Welcome to our page dedicated to PS2 reverse engineering! The PlayStation 2 was a gaming console released by Sony in 2000, and has since become a beloved classic of the gaming world. If you’re interested in learning more about the technical aspects of this console and how it works, you’ve come to the right place.
On this page, we’ve compiled a list of links to other pages that cover various topics related to PS2 reverse engineering. Whether you’re interested in understanding the hardware architecture of the console, analyzing game code, or exploring the many mods and hacks that have been created by enthusiasts over the years, you’ll find a wealth of resources and information on the pages we’ve linked to.
So grab your DualShock controller, and get ready to dive into the exciting world of PS2 reverse engineering!
Similar to the original Playstation the PS2 used a MIPS processor but this time it was 64 bit and codenamed the Emotion Engine, along with 2 custom vector processors. Although the PS2 has a much more modern GPU design compared to the PS1, the actual transformation of the vertices were still being process by the CPU core rather than the GPU 1.
The main parts of the PS2 hardware were:
For an in-depth look at the Playstation 2 Retail hardware architecture check out the excellent post by Copetti.org:
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Playstation 2 Architecture - A Practical Analysis
Copetti.org has an excellent tear down of the Playstation 2 Hardware and how it works
The hardware used to develop Playstation 2 games was similar but had an increase in memory along with a few debugging features. The details are covered in a seperate post:
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Sony PlayStation 2 Development Kit (Hardware)
For information about Sony's Playstation Two development hardware check out this post.
Later in the PS2’s lifetime SN Systems released a specific development kit for developing online multiplayer PS2 games compatible with the PS2 Modem called the Network Development Kit (NDK).
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SN Systems Network Development Kit for PS2
For information about Network Development Kit development hardware check out this post.
Olympus managed to get an official license for “VR goggles” specifically for the PS2 which were supposed to simulate a 52 inch tv floating in front of your eyes. Sounds like a great idea for a cheaper large screen tv without taking all the space, however prolonged use did cause headaches due to only having 180k pixels per eye, much lower than modern VR headsets.
Review from PSi2 magazine issue 18:
What would the Sony Playstation 2 be without its excellent line-up of games? It was huge line up of third party games that attracted many people away from the Nintendo Gamecube and Microsoft Xbox.
An excellent way to start reverse engineering is to find games where the developers accidentally left the Debug symbols in the retail release of the game. This was surprisingly common in early PS2 games as the SDK didn’t remove them when building the final executables. These gives you access to all the original function and variables names that were used in the retail source code so are very valuable for reversers!
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PS2 Games with Debug Symbols (UnStripped Binaries)
For a full list of PS2 games that have debug symbols check out this post.
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PS2 Demo Disks with Debug Symbols
For a full list of PS2 games that have debug symbols check out this post.
The most valuable reverse engineering projects tend to be the platform exclusives that have never been re-released as these are the games that can benefit the most from enhancements on modern hardware.
Wikipedia maintains a list of games exclusive to the Playstation 2 - PlayStation 2-only games - Wikipedia
The Official Software development kit was developed by a partnership between SN Systems who are known for excellent 3rd party development kits and the Game Studio Psygnosis who are known for excellent quality games.
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PS2 Official Software Development Kit (SDK)
For information about Sony's Playstation Two SDK check out this post.
The Playstation 2 Software Development kit included various statically compiled libraries that could be optionally included in your games, these ranged from vital (gcc runtime) to optional such as Multi-tap support.
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Static Libraries (.A) for Playstation 2 Emotion Engine
For a list of all the static libraries inside the PS2 SDK check out this post.
This was a newer format introduced by Sony which can be used to provide patches for online PS2 games according to a GDC advert from Metrowerks Codewarrior 2.
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IRX Files for Playstation 2
For a list of all the dynamic libraries inside the PS2 SDK and from third parties check out this post.
Similar to how the PS1 had Net Yaroze for consumers to develop small games for the Playstation, the PS2 had special software that ran a build of Linux. The software ran on consumer PS2 models and came with a PS2 hard-drive.
Athena is an environment that acts as a native PS2 program (written in C) which embeds a modified version of the QuickJS engine to interpret and run JavaScript code on the console.
JSLegendDev has a good video covering the basic of the engine, showing how to show a 2D Sonic sprite, move it around with the controller and text rendering:
3D Studio Max and Character Studio was used by Runecraft software to develop games such as Premier manager on the PS23.
We have a separate post on 3D Studio Max which you can find below:
3D Studio (Max)
For more information on 3D Studio Max check out this post.
Photoshop was used by Runecraft software to develop games such as Premier manager on the PS2. In issue 20 of PSi2 magazine there is an interview with Mark Edwards from Runecraft where he talks about using Photoshop for Premier manager on the PS2 along with a low-resolution screenshot you can see below 3:
Before Unity and the modern Unreal Engine dominated the scene it was common for developers to create their own in-house game engine, or license a third party engine such as Renderware.
In issue 20 of PSi2 an interview with Clark Stacey revealed that they have an in-house game engine called Brainstorm which was used for racing games such as Motor Mayhem and Hot Wheels 3. It also mentioned that it in theory has support for other genres of games such as platformers and that it has built in networking support.
Krome Studios used the Merkury Engine for many of its own titles, particularly on the PS2 and other last-generation systems:
If you are interested in learning more we have a specific post about the Merkury engine:
Krome Studios Merkury Engine
The Merkury engine is a proprietary game engine developed by Krome Studios since at least 2001, known to run on PS2, PSP, Wii and with version 3 of the engine...
On 1st November 2020 CAPCOM was targeted by known hacker group RagnarLeaks and some source code and private data was leaked to the dark web. This post will only cover... ...
This post will cover the programming libraries that were provided by the Official PS2 SDK for the Emotion Engine (the main processor for the PS2). Main Emotion Engine SDK libraries... ...
Evolution/History of Playstation PS games (PS1,PS2,PS3 and PS4) from 1995 to 2018. PlayStation is a gaming brand that consists of four home video game consoles, as well as a media... ...
PS1’s hardware (Motherboard) overview. Hardware Components Emotion Engine Used for Game Logic 32MB RAM MIPS 59k CPU Graphic Synthesiser Used for rendering and vertex transformation 4MB RAM 2.4 GPixel/sec Support... ...
This page is dedicated to listing Playstation 2 Demo Discs that contain developer debug symbols, either embedded inside the executable or as separate .map or .sym files. It was much... ...
PS2 Official Software development Kit by Sony Last known version: 3.1.0 1 First known version: 0.3.0 2 Updates were provided to licenced playstation developers on ps2-pro.com, where the update contained... ...
This post covers the hardware used to develop Playstation 2 games by major studios back in the day, for the software side see the post on the Official PS2 SDK.... ...
Sony’s PlayStation has quite the history. It’s biggest changes through the years were in console hardware updates. Let’s break them down! ...
Debug symbols are normally a rare treasure sought by reverse engineers from prototypes and beta versions of games, however in the early years of the PS2 it was common for... ...
History of the SN Systems NDK for PS2 First mentioned on the official SN Systems website on the 10th November 2000 the PS2 Network Development Kit (NDK) was a software... ...
Introduction On the 21st August 2021 the full source code to the classic GTA clone staring The Simpsons was released online. This included both the C++ source code plus the... ...
Introduction If you are interested in the Playstation 2, especially reversing or developing games for it, you will eventually come across files with the .IRX extension. What are IRX Files?... ...
