PS2 Web Recomp FAQ

PS2 Web Recomp (ps2-web-recomp) is an open-source project that runs PlayStation 2 games in your browser without an emulator for the main CPU. A recompiler translates the game's Emotion Engine machine code ahead of time into C++ and compiles it to WebAssembly; the rest of the console, its operating system and hardware, is reimplemented by a runtime that draws with WebGPU.

Clone the ps2-web-recomp repository, install the build tools (git, CMake, Ninja, a C++20 compiler, Python 3), then run scripts/port.sh mygame "My Game.iso". The script translates the game code, runs it headless to discover entry points and vector-unit microprograms, and builds a web page. Then serve it with scripts/serve.py and open it in a WebGPU browser.

It's a hybrid. The main CPU (Emotion Engine) is not emulated — its code is statically recompiled to native C++/WebAssembly, so it is never interpreted. The rest of the console is emulated: the I/O processor runs on an R3000 interpreter, and the Graphics Synthesizer gets a WebGPU compute-shader renderer.

No BIOS dump is required. The runtime answers the operating system with high-level emulation and provides a boot path like the one the BIOS gives. You do not dump anything from a real console.

Not directly. The project targets desktop browsers with WebGPU (Chrome or Edge), and the build pipeline runs on a Linux or macOS computer. Console browsers don't support the required WebGPU rendering path, so there is no way to run it on a PS5 itself today.

Two games are verified end-to-end so far: Gran Turismo 4 (50 fps PAL, 2x resolution on integrated graphics) and God of War II (60 fps in heavy combat at native resolution). Any other game can be attempted with the pipeline, but most titles will initially stop at a system call, an IOP library function or a graphics feature that hasn't been implemented yet.

You use a disc image of a game you own. The project includes no game data and downloads none — the scripts turn your own ISO (or a ZIP/7z archive of one) into a locally built web page. This is also what keeps the project itself legal to distribute: it ships code, not content.

The project is released under the MIT license and contains no copyrighted game data — it only translates the disc image you provide on your own machine. As with emulators generally, what matters is that you own the games you run. The project is community software, not a Sony product, and "PlayStation"/"PS2" are trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

You need a browser with WebGPU. Chrome and Edge support it on Windows and macOS out of the box. On Linux it is off by default and must be enabled in the browser's feature flags. Without WebGPU the page cannot run the GS renderer.

Gran Turismo 4 runs races at full speed — 50 fps for the PAL release — at twice the PS2's resolution, in Chrome on a laptop's integrated GPU. God of War II holds 60 fps in heavy combat at native resolution (48–60 at 2x). The internal resolution is adjustable, and a discrete GPU gives more headroom.

Yes. Saves go to a memory card kept in the browser, so your progress persists between sessions in the same browser profile.

Once your machine is set up, recompiling a known-good game is quick: God of War II goes from ISO to a playable page in about three and a half minutes on an 8-core laptop. The first-ever run is slower because it installs the Emscripten SDK.

The canonical place for anything project-related is the GitHub repository — issues, discussions and pull requests. Treat anything else claiming to be official with caution.

It's the sibling project by the same developer, applying the same static-recompilation method to PlayStation Portable games. If you're interested in PS2 Web Recomp, its approach and lessons carry over.