Through the magic of emulation, it’s now possible to play a selection of classic PS2 games on native PS5 apps as part of the PS Plus Premium offer. For context, the first crop of emulated PS2 classics appeared with the new PS Plus tiers in 2022, but the games came with major issues that made them hard to recommend, including PAL/NTSC compatibility issues, meta scaling options and distribution to a PS4 application container. Sony has a chance to deliver a fundamentally updated experience alongside native PS5 apps, but the revised offering is disappointingly low – despite a selection of some great games, including Sly Cooper, Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
The crux of the matter seems to be a distinct lack of care when it comes to emulation, with some of the same issues we noticed with the PS4 version of the emulator still unresolved two years later – and some new issues too, as John and Rich is featured on the latest episode of DF Direct.
That’s not to say these releases are entirely without merit – you can play PS2 games with the PS5’s menus to enable gameplay enhancements such as rewinding or save states, custom controls and a free choice of NSTC versions or PAL, adding welcome options. The problem is that APPLICATION of these ideas is often overwhelming, or even actively detrimental to your enjoyment of said game.
Let’s start with the presets. In Tomb Raider: Anniversary, you can choose between four options: the default image, modern (which suppresses blacks), classic arcade (which adds an unconvincing CRT filter), and modern arcade (which adds a slightly different CRT filter unconvincing).
So far, it’s standard for official emulation efforts, but video upscaling is significantly worse. The resolution ratios of unchanged vs the PS2 original are unfounded, but it’s an easy mistake to make because the output is scaled to look just as blurry as the original. This is most apparent in UI elements such as text, which are PS2 assets, but stretched (without factoring in the anamorphic pixels that would have been used on the original hardware) and scaled with a simple bilinear filter for a result unclear. Considering that high-end third-party hardware like RetroTink 4K (and even software emulation) can make the game look better even on the original hardware, it’s strange to see how slippery the scaling is here on PS5 hardware .
Beyond these themes, there are also some minor differences in how these games work. On the plus side, some instances of slowdown on the original hardware have been fixed here, with Sly Cooper running at a locked 30fps on PS5. On the other hand, the same game exhibited several glitches on Sony’s latest hardware, including a level that played without music.
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We also tested the current state of PSP emulation on PS5, including Daxter and Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy. On Daxter, we noticed uneven framerate distribution, and we’ve seen similar and even worse frametime issues on other PSP versions on PS Plus.
After all, it’s hard to appreciate Sony’s efforts when the retro hardware community has collectively solved so many of the problems here – mostly by developing a bunch of really good enhancement methods and filters that you might want to use .
Given that this knowledge is out there in the retro community – and no doubt in Sony’s offices as well – it seems like Sony just doesn’t want to spend the time to present its classic titles at their absolute best. To paraphrase John Linneman, it’s like someone starts an emulator with default settings and just hands you the controller. Sure, you can play the game, but wouldn’t you rather have someone who knows and loves the title in question set it up for you? only right?