Downloading PS2 ISOs and burning them onto discs?

[The Almighty Hamster]

Hello everyone! I enjoy collecting PS2 games, but have been wanting to try and download ISOs and burn them onto discs to see if they would work. Complete newbie to this, I haven't got a modded PlayStation 2 as I am not all too tech-savvy. Only ever downloaded ROMs and used easy emulators. There are a lot of games I used to own but the discs are either damaged or the market for them is super expensive these days. Is it worth the hassle burning the ISOs onto discs or is it better just emulating or buying the physical copy? Seriously, I was a carboot sale today and it was £15 for TMNT. I get that's cheap considering the price of some games (cough Rule of Rose cough) but come on man. Everything costs a fortune nowadays and I'm being priced out of vidya by other collector nerds inflating the price. Decided to settle with one and got R Type Final for £6. If companies are only going to re-release crappy overpriced "remasters" on newer consoles or leave their IP's to die then no wonder so many people prefer digital over physical. The prices these days are nuts. I figured since DVD discs are only like £6 for x16 each off eBay, I could save an absolute fortune just by doing this.

 

[Spike]

Sadly Discs are not a good media for long term storage (search "disc rot"). Specially when the original discs are already 20 years old.
Burning isn't really recommended imo.
I think the best you can do if you want "Original Hardware" is to mod it with an ODE (Optical Disc Emulator), that does everything the CDs and CD Reader did but from a Flash Memory Stick, this greatly improves read/write speeds, there's no noise, and you can easily transfer tons of games into it.

Beware there's "purists" who would condemn ODEs and not even consider it "The Original Experience".

 

[Inkingsama]

If you don't mod your PS2 you are out of luck. Either get a softmod such as freemcboot in your memory card or install a modchip into the console. With the modchip, the ps2 will read burned games but i recommend looking up how to use OPL, which let's you run games from the HDD if you have a fat ps2 or an ethernet if you have the slim.

 

[The Almighty Hamster]

Sadly Discs are not a good media for long term storage (search "disc rot"). Specially when the original discs are already 20 years old.
Burning isn't really recommended imo.
I think the best you can do if you want "Original Hardware" is to mod it with an ODE (Optical Disc Emulator), that does everything the CDs and CD Reader did but from a Flash Memory Stick, this greatly improves read/write speeds, there's no noise, and you can easily transfer tons of games into it.

Beware there's "purists" who would condemn ODEs and not even consider it "The Original Experience".

Disc rot doesn't bother me as it's not a long-term option. It's just so I can play them again without spending an absolute fortune on inflated price listings off eBay. The original physical copies aren't viable for low-income folk. I bought older-generation games specifically because it was cheaper. You could get a decent stack of like ten to fifteen games for maybe thirty quid and that would be a whole year's worth of entertainment. Is there any noticeable difference playing the ISO of an emulator? I have a CRTV and a fat PS2.

If you don't mod your PS2 you are out of luck. Either get a softmod such as freemcboot in your memory card or install a modchip into the console. With the modchip, the ps2 will read burned games but i recommend looking up how to use OPL, which let's you run games from the HDD if you have a fat ps2 or an ethernet if you have the slim.

Does it cost much or require any technical skill to mod a PS2? I had a look on eBay and the FreeMcBoot thing is £13. I wouldn't mind playing from a HDD but I still prefer having the disc to physically store. All two of my braincells are working overtime to understand this.

 

[DJPlace]

i use to disk burn my PS2 games but i stopped sadly cause of my burner dying i have a different burner but it takes 2 usb slots to power it up. so it's not worth my time... also you have to patch you PS2 games with a program for them to run with free mc boot it's been so long since i done this.

 

[The Almighty Hamster]

i use to disk burn my PS2 games but i stopped sadly cause of my burner dying i have a different burner but it takes 2 usb slots to power it up. so it's not worth my time... also you have to patch you PS2 games with a program for them to run with free mc boot it's been so long since i done this.

