PCSX2 has long been a fantastic PS2 emulator, but a recent advance has made it all the more appealing for anyone playing on a PC: the ability to swap textures in games.
While the famous Dolphin emulator for the GameCube has long supported this feature, PCSX2 has only just brought it in, and it’ll allow modders to improve any kind of texture they want in an old PS2 game. In the example video below by someother1ne, we can see everything from the road in Gran Turismo to the helmets and jerseys in NFL2K5 get swapped out.
Note these are just some textures that the video’s creator threw in there, and you can expect more professional efforts to come as more modders tackle the project down the line.
DISCUSSION
I wish I understood why 6th-Gen console emulation is in the state that it’s in. Where one console (GameCube) is done really really well, one is decent... finally... but only if you’re on x86 (PS2), and the x86-based console is... essentially unusable in emulation (Xbox).
Oh and the PCSX2 team has been pretty much rejecting x86-64 and all of its benefits (such as being able to use more RAM) even after 64-bit builds for Windows have been made available. (And anyone saying “use DamonPS2" for Android on ARM either doesn’t know that it’s a stolen* and badly-implemented version of PCSX2 or is a fucking asshole.)
*How do you steal free and open-source software? By refusing to comply with the license under which the software is given. PCSX2 is licensed under GPLv2+. In a nutshell, if you modify and distribute code licensed under the GPL, you’re contractually required to release your modifications under the GPL as well, which DamonPS2's team does not do. Therefore they are violating the license, and thus stealing PCSX2.