Time Crisis 5 is the sequel in the now very long-running Time Crisis series, featuring your usual light gun affair of pointing at a screen and mowing down dudes until you have to pop in another credit to carry on playing. The nice thing about playing on a PC is that you can skip the light gun and simply play with the mouse and keyboard.

While not exactly the most thrilling way to play, I do highly recommend you at least witness this game in its full glory at some point in your life, as it is like it fell from an alternate universe where video games carried on being made as if the leap in storytelling and such didn't progress further from House of the Dead's initial entry.

Outside of this, Time Crisis 5 is actually fully playable without needing to use TeknoParrot, instead, just requires you to just dig around in the files for a little bit to find the right thing to click.

As the game runs natively on most PC hardware, there's not any need for the various layers of emulation between the game and operating system. It is after all just using the Unreal 3 Engine.

Head into the folder where you extracted all the files and you want to head to:

TC5 > Binaries > Win64 > start.bat

This batch file will skip the fuss of not being part of an arcade system and allow you to freely use the game as you see fit.

Of course, with no way to rebind the controls natively, you'll either need to stick with your favourite key rebinder (like Microsoft PowerTools) or use something along the lines of Joy2Key if you wish to use a controller.

The main controls for the game are:

The main issue however is usually controlling the games, weird bugs and getting around the various unique settings to the arcade game itself. 

TeknoParrot takes care of all of that for you, with easy to navigate menus and settings options, plus a full list of all supported games. The downside is that it does require a Patreon Subscription to get into sought after games like Time Crisis 5, as these need extra leg work on their end to begin mapping the games to your chosen device. 

You’ll find the specs needed for these games aren’t particularly taxing on your modern gaming machine, with a GTX 1070 being the lowball point of where I’d recommend just having it ‘work’. However, you might get by with a more recent APU from AMD.

There are communities around each game that are dedicating time to ensuring things like progress etc., work as you would expect, but for the most part, if you just run the game as is, you’ll find it to be a one-to-one experience of running your own arcade cabinet. 

It also supports a tonne of games from download services that people in the community are actively ‘dumping’ to their own repositories for people like us to go Google and find ourselves. 

PC Guide will never share the locations of where we acquire our games from and don’t even ask. 

Here are the boards it currently supports:

What games does TeknoParrot support?

Games it currently supports include:

It is fascinating to go through Sega’s work on arcade machines from the Dreamcast era onwards, as they’re these incredible machines that are essentially prolonging the life of consoles way past their original intended expiration date and even adding in cool new features that you didn’t get at home. 

The games weren’t plentiful, but arcade games usually are developed a little weirdly. As they’re intended to draw in large amounts of cash over a course of time for the different arcades they live in, the high cost of selling the full machine or board, along with the lack of need for constant replenishment of different games every single week or month like with home consoles, means that the limited library of the Triforce is actually about average. 

What makes the Triforce unique is that it is built on the Gamecube and uses Sega’s proprietary GD-ROM, or Gigabyte Disc, which the Sega Dreamcast and their other arcade systems used (the NAOMI for instance). Combine this with the powerhouse developers at Namco and it is one of gaming’s curiosities that unfortunately doesn’t seem to be getting many places with emulation. 

How is emulation for Triforce?

While plenty of videos exists out in the wild of these games running at full speed and without too many issues, along with the hardware already being familiar enough to the scene, it is the additional functions from games like F-Zero AX and Mario Kart GP 1 & 2 that are causing the headaches. 

If it needs to connect to something or link up to a camera for instance, like in Mario Kart, it will immediately crash. There are plenty of workarounds, but the common thought is that without reverse-engineering these games, it’ll be tough to do anything with them without a whole list of caveats. 

So what games were available for the Triforce?

From Namco:

From Sega:

The Triforce unfortunately is not particularly supported by any emulation scene and getting the hardware or discs for the hardware is wildly expensive. However, Dolphin’s team did work on a fork of the program that does have some support, but is a little finicky as it hasn’t been updated in 8 years, leaving it in the lurch. 