Honestly, the ISO-burning process feels needlessly more complicated and pointless than just downloading an emulator with some ROMs and booting it up. I just want to play Bomberman Kart and Timesplitters without paying a damn fortune. ;_;

Also, what in God's name is that avatar??

 

[DJPlace]

it's Aigis from Persona 3 has a toaster. also i'm not a big PC gamer i like my systems better and with current gen stuff not being cross play for some games (looks at marvel vs capcom collection for steam/ps4/switch) i bought it for steam since my friends play on it. but not on the PS4. i may buy it on the PS4 once it goes on sale for 20-30 dollars which will never happen for a while.

 

[The Almighty Hamster]

it's Aigis from Persona 3 has a toaster. also i'm not a big PC gamer i like my systems better and with current gen stuff not being cross play for some games (looks at marvel vs capcom collection for steam/ps4/switch) i bought it for steam since my friends play on it. but not on the PS4. i may buy it on the PS4 once it goes on sale for 20-30 dollars which will never happen for a while.

P3 damn, it's been a while since I played that. I very vaguely remember it. I got around 30 hours into Persona 5 and then gave up but it's still one of my all-time favourites. Idk if it's ADHD or if the modern Internet has crushed my attention span as a zoomer but I cannot sit for longer than an hour anymore.

I hate newer generation consoles. Too much variety and choice at your disposal which makes it near impossible to stick with and choose one game. Digital has it's place, but I hate it. Also, a lot of games (especially 8-bit and 32-bit games) look much, much better on the original hardware and CRT. Physical copies give you that limitation but also a sense of ownership over the game.

 

[Spike]

@The Almighty Hamster
If money is an issue I would just burn the ISOs to CDs, but the PS2 need to be moded as @Inkingsama said.
Not hard! This will clear things up:

 

[Don Patch]

@The Almighty Hamster
If money is an issue I would just burn the ISOs to CDs, but the PS2 need to be moded as @Inkingsama said.
Not hard! This will clear things up:

To piggyback off this:
I play my PS2 using the OPL app over ethernet.
You can use a Raspberry Pi and a usb stick or HDD.
Cheaper than the disc emulator.
FreeMcBoot and OPL are amazing!

GitHub - toolboc/psx-pi-smbshare: A swiss army knife for enhancing classic game consoles with Raspberry Pi

A swiss army knife for enhancing classic game consoles with Raspberry Pi - toolboc/psx-pi-smbshare

github.com

PS2 - OPL (Open PS2 Loader)

Various OPL v1.0.0 versions -OPL Development Team (c. Ifcaro & jimmikaelkael)

www.psx-place.com

 

[The Almighty Hamster]

@The Almighty Hamster
If money is an issue I would just burn the ISOs to CDs, but the PS2 need to be moded as @Inkingsama said.
Not hard! This will clear things up:

To piggyback off this:
I play my PS2 using the OPL app over ethernet.
You can use a Raspberry Pi and a usb stick or HDD.
Cheaper than the disc emulator.
FreeMcBoot and OPL are amazing!

GitHub - toolboc/psx-pi-smbshare: A swiss army knife for enhancing classic game consoles with Raspberry Pi

A swiss army knife for enhancing classic game consoles with Raspberry Pi - toolboc/psx-pi-smbshare

github.com

PS2 - OPL (Open PS2 Loader)

Various OPL v1.0.0 versions -OPL Development Team (c. Ifcaro & jimmikaelkael)

www.psx-place.com

Thank you! I'm going to try this once the October holidays come along.

 

[The Almighty Hamster]

@The Almighty Hamster
If money is an issue I would just burn the ISOs to CDs.

Also, just for clarification, do you mean CDs specifically? Is there much of a difference between them and DVDs? I want to download them off the CDRomance site, burn them onto the discs and play them but not too sure on the technical or hardware side of it.

 

[DJPlace]

there are about 5-10% games that are CD based. you would have to do something to them to make them play on dvd's. also % are all DVD's.

