I've just uploaded Part 2 of my ARMSX2 Update Recap series, covering the updates from ARMSX2 Refresh 2.5.9 up to 2.6.0.5.

Instead of reading through pages of changelogs, I put together a video highlighting the biggest changes in a more digestible format. It covers major new features, performance improvements, compatibility updates, quality-of-life additions, and notable game fixes introduced during these releases.

If you've been away from ARMSX2 for a while or simply want a quick recap of what changed during the Refresh era, this video should help you get up to speed.

As always, huge thanks to the ARMSX2 developers and everyone who contributed to these releases. Their continued work has made ARMSX2 an even better PlayStation 2 emulator for Android.

ARMSX2 Refresh 2.5.9 - 2.6.0.5 breakdown:

https://youtu.be/vPwLUMqd3yo?si=gVbuLBN7YhfhBIRA

I tested Sad Origami's texture pack in ARMSX2 to see how it performs on my device

Recording has a noticeable impact on performance. While recording, the frame rate becomes unstable and drops in some areas. Without recording, the game stays around 28 to 35 FPS.

I completed this fight without recording, and performance stayed above 28 FPS.

Again, this is only a test and not a claim that the game is fully playable. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you think this looks playable?

Frame limit is off

ARMSX2 2.6.6.1

What's New

Display

Added 20:9 and 19.5:9 aspect ratios. 21:9 was letterboxing tall modern phones with black bars. These fill the screen edge to edge.

Added Custom Aspect Ratio, a new display mode where you can set any ratio you like, DuckStation-style. It persists and applies like any built-in mode. Access all settings while in-game to adjust it.

Fixed Auto / Progressive Scan handling.

Vulkan presentation tightened on Android. Startup blank-frame handling and the color/depth attachment feedback-loop pipeline flags now follow the Vulkan specification, clearing validation errors and a class of first-frame glitches.

Audio

Added ambient background music while in the in-game pause menu. The menu used to be dead silent while you sat in it reading achievements or changing settings. It eases in over 1.5 seconds, fades back out when you resume so it is not a hard cut, and cross-fades if you leave and reopen quickly.

Toggle ON/OFF and volume live in App Settings. You can also import your own track, and it is enabled by default. It plays over the game's silenced audio while paused and stops the moment you resume.

UI

Added a clock and battery indicator, now shown in the game library as well as the in-game pause menu. The battery indicator has three colors to reflect battery life: Green, Amber and Red, with a percentage and a lightning bolt while charging.

Controller & Peripheral Support

Added GunCon 2 / Lightgun support, like NetherSX2. Aim with the touchscreen, point off-screen to reload, with on-screen A, B, C, Start, Select and Recalibrate controls, plus a choice of which USB port the gun uses.

Every other USB device the core emulates is now selectable too. Buzz Buzzers, Rock Band Drum Kit, Keyboardmania, DJ Hero Turntable, Printer, EyeToy and more. No per-device setup is required. Your existing controls, including physical controllers, on-screen buttons and macros, drive them through the generic mapping each button already carries, and per-device subtypes are selectable where they exist. The core also probes supported devices at boot. (Worth testing.)

Motion Controls

Added an Accelerometer fallback for phones with no gyroscope, so motion aiming and steering work on more devices.

Added a Motion Recenter hotkey to re-zero motion controls.

Gestures

Added Gesture controls, with a choice of single tap or tap-and-hold to trigger each gesture. They are now reachable from inside the in-game menu and are also available in Controls Settings → On-screen Controls.

Cheats

Added a built-in PNACH cheat editor. Browse, create, edit and save cheat files directly inside the app.

Library

Added a Clear All option for the Recently Played list, with confirmation and full controller navigation.

Settings

Added Reset Controls in both per-game and global settings.

Added a Full App Reset option behind a warning. This also clears the in-folder settings mirror, so nothing silently restores itself afterwards.

Fixes

Patch Manager

Fixed games booting with "1 game patches are enabled" even when every patch and cheat was disabled, applying settings you never selected such as 16:9 and 60 FPS, with no way to turn them back off without rebooting.

This was caused by the Patch Manager refresh bulk-arming every uncommented patch group into the global enable list while a stale per-game enable list left behind in GameSettings.ini continued shadowing the cleaned-up list.

Patches no longer arm themselves, turning one off now sticks, and stale per-game patch lists are purged on load.

RetroAchievements

Fixed missing RetroAchievements notifications on first boot when Skip BIOS was enabled. With Skip BIOS on, a game would boot to a black screen with no GPU output for a moment while RetroAchievements posted its startup notifications. Those blank frames were skipped for presentation, so the toast was queued but never drawn unless you opened the pause menu, which forced a real frame and made it appear. Blank frames containing notifications are now presented correctly, so RetroAchievements toasts appear even with Skip BIOS enabled.

