I turned my old Android phone into a mini PlayStation 2 and now you can too

The emulation scene on Android keeps improving. Earlier this year, a new PlayStation 3 (PS3) emulator was launched, and even a Nintendo Switch emulator briefly appeared on the Google Play Store. Now, a new PlayStation 2 (PS2) emulator has entered the scene, potentially reshaping the future of PS2 emulation on Android.

The new PS2 Android emulator is called ARMSX2, and what’s exciting about is that it’s a fork of PCSX2, the leading open-source PS2 emulator project available for PC, Mac, and Linux. This means the ARMSX2 development team has modified PCSX2 to create its own project that runs on Android and other ARM-based devices.

The ARMSX2 team has been testing the emulator for several months and recently released its official 1.0 version on GitHub, with a launch on the Google Play Store planned for this week (via Android Authority). This means users won’t need to worry about sideloading the emulator and will soon be able to download it directly from the Google Play Store, just like other emulators such as PPSSPP for PSP emulation.

ARMSX2 differs significantly from other PS2 emulators on Android

Performance is likely to improve as development continues

PS2 emulation on Android isn’t new, but it has faced challenges in recent years. Most recently, an Android PS2 emulator called AestherSX2 showed promise but was unfortunately abandoned in 2023. Another PS2 Android emulator, NetherSX2, emerged as a fork of AestherSX2 and made improvements, but because AestherSX2’s code is older, and it was developed privately, its progress is extremely limited.

That’s where ARMSX2 shows greater promise. It’s completely open-source, like PCSX2, and uses x86-to-Arm64 translation to emulate PS2 games rather than relying solely on an ARM-based compiler, as NetherSX2 and AestherSX2 do.

Currently, performance might not be as good as NetherSX2 because it uses a two-stage process instead of just one to emulate games. However, as development continues, performance may improve, partly because ARMSX2 is based on a newer version of PCSX2. This makes it easier to implement fixes and optimizations for games that have issues running. The developers also note on GitHub that “things are subject to change as development goes on.”

As it stands, ARMSX2 lists a number of notable games that are currently running “Perfect” on the emulator, such as Batman Begins, Colosseum: Road to Freedom, God of War II, and Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. A full list of compatible games can be found on ARMSX2’s website.

The developers of ARMSX2 have also released a roadmap outlining what to expect from the project moving forward, with different priority levels. Fixes for crashes on devices with Mali GPUs are the top priority, alongside fixes for Eclipse GPUs. Updating the project to the latest core version of PCSX2 is also a high priority, which should help it iron out even more bugs and performance issues. Interestingly enough, Nintendo Switch support is listed on the roadmap, but it’s set to medium priority, so it may be a while before we see it added.

If you want to try out ARMSX2 on your Android device, you can download the APK from GitHub and sideload it, or wait for the Google Play Store version, which should be available soon. Like all other PS2 emulators, you must provide your own BIOS from a PS2 console you own for ARMSX2 to work, along with your own PS2 games.