 

[The Almighty Hamster]

there are about 5-10% games that are CD based. you would have to do something to them to make them play on dvd's. also % are all DVD's.

No big problem. I can get a 16x bundle of blank CDs off eBay for a fiver.

 

[Don Patch]

Thank you! I'm going to try this once the October holidays come along.

Right on
Let us know how it goes!

 

[DJPlace]

No big problem. I can get a 16x bundle of blank CDs off eBay for a fiver.

but IMO using OPL to launch CD Based games are the way to go.

 

[deceptionfalls]

Back in like 2018 I used to buy like 10/15 blank CDs with my stepfather and then I would spend days just downloading PS2 ISOs on my crappy laptop (which came with a disk drive) and I would just burn a ton of games in that using some software that I don't even remember the name of.

Yes, that was back in twenty eighteen, pirated PS2 games are still very much accessible here, you can go buy something to eat in the local farmer's market and get like Shadow of the Colossus for 2 bucks.

That being said, emulation is far more convenient, you would probably have to mod your PS2 to accept unofficial disks, and then comes the issue of organizing all of your disks and labeling everything (i used to have tons and tons of disks laying around), but it's immersive, and it was fun for me back in the day, it really depends on how much you're willing to go through just to play a game.

 

[NakaGX]

Funnily enough I've returned to burning discs since I got a PS1 and Saturn recently and I'm not a fan of the ODE solutions for either one. What a pain in the ass it was going through the trial and error of finding a good CD/DVD drive (modern ones suck) and good optical media (modern CD-Rs suck) that wouldn't result in bad burns.

At least with the PS2 the chances of having a bum disc with DVD-Rs is way lower, but I will still vouch for going the free mcboot/OPL route as it's convenient with slightly faster loading and less wear on the laser. The only exception I will say is if you get into musou games like Dynasty/Samurai Warriors and want to play Xtreme Legends expansions with the base game data loaded. You'll have to burn DVDs for those as the disc swap is not possible on OPL at the moment.

 

[Onlyfordj]

On a PS2 Slim you can play with ISOs recorded on DVD. You don't need to modify anything. Insert the game and play. Exactly like the original.

 

[Zekr20000]

On the not modified PS2 slim (only tested by myself on slim models) you can play burned ISOs on DVD by using freedvdboot patcher by Jabu (app created by a fellow man from Poland). However, you need to have a English language set on your PS2.

 

[BananaJane]

burn them at 1x speed or they will stop working after a while

 

[AmberMinx]

I once used Burned Disks but it was stinky.

I now use PS2 HDD with OPL.

Highly recommended.

 

[Dskittlz]

I've been doing this a while now across multiple PS2s and there are a lot of things to take in to account here. The model of your PS2 for starters. The media you are using (DO NOT USE CHEAP DVDS/CDS YOU WILL WRECK YOUR LASER. ONLY USE DVD-R/CD-R NOT RW.) In order to even begin to play backed up copies you must install FMCB or Fortuna or get a memory card with it installed. ESR or FreeDVDboot (the latter being more for slim models but I prefer ESR anyways) is what you will want to be using after that. Not all games can be played using ESR/FreeDVDBoot for what it does is basically trick the PS2 to load a DVD video meaning backups on CDs will not work unless converted to DVD even then not all CD based games will work (easily I should say since copywrite protection goes down to an LBA level on some). Psx-place is going to be your friend for all downloads. If you need help with any of this I can point you in the right direction.

 

[||REDACTED||]

On the not modified PS2 slim (only tested by myself on slim models) you can play burned ISOs on DVD by using freedvdboot patcher by Jabu (app created by a fellow man from Poland). However, you need to have a English language set on your PS2.

this
no need for OPL or hardware modification with this
BUT keep in mind playing burned discs on your ps2 will put strain on your laser lens

 

[themoon]

I used mechapwn on my 7 series slim, it plays any burned PS2 disc, even DVD-DL, just fine, as well as most PSX games I have tried. I use the HDD method (with an SSD) on my fats but mechapwn was the easiest fix for my slim.