You know, you don't have to upscale if you don't want to. PCSX2 has an option called "software mode" on the renderer selector that pretty much provides the PS2 experience. Though, I recommend to keep anti-blur on just to make the games look a bit cleaner than real hardware... and the no-interlacing patches too of course.
oh my god I have been looking for Champions of Norrath for YEARS AND YEARS. I played a demo disc and it's one of the games I didn't know the name of. I will be back in a few weeks... bless you I LOVE YOU
Gotta leave a second comment. Ive been playing around with PCSX2 and I think the sweet spot in settings are 720P Resolution + Scanline filter. I feel like that gives the best combination of improved clarity but leaves just enough blur to hide all the visual artifacts that a standard defination CRT would hide. If you see this comment I am curious to know what you think of those settings.
I'm just not a fan of the built-in CRT emulation at all. Been digging into Reshade CRT emulation off and on, but if I'm going to go through that effort, I'm just going to play on a real CRT lol
I can't vouch for the RetroTINK 4K since I don't have one, but I'm pretty satisfied with PCSX2. It's really convenient to be able to access over 1200 PS2 titles on my 5tb external hard drive at the drop of a hat, on my PC, with the emulator upscaled to 3x or 4x native resolution. I also have an original PS2 fat and a 1tb hard drive in the expansion bay with a FCMB memory card & OPL connected to my tv with a "PS2 to HDMI" connector. While it's definitely better than the native connection, it's still not that good. I'd like to have the RetroTINK 4K but with it being $750, I'd have to take out a small loan lol. I'll just stick with the emulator and my PS2 fat set up for now lol. Good comparison video though!👍
@@RedEyedDRAG00N what? the system is no longer sold and its games are no longer sold , who did they steal from to become a thief? you living in 2000s my dude?
@@RedEyedDRAG00N dawg 1200 ISOS of a system no longer sold in an official capacity. sure on a technicality its still piracy but no one , not ONE person gives a shit about that. hell even law doesn't care about that. no one is saying you should pretend you didn't buy a PS2 in 2021 or its games , but i am saying you did not buy that when Sony was selling it officially. it is no longer a system manufactured OR sold by Sony. they are no longer games published and sold by Sony. you BOUGHT them from a third party that is not Sony. it is literally abandonware. no company out there is currently making and selling legit new PS2 games. and guess what , PS3 is the same. so no , he is not a thief , he is a preservationist of history who refuses to pay 2 or 3 sometimes 4 times the price of a game for a legit copy off of a third party seller where the safety of the games or consoles are not guaranteed.
Generally speaking, stylized games like Jak and Daxter, Spyro, and Crash Bandicoot benefit the most from emulator enhancements. Zelda Windwaker looks like a complete remaster just by bumping the render resolution. The cartoon/cellshaded style lends itself nicely to upscaling.
Great comparisons, but it’s all really subjective, I see all the PCSX2 stuff and think ‘no comparison that’s way cleaner and better’, but I do get the look of the shimmering/distortion/black pixel darkening adds a mood or texture to some of the games here
Nice video with some cool examples of comparisons. Only one thing I would agrue back, is that you can play on pcsx2 at original PS2 resolution, which will solve many graphics anomalies that are caused due to upscaling. Worse comes to worse, you can play at original PS2 resolution with software rendering instead, which increases the accuracy to impressive levels. Team this up with some nicely tweaked filters, and well, you have a pretty convincing replacement for actual hardware. 🤷♂ I do still have many original consoles, but, when it comes to PS2, I do use PCSX2 a lot, simply for convenience and practicality. 🍻
@@lostsaves yeah, I didn't like playing on PCSX2 because it felt heavier (input latency) than my real PS2 but found out you just need to choose 0 on frames to buffer and set it to hard GPU sync, it needs a beefier PC but feels exactly as a real PS2 that way.
@@lostsaves Although not a fix, but a workaround to fix the streetlights is to quickly press F9 to enter Software Mode and back again to the Renderer of your choice completely eliminates this issue. You have to do it each time you enter a race or to into cruise around the map, but it does indeed fix the issue of the street lights trailing. I will admit that is honestly the one thing holding it back from becoming better to play on PCSX2.
CRTs probably do the original hardware more justice, they can really smooth out the low res elements, I never really liked the mismatched look of high resolution combined with low res textures, and sometimes models. It's a really variable thing but despite that there's still a significant amount of detail that can be brought up by up-rendering in models, it's a weird thing. A few of these games (as mentioned with ultimate alliance) have ports/remasters better on that hardware like SoulCalibur II pulling 720p (albeit at 4:3 only) on Xbox (and it's remaster for PS3/360) MK Armageddon also pulling 720p on Xbox GOW games and their PS3 remasters and Katamari Damacy with it's Switch/PS4/Xbox/PC remaster Just Cause and it's advanced PC/360 release Tomb Raider Anniversary with 360 and PC ports Budokai 3 on 360/PS3 (without it's original soundtrack, you can mod it in if you have what's necessary though) and on the note of Budokai 3, that does support 480p natively if you hold △ and X on boot. Lastly there's a few games where no-interlacing patches exist but weren't used, I don't know if PCSX2 just include them or if they're stuck on the forum but yeah, nice vid.
Excellent video and excellent points. The conclusion I came to was one you didn't consider actually. I think playing the games on the emulator with the native 480i / 480p renderer with a CRT filter is the way to go. That way everything looks as it was intended but you get a crystal clear image. Also the PS2 native renderer in PCSX2 is very accurate to PS2 however the hardware renderer is NOT as accurate and does not support as many features. This is why some of the Silent Hill games for example look perfect with the PCSX2 software renderer but are missing effects with the hardware renderer.
According to the devs, software rendering shouldn’t make any difference after the 2.0 update & using Vulkan. I do actually agree that on many cases using native res is the best (which is why you see me experimenting with it in some games) and I like outputting that to a VGA CRT. I don’t really enjoy the CRT filters in PCSX2 at all, though, and I hope someone contributes better ones eventually.
I appreciate the opinions here, I am of the same mind. In the late 2000s I was playing PS2 games in 4k with my i7 950 CPU and it was truly amazing, Kingdom Hearts games in particular look very clean in 4k. Over the years I just find that playing games on their native systems more often than not gives the best experience. Older textures look so much better at low resolutions, it gives the illusion of way more detail being there than their actually is and you lose that magic when you upscale for most games.
When deinterlacing doesn't work right in PCSX2, try changing the deinterlacing field order (top field first or bottom field first). In some of your examples it looked like the fields were getting swapped.
Thanks for this! A bit embarrassed that I didn't check this, but also strange that it's happening at all. Top field first should only be used by HD sources, and it's odd for specific games to utilize it. That being said, I did try it and it fixed Tekken 5, though the MA deinterlacer still holds up VERY poorly compared to that of the Framemeister/RetroTINKs. Still disappointed in the implementation, but it certainly fixes it here. Soul Calibur II was not fixed by this, unfortunately.
