How To: Play Super Nintendo Games on Your PS2

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 Snes-Station. This program is based of the snes emulator known as "SNES9x" and is programed by a gentleman that likes to be just called Hiryu. 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 all you need just open up your favorite cd or dvd burning program (depending on how many games you have a cd is fine). If you have winxp you don't even have to open a burning program just copy and paste to your cd drive. Depending on your program it is going to ask if you want a multi-session disk. Your answer is no, so do what you need to (check the appropriate box or what ever) to make sure its not multi-session. Ad the three programs from Snes-station. Then add the games. Yep that simple. Burn away and you are ready to play. Just use your controller to chose your game and
press "X".

On a side note depending on how many games you have you may want to add folders to separate them. I personally have them separated by genre so if I feel like wasting a day away with an RPG, I just pick that folder and decide from there. The extension (*.zip or *.smc) shows up on your PS2 screen so you may want to rename the game image so its easier to read (I.E. Final Fantasy__.zip). I always ad enough underscores to keep the game names around the same length just to make it look clean.

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.