However, if you’re up for the task, getting it to run gives you an insight into the weirder side of Nintendo’s business. The company has its video game roots in the arcade, so whenever they release a new one into the wild it usually sees this cult following. 

However, if you really want to experience the Mario Kart Arcade games, we’ll be covering Teknoparrot in the near future, along with recommendations on builds you need for it. 

How to play F-Zero AX on Dolphin

In the meantime, if you have a copy of F-Zero GX for Dolphin, use these codes in the properties menu for the game, by right-clicking and choosing properties. Then click on Gecko Codes and configure Dolphin to enable cheats if it hasn’t already been selected. 

Then in the code section copy-paste this in:

For a PAL copy:

On NTSC (US):

Load up the game and after a couple of messages about GX save data, you should load straight into AX. They’re similar games, but it’s fun to experience the arcade game without much of an issue. 

All images are sourced via Sega Retro.

Gaming is suffering from the same thing that tech, in general, is seeing, with a ‘rot’ slowly trailing up its leg. Discs, cartridges and whole games not stored in traditional means are being lost due to time or the technology failing them. 

As Halo’s servers are shut down in favour of The Master Chief Collection, it highlights that the industry is in dire need of being changed for the sake of preservation. While Halo 3 can be played right now on multiple platforms, the ability to go back and play as I did back in 2007 is lost forever because Microsoft has little to no interest in providing the tools needed to run those servers. 

When id Software released the DOOM 3 source code around a decade ago, the intention was to simply ensure that if and when DOOM 3 stopped existing in an easy to acquire way, it’d be able to be built from the ground up. Years had passed, as had any method of making money on it, so it became open. 

Why not do the same with Halo 3? Provide the server software in some capacity and allow people to run private online servers. The entry would be low and there’d be no money in it, but providing that data can mean that when the Master Chief Collection eventually goes offline, some form of Halo 3’s multiplayer will still exist for prosperity. 

It’s why I respect all ‘scenes’ who actively work on development for emulation and building cores for Retroarch, cramming them wherever and however they can in the hopes that their work can ensure that the fun can be had for years to come. 

The industry has built itself on secrets, insulating itself from the outside and creating a mystical way of games being generated. The need for preservation will help break down the barrier between developer and fan, the fans in particular who don’t understand how hard a video game is to make. Why statements of “just make it happen” and the like aren’t doable. Even recently, Twitter drama started over a user thinking the reuse of assets is bad, much to the annoyance of the developers on the platform.

By exposing its core and allowing others to look in without the need for diving headfirst into the Unreal or Unity engines for even a glimpse of the process, by preserving that which is no longer available, the industry could finally begin to allow its audience to grow its understanding of the various inner workings. 

The greatest advancement is a move towards FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Arrays - which doesn’t emulate software but recreates the hardware to the best of its ability. These are better - if a little bit less well known - as those behind the scenes at things like the MiSTer Project are straight-up recreating the original environment of hardware long since out of date or lost to time. 

Technology is rotting and if it weren't for the few out there cracking open hardware, rebuilding codebases or reengineering entire computer hardware - like with the FPGA systems - the gaming industry is going to lose a lot more than just servers.

Dolphin’s library is vast and extravagant, so we’ve split this article into two parts to help cover both Gamecube and Wii. This is the Gamecube portion, so be sure to check out what we recommend on the Wii as well! 

Cubivore 

I love the weirder side of the Gamecube and I think Cubivore, a game about eating other animals for survival is one of the better examples out there. It’s a shame this game has been confined to the Gamecube forever, but now we can play perfectly at higher resolutions. 

I’m recommending this because it is just downright weird. It isn’t the best playing game in the world, but it’s fun enough as a curiosity and bizarre enough to keep you going throughout the entire game’s not too long run time. 

Taking the role of a creature, you go about eating others to gobble up their parts, take their moves and then continue until you’ve hit some sort of goal. The look, feel and overall dark humour about the game is something you rarely see anymore outside of independent games and I just think more people should at least see what it is about. 