Man - I'm so torn now.. Love the video but the decision is as clear as mud lol. I have an Original Xbox, PS2 and Xbox 360. I've been set on getting an OSSC Pro (Xbox 360 upscaling) and I currently have an Electron Sheperd HDMI adapter. It's just such a tough idea - I can either get a HDMI mod for the Xbox and get a nice clean 480p signal and be done - then I've only got a handful of games that I'd need to emulate or play on PS2 without an upscaler (GTA VCS, GT4 and the Getaway).
why not do both ? run the ps2 emulator through a tink 4k with mask and scanlines emulation... i do this now with batocera and a real crt and you get the best of both worlds... higher model resolutions and cleaner visuals fed back through 240p.... it looks incredible.
What are your opinions on older PC games say pre 2005 being played on a CRT monitor vs a modern display? Currently playing through Dark Forces 1 and my CRT monitor bit the dust mid playthrough so i swapped to my main PC and am playing it on an OLED. Man did it ever feel and look better on the CRT. Crazy how 320x200 85FPS on the CRT feels better than 1440p 240FPS on the OLED.
Ironically, playing gt4 on PS2 using small tv feels better than at 1080p with pcsx2 and that's mainly because it hides imperfections through blurry graphics and smaller display. 4k textures are too sharp and cars feel very slightly blocky due to it. But it's easier to play on pcsx2 than to set up the tv and aging PS2 for me
Funny that you mention that. I use a 720p TV for playing PS3 games. To be honest, having Edge smoothing on, when playing on the original hardware looks almost the same as when emulating it. I'm the kind of person who uses both original hardware and emulation."
@@bluetooth2677I think PS3 emulation is fine and that's mainly due games still looking decent. Imo I just like a little bit of smoothening, not too much otherwise it ruins the details.
@@chhandobhihbhushan2742 Agree, PS3 emulator is fine. But there still a lot of issues with it. But if you don't have a good PC, using 720 TV does wonders for PS3/360 games. Because most only support 720p resolution.
absolutely not lmao , its partly unaccessible incredibly expensive hardware which can die fast , at that point with its costs+repair cost in case it dies , you would rather get an actual PS2 with an upscaler or a freaking low-tier to mid-tier gaming PC that can handle PS2 emulation just fine. even Steam Deck can do that.
PCSX2 ought to have the same option as Dolphin does, where I can opt to choose the native output resolution with 8x SSAA applied to get rid of the horrid shimmering.
The way I play PS2 games on my oled is using xbox series s in dev mode with the xbox fork of pcsx2 called xbsx2 which is then hooked up to a retrotink 4k. You get a 1080p HD PS2 experience upscaled to 4k with scanlines with the retrotink 4k.
If you don't mind getting it from Sailing the Seven Seas, you should be able to get Champions of Norrath CD quality soundtrack from places like Soulseek. You might have to go a little deeper to find it in high quality.
Would've loved to see PCSX2 running at the game's original resolution added to the comparison as well. A lot of your complaints stem from the game running at "too high" of a resolution making the lack of detail in some games stick out more (not sure I agree with that, but that's why a comparison would've been nice).
I think deinterlace on auto should be the better option but I don't understand any of them so .. Also you can change textures on some games with pcsx2 Few days ago I played crash of titans on both pcsx2 emulator and xbox360 emulator I was amazed that ps2 looked better while having much better frame rates
One huge benefit (for me) is overclocking of the cpu It increases the framerate in some games to the intended 30/60 fps Lots of games stutter on OG hardware It also applies to duckstation and PS1, especially the classic tomb raider games where framerates dip into the high 10s
Just cause was originally developed as a 360 game first, all the other versions are ports (even the PC version), inferior, and are running in different graphics api and even engine. I owned the 360 version and later tried the PC demo back then, and a friend had the PS2 version and holy shit, what a massive difference. Same thing with NFSP Most Wanted. The PC version was a port from the og Xbox and PS2, the 360 version was the "definitive" version.
Never played the silent hill series but I think those are the kinda games that would look better in their original art style as well with no resolution scaling/anti aliasing or filtering
I remebmer that there where games with progressive mode(deinterlaced) when you was useing component video output, and to run game with progressive mode you had to hold some button when PS2 was starting reading dvd disc
After PCSX2 received the 2.0 update i don't need to worry about the original hardware anymore, and MNC 3 it's ok for me, i dont get distracted because of the light trails, it's always in there even in PS2 with a CRT panel, i aways seen it back in the days
The trails existing weren’t the problem. Of course they’re there on the original. The problem were that they were rendered completely incorrectly and almost detached from the light sources. They stand out instead of blending into the intended aesthetic
This console and games on it were designed to work in tandem with older TVs. To simulate a picture of that time you need one of the CRT variants of ReShade effect, then advantage will always be with PCSX2 in my opinion, but you still need a powerful PC fo 4K gaming in 60 fps.
CRT emulation doesn’t make up for the inaccuracies or outright errors, which is what this was focused on. RetroTINK also has great CRT emulation - it just isn’t used here because it doesn’t look good in videos at all
@@lostsaves I see and agreed with it. Not all of them looks goon on PC or have working fixes. So for a fair comparison, I think it also makes sense to compare only games that don’t have the obvious errors you showed, and simply ignore the rest as defective. That's exactly what I did with Haunting Ground until I found a solution of all problems. Of course one effect like CRT_Lotus.fx, CRT-Guest-Advanced.fx or BadBloomPS2.fx doesn't compensate for all features and artefacts of different games on PCSX2 in comparison with original console PS2 on CRT TV, but it would be interesting to see realistic view of final image of old time in comparison with the capabilities of programs available on a PC for understanding maximum of possible authentic reflection on modern screens. Judging by RUclips, no one wants to deal with this, probably due to the lack of opportunities, the presence of a professional camera and a room that gives the right lighting conditions for this type of shooting, but yes, with 3D graphics everything can be different depending on some resolution and other factors like pinched RUclips video. In any cace you did great work, I learned a lot of new things for myself, thanks.
It's interesting that you put Jak 3 in this video - pretty soon the definitive way to play it will be natively on PC, just like Jak and Daxter: TPL and Jak II. Have you seen OpenGOAL?
I do not like the CRT filters built into PCSX2 at all. They’re the bare minimum, lazy-implemented masks that don’t interact with the source material. There’s some great GLSL crt shaders and the ones in reshade are pretty good, but the PCSX2 ones really disappoint me
@@larrymorgan3858 CRT filters are a joke. they look NOTHING like a real CRT. Most of those who create TV shaders have no clue how a real CRT really looks like. The closest one i tried was Koko Aio from the Retroarch shaders, try it out, even though i think PCSX2 is not updated on Retroarch.
