX2 correctly so that you can start playing your favorite game. Here are the things that you need for playing a Play station game:

Requirements

1. A Play Station game disc image file ,i.e., God of War.iso or Game.nrg
   Here Godofwar.Iso is the image file of God of war game and .Iso is its format. You must have a Play station game image in order to play it, seems legit. If you don't have one, then you can get it from the Kick or Bay's market.
2. PCSX2 application
   You need to download the version according to your OS. Fortunately the developers are working hard for all three platforms: Mac OSX, Windows and Linux
3. Play Station 2 BIOS file
   This one is tricky and you need to extract bios from a real physical play Station 2. Its a small file of 4 MB that is stored in your Play Station and can be extracted using the tool provided by the PCSX2 team. They are asking for the BIOS file as it is needed to run emulator and it also indicates that you are  a genuine and legit player.
4. Extras: Your system must have all necessary software installed like Direct X must be updated, VGA driver must be updated and your system must be running with any kinda error.

So all we have to do is make this happen:

Starting from scratch

Go to your desktop or any comfortable location and create a new folder named "Project PlayStation 2". In that folder make four folders as follows  : 

1. Game: In this folder copy a game image file like God of war.iso 
2. Emulator: In this folder copy the emulator program files.
3. BIOS: In the third, copy the BIOS file. We will later use this file
4. Extras: MSVCP100.dll file This file is needed as in most cases the emulator fails to run because of absence of this file.

Download Link for all of above files

Next step

Now you have four folders which are ready to be used for making your game-play possible. So first of all go to emulator folder and extract the file "PCSX2 Emulator-www.Ptmaroct.com.zip" and then run "pcsx2-r5350.exe" from the extracted folder.

WTF an error hits the screen!!

If you get an error saying that MSVCP100.dll is missing from your computer, then you need to download this file and copy it inside the emulator folder from where you ran the main exe file.

And again if the same error hits the screen with the dll file changed to, MSVCPR100.dll, no problem, you can fix the issue again using the same method, just download the file and put it into root folder.

Now the emulator should execute without any problem. Once it opens, keep hitting the next button till the last step and when you are at the last step, you need do the BIOS fie copying.

Now again go to the first time configuration window and click on Refresh List. The BIOS file that you just copied shall be visible in the list. Select the file and click on Finish.

Now you have finished configuring it and a new blue window with a program log windows should appear.

Ah Ah wait, the configuring is not over yet, you still have one task to do and that is configure the keypad settings. Can you play the game without telling it which button does what?

To configure keyboard or gamepad settings:

• Click on configure and then select  Controllers (PAD) and then Plugin settings.
• From the top of the window, click on Pad 1
• Now you will see many buttons' names. To configure an action of that button, first click on it from the window and then press the respective key from keyboard or gamepad. For eg. First click on Square and then press "S" from keyboard. Now S will serve as the square button for the emulator. 
• You need to configure these buttons: X O [] ∆, D Pad, Select Start and L1 L2 and R1 R2 for an optimal gameplay.
• Now the final step is to load the game. Click on "System" from the menu bar and click on Boot CDVD "Fast" and then tell him where is the game located. You shall start playing now.
  The reason I told you to choose fast is that if you choose "Full" then it will show Play Station Boot Screen, Select your language and asks you to set time. You can skip this using the fast boot method.

Video Tutorial to Play Playstation2 Game

As I promised you that I will add a video recording demonstrating all the above steps involved, but the video is under processing and still to be uploaded. the video will be ready within 1 day. So keep visiting to check if I have added it.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Here are the answers of the top questions that any user might face meanwhile using PCSX2:

Why the hell the game is running too slow!

This is the most common question among most PCSX2 users. There are many reason. Here is my explanation for the cause. PCSX2 creates a virtual play station 2 based environment to make gameplay possible. Whenever we  use two different environments simultaneously, we are ought to feel the lag as a simple Home PC isn't meant to do these kind of hard core tasks. Moreover, a perfect emulations is only possible on a good config PC. For Example: If a game made for PC gives you 100% performance, then the same game made for PS2 running on PC will give you only 70% of performance. This is because of high usage of CPU, GFX and RAM.

Jokes apart, you can turbo charge your gameplay using a simple hack. If gameplay in your PC is now of 15 to 20 FPS (Frames Per Second ), Then you can boost your gameplay to 50-55 FPS using a simple hack. Here are the instructions to boost your gameplay:

1. From PCSX2 window, run any game and during gameplay, Press the F4 key. This will disable frame limiting and thus making it possible to achieve higher FPS.
2. Now go to PCSX2 Window and then click on Config from the menu bar. Now select Emulation settings. In the window just opened, click on Speed Hacks from the top. Now from this window, enable everything, move the scroller to rightmost and then click on OK.
   DO NOT enable the setting named " MTVU (Multi Threaded Micro VU1) " if you do not have a Quad Core CPU. Even if you have a quad core CPU, leave this setting or you might end up in trouble.

Now run the game and you must feel a increase in FPS, enjoy you game :-)

The emulator can't find MSVCP100.dll 

This error is very common even if your PC has C++ run-time installed. To fix this error, just download this file and place it in the emulator folder along with all core files. 

Download MSVCP100.dll

Author's Note

I hope you utilized my tutorial and you are able to play Play Station 2 game yourself as for now. You are always welcome to ask me anything if you face any error, or if you have any suggestion for me or just a simple vote of thanks. Good bye for now and keep visiting my blog :-)