Wario World

Yes, the big man, Wario, had his own 3D adventure game with all the nice eccentricities of a Nintendo game of 2003. I have a soft spot for Wario and always have, but Wario World is something that I don’t think will ever happen again. 

It’s a true 3D platformer with combat, with Wario’s goal of being this grotesque anti-hero who just wants as much cash as he can humanly have in his back pocket. Wario’s little jiggle run as he navigates the different areas, along with all the grim noises that he makes, just fill the air with such personality that — and with much hindsight — I think I now consider this better than the Mario entries on Gamecube. 

Nintendo were all about trying something new on this console and if I’m honest, not having a Wario World 2 at any point and a total abandonment of the Wario Land series since the Gameboy Advance’s 4 is a crying shame. 

There are few games that have the same energy as Wario World, and I insist you check it out. 

The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords Adventures

What? A Zelda game? On a list predominantly crowded by lesser known games? Well, The Four Swords Adventures is a different take on the original Link to the Past and uses multiplayer to have each person chaotically working together to bring down the evil Vaati. 

Because Dolphin supports Netplay and has built in mGBA (a Gameboy Advance emulator) straight into the program now, it makes playing this unique multiplayer take on Zelda a cinch. Yes, it’s one of those weirder Gamecube games that requires multiplayer excursions to have each player own a Gameboy Advance, the Link Cable needed to connect it all together and then get together around a singular console to play what is essentially a remix on the original Link to the Past game. 

However it is an utterly fascinating experiment and a complete egotistical project from Nintendo, one which envisions a world in which everyone owns all four components to play this game, instead of using the four Gamecube controllers. The game does offer different bits of information on the personal screen and weirdly, is a cool prototype for the eventual 3DS spiritual sequel, but it has never really been seen since. 

Bring it back! The 2D effects pulled in from Wind Waker looked so cool under the gloomy world of Link to the Past and the game was actually rather challenging if you were solo. 

Or cooperative. It’s very easy to lose friends in it. 

Chibi Robo

Inexcusably cute, absolutely joyous to be in and in clear need of more attention, Chibi Robo is one of those games you have to play to really get what I’m talking about. 

As Chibi Robo, you’ll go about and do your chores for the family, eventually learning more about them and the inhabitants of the house, like all the toys. It’s part time management, puzzle solver and cuteness overload. 

If you ever enjoyed those levels back in Unreal, Quake or Team Fortress 2 days of the super large house arenas, you’ll find this to be a joy to be in. 

The Chibi Robo series has had a total of three entries in it and I just thoroughly want to encourage everyone to see what I’m talking about. They’re so relaxing to be in, even with the various managements you have to consider, but also weirdly unique for games that are eventually, once you get past everything, your very standard adventure platforming game from the mid-00s. 

Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat

It doesn’t matter if you have the right controller (the DK Bongos rule), map the buttons to a few different keys on your keyboard and the claps to your space bar and I think you might be good to go. 

Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat isn’t just a game that hinges on its gimmick, it makes the gimmick such a major part of the platforming experience that I don’t think many games even come close to making something so ridiculous work in such a good way. 

Timing is everything, with ninja monkeys, raging robot elephants and a slew of great bosses to take on in fist fights all coming for you. The platforming is chaotic in the best way, with wonderful style choices throughout to really make it one on its own amongst the rest of Nintendo’s library.

While the bongos might have come from some half-baked idea of a rhythm game, they shine here if you can find some to hook up to your PC for some good old fashioned fun. 

Dolphin’s library is vast and extravagant, so we’ve split this article into two parts to help cover both Gamecube and Wii. This is the Wii portion, so be sure to check out what we recommend on the Gamecube as well! 

Eledees/Elebits

Once you’ve tinkered with the bindings for the controller to a mouse or even got your Wii Remotes straight up connected via Bluetooth, Eledees/Elebits is one of the more fun point-at-the-screen games on the Wii.

A light gun game in the sense of it requiring you to point and shoot, you can wreck whole rooms with semi-realistic physics, hunt through the various levels for the little critters hiding everywhere and eventually, as I did, get way too wrapped up in the nuances of the game’s score and progression. 

