It has been more than four years since the PCSX2 emulator reached a stable version. Back then we highlighted its compatibility and performance improvements, but with the arrival of version 2.0, we can now say that the emulator has completely reinvented itself. Among the most important changes we find the abandonment of wxWidgets in favor of Qt for the interface, the definitive disappearance of plugins, independent per-game configuration, Big Picture mode, and the adoption of Vulkan for graphics processing.
PlayStation 2. Thirteen years on the market, 160 million units sold, thousands of titles in its catalog... an entire generation of players grew up with that console. Many franchises were born on that platform, and others multiplied their popularity. Obviously, the PlayStation 2 is a finished story for Sony, but the community has another vision of things, and that led to the development of solutions like the PCSX2 emulator. With more than twenty years on its shoulders, PCSX2 has reached version 2.0... and it looks better than ever.
PCSX2 2.0: What's New?
The evolutionary leap for PCSX2 has been so great since its last stable version that the official blog published an article with an estimated reading time of 25 minutes. At the top of the list of changes is the definitive retirement of wxWidgets and the adoption of Qt for its interface development. This offers better performance and greater flexibility when customizing its content with themes, rooting out all its technical debt.
Another big change in PCSX2 2.0 is the abandonment of the classic plugin system. Invaluable at the time, now plugins have become an automatic and unique solution. If a specific game needs a hack or another similar change, the emulator will handle it without user intervention. However, there will always be room for personal adjustments (for example, resolution), and instead of modifying global parameters, PCSX2 2.0 includes per-game configuration support.
The category of incompatible games has been reduced to an all-time minimum, Big Picture mode works very well with high-definition panels, and the new patch dynamics allow applying mods to certain games (widescreen support, 60 FPS, etc.) without headaches. This covers just a fraction of the optimizations that PCSX2 received in version 2.0, and I definitely recommend visiting the original article, as well as downloading a copy. PlayStation 2 emulation is at its best.
Official announcement and downloads: Click here