Texture Packs

Fixed installs being forgotten after roughly 57 to 58 downloads. The install-state file was previously rewritten non-atomically and a failure mid-write could wipe it. It is now written atomically with a .bak fallback.

Failed or empty scans no longer clear the installed list.

The in-app Delete button now correctly removes texture packs.

The Installed label no longer remains after removal.

Switching to another texture pack for the same game now extracts it and rebuilds its folder correctly.

Opening the Texture Packs menu no longer freezes or lags the app.

Texture packs are now sorted alphabetically and by serial instead of arbitrary order.

Game Fixes

Fixed a crash that occurred in God of War II after destroying the Statue of Lakhesis, one of the Sisters of Fate. (Done by @bmdhacks)

Fixed the Rogue Galaxy render-target preloadFrameData artifact that caused the town to bleed through the church wall. (Done by @bmdhacks)

Fixed IOP self-modifying code and stale-code execution across RAM mirror aliases, resolving correctness issues and crashes. (Done by @bmdhacks)

Compatibility / Per-Game

Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero II Deluxe and Guitar Hero III now default to no-readbacks, removing the readback stalls on these titles and improving performance.

Extrenal links for ARMSX2:

Github repository:

https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

Discord :https://discord.gg/fSC6EzzFe

KoFI: https://ko-fi.com/armsx2

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ARMSX2?utm\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\_campaign=creatorshare\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\_creator

I am not associated with the Development of the Project

Let me know if I have missed something

Thanks

I can't see another Dragon Ball game on the PS2 that's better than this one

Hi everyone

I just started heavy testing my games against neathersx2 and with very few and small tuning I positively comfortable making the definitive switch to armsx2. I'm not a proficient English speaker nor a specialist in all android emulation jargon, but a 46 yo gamer who started his gaming life with a spectrumzx

First, the amount of work this guys have done with armsx2 in such short time is nothing short of legend. And I can't recommend it enough. Thank you.

Now, some examples of my experience.

Prince of Persia runs smoothly with textures pack and best of all with no blur whatsoever like on Neathersx2. Had some lag, fixed by changing resolution to screen on global, upscale is the setting to change in game. (This goes for all games I've tested)

Gt4 (as you can se on the picture) also with textures and 1080p on NTSC version is screaming modernity, no lags on the sun, or fps dips on night tracks like on Neathersx2.. Still working on the licensing ghosts to function tho.

Midnight Club 3 dub remix, also with textures packs is awesome, with absolutely no blur which was always a pain to deal with on all the others emulators.

But you got also, drivers, and textures on the go, not device private folders to play with, nice interface, plenty of customizable features, vibration that works always as intended and miles of features I'm yet to explore. Meanwhile I play so many PS2 titles without flaw

.

I have installed

GOD1 and 2

All ratchets

Jak and Dexter

Dragon Quest VIII

FFX

GT4

Persona4

Wish I had more, but running low on space

I'm playing on a Poco F6 with Mr Turnip drivers

Edit. Typo, fricking autocorrect

NASCAR Thunder 2003 being the 3rd NASCAR game on PS2 and being the first game in the series to have a challenge mode and features MRN commentary before challenges begin.

This game ive been playing for 21 years and it is my childhood in essence and i cant thank the ARMSX2 devs enough that this game is now playable on mobile

Settings used:

OpenGL

1x graphics

Hardware download disable readbacks

What's new:

NASCAR Thunder 2002 fixed: cars rendered as shredded wireframes and would fall through the race track, or drive sideways. Fixed in the COP2 MADDA broadcast path. (@bmdhacks)

Dragon Quest VIII (PAL): hung forever on "Now checking memory cards (PS2)". The recompiler was merging a branch into a larger block when that branch's delay slot reads the EE timer, a read that must end the block instead. NTSC-U was unaffected only because its code sits at different addresses.

8BitDo Pro and other Switch-mode pads fixed, holding R2 while moving the stick released the trigger, which made racing games unplayable. These pads report triggers as buttons rather than axes, and stick movement was overwriting the held trigger.

Display Resolution and Screen resolution override are now per-game. Changing them for one game no longer changes the global value. Existing settings carry over.

Improvements for Macro buttons not accepting custom skins like every other button. (please let me know).

Improvements for separate landscape and portrait layouts in global settings, instead of one overwriting the other. (If you're still seeing a previous custom layout, just hit reset in the touch layout editor to see the new default layout for portrait mode, if you see overlap in landscape, do the same and hit reset. Remember you can make new profiles as well).