Those aftermarket PS2 shells would be nice if they had the PS logo on them like the original does (I understand why they don't). But i guess i can just get a bottom as thats the only part on my phat PS2 that has any damage.
When I was 10 years old I had a PS2 and I never knew how to take advantage of the catalog, because I was very stupid, and I didn't know any English and many games were in English, now I want to take advantage of it and without a doubt the emulator looks infinitely superior
Since the thumbnail is God of War 2, I have to say I don't understand why people choose rpcs3 over pcsx2 for the first two God of War games. On pcsx2 you can save stats and load pretty much any second while on RPCS3 you can only load you save stat before you load the game.
Oh man this video is so helpful. Unfortinately the results are slightly disappointing. Thats not a knock on your work which is amazing, its just the simple reality is that the PS2, the greatest console of all time has the Achillies Heel of being designed for the CRT TV which we can no longer buy new. I cannot spend $750 on the Retrotink 4K, but I was thinking about getting the 2XPro. Not sure if I will be happy with it though while I am in possession of some working CRT TVs though, but the CRTS have their own drawbacks. Their pictures are no longer perfect and need adjusting (and I cant find anybody that knows how) but even flawed they still look better than that Kaico adapter on my LG Oled. Maybe Emulation is the route to go but it comes with its own problem too.
Not only you get a more consistent image with real hardware through a CRT TV, but also no input lag or very little input lag compared to playing with PCSX2 which has got a lot of input lag, like 2 or 3 frames, some games have 5 frames which is unbearable and makes fighting games very hard to play. When i tried a real PS2 through a CRT TV i was impressed with the no input lag, today with modern LCDs and emulators you dont get the same experience. If someone wants to go the emulation rute but still wants a "retro" feel, get a Raspberry PI and connect it to a CRT TV.
A Pi has the same amount of input lag and can't play PS2. It would still be emulating and isn't an FPGA solution so it would still have input lag. Even if you somehow got a Pi 5 connected to a CRT by soldering the right pad, it still is emulating. The only way around it is with a modded PS2 with FreeMcBoot plus OPL Loader
@@samuelbanya I know this. But connected to a CRT you wil still have less input lag compared to a LCD, and also you can use run ahead. Yeah cant play PS2 that is the bad part really.
The way I have midnight club set up on an emulator it looks amazing I don't know what you did. Whatever you did it made it look. Crazy plain looking. I basically leave everything the same just make it windscreen and I up the revolution to 1080p but it looks amazing on my 4K TV whatever you showed us and whatever I'm playing right now do not look the same I have my version loaded up on my computer now on my TV. Because I was like there's no way I've been playing it looking like that. I loaded my version up and it looks amazing. I'm much rather play it this way than my original PlayStation 2 and I have damn near every game
imo might be best to make comparison for games that don't have their PC port counterpart, since would be just better playing on PC instead of through emulations, regardless on latest console/mobile phone emulators or not.
true, but still... much better exclude those having PC ports. From your lists: original PC ports: Just Cause - all series Marvel - Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2 All Tomb Raider series that got console releases, excluding non consoles. Devil May Cry 3, the 1st DMC PC ports, while 1 & 2 would later on get HD remaster port instead more than decade later. DMC3 & beyond got their original PC ports. PC HD remaster: Katamari Damacy
As someone who has been using software emulation for the past 13 years. I'll give the edge to the original hardware. The main reason is basically accuracy and input lag, bot of which are hugely lacking in this particular emulator. I'd rather play DMC3 on a real PS2 for example, because of the hard to time royal guard and other mechanics that require good timing. Doing it on PCSX2 is much harder because of that and felt unplayable sometimes because I'm so used to the original's latancy compared to emulation. That's only one game, not counting many others.
The Great PCSX2 stands tall as the best gaming experience for PS2... of course, along with its younger brother DUCKSTATION and its older brother RPCS3. Three of the best emulators of all time... ❤🙏🔥
@@efrenarevalo2025 ePSXe... yeah, a real shame, it was very good in its time and of course I didn't like knowing that it had died. But the joy soon returned when I knew that there was something better! xD
@@archivey-h8e Beetle is just a core and needs to be built on a platform... Duckstation is a complete and completely independent emulator, and it has long since surpassed Beetle.
If input latency were not a problem, image priors would not be a problem for emulators for me. But the problem with emulators is unfortunately input latency. That's why original hardware is always better. I hope one day an fpga hardware will be made that can emulate ps2.
i have both and i still prefer certain games on PCSX2 especially with all the modding capabilities it offers as well as HD Textures sometimes (example : Persona 3 FES)
5:30 the issues with soul calibur II and III were fixed years ago buddy, you need to manually fix the sprites if i remember correctly that is in "manual hardware fixes"
PCSX2 already ships with a sprite fix for the game, which enables automatically and checking the "manual hardware fixes" box disables it. That fix fixes the old issues I described, but does not fix the newer deinterlacing issues I showcased.
im pretty late to the comment section i use pcsx2 nightly build n i just switch from ps2 and pc i like both sometimes its not even jus the quality of the graphics i jus miss the game
A bit of a dis-service to PCSX2 by not running a comparison through software mode. You would find that everything will look the same if not a bit better due to digital output on PC as opposed to analogue on PS2. Also, running the latest "stable" version is never recommended as PCSX2 is set up for rolling releases, stable is really only put up to preserve a period of time where the team hit a milestone. I would like it if you ran this test again but in software mode or in hardware mode using no resolution scaling so you might also get other effects (texture filtering options, texture replacements). Cool vid regardless I do like seeing these comparisons against real hardware.
Did you run your PCSX2 games through a big 4K TV when comparing? I find that while the graphics might look better on the emulator, the playing experience is much better on a big TV screen vs. small computer screen.
Just googled for RetroTINK 4K....they can keep it, $750 they asking makes PS5 Pro price suddenly seem quite reasonable. No thanks but I'll be sticking with PCSX2.
By playing "on original hardware" I think you mean playing on CRT (or with CRT filter) with original resolution and settings, even on emulator. That's how I play.
I mean, that’s clearly not what I meant since the video was very clearly about using a scaler on a normal TV, but I do discuss and advocate for CRTs all the time. That’s just not what this video was about and thus not what I meant.
