playstation 2 lcd screen free sample

The PlayStation 2 games can support HDTVs and EDTVs as well as the 16:9 widescreen mode. Generally, progressive scan mode is activated by holding the Template:PlayStation key press and Template:PlayStation key press, buttons down after the PlayStation 2 logo appears. When this is done, the game will typically load a screen with instructions on how to enable progressive scan. Many games only offer progressive scan through this method, offering no related options in the game"s options menu. Both methods work on a backward compatible PlayStation 3 as well.

At the PS2 internal System Configuration menu, the Screen Size option allows for a 4:3 or 16:9 (widescreen) display, however, most games do not poll this option for enabling widescreen, relying on internal options instead. As with progressive mode, widescreen mode can also be forced. Using the products of the PlayStation 2 emulation and homebrew scene, many games that don"t directly offer a widescreen mode can be patched to use a true 16:9 aspect ratio. This is achieved by one of two methods: using cheat codes with a cheat engine like the commercial software Code Breaker or the free Homebrew software PS2rd; or by modifying the game executable permanently with a hex editor.

The most important things you can do to improve the clarity, color, and brightness of your PS2 games is to get component cables (if your HDTV will accept them) and optimize the HDTV using a THX certified DVD/BluRay.

When you change the aspect ratio of the game to widescreen, your TV does not automatically adjust. You"ve have to manually switch the TV to 16:9 (aka Full Screen). Don"t forget to change back when you play a game in 4:3 mode.

Some games, like Ratchet and Clank 2: Going Commando, have a widescreen mode takes the easy way out and just chops off a lot of the top and bottom of the video to make it fit the 16:9 aspect ratio. Be sure to check any game you suspect this of. I preferred how the game looked in 4:3 mode. I still set the TV to Full Screen. There"s some distortion, but not enough to bother me.

The main drawbacks to improved video quality via better cables and HDTV are jagged edges and graphical artifacts becoming much more apparent. PS2 games were designed for the brighter, more saturated look of cathode ray tube televisions, not the clearer, sharper but less rich LCD screens. Some tweaking of the TVs settings can help here. First, most if not all HDTVs store separate video settings for each input. So changing the brightness on the component input won"t ruin the cable TV settings.

The PlayStation 2 was not one of the most powerful consoles of its generation, yet it managed to achieve a level of popularity unthinkable for other companies.

This machine is nowhere near as simple as the original PlayStation was, but we will see why it didn’t share the same fate of previous complicated consoles.

32 128-bit extra registers: Another enhancement. They are better managed using multimedia instructions and are very useful for vector processing.These registers are accessed through a 128-bit bus, while the rest of the CPU uses an internal 64-bit bus.

24 KB L1 cache: Divided into 16 KB for instructions and 8 KB for data.It also implements a prefetch function to cache instructions and data before they are requested. This is done by including extra circuitry that can identify which places in memory are more often requested.

The core is complemented with a dedicated floating point unit (identified as ‘COP1’) that accelerates operations with 32-bit floating-point numbers (also known as floats in C). This is a peculiar block as it doesn’t follow the IEEE 754 standard, most evident with its absence of infinity (computed as 0 instead)

At first, this can be a little disappointing to hear, considering the internal bus of the Emotion engine is as wide as 128 bits. However, the RAM chips are strategically placed by following the dual-channel architecture, which consists in connecting both chips using two independent 16-bit buses (one bus per chip) to improve data throughput. The resulting setup provides a theoretical 3.2 GB/sec, so rest assured that memory latency is not an issue in this console!

Data transfers are done in batches of 128-bits, but here is the interesting part: Every eight batches, the main bus is temporarily unlocked. This leaves a small window to perform other DMA transfers in parallel (up to ten) or let the CPU use the main bus. This modus operandi is called slice mode and is one of the many modes available on this DMA unit. Bear in mind that while slice mode reduces stalls on the main bus, it does so at the cost of slowing down the overall DMA transfer.

Adding a 128-byte Write Back Buffer: Very similar to the Write Gather Pipe, but instead of waiting until it’s 25% full, it will check the state of the bus (i.e congested or free) first.

Inside the same Emotion Engine package, there is yet-another processor called Image Processing Unit or ‘IPU’, this time designed for image decompression. As the successor of the MDEC, the IPU can be useful when a game needs to decode an MPEG2 movie without jamming the main CPU.

Long story short, the game sends compressed image streams to the IPU (hopefully using DMA) which are then decoded in a format that the GPU can display. The PS2’s operating system also relies on the IPU to provide DVD playback.

It’s been two years since the rivals presented their latest offering. If you read the former article and just started reading this one, I presume you are still waiting for ‘the thing’ that makes the PS2 as powerful as it seemed back then. Now, let me introduce a very important set of components Sony fitted in the Emotion Engine, the Vector Processing Units or ‘VPU’.

Macromode: The VPU0 becomes the ‘COP2’ of the main CPU and executes ‘macro-instructions’, received from the main CPU through a dedicated 128-bit bus.Macro-instructions have the same functionality as microinstructions but use different opcodes. Nonetheless, the VPU execution unit is no longer split (meaning it can only execute one instruction at a time).

These have been so far examples from the theoretical point of view, but to explain a more ‘practical’ implementation, I’m going to refer to a video Jon Burton published regarding the development of one of their PS2 games

The Emotion Engine kickstarts the Graphics Synthesizer by filling its embedded DRAM with the required materials (Texture bitmaps and Colour Lookup tables, the latter are also known as ‘CLUT’), assigning values on the GS’s registers to configure it, and finally, issuing the drawing commands (Display Lists) which instruct the GS to draw primitives (points, lines, triangles, sprites, etc) at specific locations of the screen.

Texture maps are fetched from DRAM in an area defined as Texture buffer, although this is interfaced by a separate area called Texture Page Buffer which seems to serve as a caching mechanism for textures. CLUTs are also mapped using this page system. Both elements are retrieved using a 512-bit bus.