This is one of those buried classics on the Wii, as it came out at an awkward time where everyone was so focused on getting it out for Christmas with a copy of Wii Sports, that I think it just got lost in the mix. 

But the game is genuinely good fun with a friend and playing it together as you turn entire rooms upside down to look for these things is something that the Wii actually rarely ever did. 

Kororinpa 

Another launch window game, Kororinpa is a Marble Madness styled game that features cute critters to roll around and an infuriating level design. You’ll probably be best trying to map a controller with a gyroscope or something along those lines to get the most out of it and a Wii Remote is always recommended over everything else. 

Kororinpa is addicting in that it isn’t too long, but getting ahold of levels to perfection is impossibly anger inducing - in the best way! 

Every time you fail you know that you can do it. It’s your fault. No it’s the controller’s fault. No it’s yours again. 

Whatever the case may be, this is perfect for a Dolphin emulation in 4K, especially if you can get the game running at 60fps, rather than the limited 30 on the original console. 

Wario Land Shake It!!

The Wario Land series is one of my favourites. Both excellent puzzle platformers with 2 and 3, removing death from the games, to the original’s gall to try something wildly new with a character only just introduced in a prior Mario game. 4 however is where Wario finally got that incredible personality he’s known for, with a game so far out there and one of the best looking game on the Gameboy Advance, it’s a serious contender for one of my favourite games of all time. 

Which is why Shake It!! needs more love. These handcrafted 2D animations, all sublimely put together in a way that I think it might have been Cuphead to usurp it for animation since it released. 

It might be your typical Wario affair, with a lot of bashing into enemies and ridiculous scenarios, but it is genuinely an enjoyable game that will look great on a great big screen at a resolution it was never meant to be seen at. 

Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Laid back fun is never something to snub your nose at, especially when it looks this good.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn is such a wonderful little game, with its easiness nothing to be scared of, as it can become a child’s favourite game - especially in two player modes. 

The whole world is made from this fabric, with realistic and expected effects when you for instance, head under the trees for treasure and you can see the little lump of Kirby fumbling around. 

It might not feature a lot of Kirby’s more traditional gameplay attributes, like taking and copying powers, but it does its own thing so well that it really stops being an issue more than five minutes in. 

It is also impossibly cute, egregiously so. Like, the game should be arrested for being like this. 

Super Paper Mario 

A little well known out of everything on this list, Super Paper Mario is a bit different to the rest of the Paper Mario games, ditching a lot of the RPG mechanics in favour of the more platforming centric ones, but it still features a funny story and some twists in the formula for an overall comedic, odd game. 

This game focuses on the ‘paper’ aspect, by allowing you to twist the world into a 3D version, meaning that ol’ Paper Mario can begin to slot into different places he wouldn’t usually be able to. 

While the platforming isn’t the greatest Mario has seen, it is very different once you begin to morph in the various RPG elements, offering something new for those burnt out on the constant Goomba stomping. 

Super Paper Mario’s script is where it really shines, as it is genuinely funny - a lot of these Mario offshoots actually are - and its fourth-wall breaking is never not going to get my sides hurting. 

Microsoft’s console is a powerhouse simply down to its expansive library, only rivalled by the DS and PlayStation 2. Everything from what was on a disc to the game changer of the Xbox Live Arcade, the 360 straight up ruled. While most of us probably remember it as the box that had Halo or those first few Call of Duty games on, it is also home to some of my favourite janky, downright weird games. 

However, on the emulation side of things, it has taken a weird amount of time to get the console going. When I say weird, the PS3 is further ahead in terms of compatibility, but this could also be down to the fact that the 360 has a lot of its titles actively available across modern platforms due to ports, backwards compatibility and general support for the older consoles. 

The best on the ‘market’ is Xenia, is still actively in development and is nowhere near running things perfectly every time.  You’ll find a list of games that do work, but your mileage will vary. You’ll also need a beefy machine to even get going, with the last few i7s doing a lot of the heavy lifting in conjunction with at least a GTX 1650. 