Fun fact if you want to play l o t r the two towers At 60 FPS Then you want to play the game on dolphin as the game cube version targeted 60 But it has lower quality FMVs So it's still not perfect But better than playing the game at 30
Urgh honestly I was ready to pull the trigger on the Retrotink 4K and I think it is an extremely good choice for 2D consoles and maybe the GameCube or other progressive scan output consoles but for the PS2 in particular it really does not look good, I think the only options for tolerable image quality for the PS2 is basically PCSX2 or a CRT. I agree with everything you say about the barren look of certain games in PCSX2 but I don't think the Retrotink 4K is a solution to that, that satisfyingly noisy quality to an image that is missing in emulators seem to still only be presented properly in interpolated video by a CRT :(
I prefer filling the screen. Plus integer isn’t always best for 3D games. Unfortunately PCSX2 doesn’t have the capabilities to integer scale to the closest even % and interpolate from there like the scalers can
Ratchet Size matters was kind of a poor pick imo, being a PSP game originally and really not great looking overall. The three original games hold up so much better and look great on both OG hardware and PCSX2
You seem biased towards original hardware. Emulation is literally always better because it's not limited by the hardware, keeps improving over time, has WAY more options, etc. In the Midnight Club example you could have just chose options (like leaving motion blur on) to make it more authentic.
Geniune question as you talk a lot of some games looking better on crt (i agree) then why do this comparassion with a upscaler for modern tvs? Like if it is for that why not using a nice crt shader on pc like crt royale?
Good question! I do plan on exploring good CRT shaders in future videos. I don’t like the CRT filters in PCSX2 specifically (and was trying to keep this to built in stuff) and most people who didn’t grow up with them don’t prefer the CRT look in general these days either
i will definitely set it up for some PS2 games just to have it as a PC gamer that got into consoles with PS4 Pro i really hate PS1 and PS2 controls so i only got PS3 good thing is many PS2 games were ported to PS3 and you can play PS2 games on hacked PS4 with patches cheats and so on i have all PS2 GTA games fully modded on my PS4 Pro it's 1000 better then the definitive collection for PS4 and PS5
I mean, I very clearly noted that I was trying other resolutions when o had deinterlacing issues. PCSX2’s deinterlacer has always needed work, the MA option is very new to it too You’re going to notice this far less easily on the tiny SD 800p screen compared to a big 4k monitor/TV lol
Funny : PS2 games , when played on a PC look like .... Mobile games from 2024 !! Well, NO rest fo technology. And to think that we loved those games back in the days (it's my case.. Bought PS2 day one ....).. At least, games were FUN !!!
I’m a little confused. Why are you comparing 480p + rt4k to PCSX2? Shouldn’t it be 4k with rt4k compared to PCSX2? The higher resolutions you are getting with PCSX2 look like what I would’ve imagined with the rtk4 which is why I’m saying this.
It is an incredible scaler and beats anything on the market, even in the professional broadcast industry. But it can’t change the internal rendering resolution of games lol If I compared native 480 output from PCSX2, they would look nearly identical (which is what you want)
@@lostsaves Yeah I'm kinda expecting that... PS2 is a great system, one if the best ever, but regarding image quality its almost like N64, with so many post-processing effects and incoherent resolutions... It's a bit hard to make it look good without an expensive scaler. And emulation (from my point of view) It's kinda meh, due to the frame-time delivery. Hopefully fpga will become cheaper to the point where doing integer scaling, line multiplying and applying crt filters will note put a hole on your wallet. Excellent video though! Hopefully someday you'll do some 6th gen console gameplay tribute video 👌🏻 Take care 💪🏻
dbz 3 is 480p hold triangle and x while booting
It is, but when you activate 480p, the performance (fps) is reduced and the color range is also reduced, giving a less vivid image.
You know, you don't have to upscale if you don't want to. PCSX2 has an option called "software mode" on the renderer selector that pretty much provides the PS2 experience. Though, I recommend to keep anti-blur on just to make the games look a bit cleaner than real hardware... and the no-interlacing patches too of course.
I thought that too I would have been more interested to see a comparison at native res Which handles motion adaptive de interlacing better
oh my god I have been looking for Champions of Norrath for YEARS AND YEARS. I played a demo disc and it's one of the games I didn't know the name of. I will be back in a few weeks... bless you I LOVE YOU
Huzzah!
there is also a sequel called "Call to Arms"
Champions Return to Arms
@@lostsaves my bad, been awhile, I was big into EverQuest so I really enjoyed those games
If only you mentioned it even a single time in any of your videos I could have told you exactly what you were looking for!
i love how it really shows where the emulator shines and a reason to keep the OG hardware.
Absolutely incredible videos lately dude, loving these!
Thank you!
I'm so glad you covered some of these games that made my childhood. Thank you.
Gotta leave a second comment. Ive been playing around with PCSX2 and I think the sweet spot in settings are 720P Resolution + Scanline filter. I feel like that gives the best combination of improved clarity but leaves just enough blur to hide all the visual artifacts that a standard defination CRT would hide. If you see this comment I am curious to know what you think of those settings.
I'm just not a fan of the built-in CRT emulation at all. Been digging into Reshade CRT emulation off and on, but if I'm going to go through that effort, I'm just going to play on a real CRT lol
Thanks i followed, for san andreas. I like the taste. Some games look like watching spiderman into the verse with high quality. :have a great day.
@@lostsaves I have no experience with reshade. What is the visual difference between it and the scanline filter?
I can't vouch for the RetroTINK 4K since I don't have one, but I'm pretty satisfied with PCSX2. It's really convenient to be able to access over 1200 PS2 titles on my 5tb external hard drive at the drop of a hat, on my PC, with the emulator upscaled to 3x or 4x native resolution. I also have an original PS2 fat and a 1tb hard drive in the expansion bay with a FCMB memory card & OPL connected to my tv with a "PS2 to HDMI" connector. While it's definitely better than the native connection, it's still not that good. I'd like to have the RetroTINK 4K but with it being $750, I'd have to take out a small loan lol. I'll just stick with the emulator and my PS2 fat set up for now lol. Good comparison video though!👍
Thief
@@RedEyedDRAG00N what? the system is no longer sold and its games are no longer sold , who did they steal from to become a thief? you living in 2000s my dude?
@@leorelic 1200 ISOs tells me he is a thief.
@@leorelic So ima just pretend I didnt buy a PS2 in 2021 and havent been buying games because according to you, they arent being sold.
@@RedEyedDRAG00N dawg 1200 ISOS of a system no longer sold in an official capacity. sure on a technicality its still piracy but no one , not ONE person gives a shit about that. hell even law doesn't care about that.
no one is saying you should pretend you didn't buy a PS2 in 2021 or its games , but i am saying you did not buy that when Sony was selling it officially. it is no longer a system manufactured OR sold by Sony. they are no longer games published and sold by Sony. you BOUGHT them from a third party that is not Sony. it is literally abandonware. no company out there is currently making and selling legit new PS2 games. and guess what , PS3 is the same.
so no , he is not a thief , he is a preservationist of history who refuses to pay 2 or 3 sometimes 4 times the price of a game for a legit copy off of a third party seller where the safety of the games or consoles are not guaranteed.
Generally speaking, stylized games like Jak and Daxter, Spyro, and Crash Bandicoot benefit the most from emulator enhancements. Zelda Windwaker looks like a complete remaster just by bumping the render resolution. The cartoon/cellshaded style lends itself nicely to upscaling.