Colour Clamping: After applying operations like Alpha Blending, the new RGB value may exceed the valid range (0-255), so clamping sets the value within the range.

It’s worth mentioning that games like Dragon Quest implemented a custom lighting model called Cel Shading (a term I have mentioned before), however, in my previous articles I explained that the GPU was mainly responsible for this. In the PS2 case, the required colour calculations are presumably done by the Emotion Engine, since the GS isn’t as flexible as other GPUs.

As stated before, the PCRTC sends the frame buffer through the video signal. The interface can broadcast video using a wide range of formats (to work with TVs from any geographical region)PAL: Sends up to 640x512 pixels at 50 Hz, either progressive (576p) or interlaced (576i).No games found in the market use 576p. While some support progressive mode, they do so in 480p mode.

DTV: Up to the enormous amount of 720x480 pixels in progressive mode or 1920x1080 in interlaced mode.By tweaking the PCRTC settings, a game can also force to output in 1080p. However, this mode is undocumented and therefore subject to unpredictable behaviour.

Does that mean the PS2 can ‘display HD’? Technically… yes, but I don’t think most game studios risked the performance penalty for a format that wasn’t popularised yet.

There’re quite a lot of modes to choose from, but it all comes down to the format adoption during the early 2000s, which narrows it down to PAL and NTSC. Also, even though PAL provided a higher resolution than NTSC, some European versions of NTSC games resorted to letterboxing to mask the unused horizontal lines and slowed down the refresh rate to fit in the 50Hz limit (I call these ‘bad ports’!).

The new audio chip is an incremental update of the old SPU called… SPU2! Improvements include the inclusion of 2 MB of internal memory and 48 channels available (two times the original amount).

Curiously enough, these are still two independent processors and to configure them, you have to alter their registers. However, Sony warned developers that both sets of registers have to be set with 1/48000 seconds of gap. If you hurry too much, the behaviour of the SPU2 becomes unpredictable!

The SPU2 inherits the same effects available from the original SPU. The memory provided is used as a ‘work area’: You can store raw waveform data and allocate extra space to process it and apply effects on it.

Finally, the chip can mix all channels to provide stereo output. Now, here is the interesting part: The SPU2 can feed itself the mixed stereo sample as new input, this enables the EE to access it (to mix it with even more audio, for instance), or keep adding more effects (such as reverb, echo and delay).

To start with, there’s a dedicated processor that arbitrates the communication between different components, this CPU is no other than the original MIPS R3000-based core found in the PlayStation 1. This time, it’s called IOP and runs at 37.5 MHz using a 32-bit bus

By including the original CPU, we can suspect PS1 compatibility would eventually happen somehow. Conveniently enough, the IOP happens to include the rest of the components that formed the CPU subsystem of the PS1. Moreover, the core can be under-clocked to run at PS1 speed. Unfortunately, the SPU2 has changed too much for the PS1, but for that, the Emotion Engine is ‘repurposed’ to emulate the old SPU.

In later revisions of this console, the IOP was replaced with a PowerPC 401 ‘Deckard’ and 4 MB of SDRAM (2 MB more than before), backwards compatibility persisted but through software instead.

This console kept the previous front ports that were included in the original PlayStation, it also featured a couple of ‘experimental’ interfaces that looked very promising at first.

What about the ‘experimental’ ones? To start with, there was initially a front i.Link port (also known as IEEE 1394, or ‘FireWire’ in the Apple world). This port was used to connect two PS2 to enable local multiplayer, but it was removed after the third revision (presumably replaced by the ‘Network card’, more details below).

The ethernet transceiver supplied supports transfer rates of up to 100 Mbps (12.5 MB/s). However, the observed rate is notoriously lower (down to 2 MB/s in some cases). The explanation for that is relatively simple: To achieve usable network communication, one is required to implement all the layers of the standard ‘OSI Model’; and the transceiver is just one piece of the puzzle. The rest is often delegated to the IOP (thus, done in software) but due to the IOP’s limited performance

During the days of the original PlayStation, multiple revisions of the original controller were released featuring different features (and also bringing fragmentation to the market). Now, for the benefit of developers, there was a single controller that unified all the previous properties.

Next to the controller slot is the Memory Card slot which is compatible with PS1 and PS2 cards. The new cards embed extra circuitry for security purposes referred to as MagicGate, which enables games to block data transfers between different memory cards.

Start the IOP processor and send it modules, these will enable the IOP to handle the hardware of this console. In the end, the IOP will be put in a ‘waiting for command’ state.The use of modules allows Sony to release new hardware revisions of the PS2 without changing the IOP, lowering production costs.

It is unprecedented the level of popularity this system achieved during the noughties, at the end of its lifespan (2013, after 13 years!) the game library was filled with 1850 titles

What happened here is really impressive. The PS2 doesn’t have a ‘programmer-friendly’ architecture, (as seen from the perspective of a PC programmer) yet with such an amount of games developed, I too wonder if there were more factors involved (such as ‘licensing reliefs’, low distribution costs, cost of development, small form factor and so on).

On the software side, there was the PlayStation 2 SDK which includedThe Emotion Engine toolchain: A set of C and C++ compilers, assemblers, linkers and debuggers used to control each element of the EE. The main CPU was mainly programmed using C/C++, however, performance-critical components like the vector units were programmed using assembly (microcode/macrocode) instead.The pack also included an ‘Emotion Engine simulator’ which could roughly test out the code without sending it to the real hardware, although the simulator wasn’t as accurate as the physical EE chip.

On the hardware side, Sony provided studios with dedicated hardware to run and debug games in-house. The initial devkits were bare boards stacked together to replicate the un-released hardware of the PS2. Later kits (named Development Tool), had a more presentable appearance, enhanced I/O and combined workstation hardware (running RedHat 5.2) with PS2 hardware to build and deploy the game in the same case

Due to the type of medium used, not only games could be played, but also movies. Now, this requires a decoder to be able to read the DVD movie format, and for that, the PS2 initially included the required bits installed in the memory card (after all, the card is just a storage medium) but later models came with the DVD software pre-installed in the BIOS ROM.

