[Blurt Gaming] Nostalgic on PS2 Emulator | Tony Hawk's Underground 2 [ENG]

Dear Blurt Gaming Community,

I made a post not so long time ago on Hive so today I found out about this awesome platform like blurt and I decided to write a post here aswell.

I wanted to play something nostalgic and I remembered back in time I owned a PS2. Yep, you may ask, PS5 is out now and you talking about PS2, for nostalgic purposes I want to play on it, but I don't own any console right now, so I try this PS2 emulator.

I'm using PCSX2, It's a free and open-source PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS that supports a wide range of PlayStation 2 video games with a high level of compatibility and functionality.

So first things first. What are the advantages of this emulator over the PS2 console, you may ask?

• Custom resolutions, up to 4096x4096, Anti Aliasing, and Texture filtering to make your old PS2 games look better than their HD remakes
• Save states, enabling you to quick save and load practically anywhere in your game
• Use any controller (PS3, Xbox360, etc) that works on Windows, keyboards, and mice
• Increase or decrease the game speed by using the built-in frame-limiter for fast grinding or passing hard spots by slowing them down

And now, I'm skipping some of the first time configuring parts (but if someone needed the full setup I'm okay to do it later). Download the latest release from the PCSX2 website here, on the install I'm using the suggested default settings.
On some part, you need a copy of PS2 BIOS, you can download it here after downloading you need to copy all the BIOS files in the PS2 BIOS folder of the PCSX2 Emulator, and after that, you push the "Refresh list" button and if you seeing this list:

Select the BIOS version (in this case I used the USA v01.60 version) and press finish and you're are good to go.

System Requirements

Minimum:

Operating System

• Windows 7 or newer (32 or 64 bit)
• Ubuntu 18.04/Debian or newer, Arch Linux, or other distros (32 or 64 bit)
  CPU
• Supports SSE2
• PassMark Single Thread Performance rating near or greater than 1600
• Two physical cores, with hyperthreading
  GPU
• Direct3D10 support
• OpenGL 3.x support
• PassMark G3D Mark rating around 3000 (GeForce GTX 750)
• 2 GB Video Memory
  RAM
• 4 GB

Recommended:

Operating System

• Windows 10 (64 bit)
• Ubuntu 19.04/Debian or newer, Arch Linux, or other distros (64 bit)
  CPU
• Supports AVX2
• PassMark Single Thread Performance rating near or greater than 2100
• Four physical cores, with or without hyperthreading
  GPU
• Direct3D11 support
• OpenGL 4.5 support
• PassMark G3D Mark rating around 6000 (GeForce GTX 1050 Ti)
• 4 GB Video Memory
  RAM
• 8 GB

No, it's just your own choice which game you want to play, you just need to download the ROM (ISO) file of the game, in this case, I used Tony Hawk's Underground 2
At this point, I may need to say that I don't suggest games pirating and you're on your own, I mean download at your own risk. If you loaded ISO correctly and booted up, so you're good to nostalgic some games.
I played Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (it's a skateboarding video game, the sixth entry in the Tony Hawk's series after Tony Hawk's Underground. It was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision on October 4, 2004)

(snapshot from PCSX2 running Tony Hawk's Underground 2)

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Conclusion time

My PC Specs:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
RAM: 16GB
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

(PS2) BIOS Used: USA v01.90(23/06/2003) Console

Plugins:
GS: GSdx 5334 sse4.1
PAD: Lilypad 0.11.0
SPU2: SPU2-X r5324 2.0.0
CDVD: cdvdGigaherz (r4488) 0.8.0
USB: USBnull
FW: FWnull
DEV9: DEV9null
Plugin Settings:
GS:
Renderer: Direct3d11 (Software)
Interlacing: Auto
Extra Rendering Threads: 3
Edge Anti-Aliasing (AA1): Checked
Audio: defaults
PAD: xbox 360 controller
USB, FW, DEV9: N/A

Comments:
Random Slowdowns and FPS loss
Remove Limiter when playing resolves some slowdowns
Played with a PS4 controller and I might say, it's not perfect but It's okay

Status
It's Playable

References used:
PCSX2 Emulator itself
PS2 BIOS
Tony Hawk's Underground 2

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Thank you for reading and all the best,

@kentzz001