How To Play the Old NES Games on Your PS2/PSX

I LOVE video games. Yep thats about it. I love being able to take the form of some heroic figure to save the day. Be it a highly advanced space ship trying to save the galaxy or a lowly fairy boy trying to save a princess and her kingdom. I have been playing video games since the Atari 2600 came out with its stick-figure-like graphics. With the systems as advanced as they are now, it is as if you are part of a live action movie making your way to the credits. Sometimes, in between tearing heads of gorgons in "God of War 2" and running over prostitutes in "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", I feel the need to relive those days where you only needed a couple buttons to be a hero. So instead of hooking up every system I have ever had in my life, I did some research on how to get the PS2 to play the old classics. And to help my fellow old school gamers, I put my research in this handy, easy to follow, tutorial.

First, and most importantly, you must have a modified PS2 or some sort of swap method disc to play burnt or copied games. A modified PS2 is just that, a PS2 that is modified with a mod-chip to be able to play games or other software that the normal out-of-the-box PS2 wouldn't. Modifying a PS2 voids the warranty so you may have opted for the second method, swap disc. The swap disc method is a method that uses a regularly programed PS2 game or disc to start the loading process then you "swap" your copied or burnt game. Normally games for the PS2 have whats called "boot sectors" (these can not be copied by a dvd writer, they have to be "stamped" at the factory) preset in to tell the PS2 it is a legit game for your region. The mod chip or swap disc bypass that part of the PS2's programing. A simple google (or your favorite search engine) for "PS22 mod chip" will find plenty of sites that sell mod chips or swap discs. If you don't feel you are that technically inclined to do the job yourself, there are sites that will do the service for you so you don't have to worry about ruining your black box.

Second, you need, of course, the program and the games. The program to use is called "It Might Be NES". This is what is called an emulator for the PS2/PSX to play another consoles games. An emulator is a program for the computer that actually emulates the console so that you an play it on a computer as if it were a computer game. It basically tells the game itself it is being played on the system it was meant for so play as normal. The games that you need are actually called Roms. A Rom is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only-memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade machines main board. There is a lot of debate on the legality of distributing Roms so I won't link to where you can get some, but let's just say if you search about as long as it is taking you to read this article, you can find plenty.

Third, after you have downloaded the software, run "rombank.exe". At the top left you will see add/remove Roms. Click the left icon to add the full folder of Roms or the middle icon to add just one ROM at a time. Once you've added all your Roms, you can manipulate the list to get it just the way you want it. At the very least, you'll probably want to sort the list alphabetically using the "AZ" button. When you are done making your list, click "build IMBNES ISO" at the bottom left. Depending on how many Roms you added it shouldn't be long be for you get a disk image called an ISO. Disk images are just that, images of the finished disk in file format. Finally chose your favorite burning program that burns ISO images. I personally use NERO, but any burning program should work.
Finally, just pop the disk into your PS2/PSX and start playing.

The controls are as follows: After the splash screen, a list of Roms on the disc will be displayed. Use the d-pad to navigate through the list to find the game you want to play. You can use the L1 and R1 buttons to page up and page down through the ROM list quickly, or press L1+R1 to go to the middle of the list. Use R2 and L2 to change between NTSC and PAL mode if need be, and press triangle to enter the options menu where you can enter game genie codes, reconfigure the controls, or reposition the screen. When you're all ready to play, just press start and enjoy! To return to the menu from a game, press L1+R1+Start+Select.

If this has helped you or you are like me and love more systems and old school games feel free to look at my other articles for other systems and programs to use on your PS2.