Linux Kit included compilers targeting the EE (gcc 2.95.2 with glibc 2.2.2) and assemblers targeting the vector units, along with a window system (XFree86 3.3.6) ‘accelerated’ in the Graphics Synthesizer

This doesn’t necessarily require altering the console. However, depending on the model, the external case of the PS2 will have to be tampered with to block the eject sensors of the drive. In some cases, placing cotton in certain places will do the trick.

The PS2 stores a database file called TITLE.DB in MemoryCard which contains information used to optimise the emulation of PS1 games strike one). The information parser is implemented using strncpy(), a function in C that copies strings (chain of characters) from one place to another.

For people familiar with C, you probably guessed where I’m going. The thing is that strncpy() doesn’t know how long is a string, so unless it’s terminated (by placing \0 at the end of the chain) the copy goes on ‘forever’ (with unpredictable results!). Luckily, this function contains an optional parameter that specifies the maximum number of bytes to be copied, protecting the copy from buffer overflows. As ludicrous as it may seem, Sony didn’t use this parameter, even though each database entry has a fixed size of 256 bytes (strike two).

Congratulations and thank you for reaching the end of the article! To be honest, there was so much to talk about that I wondered if readers would eventually get tired of PlayStation-related stuff after finishing this.

Last time I went into considerable detail about how Okre’s Xbox renderer worked. In this post I’m going to explain how we got Okre running on PlayStation 2.

The PS2 was a powerful but limited machine. Its speed at rendering to the screen was unsurpassed at the time, but the blending it could do was very limited indeed. Where the Xbox could sample up to four textures and blend them arbitrarily with each other and the current screen contents, the PS2 could only sample a single texture, and either add or alpha blend with the screen. In terms of per-vertex calculations, the PlayStation 2 had a general purpose processor (called VU1) to process vertices, compared to the Xbox’s vertex shader which had a limited instruction set.

As mentioned in the introduction, we were able to leverage Argonaut’s existing PlayStation 2 technology, notably the code that ran Lego Bionicles and I-NinjaSuperFX chip). The Xbox clipped geometry in hardware whereas the PS2 had to use software clipping, and would crash horribly if got it wrong and let it draw too far off the sides of the screen.

The PS2 had an unusual feature — it supported two separate hardware rendering contexts. A context held settings like texture modes, blending modes, render target and so on. At render time, a triangle could be submitted through either render context. Okre used this to perform lighting and texturing at the same time for dynamic objects: one context had the settings for the texture of an object, the other had the lighting settings. The lighting context was set to add to a different buffer, so by the end of the texturing and lighting pass we would have two screen-size buffers: one would have the unlit, textured scene, and the other with the lighting.

Before rendering we initialised the lighting buffer to the ambient colour. Then we added on any self illuminated surfaces, as we did on the Xbox. The PS2 hardware didn’t have all the clever pixel-counting and early outs for Z failures, so we had no “Z stamp” pass.

Our solution was to use a 2D texture for falloff, using a fairly simple linear distance-based falloff of 1-sqrt(x*x+y*y). For each triangle, we calculated the plane it was lying on, and considered it to be a planar slice through the sphere of influence of the light. We projected the appropriately scaled coordinates of the triangle onto the plane, and used them as the U and V coordinates of the texture lookup. The distance from the triangle’s plane to the sphere’s centre was used to dim the light’s colour based on distance, and the resulting value used as the vertex colour(1-sqrt(x*x+y*y))*(1-z*z))

The tricky bit then came as we needed to combine the textured scene with the light buffer by multiplying the two together. Unfortunately the PS2 doesn’t have a multiplicative blending mode: the best it can do is multiply textures by a constant value and by either alpha or (1-alpha). Even worse, its idea of “multiplying” two values together is actually (x * y) >> 7 — that is, the result is double the value you’d expect. (Multiplying two 8-bit values together gives a 16-bit answer, and usually you’d shift this back down 8 to get an 8-bit answer out). This “feature” allows you to brighten things by up to 2 times during lighting (for mock specular effects), but actually throws one bit of accuracy each multiply. Aargh!

The trick is to “lie” to the hardware about the type of texture you have. By pointing the texture unit at the 32bpp light buffer, but saying “hey, it’s an 8bpp palettized texture”, it was possible to read just one component out (i.e. either red, green or blue). Setting an appropriate palette of (1 in either red, green or blue as appropriate, and index/2 in alpha) would then look up the 8-bit value and get a neutral colour with an alpha value of the “actual” amount. This would be used by the hardware as the value to multiply with, and so you’d get a single component multiplication. Repeat this for green and blue and you’ve done a full screen multiply.

This was made even more complex by the fact the layout of the buffers was not a contiguous ARGB, nor a simple planar format. Instead, when interpreting a 32bpp screen as if it were an 8bpp texture you saw a 16x4 block of pixels for each 8x2 source block:

The colour of each cell indicates which of the four components (red, green, blue or alpha) is stored, and the number indicates which pixel number is stored in an 8 by 2 block of pixels.

Selecting a single component from the buffer (when the buffer is viewed as an 8bpp texture), means crafting thousands of quadrilaterals that cherry-pick the right part for each component. We took advantage of the fact the pattern repeated regularly, and so could prepare a set of rendering instructions offline for a single screen block, and reuse that over and over again, just moving the source and destination texture pointers as appropriate. All this could happen on the VU1 chip, leaving the data bus free for the CPU while this operation occured.

Apart from the pre-calculated scenery shadows, we couldn’t come up with a viable way to do true dynamic shadows on PS2. There’s no stencil buffer or depth buffer support on PS2 and although there are some tricks to achieve both they’re both very expensive. We were already burning so much processing power doing our lighting so we decided against implementing them.

