The PlayStation 2 PCSX2 Emulator, a fan-made PS2 emulator, now has a stable build which was released earlier this week. The emulator is an open-source project and has been in development for over four years.

Players who have been associated with gaming for a long time have a special affinity towards emulators. Surely the gaming industry has taken multiple steps forward with each passing generation but the games which people have grown up playing will always occupy a special place in their hearts. Emulators, for instance, aren't developed by a team looking to make a business out of it. It's just the creator's love for classic games which encourages them to do something for the community, and groups of developers often join hands to deliver this non-profit venture to players. Since these developers don't have the support of the brands behind the consoles they are emulating, it takes them years of hard work and perseverance to make the games playable.

Related: Sony Confirms Plans to Emulate PS2 Games on the PS4

The team behind the PS2 PCSX2 emulator announced on Thursday that the first stable build of the emulator is now available to download from their website. The release of a stable build after four years might sound surprising, but it can be compared to a game coming out of early access. While the emulator might still have a few bugs, a large proportion of the problems are solved with the release of the latest build. Emulating a game is an intricate task, and the various progress reports show the amount of work the team puts behind each release of the software.

Urban Chaos PCXS2

One of the prime examples of the changes in each build release can be found above. The game in question is Urban Chaos and the build dates back to Q2 2019. The developers transformed a completely unplayable game that looks more like a distorted image to a full-fledged playable game. The developers highlight that the presence of "Texture shuffle emulation, Depth emulation, Channel shuffle emulation and special HLE shader emulation" as the elements which gave the game such a massive improvement. There are tons of such instances in the progress reports out there, which made it possible for the PS2 PCSX2 emulator to have a total of 2535 playable titles, which is 96.13% of the 2637 compatible games, and 14 more games then before which are completely perfect.

The sixth-generation, which included the PS2, has been considered the golden era of gaming. It was not just the backward compatibility of the PS2 which made it such an impressive console, but the alluring library it had at that time, and many beloved couch co-op games delivered the experience of a lifetime. With Sony shunning the idea of backward compatibility beyond the PS4 in the upcoming PS5, it seems like the PlayStation 2 PCSX2 Emulator is the best way to preserve Playstation games. Thankfully, Sony isn't very stern about these fan-made video game recreation projects, so more of these ventures would do well in the near future.

Next: Best PS2 Games (Updated 2020)

Source: PCSX2