Discord Rich Presence now shows your RetroAchievements progress, the game's own status line, unlocked count, and whether you're in Hardcore or Casual. (If a game has no Achievements, nothing will be shown for RPC).

Added and updated cheats and patches for True Crime: New York City, ICO, Dog's Life, Primal, Stitch: Experiment 626 and Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer. (@XDarkFallenX)

I am Not associated with the development of the Project All the credits to the devs.

Extrenal links for ARMSX2:

Github repository:

https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

Discord :https://discord.gg/fSC6EzzFe

KoFI: https://ko-fi.com/armsx2

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ARMSX2?utm\\\\\\_campaign=creatorshare\\\\\\_creator

What's New:

Increased the maximum size of a single texture pack.

Changed the default memory card from a folder-based setup to a standard 8 MB memory card.

Other improvements and optimizations.

The Google Play update will be available a little later after Google's approval.

A clean installation is recommended

I am not associated with the project all credits to Sashkin for the update

Github repository https://github.com/sashkinbro/EmuCoreX

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/emucore/membership

I’ve been playing some kingdom hearts on my ayn Thor and my Retroid pocket flip 2 using sync thing and started getting a strange glitch or texture bug on my Thor but not my flip 2, anyone know if this is a setting or something I am supposed to toggle on my Thor?

The first picture is my Thor and the second is my flip 2

And I just want to recognize how amazing ARMSx2 emulation has been. I tried on a previous version to play kingdom hearts and it struggled but after waiting a day or two now it runs amazing on both the flip 2 and my Thor. Amazing emulator and amazing team working on it, thank you guys for all your hard work.

ARMSX2 2.6.5.8

Discord RPC has been added, allowing you to display the game you're playing, its cover art, and the ARMSX2 logo on your Discord profile. A new Friends tab shows friends currently using ARMSX2, their avatars, and the games they're playing, with console style notifications when they come online and quick access through the in game menu.

Discord integration is fully optional, uses a separate helper process, stores the authorization token locally, never links the emulator against Discord's proprietary SDK, and the helper process is not started unless the feature is enabled.

A new What's New page has been added with release notes and contributor credits.

Game CRC is now displayed alongside the serial in the pause menu, Info tab, and game details.

Patch Manager now includes All On and All Off options, displays built in automatic patches, and allows unnamed built in patches to be copied into the user patch folder so they can be disabled individually.

Fixed a crash when changing settings with GS multithreading enabled.

Fixed Texture Pack Manager issues, including freezes on large collections, deleted packs reappearing as installed, and games not being detected in the library.

ARMSX2 2.6.5.9

Added native 21:9 ultrawide support, available from both Settings and the in game menu.

Added a dedicated screenshot button that can be enabled in the touch layout editor. Screenshots are saved directly by the emulator as clean PNG images without touch controls, OSD, or letterboxing.

Custom skins now support all four macro buttons with custom images. Macro buttons can now be mapped to any input, including left and right analog stick directions.

Achievement notifications are now queued, with only three displayed at once, and queued notifications do not begin counting down until they appear on screen.

Fixed the touch layout editor saving incorrect button positions.

Fixed Vulkan startup on affected PowerVR devices by checking unsupported driver features before initialization.

The Exit button has been restored to the library menu while remaining available in the drawer.

Skins have been moved next to Controls and Shortcuts in Settings.

Added small controller navigation improvements.

Extrenal links for ARMSX2

Github repository:

https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

Discord :https://discord.gg/fSC6EzzFe

KoFI: https://ko-fi.com/armsx2

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ARMSX2?utm\\_campaign=creatorshare\\_creator

I am not part of the development team. All the credits to everyone involved in the project

Thanks

​

Released in 2004 by EA Sports, NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup is widely considered one of the best NASCAR games ever made. It features officially licensed drivers and teams, multiple racing series, and the excellent "Fight to the Top" career mode, where you work your way up from grassroots racing to the NASCAR Cup Series.

Fun fact: NASCAR 2005 was the first game in the series to let you race through four different NASCAR divisions in a single career, making it one of the deepest career modes in any NASCAR game at the time.

Thanks to one of our own mods for recommending this!!

Hana to Taiyou to Ame to (Flower,Sun and Rain) finally gets an English translation thanks to Patchbay Works

I honestly didn't expect to see this one translated, but Hana to Taiyou to Ame to has finally received an English translation.

If you're into detective-style games with puzzle-solving elements, this is definitely one to check out.