Things are progressing nicely though, as Red Dead Redemption is continuously being shown off as the bar of improvements, with each iteration showing the progress the development is making. 

If you’re after a more stable console emulator from this generation, you might want to check out RPSC3 and Dolphin.

The console was known for bringing Mario into the 3D world, revolutionising how games were made post-Zelda and for whatever reason, still heralded as the console with the Mario Kart of choice between weirdos. 

There’s no reason to really check out many Nintendo 64 games, but the few that are worth a shot like Paper Mario, Starfox 64 and the various Rare games you can now get quite easily through Game Pass. 

The top emulator for the Nintendo 64 is Project64, which has been going for quite a number of years at this point. While not perfect for every game, if you load in a rom, you’re probably going to get the desired results. 

However, you’ll want to also check out the RetroArch core, as this also provides a similar if not marginally different performance experience. 

We have a guide for how to load up this core over at our dedicated guide.

However, the reason for the advancements in the Switch emulation scene as quickly as it is down to the fact the Switch is using much more traditional hardware than the other consoles. It’s more akin to an Android tablet than anything, making the games that it runs very easy to get up and running on an emulator. 

While there are a few things stopping it is the perfect one, Yuzu is the current favourite, with large compatibility amongst the games that it has. As of right now, there are 624 games that are “Perfect”, which Yuzu states are games that have no glitches and no workarounds needed. 

Obviously, specialised hardware is going to come up with issues everywhere, it’s why these emulators have compatibility lists, but those are that listed as “Great” usually have issues like shadows not rendering or the game being too bright. 

The Nintendo Switch is currently one of the best consoles you can get your hands on, with a large swath of games from every developer littering the storefront and a healthy homebrew scene for those with original launch Switches, which are dime-a-dozen on eBay. However, the console is strictly underpowered in terms of other comparable devices right now, with a rumoured Pro version still in the lurch. 

This is where Yuzu comes in and helps upscale newer games that might be locked to 720p and upscaled to 1080p or even provide better performance than can be experienced on hardware now over half a decade old. 

Retroarch uses ‘cores’, which is effectively the emulator without the user interface, defaulting to using the engine it is built on within the Retroarch framework. This allows for developers to push updates through to Retroarch directly, without the need to head to any Github or particular download pages.

Adding cores to Retroarch is incredibly easy, with the easiest option to do it directly within the program itself. Retroarch is easier to navigate with a controller, but it’s self-explanatory with a mouse and keyboard. 

First, if you haven’t used Retroarch in a while and coming back to it fresh, use the Online Updater to grab all the necessary updates for it before we begin.  There might be newer cores that haven’t been loaded in and various fixes or cheat tables updated. 

In the Online Updater or within the Load Core menus, navigate to the Core Downloader. This will present you with a massive list of consoles and their designated cores. Each core has its own background, development and functionality. 

For instance, the FlyCast core for Dreamcast games might have different support than the dedicated emulators that we’ve written about beforehand. 

The difference between this and the unofficial version available on jailbroken PS4s, is that you can decide what you want to install rather than everything all at once. 

As the user interface is the same across the board for the most part, just apply this to your chosen platform.

There’s no ‘right’ core, each one will have its benefits and disadvantages, but you’ll never be without your favourite games wherever you go! The only thing really holding you back now is hardware - don’t expect to run PS2 games on your 3DS!

The way to do this is really simple. Plug in your designated device and head into the controller settings. From here, choose port 2 and put either Standard Controller or whatever else you intend to use. 

If it is 4 players, you’ll just want to do the same for ports 3 and 4 too. 

For the Wii, you’ll want to configure either your real Wii Remotes or whether you’re going to be ‘emulating’ one with another controller. By pressing configure, you can assign the buttons to a more traditional controller in the process. 

How to play online with Dolphin

But can you play online? Well, actually now you can! While LAN play is a little convoluted and is only really limited to Mario Kart Double Dash!! for anything worth a dime, you can actually play online with any game and the setup box is quite straightforward with the rules needed for everyone to play. 