In order to get the camera effect (virtual aperture and exposure), we used a similar technique to the multiply trick to look up the red, green and blue component of the screen in an exposure table.

The colour bleed effect was one of the easier things to port over: the PS2 supported subtractive blending, so we could threshold the brightest pixels. Then downsampling, re-upsampling and adding was just texture manipulation and additive blending.

Sampling the brightness of the screen to feedback to the camera effect involved downsampling the screen until it was very small (around 32x32), and then transferring this small texture back from the graphics unit to the main memory where the CPU could read it.

Invaluable in the development process was the PlayStation 2 “Performance Analyser”, which was a gigantic, instrumented PS2 development kit. As far as I can tell it was a normal PS2 with a bunch of very fast RAM and hardware logic probes on all the bus signals. Triggered by a foot switch it would capture all the main signals going on for a whole frame. An application running on the developer’s PC would then let you visualise the captured data. This was handy for finding and fixing bottlenecks, and also at a push for working out why geometry wasn’t turning up in the right place. It required a pretty comprehensive understanding of how the PS2 worked though.

The Xbox had an equivalent system, except instead of being a very expensive piece of hardware, it used software instrumentation to capture essentially the same data although not at the detail of the PS2. The Xbox’s equivalent went on to become DirectX’s PIX, although it was much more powerful owing to the tool knowing exactly what graphics card it was running on. This meant it could do things like display the captured frame and then allow you to click on a pixel somewhere and tell you exactly how that pixel came to be rendered the colour it ended up — which polygons drew over it, what blending modes and textures were used and so on.

Argonaut had the first PlayStation 2 in the UK, and we developed a pretty complete demo of a game called “Cash on Delivery”, which was a Crazy Taxi-like game. Sadly nothing came of it. ↩

Staggerinly, the PS2 didn’t interpolate its colours taking into account perspective. This meant we had to be careful to minimise the colour change over larger polygons, particularly if they were next to smaller polygons where it would be more noticeble that the colour interpolation was completely different in each case. ↩

I have a theory that part of the success of the PlayStation consoles comes from their complexity to program and their insane limitations — this gives a gradual increase in game quality as developers learn new tricks the quality improves, giving the console a long lifetime. Gamers see continual improvements in game quality. Compared to Xbox say, where there doesn’t seem to be as big a difference between the quality of first-generation games compared to the later ones. ↩

The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on 30 November 2000. It is the successor to the original PlayStation, as well as the second installment in the PlayStation brand of consoles. As a sixth-generation console, it competed with Nintendo"s GameCube, and Microsoft"s Xbox. It is the best-selling video game console of all time, having sold over 155 million units worldwide.

Announced in 1999, Sony began developing the console after the immense success of its predecessor. The PS2 offered backward-compatibility for its predecessor"s DualShock controller, as well as its games.

The PlayStation 2 received widespread critical acclaim upon release. A total of over 4,000 game titles were released worldwide, with over 1.5 billion copies sold.PS2 Slim. Even after the release of its successor, the PlayStation 3, it remained popular well into the seventh generation. It continued to be produced until 2013 when Sony finally announced that it had been discontinued after over twelve years of production, one of the longest lifespans of any video game console. New games for the console continued to be made until the end of its life.

Released in 1994, the original PlayStation proved to be a phenomenal worldwide success and signalled Sony"s rise to power in the video game industry. Its launch elicited critical acclaim and strong sales; it eventually became the first computer entertainment platform to ship over 100 million units.development kits, large-scale advertising campaigns, and strong third-party developer support.Sega and Nintendo in the global video game market.Dreamcast in 1998 as a last-ditch attempt to stay in the industry.

Though Sony has kept details of the PlayStation 2"s development secret, Ken Kutaragi, the chief designer of the original PlayStation, reportedly began working on a second console around the time of the original PlayStation"s launch in late 1994.Argonaut Games, under contract for semiconductor manufacturer LSI Corporation, were instructed to design a rendering chip for Sony"s upcoming console.Jez San, founder of Argonaut, recalled that his team had no direct contact with Sony during the development process. Unbeknownst to him, Sony was designing their own chip in-house and had instructed other companies to design rendering chips merely to diversify their options.

By early 1997, the press was reporting that a new PlayStation was being developed and would have backward-compatibility with the original PlayStation, a built-in DVD player, and Internet connectivity.Chris Deering, then-president of SCEE recalled that there was a degree of trepidation among Sony leaders to produce a console which would recapture or exceed the success of its predecessor.

"PlayStation 2"s real-time graphics have no limitations. That"s why I chose the colour black as it represents the infinity of the universe. The blue represents the intelligence and life spouting up."

The PS2 was launched in March 2000 in Japan, October in North America, and November in Europe. Sales of the console, games and accessories pulled in $250 million on the first day, beating the $97 million made on the first day of the Dreamcast.eBay, where people paid over a thousand dollars for the console.Atari 7800, due to the added hardware costs and industry concerns that backward compatibility could cause the console to appear to be a merely a new model of its predecessor or lead developers to prefer making games for the predecessor system.

Later, Sony added new development kits for game developers and more PS2 units for consumers. The PS2"s built-in functionality also expanded its audience beyond the gamer,

Marketing for the PlayStation 2 reverted to the same tactic used in the early days of the original PlayStation: use 17-year-olds as the target audience, since younger audiences aspire to be teenagers and older audiences enjoy video games at the same level they did when they were 17.

