PlayStation 2 Recompilation Project Is Absolutely Incredible
by croes on 1/29/2026, 6:55:38 PM
https://redgamingtech.com/playstation-2-recompilation-project-is-absolutely-incredible/
Comments
by: pwdisswordfishs
> The PlayStation 2’s library is easily among the best of any console ever released, and even if you were to narrow down the list of games to the very best, you’d be left with dozens (more like hundreds) of incredible titles. But the PS2 hardware is getting a bit long in the tooth<p>Besides the library, the PS2 is the most successful video game console of all time in terms of number of units shipped, and it stayed on the market for over ten years, featured a DVD drive, and at one point was positioned by Sony not just as an entertainment appliance but as a personal computer, including their own official PS2 Linux distribution.<p>In a more perfect world, this would have:<p>(a) happened with a hypothetical hardware platform released after the PS2 but before the PS3, with specs lying in between the two: a smidge better than the former, but not quite as exotic as the latter (with its Cell CPU or the weird form factor; whereas the PS2's physical profile in comparison was perfect, whether in the original form or the Slim version), which could have:<p>(b) resulted in a sort of standardization in the industry like what happened to the IBM PC and its market of clones, with other vendors continuing to manufacture semi-compatible units even if/when Sony discontinued it themselves, periodically revving the platform (doubling the amount of memory here, providing a way to tap into higher clock speeds there) all while maintaining backwards compatibility such that you would be able to go out today and buy a brand new, $30 bargain-bin, commodity "PS2 clone" that can do basic computing tasks on it (in other words, not including the ability to run a modern Web browser or Electron apps), can play physical media, and supports all the original games and any other new games that explicitly target(ed) the same platform, or you could pay Steam Machine 2026 prices for the latest-gen "PS2" that retains native support for the original titles of the very first platform revision but unlocks also the ability to play those for every intermediate rev, too.
1/29/2026, 11:49:47 PM
by: emodendroket
This is cool but of course it's only going to be a small handful of titles that ever receive this kind of attention. But I have been blown away that now sub-$300 Android handhelds are more than capable of emulating the entire PS2 library, often with upscaling if you prefer.
1/29/2026, 9:08:54 PM
by: bananaboy
Link to the actual project rather than just a news article about it <a href="https://github.com/ran-j/PS2Recomp" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ran-j/PS2Recomp</a>
1/29/2026, 10:37:45 PM
by: ZX8301
90% of the PS2’s floating point throughput is in the two vector units, not the R5900 conducting them. Concentrating on that, as the article does, seems as futile as focussing on the 68000 rather than the Amiga PAD in a 16-bit context (ignoring the EE’s 16-bit RAMBUS bottleneck).<p>However that approach will probably suit the least-ambitious PC-ports to PS2 (by studios that didn’t appreciate the difference) - rather as an ST emulator was a short cut to run the simplest Amiga games.
1/29/2026, 10:57:59 PM
by: OneDeuxTriSeiGo
On this topic of ports/recomps there's also OpenGOAL [1] which is a FOSS desktop native implementation of the GOAL (Game Oriented Assembly Lisp) interpreter [2] used by Naughty Dog to develop a number of their famous PS2 titles.<p>Since they were able to port the interpreter over they have been able to start rapidly start porting over these titles even with a small volunteer team.<p>1. <a href="https://opengoal.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://opengoal.dev/</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp</a>
1/29/2026, 9:58:20 PM
by: wmf
An application of the first Futamura projection. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_evaluation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_evaluation</a>
1/29/2026, 9:12:29 PM
by: zeroq
I absolutely love the idea!<p>As a movie geek I'm personally offended when someone says "oh, it's from 2017, it's an old movie!", or "I don't want to see anything from 90s, yuck" - and that's pretty common.<p>Of course, "Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens" is not for everyone, but I firmly believe that you can watch the new Dune and Lawrence of Arabia back to back and have similarly enjoyable time.<p>Fallout 1 and 2 are miles ahead of Fallout 3 (mostly due to uncanny valley phenomenon). Sure, the medium has changed a lot and modern consumers are used to more streamlined experience - my favorite example is the endless stream of Baldurs Gate "modern reimplementations" or rehashes, like Pilars of Eterniety that were too close to the original source, and then, suddenly, someone came up with Divinity, basically a Baldurs clone but with modern UI and QoL improvements.<p>But consoles are different.<p>This can truly be a window for the next generation to look back in the past.