Great comparisons, but it’s all really subjective, I see all the PCSX2 stuff and think ‘no comparison that’s way cleaner and better’, but I do get the look of the shimmering/distortion/black pixel darkening adds a mood or texture to some of the games here
Nice video with some cool examples of comparisons. Only one thing I would agrue back, is that you can play on pcsx2 at original PS2 resolution, which will solve many graphics anomalies that are caused due to upscaling.
Worse comes to worse, you can play at original PS2 resolution with software rendering instead, which increases the accuracy to impressive levels. Team this up with some nicely tweaked filters, and well, you have a pretty convincing replacement for actual hardware. 🤷♂
I do still have many original consoles, but, when it comes to PS2, I do use PCSX2 a lot, simply for convenience and practicality. 🍻
I'm weird, I put the games in 720p, no widescreen and in my mind they look the way I remember them, crunchy but not blurry/aliased so I play this way.
Sounds like a solid way to go!
@@lostsaves yeah, I didn't like playing on PCSX2 because it felt heavier (input latency) than my real PS2 but found out you just need to choose 0 on frames to buffer and set it to hard GPU sync, it needs a beefier PC but feels exactly as a real PS2 that way.
How do I configure this? In which part of the emulator? @@yadspi
I think the light trails in midnight club are intended to emulate how blown highlights would trail on ancient handicams
I don’t mind it in the real game, it just doesn’t look right in PCSX2
Why not just emulate the game in the original resolution if the light trails look bad in 4k?
Because 4K wasn’t the specific cause
what about leaving motion blur on and keeping res at 4k?
@@lostsaves Although not a fix, but a workaround to fix the streetlights is to quickly press F9 to enter Software Mode and back again to the Renderer of your choice completely eliminates this issue. You have to do it each time you enter a race or to into cruise around the map, but it does indeed fix the issue of the street lights trailing. I will admit that is honestly the one thing holding it back from becoming better to play on PCSX2.
CRTs probably do the original hardware more justice, they can really smooth out the low res elements, I never really liked the mismatched look of high resolution combined with low res textures, and sometimes models. It's a really variable thing but despite that there's still a significant amount of detail that can be brought up by up-rendering in models, it's a weird thing.
A few of these games (as mentioned with ultimate alliance) have ports/remasters better on that hardware like
SoulCalibur II pulling 720p (albeit at 4:3 only) on Xbox (and it's remaster for PS3/360)
MK Armageddon also pulling 720p on Xbox
GOW games and their PS3 remasters
and Katamari Damacy with it's Switch/PS4/Xbox/PC remaster
Just Cause and it's advanced PC/360 release
Tomb Raider Anniversary with 360 and PC ports
Budokai 3 on 360/PS3 (without it's original soundtrack, you can mod it in if you have what's necessary though)
and on the note of Budokai 3, that does support 480p natively if you hold △ and X on boot.
Lastly there's a few games where no-interlacing patches exist but weren't used, I don't know if PCSX2 just include them or if they're stuck on the forum but yeah, nice vid.
CRTs for life!
💯
Excellent video and excellent points. The conclusion I came to was one you didn't consider actually. I think playing the games on the emulator with the native 480i / 480p renderer with a CRT filter is the way to go. That way everything looks as it was intended but you get a crystal clear image. Also the PS2 native renderer in PCSX2 is very accurate to PS2 however the hardware renderer is NOT as accurate and does not support as many features. This is why some of the Silent Hill games for example look perfect with the PCSX2 software renderer but are missing effects with the hardware renderer.
According to the devs, software rendering shouldn’t make any difference after the 2.0 update & using Vulkan.
I do actually agree that on many cases using native res is the best (which is why you see me experimenting with it in some games) and I like outputting that to a VGA CRT. I don’t really enjoy the CRT filters in PCSX2 at all, though, and I hope someone contributes better ones eventually.
I appreciate the opinions here, I am of the same mind. In the late 2000s I was playing PS2 games in 4k with my i7 950 CPU and it was truly amazing, Kingdom Hearts games in particular look very clean in 4k. Over the years I just find that playing games on their native systems more often than not gives the best experience. Older textures look so much better at low resolutions, it gives the illusion of way more detail being there than their actually is and you lose that magic when you upscale for most games.
Well said!
When deinterlacing doesn't work right in PCSX2, try changing the deinterlacing field order (top field first or bottom field first). In some of your examples it looked like the fields were getting swapped.
Thanks for this! A bit embarrassed that I didn't check this, but also strange that it's happening at all. Top field first should only be used by HD sources, and it's odd for specific games to utilize it. That being said, I did try it and it fixed Tekken 5, though the MA deinterlacer still holds up VERY poorly compared to that of the Framemeister/RetroTINKs. Still disappointed in the implementation, but it certainly fixes it here. Soul Calibur II was not fixed by this, unfortunately.
@@lostsaves SC2 doesn't exist outside the GameCube and Link 😂
Man - I'm so torn now.. Love the video but the decision is as clear as mud lol.
I have an Original Xbox, PS2 and Xbox 360.
I've been set on getting an OSSC Pro (Xbox 360 upscaling) and I currently have an Electron Sheperd HDMI adapter.
It's just such a tough idea - I can either get a HDMI mod for the Xbox and get a nice clean 480p signal and be done - then I've only got a handful of games that I'd need to emulate or play on PS2 without an upscaler (GTA VCS, GT4 and the Getaway).
Get the OSSC!!!
@@lostsaves I did! It's decent for sure
I've been waiting for a video like this! 😊
cool video dude, i recently got a ps2 and crt (og xbox as when i was a kid) and im really excited to play all the games i can
Great video! I'd be interested in seeing more comparisons like this for PS2 games and perhaps even GameCube/Dolphin comparisons if you ever made them.
Thanks for the idea!
Really amazing video, good to see
Thank you!
why not do both ? run the ps2 emulator through a tink 4k with mask and scanlines emulation... i do this now with batocera and a real crt and you get the best of both worlds... higher model resolutions and cleaner visuals fed back through 240p.... it looks incredible.
I'd be really curious to see how that looks I hope he sees this comment and does a video on it in the future
Champions RTA is so underrated, i still love it to this day
What are your opinions on older PC games say pre 2005 being played on a CRT monitor vs a modern display? Currently playing through Dark Forces 1 and my CRT monitor bit the dust mid playthrough so i swapped to my main PC and am playing it on an OLED. Man did it ever feel and look better on the CRT. Crazy how 320x200 85FPS on the CRT feels better than 1440p 240FPS on the OLED.
A lot of them definitely feel better on a CRT. CRT masks help hide the graphics and make them feel a lot more real
Ironically, playing gt4 on PS2 using small tv feels better than at 1080p with pcsx2 and that's mainly because it hides imperfections through blurry graphics and smaller display. 4k textures are too sharp and cars feel very slightly blocky due to it.