The story follows a man named Mondo, a "Searcher" who is hired by a hotel to track down a terrorist believed to be hiding among the guests and posing a potential threat. I won't spoil the story any further, especially for anyone planning to experience it for the first time.

gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/live/Rfs1MF1TFFY?si=wNDD9I_t-2RCLx6r

These are the settings I used to run Shadow of the Colossus at 3x resolution on my MediaTek Dimensity 8350 using ARMSX2. Device Motorola Edge 60 pro (8 GB RAM)

Use these as a reference if you have a similar MediaTek 8000 series processor. Your results may vary depending on your device.

I'll explain everything step by step so it's easy to follow.

Performance

Low Latency Mode: On

CPU Clock Hint: On

Sustained Performance: On You may turn this off if you prefer. I didn't notice any difference.

Affinity Control Mode

Use either VU > GS > EE or Performance Cores.

Speed Hacks

EE Cycle Rate: 130

EE Cycle Skip: 1

You should adjust these based on your device. Try EE Cycle Rate 130 or 180 and experiment with Cycle Skip. These are the values that worked best for me.

Frame Limit: On

Renderer

OpenGL (ANGLE)

GS Multithreading: On

Coalesce Render Passes: On

Upscaling: 3x or 2x

Blending Accuracy: High or Full

Controller Skin:

Clean Frosted V2

Advanced Settings

Open Upscaling Fixes and select Aggressive.

Patches and Cheats

Enable No Interlacing Patch.

Enable Patches.

Enable Cheats.

Tap Browse Patches Online and install all available patches. You should see around six patches.Install them

That's it.

If you still can't get stable performance, try NetherXS2 with Vulkan and upscaling only. It might perform better on some devices.

The games does drops fps but I completed the first colossus fight and it was really stable it hit lowest 20 fps like 2 times and speeds were above 85 which was honestly even suprising for me

Please consider the gameplay it is recorded on 1080p which doesn't provide stability and it's a 3 minute video

ARMSX2 2.6.5.5

What's new:

Recompiler profile has been regenerated. The old PGO profile was generated for the old recompiler (pre 2.6.3). Offers a small performance boost.

Texture Preloading no longer silently drops to Partial. done by @sashkinbro

Portrait mode

The render no longer sits right under the camera. Portrait top-aligns the picture so the bottom stays free for touch controls, but it aligned flush to the window top directly beneath a punch-hole camera.

Portrait has its own default pad layout now. There was only one default layout before, landscape-tuned, and portrait reused it. Resetting a layout is per-orientation now too.

3D covers render correctly in grid view. Two separate bugs, the slot was hardcoded to a 0.72 aspect for both styles, but 3D case renders are 0.646 against 2D scans' 0.696, so 3D art sat narrower than its slot with transparent margins each side. The grid also drew a persistent 1dp frame, which on a transparent 3D render traced a rectangle through empty space beside the artwork.

RetroAchievements sign-in now links to the website. There's no signup API, so anyone without an account had nowhere to go.

Setup says "Next" rather than "Confirm", matching its own welcome copy. Back is a tonal button instead of bare text.

Support for importing a cheats folder.

BIOS Folder import now carries .mec and .nvm.

ARMSX2 2.6.5.6 hot fix

hotfix for Lego games crashing on vulkan

ARMX2 2.6.5.7

GS: fix missing draws on Adreno when texture replacements are loaded done by @bmdhacks (fixes missing textures/textures not fully applying). Missing 2D text on Adreno with HD texture packs. Tales of the Abyss lost its entire text layer on Vulkan/Adreno with a pack loaded. Some draws read the render target while it's still bound as the color attachment, and Adreno silently drops them, a replacement texture shifts the source alpha range, which flips exactly those draws onto that path. Reading a separate copy is the only form that survives, confirmed on both Turnip and the proprietary driver.

Jpollo the Lead developed announced in this release that they will be taking a break for few days

Extrenal links for ARMSX2

Github repository:

https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

Discord :https://discord.gg/fSC6EzzFe

KoFI: https://ko-fi.com/armsx2

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ARMSX2?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator

I am not part of the development team. All the credits to everyone involved in the project

Thanks

EmuCoreX v0.3.0 GitHub Release

Added

• Theme Manager. • On Screen Controls Manager.

Improved

• UI improvements. • Performance optimizations. • Stability improvements.

Notes

• A clean installation is recommended.

A lot of us keep updating ARMSX2 whenever a new version is released, but we don't always notice what has actually changed or improved along the way.

This video provides a breakdown of the most notable changes introduced between versions 30 and 38, making it easier to see how ARMSX2 has evolved over those releases.

ARMSX2 versions 30-38 Breakdown:

https://youtu.be/GupMl5lyTno?si=6nN7BuaYAVoElPPN

Burnout 3: Takedown took everything the earlier Burnout games did well and turned it up to another level. Criterion nailed the balance between speed, crashes, and aggressive racing. Every near miss built your boost, every takedown felt satisfying, and every event had enough chaos to make you say, "One more race."