It has text chat, you can host it so anyone can join via a server browser and the default does limit it to whoever you share the information with. 

Starting out with Dolphin and emulation? We've got the following guides for you!

If you have a save from another PC or from the internet, you can simply just pop these into your designated folder and it should begin to load them up as usual. 

The benefit of gaming on an emulator is the Save State function, with saves and loads a moment in your game that you’re up to, then you can load into it automatically next time you want to play. This is great for games with tough bosses or older games that don’t actually have auto or manual saves, forcing you to find a save point to log your progress. 

Dolphin Save States Explained

With your game loaded, head into the main Dolphin menu, where you’d load your games from, and hit Emulation. In the drop-down list, you’ll see some options for how to save state. 

Starting out with Dolphin and emulation? We've got the following guides for you!

Inside the file is a .exe file, which is what you’ll use to load up Dolphin. If you want to avoid going to the folder for whatever reason, right-click and press “create shortcut” and place that on your desktop instead. The .exe has to exist within the file structure or it won’t be able to grab the files it needs to launch. 

Now in another place, preferably somewhere with a large amount of storage, make a new folder called something like “Games”, this will be where you place all your ISO files for Dolphin to pick up. 

If you’re a stickler for organisation, you can even make multiple folders and choose each one by adding them individually. When you’ve done this, you’ll be able to press ‘refresh’ in Dolphin for it to begin populating the list of games you have!

If you close out of this and choose Graphics, here you’ll be able to tinker with the game’s output to your own desires. This includes forcing 16:9 or 4:3, as well as enabling V-Sync to avoid screen tearing or even choose your particular wanted renderer like DirectX or Vulkan. 

Start with the native resolution if you’re not too sure about how your PC is going to handle things and from there, just raise it further if you’re on a PC that’s more than capable. Remember that you will still need a beefy PC, as you’re not only running your own things but the emulator on top of it too, which is trying to render out higher resolutions of fake hardware. 

Controller options will allow you to map out your keyboard, controller or whatever other devices you have to however you like to use within the emulator. You can even dictate what controller you’re trying to emulate and work from there. This is great for things like Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, where you don’t have the option to clap into a microphone and would need to bind a button to mimic it. 

Starting out with Dolphin and emulation? We've got the following guides for you!

If you look on their website, it might look like not a lot of titles are running ‘perfectly’, but the sheer amount of titles that are available to them across both consoles is extraordinary. It supports all types of controllers, even down to emulating the Donkey Kong Bongos and has full motion control support for Wii titles. 

The emulator also can upscale games to 4K and beyond, as well as downscale for those who have lower-end machines. However, running at the native resolution, Dolphin can run Gamecube titles on a massive array of machines without much hassle. 

You can use pretty much any controller, with full support for the original Wii Remote and Nunchuck if you want to connect them via Bluetooth. The settings are really robust, with full abilities to map the controller sticks or any button to shakes, pointers and any other unique features. Being able to play Mario Galaxy at 4K is a blast, even with the slight jankiness of mapping the sticks as the star bit pointer.

Of course, the downside to Dolphin is the configuration, but once you have it locked down for one, you pretty much will have it locked down for everything. The Gamecube and Wii weren’t exactly the most powerful devices on the planet when they were around, so taking the time to figure this out isn’t going to be a hardship. 

You can download the Dolphin Emulator from their website and follow our guides for how to install, load games, save games, play multiplayer and the best PC builds for Dolphin. 

Starting out with Dolphin and emulation? We've got the following guides for you!

The PlayStation launched in 1994 to surprise and mild confusion. Sony of the Betamax failure, Walkman success and probably the TV sat neatly in the corner of the room is making a console? Wild. 

Sony had an instant winner, with a lower cost and better games than the competing Sega Saturn, as well as the full 750MB to work with on their disc-based system, rather than the hard limits of a cartridge that Nintendo still enforced with the Nintendo 64 a couple of years later. 

PlayStation saw the birth of Naughty Dog and Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII and so many more, with a lot of these games still persisting to this day. 