But it's easier to play on pcsx2 than to set up the tv and aging PS2 for me
Funny that you mention that. I use a 720p TV for playing PS3 games. To be honest, having Edge smoothing on, when playing on the original hardware looks almost the same as when emulating it. I'm the kind of person who uses both original hardware and emulation."
@@bluetooth2677I think PS3 emulation is fine and that's mainly due games still looking decent. Imo I just like a little bit of smoothening, not too much otherwise it ruins the details.
@@chhandobhihbhushan2742 Agree, PS3 emulator is fine. But there still a lot of issues with it. But if you don't have a good PC, using 720 TV does wonders for PS3/360 games. Because most only support 720p resolution.
PS2 on PS3 is still king!
Definitely not
absolutely not lmao , its partly unaccessible incredibly expensive hardware which can die fast , at that point with its costs+repair cost in case it dies , you would rather get an actual PS2 with an upscaler or a freaking low-tier to mid-tier gaming PC that can handle PS2 emulation just fine. even Steam Deck can do that.
@@leorelic hell a $300 mini pc will give you 1080p-1440p on most games on PCSX2
@@ineedandrenaline yes it does.
@@leorelic My PS3 60gb is still going very strong. I had to replace the cmos battery, but other than that I have never had any issues.
PCSX2 ought to have the same option as Dolphin does, where I can opt to choose the native output resolution with 8x SSAA applied to get rid of the horrid shimmering.
That’d be amazing TBH
The way I play PS2 games on my oled is using xbox series s in dev mode with the xbox fork of pcsx2 called xbsx2 which is then hooked up to a retrotink 4k. You get a 1080p HD PS2 experience upscaled to 4k with scanlines with the retrotink 4k.
Hardcore
Спасибо за видео дружище , чисто ленту листал и обнаружил твое видео , я никогда не скачивал Эмуляторы но после этого видео обязательно попробую ❤
If you don't mind getting it from Sailing the Seven Seas, you should be able to get Champions of Norrath CD quality soundtrack from places like Soulseek. You might have to go a little deeper to find it in high quality.
Yeah I think I have a copy, I just like having the real thing
Would've loved to see PCSX2 running at the game's original resolution added to the comparison as well. A lot of your complaints stem from the game running at "too high" of a resolution making the lack of detail in some games stick out more (not sure I agree with that, but that's why a comparison would've been nice).
I think deinterlace on auto should be the better option but I don't understand any of them so ..
Also you can change textures on some games with pcsx2
Few days ago I played crash of titans on both pcsx2 emulator and xbox360 emulator I was amazed that ps2 looked better while having much better frame rates
One huge benefit (for me) is overclocking of the cpu
It increases the framerate in some games to the intended 30/60 fps
Lots of games stutter on OG hardware
It also applies to duckstation and PS1, especially the classic tomb raider games where framerates dip into the high 10s
For sure
Just cause was originally developed as a 360 game first, all the other versions are ports (even the PC version), inferior, and are running in different graphics api and even engine. I owned the 360 version and later tried the PC demo back then, and a friend had the PS2 version and holy shit, what a massive difference.
Same thing with NFSP Most Wanted. The PC version was a port from the og Xbox and PS2, the 360 version was the "definitive" version.
Great job, incredible video!
Thanks a lot!
great content!
Never played the silent hill series but I think those are the kinda games that would look better in their original art style as well with no resolution scaling/anti aliasing or filtering
I remebmer that there where games with progressive mode(deinterlaced) when you was useing component video output, and to run game with progressive mode you had to hold some button when PS2 was starting reading dvd disc
After PCSX2 received the 2.0 update i don't need to worry about the original hardware anymore, and MNC 3 it's ok for me, i dont get distracted because of the light trails, it's always in there even in PS2 with a CRT panel, i aways seen it back in the days
The trails existing weren’t the problem. Of course they’re there on the original. The problem were that they were rendered completely incorrectly and almost detached from the light sources. They stand out instead of blending into the intended aesthetic
This console and games on it were designed to work in tandem with older TVs. To simulate a picture of that time you need one of the CRT variants of ReShade effect, then advantage will always be with PCSX2 in my opinion, but you still need a powerful PC fo 4K gaming in 60 fps.
Retro Crisis channel can help understand that.
CRT emulation doesn’t make up for the inaccuracies or outright errors, which is what this was focused on. RetroTINK also has great CRT emulation - it just isn’t used here because it doesn’t look good in videos at all
@@lostsaves I see and agreed with it. Not all of them looks goon on PC or have working fixes. So for a fair comparison, I think it also makes sense to compare only games that don’t have the obvious errors you showed, and simply ignore the rest as defective. That's exactly what I did with Haunting Ground until I found a solution of all problems. Of course one effect like CRT_Lotus.fx, CRT-Guest-Advanced.fx or BadBloomPS2.fx doesn't compensate for all features and artefacts of different games on PCSX2 in comparison with original console PS2 on CRT TV, but it would be interesting to see realistic view of final image of old time in comparison with the capabilities of programs available on a PC for understanding maximum of possible authentic reflection on modern screens. Judging by RUclips, no one wants to deal with this, probably due to the lack of opportunities, the presence of a professional camera and a room that gives the right lighting conditions for this type of shooting, but yes, with 3D graphics everything can be different depending on some resolution and other factors like pinched RUclips video. In any cace you did great work, I learned a lot of new things for myself, thanks.
This might be intresting too:
RetroRGB - Why Retro Consoles Need A Scaler
Macho Nacho Productions - I Made A PS2 So ADVANCED, It’s Basically A PS3
My own review of the RetroGEM is shouted out in that MachoNacho video lol..
Great video.
5:29 the wall became invisible in 2002, still unknown technology to fromsoftware and blizzard.
Hahaha
It's interesting that you put Jak 3 in this video - pretty soon the definitive way to play it will be natively on PC, just like Jak and Daxter: TPL and Jak II. Have you seen OpenGOAL?
I prefer to upscale to 1080p but I use the crt filter personally
I do not like the CRT filters built into PCSX2 at all. They’re the bare minimum, lazy-implemented masks that don’t interact with the source material.
There’s some great GLSL crt shaders and the ones in reshade are pretty good, but the PCSX2 ones really disappoint me
@@lostsaves reshade is trash tho i don't like something that i need to run in the background that slows down the pc more
Any sort of post processing CRT emulation will add additional processing load lol
@@lostsaves I don't get the lol its my opinion maybe you need a better pc I do agree though they need better CRT shaders but that's what I prefer.
@@larrymorgan3858 CRT filters are a joke. they look NOTHING like a real CRT. Most of those who create TV shaders have no clue how a real CRT really looks like.
The closest one i tried was Koko Aio from the Retroarch shaders, try it out, even though i think PCSX2 is not updated on Retroarch.