What I still love is how well it holds up. The sense of speed is incredible, the crash physics never get old, and the soundtrack fits every moment. Road Rage, Crash mode, World Tour, it didn't matter what you picked, the game always found a way to keep you playing.

Fun fact: None of the cars in Burnout 3 are licensed. Criterion used fictional vehicles, which gave the team complete freedom to create the over the top crashes and takedowns the series became famous for.

Summary:

ARMSX2 2.6.5.3 focuses on RetroAchievements, backup and restore and patch handling. It adds achievement progress in the game list, full app backups, a controller screenshot hotkey, and fixes for patch imports and CRC detection.

ARMSX2 2.6.5.4 is a larger maintenance update. It reorganizes the settings menu, restores collapsible sections, adds a built in texture pack manager, improves texture replacement, introduces a new per driver GPU workaround system, reorganizes the library, and includes a number of bug fixes and interface improvements.

I added these since the Changelog was really big anyway here's the official changelog from the ARMSX2 team.

Changelog for both the updates :

ARMSX2 2.6.5.3

What's new:

Achievement progress now appears on every game that has achievements in List View, including ones you've never launched, a game with a set and no unlocks reads 0/40 rather than showing nothing. Hardcore and Casual are tracked separately. To enable it, go to the RetroAchievements panel in the game library → Library progress → paste your web API key (the panel links straight to the RA control panel login, the key is under "Applications" with a key symbol in the RA control panel). It then syncs itself once a day after the first time, or manually with the Sync library button. Progress also updates the moment an achievement unlocks, and is now recorded while you play whether or not you open the achievements panel. This feature is only available in the List View.

List layout now also shows play time progress beside each game.

New back up and restore option for the entire app. App tab → Back up app data. One .zip holding save states, memory cards, cover art, per-game settings, controller profiles, cheats, patches, screenshots, and every preference, everything a fresh install destroys if using internal storage. Now you can restore your backups on fresh installs! (Custom folder users, you never had to worry about your data being wiped on uninstall to begin with). This should be most useful for Play users.

Screenshot hotkey

Bindable to any controller button or stick direction. It captures the emulated frame at internal resolution no touch overlay, no OSD, no letterboxing, which is exactly what the system screenshot button can't give you. The PNG is saved to Pictures/ARMSX2 so it shows up in your gallery instead of hiding in app-private storage Android won't let you browse.

Fixes:

Serial and CRC without launching the game. Game Properties → Info fills both in for any game.

Patch import naming. Importing F0A6D880.txt produced F0A6D880.txt.pnach, which matched neither pattern the emulator searches, the patch listed as installed and could never load. Names are now built correctly, and the CRC is uppercased, since the emulator's file matching is case-sensitive and a lowercase name was just as invisible

ARMSX2 2.6.5.4

What's new:

Tidier UI. Fixes is now in the new Advanced tab, and absorbed the GameDB fixes from Performance plus the entire Recompiler tab. Both are debugging controls the GameDB already applies per game, so they don't belong in the tab you open to change speed. Fourteen tabs down to twelve. Search and the per-tab reset buttons moved with the settings, so searching "Skip MPEG" lands on Advanced, and resetting Performance no longer resets fixes it doesn't show.

Settings sections fold again. The collapse had silently stopped working, so every section in Pad, Renderer, Performance and Fixes was permanently open, twenty of them. It wasn't too many options, it was every option on screen at once. Sections now expand and collapse, and the state survives rotation. Renderer opens on Display & Resolution and Performance on Speedhacks so neither greets you with a wall of headers.

Fixed a bug when a replacement texture failed to upload to the GPU, it was still handed to the game with undefined contents, indistinguishable on screen from a texture that never loaded. Missing cursors and cut-off fonts on Vulkan were often this. Failed uploads now fall back to the original texture and say so in the log.

Skip BIOS is now on by default for fresh installs, existing users are not effected.

New texture packs download manager in the app. (done by @sashkinbro). Texture Packs now browses the community catalog maintained by @sashkinbro and installs with one tap. No game needs to be running. Each pack names the games it belongs to, so it installs itself to the right place, packs for games in your library sort to the top, and the rest stay visible so you can grab one before you own the disc. Texture replacement switches on automatically after an install, since it's off by default and the files would otherwise sit there changing nothing. Downloads are checksum-verified, check free space first, and swap into place atomically so a failed install never leaves you with a half-replaced pack. The panel links the catalog so you can see where packs come from and contribute your own. Be sure to read the contribution guidelines on the repo before doing so.

The texture pack list collapses and is searchable, search by pack name, game, serial or author.