The success of the PS2 at the end of 2000 caused Sega problems both financially and competitively, and Sega announced the discontinuation of the Dreamcast in March 2001, just 18 months after its successful Western launch. Despite the Dreamcast still receiving support through 2001, the PS2 remained the only sixth-generation console for over 6 months before it faced competition from new rivals: Nintendo"s GameCube and Microsoft"s Xbox. Many analysts predicted a close three-way matchup among the three consoles. The Xbox had the most powerful hardware, while the GameCube was the least expensive console, and Nintendo changed its policy to encourage third-party developers. While the PlayStation 2 theoretically had the weakest specification of the three, it had a head start due to its installed base plus strong developer commitment, as well as a built-in DVD player (the Xbox required an adapter, while the GameCube lacked support entirely).holiday season with the release of several blockbuster games that maintained the PS2"s sales momentum and held off its newer rivals. Sony also countered the Xbox by securing timed PlayStation 2 exclusives for highly anticipated games such as the

Sony cut the price of the console in May 2002 from US$299 to $199 in North America,GameCube and $100 less than the Xbox. It also planned to cut the price in Japan around that time.PlayStation 3.

Unlike Sega"s Dreamcast, Sony originally placed little emphasis on online gaming during its first few years, although that changed upon the launch of the online-capable Xbox. Coinciding with the release of Xbox Live, Sony released the PlayStation Network Adapter in late 2002, with several online first-party titles released alongside it, such as Electronic Arts (EA); EA did not offer online Xbox titles until 2004. Although Sony and Nintendo both started late, and although both followed a decentralized model of online gaming where the responsibility is up to the developer to provide the servers, Sony"s moves made online gaming a major selling point of the PS2.

In September 2004, in time for the launch of Suez Canal, blocking a ship from China carrying PS2s bound for the UK. During one week in November, British sales totalled 6,000 units—compared to 70,000 units a few weeks prior.

The PlayStation 2 continued to be produced until 2013 when Sony finally announced that it had been discontinued after over twelve years of production—one of the longest lifespans of any video game console. New games for the console continued to be made until the end of 2013, including

The PlayStation 2"s main central processing unit (CPU) is the 128-bit R5900-based "Emotion Engine", custom-designed by Sony and Toshiba.die. These units include a central CPU core, two Vector Processing Units (VPU), a 10-channel DMA unit, a memory controller, and an Image Processing Unit (IPU). There are three interfaces: an input output interface to the I/O processor running at a clock speed of 36.864MHz, a graphics interface to the graphics synthesiser, and a memory interface to the system memory.clock rate of 294.912 MHz (299 MHz on newer versions) and 6,000 MIPS, with a floating point performance of 6.2 GFLOPS.

The GPU is likewise custom-designed for the console, named the "Graphics Synthesiser". It has a fillrate of 2.4 gigapixels per second, capable of rendering up to 75 million polygons per second.DRAM is capable of transmitting a display output of 1280 x 1024 pixels on both PAL and NTSC televisions.colour depth of 16.7 million true colours.lighting, texture mapping, artificial intelligence, and game physics, the console has a real-world performance of 25 million polygons per second.USB ports, and one IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port for SCPH-10000 to 3900x models only. A hard disk drive can be installed in an expansion bay on the back of the console, and is required to play certain games, notably the popular

Software for the PlayStation 2 was distributed primarily on DVD-ROMs,backward-compatible with almost all original PlayStation games.memory cards and controllers, although original PlayStation memory cards will only work with original PlayStation games

The standard PlayStation 2 memory card has an 8 megabyte (MB) capacityMagicGate encryption. There are a variety of non-Sony manufactured memory cards available for the PlayStation 2, allowing for a memory capacity larger than the standard 8 MB.

The PlayStation 2 can natively output video resolutions on SDTV and HDTV from 480i to 480p, and some games, such as 1080i resolutioncomposite videoS-VideoRGBVGAPS2 Linux only), YPBPR component [should read composite video - the single, lower resolution yellow connector for video] videoD-Terminal.RF modulator is available for the system to connect to older TVs.

The PS2 is primarily differentiated between models featuring the original "fat" case design and "slimline" models, which were introduced at the end of 2004. In 2010, the Sony Bravia KDL-22PX300 was made available to consumers. It was a 22" HD-Ready television which incorporated a built-in PlayStation 2.

The PS2 standard color is matte black. Several variations in color were produced in different quantities and regions, including ceramic white, light yellow, metallic blue (aqua), metallic silver, navy (star blue), opaque blue (astral blue), opaque black (midnight black), pearl white, sakura purple, satin gold, satin silver, snow white, super red, transparent blue (ocean blue), and also Limited Edition color Pink, which was distributed in some regions such as Oceania, and parts of Asia.

In September 2004, Sony unveiled its third major hardware revision. Available in late October 2004, it was smaller, thinner, and quieter than the original versions and included a built-in Ethernet port (in some markets it also had an integrated modem). Due to its thinner profile, it did not contain the 3.5" expansion bay and therefore did not support the internal hard disk drive. It also lacked an internal power supply until a later revision (excluding the Japan version), similar to the GameCube, and had a modified Multitap expansion. The removal of the expansion bay was criticized as a limitation due to the existence of titles such as

Sony also manufactured a consumer device called the PSX that can be used as a digital video recorder and DVD burner in addition to playing PS2 games. The device was released in Japan on 13 December 2003, and was the first Sony product to include the XrossMediaBar interface. It did not sell well in the Japanese market and was not widely released anywhere else.

PlayStation 2 users had the option to play select games over the Internet, using dial-up or a broadband Internet connection. The PlayStation 2 Network Adaptor was required for the original models, while the slim models included built-in networking ports. Instead of having a unified, subscription-based online service like Xbox Live as competitor Microsoft later chose for its Xbox console, online multiplayer functionality on the PlayStation 2 was the responsibility of the game publisher and ran on third-party servers. Many games that supported online play exclusively supported broadband Internet access.

The PlayStation 2"s DualShock 2 controller retains most of the same functionality as its predecessor. However, it includes analogue pressure sensitivity to over 100 individual levels of depth on the face, shoulder and D-pad buttons,digital buttons of the original.force feedback, or "vibration" functionality. It is lighter and includes two more levels of vibration.

Optional hardware includes additional DualShock or DualShock 2 controllers, a PS2 DVD remote control, an internal or external hard disk drive (HDD), a network adapter, horizontal and vertical stands, PlayStation or PS2 memory cards, the multitap for PlayStation or PS2, a USB motion camera (EyeToy), a USB keyboard and mouse, and a headset.

