Through the magic of emulation, a selection of classic PS2 games can now be played in native PS5 apps as part of the PS Plus Premium offering. For context, the first crop of emulated PS2 classics appeared with new PS Plus tiers back in 2022, but the games came with major issues that make them hard to recommend, including PAL/NTSC compatibility issues, faulty scaling options, and delivery on PS4. application container. Sony has a chance to offer a substantially updated native app experience for the PS5, but the revised offering is disappointingly subpar – despite a selection of some great games, including Sly Cooper, Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
At the heart of the problem seems to be a distinct lack of care when it comes to emulation, with some of the same issues we saw when the PS4 version of the emulator remained unresolved two years later – as well as some new issues, as John and Rich pointed out in the latest episode of DF Direct.
That’s not to say these releases are completely meaningless – you can play through PS2 games with native PS5 menus to allow gameplay enhancements such as rewind or save states, customized controls and a free choice of NSTC or PAL versions which add welcome options. The problem is that implementation these ideas are often overwhelming or even actively detrimental to your enjoyment of the game.
Let’s start with presets. In Tomb Raider: Anniversary, you can choose between four options: default image, modern (which crushes the black), classic arcade (which adds an unconvincing CRT filter), and modern arcade (which adds a slightly different unconvincing CRT filter).
So far so standard for official emulation efforts, but video upscaling is significantly worse. Reports of an unchanged resolution compared to the PS2 original are unfounded, but this is an easy mistake to make as the output is downscaled in such a way that it looks about as blurry as the original. This is most noticeable on UI elements such as text, which are PS2 assets but stretched (disregarding the anamorphic pixels that would have been used on the original hardware) and scaled down with a simple bilinear filter for a blurry result. Given that third-party upscalers like RetroTink 4K (and even software emulation) can make the game better even on the original hardware, it’s confusing to see how stupid the scaling is here on the PS5 hardware.
Aside from these themes, there are also slight differences in how these games work. On the plus side, some of the slowdown from the original hardware is fixed here, with Sly Cooper on PS5 running at a locked 30fps. On the other hand, the same game showed some 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. We experienced jittery uneven frame delivery in Daxter and similar and even worse frame time issues in other PSP versions on PS Plus.
Ultimately, it’s hard to accept Sony’s efforts when the retro hardware community has collectively solved so many problems – especially developing a number of really good upscaling methods and filters that you might actually want to use.
Given that knowledge exists in the retro community – and no doubt in Sony’s offices as well – it seems that Sony just doesn’t want to spend time presenting its classic titles at their absolute best. To paraphrase John Linneman, it’s like someone running an emulator with default settings and handing you a controller. Sure, you can play the game, but you wouldn’t want someone who knows and loves the title to set it up for you just right?