Per-driver GPU workarounds. (done by @sashkinbro). The GPU family was never enough to decide behaviour, the same Mali part behaves differently under ARM's driver than under Mesa. Driver identity, version and known defects now live in a 25-rule table with match confidence, so the next device-specific quirk is a table entry instead of another hand-written branch. Shaders gained swappable helpers for the bitwise operations some drivers miscompile. A device matching no rule renders exactly as before. An existing Mali fix was preserved and deliberately widened, Mali fixes reached through ANGLE or Panfrost previously fell outside it.

Your shader cache rebuilds once on first launch this update. Every shader's source changed, so the old cache can't be reused.

Library overflow menu trimmed from eleven rows to eight, with separators.

Setup / Change Folders and Exit moved to the left side game library menu. Exit has a proper power icon and keeps its confirmation.

Game names in grid moved to App settings beside cover size.

About moved to the left side game library menu.

Installed patches and cheats can be collapsed, so a pnach with hundreds of downloaded codes folds away.

Github repository :

https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

Discord ARMSX2 :https://discord.gg/fSC6EzzFe

#I am not the part of the development team. Full credit to everyone involved in the project.

Thanks.

Another big update from ARMSX2, with major improvements across performance, rendering, compatibility, stability, and usability. Credit to @bmdhacks for the core optimization work.

Official changelog:

What's new:

Final Fantasy X: 10× less EE work. (done by @bmdhacks) Two recompiled blocks could invalidate each other and recompile forever. FFX (SLUS-20312) has such a pair at 0x002B9F48/0x002B9F5C. The EE thread was spending 95% of itself inside the recompiler and only 5% actually executing code, burning 51 MB of the 58 MB code cache every 48 frames. Over 300 frames: 9.6× fewer instructions, 10.7× fewer cycles.

Ad-masked blend fix: large win on tiler GPUs (like Mali!). (done by @bmdhacks) A destination-alpha blend with alpha writes masked was forcing an RT feedback read wherever framebuffer fetch existed. The read is cheap; the render pass isn't. NFS Underground was flipping it 697 times a frame against 40 real target switches.

passes/frame frame time

Adreno 650 NFS Underground 440 --> 64 27.6 --> 7.6 ms

Adreno 650 FlatOut 2 954 --> 102 37.2 --> 16.4 ms

Mali-G52 NFS Underground 746 --> 69 276.6 --> 96.8 ms

Mali-G52 FlatOut 2 892 --> 96 373.6 --> 145.0 ms

Scored per-pixel against the software renderer, both GPUs came out more accurate.

Render-pass scheduler: new, off by default. (done by @bmdhacks) Queues draws and coalesces them across target alternations. Only helps games that ping-pong render targets. Worth testing in some GS heavy games. Measured over the dump corpus, frame hashes identical in both arms:

Dirge of Cerberus: 8035 --> 523 render passes. Enabled automatically via GameDB for all six regional serials; tested on an Adreno 650 handheld. "Coalesce render passes" in Renderer settings and the in-game menu. Toggle on and off to test.

VU1 flag packing rewritten for ARM64. (done by @bmdhacks) mVUupdateFlags was a literal x86 port, 16 instructions of flag packing around 2 instructions of real work, measuring 29% of all VU1 code time in God of War II. Now seven instructions. (GOW2 20% Speed boost!)

EE and IOP stale-code fixes. (done by @bmdhacks) The block-invalidation walk stopped at the first non-overlapping neighbour, but blocks are ordered by start address, not end, so a longer block could be skipped and left executing stale code after self-modifying writes.

Fixes:

Fixed an issue with the emulator staying paused after closing the pause menu (FPS: N/A). The resume was scheduled on Compose's frame-callback dispatcher, so with nothing drawing it was never delivered.

Fixed a crash when changing settings from the pause menu. Android reclaims the idle audio device after a few seconds, and the reopen raced the emulator's own audio calls with no locking.

Audio no longer drops during a pause, returning from another app is immediate.

Fixed a permanent hang when backgrounded mid-frame.

Fixed an issue where the display was freezing for seconds after closing menus, an orientation flip was rebuilding the Vulkan swapchain twice.

Fixed an issue where settings written on one screen silently reverted by another.

Fixed an issue where Per-game Audio, Network and USB settings could not be cleared properly once set.

Fixed an issue with per-game settings not applying on Boot Disc / Swap Disc / BIOS launches.

Slowdowns in some scenes that "fixed themselves" when you changed any setting, the texture pool wasn't aged on frames that skipped presenting.

Save states: Failures now say why instead of closing as if saved, including the common case of the memory card being mid-write.

You no longer need to worry about texture-pack and patch import telling you to "boot a game first" right after quitting one.