To download DuckStation, follow the big old button below and be sure to have a look at some of the guides if you’re brand new to the emulation of the PlayStation 1. 

The only time you’d want something like this is for games with any benefits to having saved data on, like Metal Gear Solid, as it will scan for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Azure Dreams, Suikoden and Vandal Hearts.

As it detects by code or game, you shouldn’t need to worry about swapping discs for Final Fantasy and the like. 

Save state is also included in the emulator, with it acting very similar to others. Pressing the button will let you choose a slot and then you can load up by pressing the other button to get right back to where you want. Perfect for those extra hard JRPG bosses. 

Starting out with DuckStation and emulation? We've got the following guides for you!

Inside the folder, there are two .exe files, which is what you’ll use to load up DuckStation. If you want to avoid going to the folder for whatever reason, right-click and press “create shortcut” and place that on your desktop instead. The .exe has to exist within the file structure or it won’t be able to grab the files it needs to launch. 

The one with nogui in will load up a clean user interface that displays things in a more modern fashion. The other - my preferred - is pretty much a 1:1 copy of Dolphin’s layout. 

Now in another place, preferably somewhere with a large amount of storage, make a new folder called something like “Games”, this will be where you place all your ISO files for DuckStation to pick up. 

In an easy to get to place - not just leaving it in the downloads folder - you’ll need to search Google for a BIOS file for the PlayStation. Set the BIOS location via the settings and you should stop getting any errors on boot. 

In Settings, you can set where the games will be detected. Set this to your designated folder and if they don’t immediately appear, you can either close out and start it back up or press ‘Scan for New Games’ in the settings menu. 

Enhancements will allow you to scale the game up to 16x, with 9x being 4K and 5x being 1080p. Post-processing will slap on filters like scanlines and you can also rebind controller buttons to how you see fit in Controller settings, which also allows you to change what type of controller you have plugged in, in case you really want to play the PS1 port of Diablo.

In General, you can even set DuckStation to integrate with Discord, start in fullscreen or update the application. 

DuckStation also includes Achievements, but you’ll need to log into your account with RetroAchievements to get it going. 

Starting out with DuckStation and emulation? We've got the following guides for you!

Sony's decision to just kill any kind of emulation of the PS2 in the PS4 in favour of serialising releases called 'PS2 Classics' and then sort of just, rarely update it, is a bit of a pain. The PlayStation 2 has a metric tonne of classics, oddities, and proper stinkers that should still be actively available to play.

Where else can I go from playing Shadow of the Colossus to that awful Little Britain game? Or those original pair of Disaster Report games? Either way, with a jailbroken game emulating these older, less easy to get hold of games has never been easier. With a huge catch.

Because those behind the scenes are having to refigure out emulation on a different skew of a familiar platform, it's thrown a few wrenches in the works. As of right now, there's a lot of games that do work, but not the full 100% list that you'd find enjoyment on PCSX2 and the like. It's a work in progress and at some point, should see more added.

You can check out what games are working, but your mileage may vary. However, I've had pretty much excellent results with all of the games I've tested on the playable side of things.

What you'll need

You're going to need to download a few programs and acquire your PS2 files elsewhere.

We will not tell you where to acquire these PS2 files from. PC Guide is not advocating the use of illegal ROMs.

On your PS4 you'll either need IPI, Remote Package Installer or if you plan on sending them over by USB, just ignore that and install via GoldHEN as you usually would. Follow that tutorial here.

Converting PS2 games to PS4 PKG files

With PS2 games, you'll notice that more often than not you'll get a CUE and BIN file. PCSX2 and a few other emulators don't actually need an ISO file anymore and it's a holdover for those that want to burn a physical disc rather than play digitally.

However, to make a PKG file you're going to need those ISOs. The program will ultimately crash if you try to put in the BIN or CUE.

Open up PS2 Classic GUI (it's in the Debug folder, you can make a shortcut for easy access) and go through the tutorial to familiarise yourself with the various buttons. It's straight forward and once you're done, just close the window. It'll boot up a low-res PS2 video and then open the program.

