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Posted by deadxwarrior 16 hours ago

Show HN: PS2 games statically recompiled to WebAssembly(github.com)
255 points | 135 commentspage 3
jgalt212 7 hours ago|
Did Sony know ahead of time?

Physical disc production ending in January 2028

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-produc...

mglvsky 9 hours ago||
are there clean-room games?
ultropolis 5 hours ago|
But you can't clean room the art and assets.
spwa4 12 hours ago||
VERY cool. I wish you could make this work for steam deck (and friends) though.
TheCapeGreek 12 hours ago||
Why would you want this to work on a dedicated gaming device that can emulate the titles outright?

Have a look at Decky loader and Emudeck.

captainbland 9 hours ago|||
I guess it might be a nice way to distribute homebrew PS2 games in a platform agnostic way
corysama 7 hours ago||||
Power efficiency.
spwa4 12 hours ago|||
Can't get decky loader to work on my (Lenovo) steam deck
hodgehog11 12 hours ago|||
You can definitely still get PCSX2 working on it though, and it's fantastic. PS2 and PS3 games are among my favourite uses for handheld PCs.
FanaHOVA 11 hours ago|||
What's a Lenovo Steamdeck?
nottorp 10 hours ago||
From an ars technica review of the steam deck "friends", a portable device that is way ahead of the actual steam deck, specs wise, but since it runs plain unmodified windows is a pain in the ass to use as a portable :)
ntauthority 10 hours ago|||
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/handheld/legion-go-s/83n6000g...

there's an actual sku of one lenovo handheld that officially runs SteamOS, i assume that's what GP is referring to

nottorp 10 hours ago||
Ohh that's new. I stand corrected then.
spwa4 3 hours ago|||
You can install steam os (now even the Valve version) and that just works.
deadxwarrior 10 hours ago||
There is already a native Linux build (Vulkan through wgpu, SDL2 window, audio and gamepad support), so it can run on the Deck as a non-steam game, and the browser build should work in desktop mode too. Two things are missing, the native host still runs on one thread (the VU1 and GS threads only exist in the web host so far), and since i cant distribute anything built from a game, you currently have to convert your own ISO on a PC. Decks GPU is less than half of the laptop iGPU i test on, so 1x resolution is the realistic target for now.Please keep an eye on the repo update, i'll release the relevant update for u.
fonrex 13 hours ago||
I hope they'll be able to do that with Forza too !
anthk 12 hours ago||
On the PSP recomp, I wish they could somehow target GL 2.1 video cards (ancient Intel iGPU's) so legacy users like me could play most of the games on an n270 netbook.
fps-hero 12 hours ago||
Man, the netbooks were amazing for their time, but even by 2008 standards, they were not powerful computers.

At the time you needed a fairly capable gaming PC for PS2 emulation, which is a far cry from the igpu in an atom. Given a PSP is basically a cut down PS2, I don’t think emulation on that calibre hardware is an achievable goal. An atom doesn’t even have a hardware programmable vertex shaders, on windows I don’t even think they had GL 2.1.

I never thought I’d see the day where an atom would be vintage tech, and people would still be rocking said vintage tech. It’s amazing you’ve kept it running and usable. Modern PCs can’t even keep up with modern OS, and you’re still rocking the good old days of single core single thread. Rock on!

anthk 9 hours ago|||
'Recompiled' is not the same as emulated by any stretch. Native PSP games could perfectly run under an Atom if they used SSE2 instructions and GL 2.1 plus some hacks to mimick some FX (or just some reduced graphic settings).

I've got GL 2.1 running under n270 perfectly well, up to the point to test Yandex Maps to roam around Prypiat.

Even for emulation PPSSPP was far less demanding than PCSX2.

ant6n 11 hours ago|||
I used to play GTA San Andreas on an n270 netbook, I believe at 1024x600. Didn’t run well, but was definitely playable.
mathgeek 11 hours ago||
Sounds like the epitome of amazing for its time but not a powerful computer.
pjmlp 11 hours ago|||
I agree with the sentiment, however it needs to be at least OpenGL 3.3, and take advantage of shaders.
Narishma 11 hours ago||
GL 2.1 supports shaders.
pjmlp 11 hours ago||
I know, but it still has lots of baggage and missing features, which is why game engines that support OpenGL tend to target OpenGL 3.3 as the minimum baseline, given that it used to be widely deployed.
Narishma 11 hours ago||
But we're talking about AI generated code here, it shouldn't have any difficulty supporting the older API if it has the necessary features. For PS2 games I think GL 2.1 (or GL ES 2.0 or WebGL 1 which are all more or less the same thing) is largely sufficient.
pjmlp 10 hours ago||
Yeah, but I am speaking about what the hardware can do, also I don't see why target WebGL 1.0 in the days of WebGPU, WebGL 2.0 yes, because WebGPU isn't yet widely available.

Now, OpenGL ES 2.0 isn't OpenGL 2.0, this is the trap of those that think OpenGL is the same everywhere.

Also OpenGL 3.3 is from 2010, whereas OpenGL 2.1 was designed for 2006 hardware, how back you want to get?

Narishma 10 hours ago|||
> also I don't see why target WebGL 1.0 in the days of WebGPU, WebGL 2.0 yes, because WebGPU isn't yet widely available.

Because not every hardware capable of running PS2 level games supports the newer APIs.

> Also OpenGL 3.3 is from 2010, whereas OpenGL 2.1 was designed for 2006 hardware, how back you want to get?

Doesn't matter how old it is, what matters is if it has the required features or not. For the use case being discussed, GL 2.1 is sufficient so there's no good reason to not target it. That's my philosophy at least. When I write code, I always use the oldest library or API that has the stuff I need. I don't just go automatically for the latest one.

anthk 6 hours ago|||
No webgl, SDL2/3 + OpenGL 2.1 can be enough to run most PSP games well if some of the FX's are reduced down or replaced.
m00dy 12 hours ago|||
I don’t think it’ll happen. The market is too small, and the token costs don’t seem worth the potential upside.
Narishma 11 hours ago||
What do you mean by token costs? Does it cost more tokens to support an older graphics API than a newer one?
dewey 10 hours ago||
Yes, because it would not be an "or" but an "and", more features = more tokens.
Narishma 10 hours ago||
It's not an "and". GL 2.1 has all the features necessary for PS2 games and is still supported on modern systems. Older APIs may be slightly more verbose than newer APIs but that shouldn't matter to an AI.
zamadatix 3 hours ago||
Verbose = tokens.

Newer APIs are also more flexible, making fewer assumptions about how things in the pipeline should run. E.g. the way a buffer clamps or overflows compared to the PS2 may be hardcoded in OpenGL 2.1 meaning you have to write emulation of that feature inside the older API to then run the code to emulate the buffer. In OpenGL the shaders types are limited in this manner, in WebGPU you can just use arbitrary compute shaders instead of having any assumptions at all about the rendering pipeline.

There are tradeoffs to selecting the older APIs just as there are tradeoffs selecting the newer APIs. Generally, the latter is easier on the implementation side for emulators.

That doesn't necessarily stop you from pointing an LLM at it and getting a working WebGL 1 version of course, it's just not a universal answer to "how should someone spend their tokens.

sick_of_slop 12 hours ago||
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squidmaster 13 hours ago||
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ContinuityLab 7 hours ago||
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Lagoon3384_SWE 7 hours ago||
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evann-dev 7 hours ago|
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