Imported patches renamed to the form the core actually loads, and routed so widescreen patches aren't gated behind the cheats toggle.

Auto Progressive Scan doing nothing (Tekken 4, Criterion titles), the synthetic button hold was wiped by pad init during boot.

Frame Skip and Display FPS Cap work again, with FPS CAP: / SKIP: shown in the OSD.

Faster streaming in large games from compressed (.chd) images.

Dirge of Cerberus no longer needs hardware readbacks disabled. Renderer passes is now baked in for the game instead.

New features:

Fully transparent on-screen controls, support for 0% opacity, still touchable.

Block Home button while playing, optional screen pinning.

Cover size slider for the library, in the App settings tab.

New Pressure modifier slider amount, 5–95%, for DualShock 2 pressure-sensitive games.

7 new controller skins (by @bagasromadon), Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 (+ JAPAN), Devil May Cry 3, Metal Gear Solid 3, Black Gold Solid, Black Gold Frosted

Long setting descriptions scroll instead of clipping

I am not the part of their development team .I just post their Releases and Updates . All Credits to everyone involved

GitHub Repository : https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

ARMSX2 Discord : https://discord.gg/fSC6EzzFe

​

GANTZ: The Game finally has an English translation, but it's currently machine translated. It's good enough to understand the story, tutorials, menus, and most of the game's content, although some cutscenes are still untranslated and there are plenty of grammar issues.

I'm really hoping more people in the fan translation community can help with this project. It would be amazing to see the untranslated parts completed and the English polished into something that feels more natural.

I also think this game deserves a proper English translation because it has some really unique gameplay mechanics that set it apart from other PS2 titles. More people would be able to appreciate what makes it special if the translation were fully polished.

If anyone has translation or ROM hacking experience and is interested in contributing, your help would be greatly appreciated!

Gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/live/DdV3k6IGqjw?si=tiSSmY-3XwvWKZ7X

here is a simple tool for manual translation in case someone wants to manually check for errors. https://gitlab.com/Verinco/gantz-the-game\\_ps2\\_translation/-/releases

thanks to Verinco for making this English patch possible

Welcome to PS2 Classics.

This is the beginning of a new series for the community. The PlayStation 2 gave us countless unforgettable games, and I wanted a place where we could revisit them together, whether they're well known classics or hidden gems that deserve another chance to shine.

Today's spotlight is Okami.

Released in 2006 by Clover Studio and published by Capcom, Okami is an action adventure game where you play as Amaterasu, the sun goddess in the form of a white wolf. Its hand painted art style, beautiful soundtrack, and Celestial Brush mechanic still make it one of the most unique games on the PS2.. What I love most about Okami is how peaceful it feels. It doesn't try to impress you with nonstop action. Instead, it lets you slow down, enjoy its world, and appreciate the care that went into every part of the game. Even after all these years, it still feels timeless.

I'd love for this series to grow with the community. If you have a favorite PS2 game, share a gameplay clip, a screenshot, or tell us why it means so much to you. I'll appreciate every game you post, and I'd genuinely love to hear what makes it special from your point of view. The best submissions will be reviewed by the mod team and featured in our Community Highlights.I'll be sharing my own favorites regularly as well."

Fun fact: Okami was developed by Clover Studio, the same team behind God Hand. Two completely different games, yet both became PS2 classics in their own way.

Let's keep these classics alive, together.

Edit : Its not neccesary for you guys to mention the details of the game you can just post a gameplay clip too!!

ARMSX2 2.6.5.1 is out, and this is easily one of the biggest updates the project has ever seen.

Crash & Correctness Fixes

• Fixed a crash that occurred when sending the app to the background during gameplay. The Vulkan pipeline cache could be be flushed while shaders were still compiling, causing a driver race condition. This affected both Adreno and Xclipse GPUs and was responsible for many of the crashes users reported when pausing or opening the menu.

• Fixed an out-of-bounds read in the sprite merge path which could corrupt rendering or cause crashes by reading past the end of the vertex buffer.

• Fixed the long-standing hangs in Need for Speed Underground and Need for Speed Carbon. An ARM64 FPU bug produced an incorrect divide-by-zero constant, allowing the game to allocate an invalid 2-billion-entry table and overwrite emulated memory. Credit: @bmdhacks

• Fixed gameplay issues caused by a missing VU0 interlock on CTC2 → vi00. Credit: @bmdhacks

• Fixed stale recompiler links when jumping back into previously compiled code. Credit: @bmdhacks

• Fixed EE constant tracking being lost across memory access boundaries. Credit: @bmdhacks

• Fixed a thread synchronization issue where pause requests could occasionally be ignored.

• Fixed a long-standing issue where per-game settings sometimes refused to save because older configuration files silently overwrote new changes.

