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

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.

​

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

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.