The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

rideontime wrote: post #4

Props to everyone out there digging up, preserving and translating old interviews, articles, etc. Some others doing this work: Did You Know Gaming?: https://www.youtube.com/@DYKGaming/videos Shmuplations: https://shmuplations.com/

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Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#6

Post by zoklet-enjoyer » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

FF7 spoiler alert

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#7

Post by corysama » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

rideontime wrote: post #4

Props to everyone out there digging up, preserving and translating old interviews, articles, etc. Some others doing this work: Did You Know Gaming?: https://www.youtube.com/@DYKGaming/videos Shmuplations: https://shmuplations.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ is about getting material like that in front of viewers who appreciate it. It's rare material. So, contributions are always welcome.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#8

Post by acchow » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

"In my mind, I view emulators as a sort of converter in and of themselves, ones that primarily take orders designed for old processors and translate them into ones that the new target processor can understand and execute. In that sense, even if sound and graphics hardware have their fair share of differences, in the end, they’re both still fundamentally sending commands. All an emulator is doing is changing the shape and flow of those commands. So long as an emulator is fully tested, it should all work out in the end, even if that’s obviously the really tough part in practice."

Sadly, that is the most technical part of the essay. The rest of it is just anecdotes. They talk briefly about a Crash Bandicoot freezing issue just before launch, which they got around by trying to play the game repeatedly: "All I could figure out was that as long as Crash kept moving, the game remained stable for whatever reason."

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#9

Post by yamtaddle » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

zwieback wrote: post #3

avipars wrote: post #2

Playstation 2 and not the PS/2 port

Yeah, I clicked on it expecting something about the PS/2, not the PS2. Showing my age, I remember when the PS/2 was new.

I always kinda liked having AT for the keyboard. No confusing it with the mouse port. Nice and clunky and Serious feeling.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#10

Post by _trackno5 » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

Fascinating read, even if not very technical. That type of deep work must be a joy to do. Wonder if there are still places where one might get a chance to work like that, specifically on “low level” stuff