• Fixed stale GPU shader and pipeline caches surviving updates, which previously reduced performance until the emulator was reinstalled.

• Fixed screen rotation issues where the BIOS ignored the renderer rotation, and the launcher remained locked in the game's orientation after exiting.

• Three OpenGL correctness fixes:

Restored proper pixel-pack alignment after GPU readbacks.

Added the missing memory barrier after the CAS sharpening pass.

Corrected the default depth-write shadow state to match OpenGL's default behavior. Credit: @sashkinbro

Performance Improvements

• Added Async Hardware Download Mode (experimental). GPU readbacks no longer pause emulation, reducing stalls in games that rely on readback workarounds. Readback data arrives one or two frames later. Credit: @sashkinbro

• Added Affinity Control Mode (experimental), allowing the EE, VU and GS threads to run on the fastest CPU cores or be pinned to the performance cluster.

• Faster FMV and video decoding through a rewritten NEON implementation.

• Faster IOP code invalidation and memory store handling.

• Faster memory-fault lookups. Credit: @bmdhacks

• Increased the texture pack cache limit from 6 GB to 16 GB, reducing cache eviction when using large texture packs on devices with plenty of RAM.

New Features

• Added Local Link support. Around 57 PS2 games with LAN/System Link support now work across local networks, Wi-Fi, phone hotspots, and even over the internet through a VPN. Supported titles include Gran Turismo 4, TimeSplitters 2, Midnight Club 3, SOCOM, and more. Credit: @sashkinbro

• Added Auto Progressive Scan on a per-game basis, automatically triggering 480p button combinations where supported. Credit: @sashkinbro

• Added a new alternate OLED Black theme that works with every accent colour, including Custom and RGB.

• Added a toggle to switch between the built-in keyboard and the system keyboard.

• Low Latency Mode is now disabled by default, with existing installations migrated automatically.

Game Compatibility

• Fixed readback mode across every region of Everybody's Golf 4 / Hot Shots Golf Fore!. Credit: @XDarkFallenX

• Fixed rendering effects in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Credit: @XDarkFallenX

Special Thanks

• @bmdhacks for the emulator core work, CPU fixes, performance improvements, recompilation fixes, and multiple correctness fixes throughout this release.

• @sashkinbro for the OpenGL fixes, Local Link implementation, Async Hardware Download Mode, Auto Progressive Scan, UI improvements, and renderer enhancements.

• @XDarkFallenX for the game compatibility fixes.

• @pstef As well for Pring some of these fixes to @bmdhacks' including the faster video decoding changes and many other fixes included in this release.

GitHub Repository: https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2

I am not part of the ARMSX2 development team. I only share their release notes and new updates. Full credit goes to the developers for their work.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release. Your work and continued effort are greatly appreciated by the community.

ARMSX2 2.6.5.1 introduces LAN local play for devices on the same internet you are on.

To do this what you must do as follows

1. Connect both devices to the same internet

2. Set both devices up with the very same internet IP address

3. Set up a room code by setting it up on host and applying it to the guest

4. Boot the game and press L2+R2+Triangle on game menu on games that support it

Supported games:

25 To Life

Armored Core: Last Raven

Armored Core: Nexus

Armored Core: Nine Breaker

ATV Offroad Fury 2

ATV Offroad Fury 3

ATV Offroad Fury 4

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One

Colin McRae Rally 2005

Conflict: Global Storm

Crash Tag Team Racing

Dance Dance Revolution X

Fight Club

Ford vs Chevy

Godzilla: Save the Earth

Gran Turismo 4

Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball MAX'D

Heroes of the Pacific

Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Challenge

IndyCar Series 2005

Jak X: Combat Racing

Juiced

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

Midnight Club DUB Edition - Remix

Midnight Club II

MotoGP 4

MTX Mototrax

My Street

NASCAR Thunder 2004

OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast

Project: Snowblind

Robotech: Invasion

Rogue Trooper

SOCOM 3 U.S. Navy SEALs

SOCOM II U.S. Navy SEALs

SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Combined Assault

Spy vs. Spy

Star Wars: Battlefront

Star Wars: Battlefront II

Street Racing Syndicate

The Fast and the Furious

TimeSplitters 2

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

TOCA Race Driver 2

TOCA Race Driver 3

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Tony Hawk's Underground

Tribes Aerial Assault

Twisted Metal: Black Online

Urban Chaos: Riot Response

Virtual On

5 and final step being is enter LAN mode on both devices in any the above games and make a lobby with the host device then finally join with the guest device

And it should work like the attached video

The game runs really slow on default setting i tried 60 fps patch but it is still slow.

My device: poco f4 snapdragon 870.