Convert PS2 BIN files to ISO

Now open WinBin2ISO, a freeware program that doesn't need installing. Point it towards your BIN file - ignore the CUE - and where you want it to go. From here, you'll want to go and head back into PS2 GUI and press the ISO button to get your ISO. You can rename it in the title section if it doesn't appear right.

Convert to PS4 PKG Files

Right-clicking over the icon will present a 'replace icon' or 'cover' option. This is so you can decide what will be presented on the console's icon list and when you load it up for the first time.

Press Create PS2 Classic and put it where you want to save it. Now you need to either put it onto your USB drive or send it over remotely via FTP to get the game onto your console. It should install and work like any other game, so experiment and enjoy your classic games!

Retroarch is a free project that aims to collate and make emulation as easy as possible on multiple platforms. It uses 'cores' rather than sending you to different emulators for specific systems, which on other systems, usually allows you to install what you want as you play. However, on PS4, it's a little bit different.

With our newly installed Homebrew Store, you want to head into it and on the side menu, there's an option to search by category. First, grab Retroarch from the Emulator category. Then, once you've pressed Download and then Install, return back into the sidebar and grab the Retroarch Core Installer, which you're going to need to even be able to use the program.

In any other instance, you'd be simply downloading the cores from within Retroarch as you see fit. Even the version of Retroarch that's on PS4 actually has these buttons, but it has no way to phone home and even changing the resources link to the appropriate one didn't work. So this is the only way.

When you launch it, it'll simply just install all 72 cores made available as of now, missing out on just a few newer console cores.

Change the PS4 Retroarch menu controls

From here you can close out and begin to load up Retroarch. I'd suggest upon using the app for the first time, you want to change the button layout. It's using the Japanese method of confirm and cancel, with Circle being Cross and Cross being Circle.

You can do this in Settings > Input > Menu Controls > Menu Swap OK & Cancel Buttons.

Update PS4 Retroarch

Next in the Main Menu, choose Online Updater and just update everything. It'll take a little while, but once you're done you shouldn't have to fiddle with any updates for the time being.

Missing cores are simply down to them not being ported just yet, so with a bit of patience, you'll be able to use them all at some point in the near future. That or just wait for our Linux tutorial.

With everything updated, installed, let's get some games going! Retroarch needs you to load the core then the game, so grab your favourite games from your *cough* very legal *cough* backup websites and put them onto an external drive to get going.

I've not had the best of luck with some cores on Retroarch, but after some tweaking, I did get great performance out of some of them. Next time we'll look into the individual emulators available on the PS4 Homebrew Store and on the wider web for you to invest your time into!

While the current line of consoles are now seeing their games just release all across the shop - rendering emulation for them a non-issue - the last generation still has a few titles that aren't available on PC yet. PS4 games like 13 Sentinels, God of War HD collections and The Last of Us remain trapped, while on Xbox One, Halo 5 is notably missing from any PC.

Work on getting these consoles emulation ready is far from done, even with the similar architectures to a PC introduced by moving both consoles to x86 development, but shifting the games over to emulation is an arduous task. Just look at PS3 emulation, which has only just gotten to a good state recently.

Spine is being developed on Linux, as the developer - devofspine - uses that as their main machine. It also lines up with some things on both the PS4's operating system and Linux both being UNIX based.

There's a compatibility list as well, but while it lists a lot of games as having 'in game' compatibility, this isn't exactly accurate. This mostly indicates that the game will load further than the introduction and actually into the game. However, a few videos online have pointed out that things like Persona 5, don't display right and Dark Souls Remastered simply loads a blank screen with the user interface overlapped.

Even 2D games like Shovel Knight load with big blocky artefacts, but the proof that this does work is right there, as lower-end games like Jetpack Joyride runs smoothly and introductions, like in Persona 5, work perfectly.

There's a lot of work to do, but you can download and test it yourself right now. We'd recommend using POP!_OS, but maybe don't run it on the Raspberry Pi as spoken about in the article linked!