The original PS2 multitap (SCPH-10090) cannot be plugged into the newer slim models. The multitap connects to the memory card slot and the controller slot, and the memory card slot on the slimline is shallower. New slim-design multitaps (SCPH-70120) were manufactured for these models; however, third-party adapters also permit original multitaps to be used.

Early versions of the PS2 could be networked via an i.LINK port, though this had little game support and was dropped. Some third-party manufacturers have created devices that allow disabled people to access the PS2 through ordinary switches, etc.

Some third-party companies, such as JoyTech, have produced LCD monitor and speaker attachments for the PS2, which attach to the back of the console. These allow users to play games without access to a television as long as there is access to mains electricity or a similar power source. These screens can fold down onto the PS2 in a similar fashion to laptop screens.

Unlike the PlayStation, which requires the use of an official Sony PlayStation Mouse to play mouse-compatible games, the few PS2 games with mouse support work with a standard USB mouse as well as a USB trackball.

PlayStation 2 software is distributed on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM; the two formats are differentiated by their discs" bottoms, with CD-ROMs being blue and DVD-ROMs being silver. The PlayStation 2 offered some particularly high-profile exclusive games. Most main entries in the

Game releases peaked in 2004, but declined with the release of the PlayStation 3 in 2006. The last new games for the console were software titles had been released worldwide including games released in multiple regions as separate titles.

Initial reviews in 2000 of the PlayStation 2 highly acclaimed the console, with reviewers commending its hardware and graphics capabilities, its ability to play DVDs, and the system"s backwards compatibility with games and hardware for the original PlayStation. Early points of criticism included the lack of online support at the time, its inclusion of only two controller ports, and the system"s price at launch compared to the Dreamcast in 2000.IEEE 1394 (branded as "i.LINK" by Sony and "FireWire" by Apple), and the console"s two USB ports while criticizing its "expensive" games and its support for only two controllers without the multitap accessory.

Later reviews, especially after the launch of the competing GameCube and Xbox systems, continued to praise the PlayStation 2"s large game library and DVD playback, while routinely criticizing the PlayStation 2"s lesser graphics performance compared to the newer systems and its rudimentary online service compared to Xbox Live. In 2002, CNET rated the console 7.3 out of 10, calling it a "safe bet" despite not being the "newest or most powerful", noting that the console "yields in-game graphics with more jagged edges". CNET also criticized the DVD playback functionality, claiming that the console"s video quality was "passable" and that the playback controls were "rudimentary", recommending users to purchase a remote control. The console"s two controller ports and the high cost of its memory cards were also a point of criticism.

The slim model of the PlayStation 2 received positive reviews for its incredibly small size and built-in networking, but received criticism for easily overheating due to exclusion of the original model’s built-in fan. The requirement for a separate power adapter was criticized while the top-loading disc drive was noted as being less likely to break compared to the tray-loading drive of the original model.

Demand for the PlayStation 2 remained strong throughout much of its lifespan, selling over 1.4 million units in Japan by 31 March 2000. Over 10.6 million units were sold worldwide by 31 March 2001.Nintendo DS reached 100 million shipments in 4 years and 5 months from its launch.PAL regions.

Using homebrew programs, it is possible to play various audio and video file formats on a PS2. Homebrew programs can also play patched backups of original PS2 DVD games on unmodified consoles and install retail discs to an installed hard drive on older models. Homebrew emulators of older computer and gaming systems have been developed for the PS2.

Sony released a Linux-based operating system, Linux for PlayStation 2, for the PS2 in a package that also includes a keyboard, mouse, Ethernet adapter and HDD. In Europe and Australia, the PS2 comes with a free Yabasic interpreter on the bundled demo disc. This allows users to create simple programs for the PS2. A port of the NetBSD project and BlackRhino GNU/Linux, an alternative Debian-based distribution, are also available for the PS2.

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Although it made its debut on the GameCube, the title also arrived on the PlayStation 2, potentially opening up the bizarre adventure to a new, larger audience, but it failed to do so, and the title remains a polarizing cult classic. If you’ve never played it, we urge you to do so.

It came out of nowhere, being a random video game of a 20-year-old movie, but The Thing was surprisingly good. Instead of focusing on the actual events of the movie, the game took place a few days afterwards. A team of U.S. soldiers were sent to investigate Outpost 31, before venturing to other facilities as they discovered the truth behind the alien invasion.

Arriving on the market several years before Guitar Hero andRock Band, Gitaroo Man was a precursor of what was to come. It didn’t feature the same exact style of play as GH and RB, instead using onscreen controller prompts when in guard mode, but it did feature a unique guitar playing interface when the player had to strum to the music. Using the analog stick to follow the “trace line,” you had to keep the aiming cone on the line while pressing buttons to play music and “attack” your foe. The modes alternated as the song progressed, meaning players had to quickly change from attack to guard, and so on.

You’ve heard of the Batman: Arkham series, right? Of course you have. We’re willing to bet you’ve not heard ofUrban Chaos: Riot Response, though. This is the debut game from Arkham creator Rocksteady Studios, and it’s one of the best, and most highly polished FPS titles on the PS2.

Urban Chaos looked great for a PS2 FPS, and it featured some of the most satisfying gunplay around. Head shots in particular were gratifying (and often the best way to take out foes, so mastering it was important), and the riot shield opened up new game mechanics, such as having to slowly approach a hostage-holding gang member, shielding yourself from fire until you could get in that elusive headshot. Brilliant.

A music shooter, Rez is a trip for the eyes and the ears. It’s an on-rails shooter that ties the onscreen action and your success to the music. As you fight, you add music and sound effects to the soundtrack, and your onscreen avatar transforms. Everything in the game reacts to the beat of the music, and the Panzer Dragoon-style controls and impressive bosses all make for a short, but unforgettable shooting experience.

