AetherSX2

 PlayStation 2 emulation has been in a weird place on Android for a long, long time. While it's been possible to emulate the system on your smartphone using a certain emulator available on the Play Store, allegations of stolen code and unethical business practices meant many, ourselves included, refused to promote the app, even if it was the best way to play them. Now, AetherSX2 is the best way to play PlayStation 2 games on your Android smartphone. It's free, it's fast, and you can now download it from the Google Play Store. You just need a smartphone with top-of-the-line specifications.


I ran some tests to see what games work and don’t, and the results are surprisingly excellent. I tested on the OnePlus 9 Pro on Android 12, which was one of the most powerful devices on the market for emulation at the time of this review, switching between Vulkan and OpenGL depending on where the game performed best. I tested the original Ratchet & Clank, Need for Speed: Underground 2, and The Simpsons: Hit & Run. I wanted to also test Sonic Heroes, as while it ran perfectly on a previous build, it has broken in the most recent one.


Note that all of these tests were also run on a private, alpha build of the emulator, but you can see how good the performance is. Things have only improved since then, and with more powerful smartphones available on the market, too. You'll get even better results than we did here if you have a device with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or even the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

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