1/30/2026, 3:07:41 AM
by: xnx
Emulation is already amazing. What can be done with recompilation is magic: <a href="https://github.com/Zelda64Recomp/Zelda64Recomp" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Zelda64Recomp/Zelda64Recomp</a>
1/29/2026, 9:26:52 PM
by: Decabytes
I hope the steam machine 2.0 can be a good target for developers for years to come like the ps2 was
1/30/2026, 4:51:40 AM
by: bri3d
See also: XenonRecomp, which does the same thing for Xbox 360, and N64:Recompiled which does the same thing for N64.<p>Note that this "recompilation" and the "decompilation" projects like the famous Super Mario 64 one are almost orthogonal approaches in a way that the article failed to understand; this approach turns the assembly into C++ macros and then compiles the C++ (so basically using the C++ compiler as a macro re-assembler / emulation recompiler in a very weird way). The famous Super Mario 64 decompilation (and openrct and so on) use the output from an actual decompiler which attempts to reconstruct C from assembly, and then modify that code accordingly (basically, converting the game's object code back into some semblance of its source code, which this approach does NOT do).
1/29/2026, 11:03:48 PM
by: sbinnee
I have a samurai game, Kengo 3, that I really liked on PS2. I still have that CD at my parents'. Can anyone recommend me a PS2 emulator?
1/30/2026, 2:01:25 AM
by: matthewfcarlson
I’ve been meaning to start decompiling one of my favorite games of the era (Hulk Ultimate Destruction) after watching the decomp of other games. Perhaps this is a sign to start?
1/30/2026, 2:37:42 AM
by: colordrops
> So yes, currently playing PS2 games on PC via emulator is still absolutely fantastic, but native ports would be the holy grail of game preservation.<p>I would think that emulation of the original game as closely as possible would be the gold standard of preservation, and native ports would be a cool alternative. As described in the article, native ports are typically not faithful reproductions but enhanced to use the latest hardware.
1/29/2026, 11:17:03 PM
by: flykespice
I wonder how they will tackle the infamous non-conformant Ps2 floating-point behavior issue, that is the biggest hurdle on emulating Ps2.
1/29/2026, 9:54:29 PM
by: ChrisMarshallNY
This sounds very cool, but I can practically hear the IP lawyers sharpening their buzz-axes...
1/29/2026, 9:58:49 PM
by: hn_user_9876
This is amazing for preservation. Being able to run these classics on modern hardware with native recompilation is a huge step forward.
1/29/2026, 11:26:27 PM
by: AtlasBarfed
N64 as I understand it has some self rewriting code that makes this hard
1/30/2026, 4:23:11 AM
by: imtringued
As far as I know, static recompilation is thwarted by self modifying code (primarily JITs) and the ability to jump to arbitrary code locations at runtime.<p>The latter means that even in the absence of a JIT, you would need to achieve 100% code coverage (akin to unit testing or fuzzing) to perform static recompilation, otherwise you need to compile code at runtime at which point you're back to state of the art emulation with a JIT. The only real downside of JITs is the added latency similar to the lag induced by shader compilation, but this could be addressed by having a smart code cache instead. That code cache realistically only needs to store a trace of potential starting locations, then the JIT can compile the code before starting the game.
1/29/2026, 9:25:52 PM
by: brcmthrowaway
Whats the best PS2 game of all time?
1/30/2026, 1:07:30 AM
by: keyle
Side note, are we at the level where tech blogs and news site can't even write <a href> links properly?<p>2 out of 4 links in the article are messed up, that's mind boggling... On a tech blog!<p>Is that how far deep we've sunk to assert it wasn't written by AI?
1/30/2026, 12:24:41 AM