Most games actually have the option to disable interlacing in the patches tab. Also just play in software mode if you don't want any bugs.
Most games do not. As very clearly stated at the start of the video, those were used where available.
really impressive!
Have you tried using SpecialK or ReShade to inject HDR into PCSX2? Obviously HDR is not accurate but I've found it helps a lot for older games!
Those aftermarket PS2 shells would be nice if they had the PS logo on them like the original does (I understand why they don't). But i guess i can just get a bottom as thats the only part on my phat PS2 that has any damage.
Dunno, I prefer how real PS2 looks in 90% of your examples
I agree original is original... Ps3 on Hdmi looks way better than any Pc emulator.
When I was 10 years old I had a PS2 and I never knew how to take advantage of the catalog, because I was very stupid, and I didn't know any English and many games were in English, now I want to take advantage of it and without a doubt the emulator looks infinitely superior
Since the thumbnail is God of War 2, I have to say I don't understand why people choose rpcs3 over pcsx2 for the first two God of War games. On pcsx2 you can save stats and load pretty much any second while on RPCS3 you can only load you save stat before you load the game.
it would be cool to see a comparison of pcsx2 vs retrotink 4k, everything on native resolution :)
Oh man this video is so helpful. Unfortinately the results are slightly disappointing. Thats not a knock on your work which is amazing, its just the simple reality is that the PS2, the greatest console of all time has the Achillies Heel of being designed for the CRT TV which we can no longer buy new. I cannot spend $750 on the Retrotink 4K, but I was thinking about getting the 2XPro. Not sure if I will be happy with it though while I am in possession of some working CRT TVs though, but the CRTS have their own drawbacks. Their pictures are no longer perfect and need adjusting (and I cant find anybody that knows how) but even flawed they still look better than that Kaico adapter on my LG Oled. Maybe Emulation is the route to go but it comes with its own problem too.
The Retrotink 4k is good as High End CRT and even butter with high end OLED TV but the price tag is insane and not worth it
3:00 This was one of the few games that i have dropped frames on emulator
Not only you get a more consistent image with real hardware through a CRT TV, but also no input lag or very little input lag compared to playing with PCSX2 which has got a lot of input lag, like 2 or 3 frames, some games have 5 frames which is unbearable and makes fighting games very hard to play.
When i tried a real PS2 through a CRT TV i was impressed with the no input lag, today with modern LCDs and emulators you dont get the same experience.
If someone wants to go the emulation rute but still wants a "retro" feel, get a Raspberry PI and connect it to a CRT TV.
CRTs for life!
@@lostsaves Agreed buddy.
A Pi has the same amount of input lag and can't play PS2. It would still be emulating and isn't an FPGA solution so it would still have input lag.
Even if you somehow got a Pi 5 connected to a CRT by soldering the right pad, it still is emulating.
The only way around it is with a modded PS2 with FreeMcBoot plus OPL Loader
@@samuelbanya I know this. But connected to a CRT you wil still have less input lag compared to a LCD, and also you can use run ahead.
Yeah cant play PS2 that is the bad part really.
The way I have midnight club set up on an emulator it looks amazing I don't know what you did. Whatever you did it made it look. Crazy plain looking. I basically leave everything the same just make it windscreen and I up the revolution to 1080p but it looks amazing on my 4K TV whatever you showed us and whatever I'm playing right now do not look the same I have my version loaded up on my computer now on my TV. Because I was like there's no way I've been playing it looking like that. I loaded my version up and it looks amazing. I'm much rather play it this way than my original PlayStation 2 and I have damn near every game
I paid $90 for an xbox key for Soulcalibur 2 HD Online. It was delisted, but you can gt it for PS3 emulator
imo might be best to make comparison for games that don't have their PC port counterpart, since would be just better playing on PC instead of through emulations, regardless on latest console/mobile phone emulators or not.
Most of these games did not have PC releases…
true, but still... much better exclude those having PC ports. From your lists:
original PC ports:
Just Cause - all series
Marvel - Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2
All Tomb Raider series that got console releases, excluding non consoles.
Devil May Cry 3, the 1st DMC PC ports, while 1 & 2 would later on get HD remaster port instead more than decade later. DMC3 & beyond got their original PC ports.
PC HD remaster:
Katamari Damacy
Or I can include games that were core to the PS2 experience for many people and people would be curious how they compare.
As someone who has been using software emulation for the past 13 years. I'll give the edge to the original hardware. The main reason is basically accuracy and input lag, bot of which are hugely lacking in this particular emulator. I'd rather play DMC3 on a real PS2 for example, because of the hard to time royal guard and other mechanics that require good timing. Doing it on PCSX2 is much harder because of that and felt unplayable sometimes because I'm so used to the original's latancy compared to emulation. That's only one game, not counting many others.
The Great PCSX2 stands tall as the best gaming experience for PS2... of course, along with its younger brother DUCKSTATION and its older brother RPCS3. Three of the best emulators of all time... ❤🙏🔥
...and the middle child who lost his way, ePSXe.
@@efrenarevalo2025 ePSXe... yeah, a real shame, it was very good in its time and of course I didn't like knowing that it had died. But the joy soon returned when I knew that there was something better! xD
Duckstation is incredibly overrated, everything it does Beetle PSX on Retroarch did first and better.
@@archivey-h8e Beetle is just a core and needs to be built on a platform... Duckstation is a complete and completely independent emulator, and it has long since surpassed Beetle.
If input latency were not a problem, image priors would not be a problem for emulators for me. But the problem with emulators is unfortunately input latency. That's why original hardware is always better. I hope one day an fpga hardware will be made that can emulate ps2.
Wonder if ps2 games have the same issue with older pc games when upscaled where a better resolution only makes these games look more outdated.
Community patches and texture mods alone make the emulation worth it.
Persona 3 FES Community Mod Pack is THE way to play Persona 3.
Good vid
CRT with a ps2. No other option
💯
i have both and i still prefer certain games on PCSX2 especially with all the modding capabilities it offers as well as HD Textures sometimes (example : Persona 3 FES)
@@leorelic You should use PCSX2 on a CRT for the ultimate experience
@@chaosvii4605 god damn 😂nah i'm good i have an actual PS2 that works just fine. but PCSX2 for anything not CRT
@ your loss, high red textures with crt scan lines is peak
5:30 the issues with soul calibur II and III were fixed years ago buddy, you need to manually fix the sprites if i remember correctly that is in "manual hardware fixes"
PCSX2 already ships with a sprite fix for the game, which enables automatically and checking the "manual hardware fixes" box disables it. That fix fixes the old issues I described, but does not fix the newer deinterlacing issues I showcased.
