My Jailbroken PS5 Now Reads Real PS2 Discs, and I Tested Three of Them

My PlayStation 5 can now play actual PlayStation 2 discs, thanks to a brand new homebrew update for jailbroken PS5s. I tested three of my old games on it: one worked almost perfectly, one lagged, and one was so bad it was unplayable until I found a trick that fixed it completely.

That last fix is the way I would actually play my PS2 games from now on, and I'll get to it below. Officially, none of this should be possible. Sony never made the PlayStation 5 play PS2 discs. You put one in and nothing happens.

A new homebrew update lets a jailbroken PS5 read real PS2 discs

The disc I opened with is my copy of Final Fantasy X. I still have the receipt, it's 22 years old, and the disc looks like it went through a war. My PS5 is on firmware 8.00, and 8.00 isn't even on the list of firmware this was tested on, so I honestly had no idea whether any of it would work.

The emulator is free and open source, and it's basically PCSX2 for the PS5. I've used it a lot, but after the newest update there's suddenly a new button labeled reload PS2 disc. I had no idea what it did, so obviously I clicked it. Of course, on the first try nothing worked. I genuinely don't know what I changed, but a few minutes later it just worked. That's homebrew.

One thing you do need is a BIOS from a PS2 you actually own. Nothing comes with the emulator. I'm leaving that part out here because it's boring, but you need it.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II runs from the disc, but it lags

The first disc in was Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II. At first the screen said unsupported disc. I hit reload PS2 disc, and then it said installing. Installing what? It even downloaded the cover art by itself, and then the game booted. That was a PlayStation 2 disc running on a PlayStation 5, and I'm not going to lie, I lost it a little bit. I want to thank the developer on behalf of the whole scene.

Then I got in game, and it lagged. Not a little. I think this must be because of the disc, because I have the exact same game as a file on this PS5 and that version runs perfectly. So the emulator is fine. Reading from the disc is the problem.

What I can say is that it looks sharp. On my PS2, this game looks blurry on any modern TV. Here, it looks almost remastered. Still, one game could just be bad luck, so I moved on to the next one.

My badly scratched Final Fantasy X disc ran almost perfectly

The second disc was Final Fantasy X, the one with the receipt. It is really, really scratched, so if anything was going to fail, I expected it to be this one. It installed, the music started, and after 22 years it still sounds like that. It's in German, by the way, because that's just the copy I bought.

This one barely lagged at all. There was one tiny hiccup at the start and that was it. The most scratched disc I own ran the best, which makes no sense to me.

I also had a question: once it's installed, can I play it without the disc? I took the disc out to try it, and the answer was no. Pull the disc and the game is gone. So for now, at least with this method, the disc has to stay in.

Need for Speed: Underground 2 was unplayable until I copied it to the PS5

The third disc was Need for Speed: Underground 2, and yes, I sat there listening to Riders on the Storm. It started, but in the race it began to lag really, really hard, and it got even worse after that. It just wasn't playable, sadly.

That's also where I found the real trick. The first time you put in a disc, there's an option to either play from the disc or copy it to the PlayStation 5 first. The problem is that the second time, that menu just didn't show up for me. Here's how to get it back: take the disc out, close the emulator, start it again, reload the disc from the home menu, and the prompt comes back. Then choose copy to storage.

It took about 16 minutes, but it dumped the game onto the PS5 and started it automatically. I wanted to see whether it also worked without the disc, so I took the disc out, and it still ran. The difference is absolutely crazy. From the disc, it took me about one and a half minutes to reach the same point. With the copied version, it took about 20 seconds. No lag, more FPS, and it's so sharp. There are also some tools in the background so you can custom tune it. Same game, same disc, completely different experience.

Two warnings: pull the disc before shutdown, and CD-based games won't work

There are two things nobody tells you. First, take the disc out before you turn the PlayStation 5 off. The developer warns that the console can crash otherwise.

Second, look at your disc before you get excited. Some early PS2 games came on CDs rather than DVDs. They look exactly the same, but the PS5 drive can't read CDs at all. Those will never work this way, and sadly neither will any PS1 discs.

On top of that, everything I've described here is very new. The feature has only been out for a few days, so the lag might get fixed, maybe very soon.

My verdict: use the disc as a key and play the copy

Here's my scorecard. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II works, but it's laggy from the disc. Final Fantasy X is almost perfect. Need for Speed: Underground 2 is unplayable from the disc, but perfect after copying it.

So how would I do it? Put the disc in, copy it to the PlayStation 5, and then play the copy. The disc just becomes your key to get the game onto the console, and honestly, that's better than plugging my old PS2 back in. It's one console, there's no cable mess behind the TV, and it looks sharper than it ever did.

Sony is going digital only for new PlayStation games from 2028, and meanwhile homebrew developers are making 20 year old discs work on a PS5. I kind of love that.

Which PS2 discs do you still own?