It’s crazy to think that a series as popular as Monster Hunter was once overlooked by most. The original Monster Hunter arrived on the PS2, and was promptly dismissed by all but those who had the time and patience to give it a real chance.

Clover Studios was one of Capcom’s most promising divisions before it was closed down. It was responsible for two of the best underrated games on the PS2, one of which was God Hand (see the next entry for the other).

It’s been called the PlayStation 2’s Zelda, but Okami is far more than a simple clone, and it’s undoubtedly one of the best games ever released on the console. Based on Japanese mythology, with a brilliant ink and paper art style, you played the role of Amaterasu, a goddess in the form of a white wolf with the ability to use the “celestial brush” to manipulate the world and create objects.

By drawing on the screen, you could create bombs, gusts of wind, make trees grow, and many other things, all with the aim of restoring life to the land, which was ravaged by the demon, Orochi.

Yes, it had to be here. Ico is usually the first game anyone thinks of when asked about underappreciated PS2 games, and for good reason – it was both overlooked and bloody brilliant.

Some HDTVs have the option to not stretch the image horizontally, to preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio. Some can also avoid zooming the image, but that means you will have a small box of content in the middle of the screen. Upscaling and keeping the aspect ratio isn"t usually too bad, but breaking the aspect ratio will distort the image.

LCD screens have discrete pixels, while CRTs do not, so games with poor antialiasing (or none at all) will look more jagged on an LCD screen. Almost all HDTVs are LCD, but almost all SDTVs are CRT.

If you dug up a CRT computer monitor that supported higher resolution, it wouldn"t really affect how the PS2 games look (if you had the official VGA cable or a VGA box), because it would set the monitor to 640x480 resolution, so it"s not the resolution difference, it"s the screen technology that makes the difference. LCD is usually poor at displaying content that isn"t its native resolution. CRT is great at any resolution it can support because there are no individual pixels, just a phosphor array and a shadow mask.

Selected games on Sony"s video game console offer online capabilities. Games that enable the feature provide free online play through the use of a broadband internet connection and a PlayStation 2 Network Adaptor. Since the service has no official name, it is sometimes referred as either PS2 Network Play, PS2 Network Gaming or PS2 Online.

The service was launched in July 2001 in Japan, August 2002 in North America,slimline" models, a network adapter is integrated into the hardware. Some games also allowed online gameplay using a dial-up connection (not available on all models), or LAN play by connecting two network adapters/slimline consoles together directly with an Ethernet cable or through the same router network.

Instead of having a unified online service like SegaNet or Xbox Live, online multiplayer on the PS2 was the responsibility of the game publisher and was run on third-party servers. However, later PS2 online games required the console to be authorized through Sony"s Dynamic Network Authentication System (DNAS) before connecting to the server. Unofficial servers also exist which could be connected by setting up the DNS settings to connect to an unofficial DNS server. Most recent PS2 online games have been developed to exclusively support broadband internet access.

For the original models (non-Slim) of the PlayStation 2 console, a network adapter was needed to play online and use a hard drive. All versions of the Network Adaptor provide an Ethernet port, while some North American versions also featured a phone-line port for dial-up connection. The newer slimline versions, however, have an Ethernet port (and in some early North American models, a phone-line port) built into them, making the Network Adaptor unnecessary and hard drive use nearly impossible, as well as ruling out any need to keep the network adapter in production.

Playing online games requires that users set up the system"s network connection configuration, which is saved to a memory card. This can be done with the Network Startup Disk that came with the network adapter or using one of the many games that had the utility built into them, such as Resident Evil Outbreak, to set up the network settings. The new slimline PlayStation 2 came with a disk in the box by default. The last version of the disk was Network Startup Disk 5.0, which was included with the newer SCPH-90004 model released in 2009.

Released in 2001 Capcom vs. SNK 2 was the first ever video game to offer cross-platform play between two competing video game consoles, followed in 2002 by

Over time, most game servers have been shut down. However, computer programs such as XBSlink, SVDL and XLink Kai allow users to achieve online play for some PS2 games by using a network configuration that simulates a worldwide LAN.

In my previous article, I"ve written about Playstation trivia facts that you might have never heard. Though the system put Sony at the forefront of the console war, it is truly the PlayStation 2— its successor— that cemented Sony"s status as a leader. Teen gamers must have never fully experienced the console since it was first released 18 years ago. However, the PS2 is the highest selling console of all time, even surpassing the sales of the SNES. In homage to this legendary console, we"ll discuss 25 PlayStation 2 Secrets Only True Fans Know.

What"s interesting about the PlayStation 2 timeline is that it didn"t follow the same path as its predecessor and was also a witness to many technological habit changes, most notably the popularity of the Web. Therefore, the PS2 had many signature features that would remain in future Sony consoles. While there may be a few things that you already know about the console, we"re quite sure that there are specific entries that will surprise you. Ultimately, we want to give a little PS2 class to gamers who haven"t been able to play the console while testing the knowledge of the most seasoned players. As always, we welcome you to share and comment the article. Feedback is also appreciated. So sit back, relax and enjoy another reading from your favorite gaming website, The Gamer. Enjoy!

Sony seems to love giving meaning to its system. If we take a look back at the history of the PS1 logo, the colors were initially used to highlight the joy, passion, and excellence of the console. While the PS logo seemed very lively, the PS2 symbol is very obscure. At first glance, the font looks like it could be used for a sci-fi horror movie. While it may seem a bit far-fetched, Sony had a theme for the PS2 that was similar to the idea.

As such, he decided to use the space as a central theme for the PS2. Essentially, the blue font is supposed to represent planet Earth while the black background is to symbolize the emptiness of the dark space. Further medias helped to reinforce the theme. For instance, David Lynch produced few "weird" promo videos that were meant to highlight "The Third Place" of the PS2. The concept seems to be in perfect correlation with what Sony was trying to represent with the PS2. Ironically enough, Sony never released any gameplay of the console, before these ads. Oh, dear Sony.

