PlayStation 2 Emulator PCSX2 Gets New Look

Last Updated on May 28, 2022

A new release of PCSX2 brings a new user interface to the famously ugly PlayStation 2 emulator.

Capable of playing a stated 98% of PS2 games, PCSX2 combines “MIPS CPU Interpreters, Recompilers and a Virtual Machine” to bring classic PlayStation 2 games to life on Windows, Macs, and Linux systems.

By default, PCSX2 PlayStation 2 emulator gives you standard emulation plus the following features:

Custom resolutions and upscaling

Virtual and sharable memory cards

Save-states

Patching system

Internal recorder to achieve lossless quality at full speed

But thanks to the newly introduced Qt GUI, available in current nightly releases, PCSX2 now presents games with an attractive grid-based interface, “Game Grid”. It’s similar to the UI seen in the PS1 emulator DuckStation, no doubt due to bring contributed by the same developer.

Currently, PCSX2 doesn’t have its own box art database, so you’ll need to use a resource like The Cover Project. WIth the covers saved to a suitable directory under PCCSX2 and files named to match your PS2 ISOs, with the Game Grid view enabled your PlayStation 2 emulator will present your games in a slick new view.

Reports indicate that the GUI is currently available only on Windows 10 and 11, but that seems likely to change, with macOS and Linux support for the feature available down the line. Other improvements added to PCSX2 nightly builds include:

Native DualShock 4 and 5 controller support
Per-game settings (e.g. remapping controls for a single game without affecting others, or even specifying a graphics setting, and more)
Automatic updates

And if you haven’t visited for a while, there is a new-look PCSX2 website as well!

These updates, including the Qt GUI, are available in the nightly releases of PCSX2, rather than the stable builds. Head to the PCSX2 download page to grab a copy.