PCSX2 is way better but it does have its flaws in certain games but I still got my Modded PS2 for backup.
im pretty late to the comment section i use pcsx2 nightly build n i just switch from ps2 and pc i like both sometimes its not even jus the quality of the graphics i jus miss the game
Run it all on PCSX2 and add crt/scanline shaders externally. Not the same as the console, but close and possibly the best of both worlds?
A bit of a dis-service to PCSX2 by not running a comparison through software mode. You would find that everything will look the same if not a bit better due to digital output on PC as opposed to analogue on PS2. Also, running the latest "stable" version is never recommended as PCSX2 is set up for rolling releases, stable is really only put up to preserve a period of time where the team hit a milestone. I would like it if you ran this test again but in software mode or in hardware mode using no resolution scaling so you might also get other effects (texture filtering options, texture replacements). Cool vid regardless I do like seeing these comparisons against real hardware.
Did you run your PCSX2 games through a big 4K TV when comparing? I find that while the graphics might look better on the emulator, the playing experience is much better on a big TV screen vs. small computer screen.
Yes a 48” OLED
All of them looked better on the emulator
Just googled for RetroTINK 4K....they can keep it, $750 they asking makes PS5 Pro price suddenly seem quite reasonable.
No thanks but I'll be sticking with PCSX2.
By playing "on original hardware" I think you mean playing on CRT (or with CRT filter) with original resolution and settings, even on emulator. That's how I play.
I mean, that’s clearly not what I meant since the video was very clearly about using a scaler on a normal TV, but I do discuss and advocate for CRTs all the time. That’s just not what this video was about and thus not what I meant.
Fun fact if you want to play l o t r the two towers At 60 FPS Then you want to play the game on dolphin as the game cube version targeted 60 But it has lower quality FMVs So it's still not perfect But better than playing the game at 30
Urgh honestly I was ready to pull the trigger on the Retrotink 4K and I think it is an extremely good choice for 2D consoles and maybe the GameCube or other progressive scan output consoles but for the PS2 in particular it really does not look good, I think the only options for tolerable image quality for the PS2 is basically PCSX2 or a CRT. I agree with everything you say about the barren look of certain games in PCSX2 but I don't think the Retrotink 4K is a solution to that, that satisfyingly noisy quality to an image that is missing in emulators seem to still only be presented properly in interpolated video by a CRT :(
You should use integer scaling for a uniform render.
I prefer filling the screen. Plus integer isn’t always best for 3D games.
Unfortunately PCSX2 doesn’t have the capabilities to integer scale to the closest even % and interpolate from there like the scalers can
Ratchet Size matters was kind of a poor pick imo, being a PSP game originally and really not great looking overall. The three original games hold up so much better and look great on both OG hardware and PCSX2
You seem biased towards original hardware. Emulation is literally always better because it's not limited by the hardware, keeps improving over time, has WAY more options, etc. In the Midnight Club example you could have just chose options (like leaving motion blur on) to make it more authentic.
Geniune question as you talk a lot of some games looking better on crt (i agree) then why do this comparassion with a upscaler for modern tvs? Like if it is for that why not using a nice crt shader on pc like crt royale?
Good question! I do plan on exploring good CRT shaders in future videos. I don’t like the CRT filters in PCSX2 specifically (and was trying to keep this to built in stuff) and most people who didn’t grow up with them don’t prefer the CRT look in general these days either
i will definitely set it up for some PS2 games just to have it as a PC gamer that got into consoles with PS4 Pro i really hate PS1 and PS2 controls so i only got PS3 good thing is many PS2 games were ported to PS3 and you can play PS2 games on hacked PS4 with patches cheats and so on i have all PS2 GTA games fully modded on my PS4 Pro it's 1000 better then the definitive collection for PS4 and PS5
You chose a bad image of Soul Calibur 2. I didn't have the same problems as you
Crt filters baby!
Soul caliber 2 on emu looks like it's vibrating. 😅
Too much caffeine
3:42 Rule of Rose on a PAL PS2 don't think the same.
Nothing beats a CRT in combination with a PlayStation 2.
What about button pressure sensitivity on PCSX2?
Thank goodness we have a PS2 emulator this good. XBOX fans aren’t quite as fortunate!
Indeed!
Did you downscale the PS2 resolution? I don't think the games looked as bad on PS2 as I'm seeing them in your video.
No? Upscaled 4k using the RetroTINK 4K & WobblingPixels’ profiles
Idk what's going on here, but I don't get these weird issues on a Steam Deck. May be pushing it to higher resolution issues.
I mean, I very clearly noted that I was trying other resolutions when o had deinterlacing issues. PCSX2’s deinterlacer has always needed work, the MA option is very new to it too
You’re going to notice this far less easily on the tiny SD 800p screen compared to a big 4k monitor/TV lol
Funny : PS2 games , when played on a PC look like .... Mobile games from 2024 !!
Well, NO rest fo technology. And to think that we loved those games back in the days (it's my case.. Bought PS2 day one ....)..
At least, games were FUN !!!
Yeah at least you can play ps2 games
Mobile games would rather force you through an hour of tutorials to direct you towards spending money
Just cause on 360 looks completely different to how it does on ps2
I still can't get hd texture packs to work in pcsx2... Any advice??
crt monitor+ps2 beats 4k
💯
I’m a little confused. Why are you comparing 480p + rt4k to PCSX2? Shouldn’t it be 4k with rt4k compared to PCSX2? The higher resolutions you are getting with PCSX2 look like what I would’ve imagined with the rtk4 which is why I’m saying this.
I think you are confused. The RT4K is scaling to 4K.
I was stating that the PS2 itself was outputting 480i/p to the Tink
@@lostsaves if that is the case, the rt4k doesn’t seem anywhere near as good as the price tag suggests
It is an incredible scaler and beats anything on the market, even in the professional broadcast industry.
But it can’t change the internal rendering resolution of games lol
If I compared native 480 output from PCSX2, they would look nearly identical (which is what you want)
9:36 down there is written tekken 5 instead of budokai 3
I thought the retrotink could make these games 4k. But he is only upscaling with the emulator? So he is not comparing fairly
The RetroTINK is upscaling the PS2 video output to 4k. The emulator is rendering the games at 4K.
ATV Offroad Fury 2 got patch update fix
Let's wait for PS2 fpga 💪🏻
Will be a long while lol
Even longer to get it perfect given software emulation is still very inaccurate on a technical level
@@lostsaves Yeah I'm kinda expecting that... PS2 is a great system, one if the best ever, but regarding image quality its almost like N64, with so many post-processing effects and incoherent resolutions... It's a bit hard to make it look good without an expensive scaler. And emulation (from my point of view) It's kinda meh, due to the frame-time delivery. Hopefully fpga will become cheaper to the point where doing integer scaling, line multiplying and applying crt filters will note put a hole on your wallet. Excellent video though! Hopefully someday you'll do some 6th gen console gameplay tribute video 👌🏻 Take care 💪🏻