The PS2 was host to significant fighting game series like Tekken & Street Fighter. Though the genre isn"t booming as it used to in the 90s, the scene remains one of the most vocal scenes in the video game community. Players traditionally either use a pad (that"s fighting game slang for a controller) or a joystick. However, many people aren"t aware that these games could"ve been played more interactively. Indeed, you could fight in real-time, thanks to the Thrustmaster Fighting Arena.

The Fighting Arena comes with two sticks and a mat. The rods are equipped with infrared lasers that serve as the action buttons while the mat contains the directional & shoulder buttons. Should players pass through one of the designated infrared beams, the stand will act as if the player pressed the button for the controller. In other words, you can fight your screen opponents with real jabs and kicks! The triangle and square buttons are located on the upper side of the stands while the X and O buttons are on the lower side. Also, the Fighting Arena is also compatible with the PlayStation.

The thing that people will surely remember the most about the PS2 is its intro screen. The mixture of white towers and colored fireflies make it easily the best opening sequence that I"ve seen, in any consoles to date. It even outclasses the PS3 orchestral intro and the cheesy Nintendo Gamecube opener. Like many, I thought that the console randomly created the white towers. However, this logic proved to be false.

The more save data there is, the more towers there will be. Pretty smart, isn"t it? Furthermore, the tower concept also goes hand to hand with the PS2 space concept. Back when memory cards were as expensive as games, it was pretty standard for folks —like I—not to see towers as we didn"t have enough money to buy a single cartridge. In fact, we had to leave our PS2 open to keep our progress. It would be interesting to see how the white tower concept would apply, now that consoles come equipped with at least 500GB of internal memory. The towers would literally fill the whole screen! Maybe Sony should try this concept for their PS5; just saying!

The PlayStation Portable is the best handheld console that has ever been made. Sure, you may be saying that Nintendo DS sold more than the PSP, but the latter had graphics and games that were nothing compared to the dual-screen system. Again, it was finally possible for players to play their beloved Play Station classics on the go; playing Final Fantasy VII while going on your lunch break was finally possible! So, why is the PSP is featured on the list?

Indeed, players were able to interact with both machines given that they had similar games. However, the feature was very limited and only a micro-amount of titles took advantage of it. While games likeSOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Combined Assault and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater would unlock exclusive content for selected PSP games, it also allowed some unique abilities. For instance, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence allowed players to transfer their in-game pictures and to view them in Metal Gear Acid 2. The PlayStation 3 would have more compatibility than its predecessor as it even allowed to remote control your console. Still, it"s too bad that the PS2 & the PSP are a thing of the past.

Whether you like it or not, you can"t deny the fact that the PS2 is a stunning console. Its black-lined design feels like you"ve purchased a piece of sci-fi art instead of an actual console. Though bulkier than the original PS1, the console"s is a significant upgrade to its predecessor, esthetically. While many gamers may have the impression that the console"s physique is initially from Sony, it was based from an earlier prototype from one of Sony"s earlier rivals, Atari.

Back in the early 90s, Atari released the Atari Falcon 030, a personal computer. While the machine proved to be a hit amongst amateur developers, the PC was discontinued in 1993. Before that, Atari had plans to release an upgraded version of the Falcon 030 model. Dubbed the Atari Falcon 040, the design would prove to be the inspiration behind the PS2, mostly because of its Microbox model. The similarity is noticeable when you compare both consoles together. Furthermore, Sony even mentions the prototype in the PS2 patent. We love when Sony is paying homage to the veterans, but we find it a bit odd that they would choose Atari, given their previous rocky relationship. Time heals everything, I guess.

When Xbox launched with online multiplayer, it was a total shock to the gaming industry. Sure, the Dreamcast offered online multiplayer, but it was far from Xbox Live"s quality. When Sony first released the PlayStation 2, there was no online connectivity in the console. However, it would be false to think that Sony didn"t have experience in the online field, as the original PlayStation had a Japanese-exclusive accessory that enabled players to access the limited web. It would take two years, after the PS2 release, to formally introduce online gaming to its users.

The Network Adaptor would enable online multiplayer to the console via the broadband connection. Players would merely need to open the backport of the PS2, plug the accessory and tighten the screws. Players could also use a dial-up connection, but only on selected games. Then again, it was mostly for downloadable content. Titles like Killzone and Final Fantasy XI proved to be very successful online. Though the service proved to be less stable than the Xbox Live, the PS2 network was a step in the right direction. Sony officially closed the PS2 online services, in 2016. Despite that, we"re sure you must have already done the transition to Ps3/Ps4. Oh, and did we mention the service was free?

Sony is no stranger to scandals. First, there was the 2011 PSN hacking that affected the personal information of the 77 million subscribers and blocked them from using the network. Then, there was the 2017 PSN & Xbox Live hacking that stole sensitive information of a few million accounts. Of course, these scandals were solely related to the online service. However, Sony was also in the hot waters for a situation that affected the PS2 console.

Back in 2002, Sony was the target of a class action lawsuit. Gamers reported that they weren"t able to play their game disks and DVDs on the PS2 as a "Disc read error" message kept appearing on the screen. Sony settled with the affected consumers by offering free repairs, a $25 check, and a free PS2 game from a determined catalog. Sony also reacted similarly after the 2011 PSN outage; players could choose up to two PS2 and two PSP games for free, 30-day free membership of PS Plus, and many other perks. The incident even prompted a personal apology from Kaz Hirai, Sony"s No.2 man at the time. As previously said, Sony is no stranger to scandals; they seem to limit the damages very well, though.

One of the first games that I"ve played on the PS2 was The Bouncer. While the story mode was genuinely average, its versus mode proved to be more fun, given the fact that I had my brother with me. This mode deeply intrigued me as it indicated that the game could be played with up to four players. Initially, the PS2 only has two controller ports. It would take me years to discover that there was an accessory that added the additional four players on the console.

The