Play-

Play!

Play! is a PlayStation2 emulator for Windows, macOS, UNIX, Android, iOS & web browser platforms.

Play! uses a built-in high-level emulation BIOS. Using an external BIOS file is not necessary or possible.

Compatibility information is available on the official Compatibility Tracker. If a specific game doesn't work with the emulator, please create a new issue there.

For more information, please visit purei.org.

You can test the latest improvements and bug fixes in the Actions page by clicking in the build category for your system (Build X), opening the most recent successful item (workflow run) and downloading the file below the "Artifacts" field (if you have problems, test them again if new improvements are available).

You can try the experimental web browser version here: playjs.purei.org.

For general discussion, you're welcome to join our Discord: https://discord.gg/HygQnQP.

Command Line Options (Windows/macOS/Linux)

The following command line options are available:

• --disc "disc image path" : Boots a disc image.
• --elf "elf file path" : Boots a ELF file.
• --arcade "arcade id" : Boots an arcade game.
• --state "slot number" : Loads a state from slot number.
• --fullscreen : Starts the emulator in fullscreen mode.

Running on Windows

Please make sure you have the latest VC++ redistributable package installed on your machine. Here are the links if you need to install them:

• x86-64: https://aka.ms/vc14/vc_redist.x64.exe
• x86-32: https://aka.ms/vc14/vc_redist.x86.exe

Running on iOS

This emulator uses JIT code generation to speed things up. This is not supported by default by iOS, thus, there are some extra requirements:

• Have a device running iOS 13 or less, or an arm64e device running iOS 14.2/14.3.
• Have a jailbroken device.

If these requirements are not met, there are still ways to enable JIT through other means. Here is a guide explaining how JIT can be enabled:

https://spidy123222.github.io/iOS-Debugging-JIT-Guides/

Play! implements automatic JIT activation through AltServer, which requires AltServer to be running on the same network as your iOS device. This can be enabled in the Settings menu of the emulator.

You can also build the emulator yourself and launch it through Xcode's debugger to enable JIT. This will require installing the iOS SDK. If you don't want to be tethered to Xcode, you can use the "Detach" button in the "Debug" section after attaching the debugger to the app process. After you detach the debugger, the debug process will stay on the app until the app's process ends.

If you try to play a game without JIT enabled, you will experience a crash when you launch the game.

Adding games to the library

Please refer to the following guides for instructions regarding adding your disc images to the Play! application on your iOS device:

• https://support.apple.com/HT201301
• https://support.apple.com/HT210598

If your device is jailbroken, the emulator will look through all bootable files in the /private/var/mobile directory and all of its subdirectories.

Namco System 2x6 Arcade Support

Placing dongle images and disc images

The files required to run arcade games should be placed inside the arcaderoms subdirectory of your Play! Data Files directory.

arcaderoms/
  bldyr3b.zip
  bldyr3b/
    bldyr3b.chd
  tekken4.zip
  tekken4/
    tef1dvd0.chd  

Arcade Specific Controls

Some arcade specific actions are mapped to these buttons on the PS2 controller mappings:

• Service/Coin: SELECT
• Test: L3 & R3 pressed at the same time

Light Gun Support

For games that support light guns, the following buttons are mapped:

• Gun Trigger: CIRCLE
• Pedal: TRIANGLE

The mouse's cursor position on the emulator's window will be used for the gun's position. It's also possible to map mouse buttons to CIRCLE or TRIANGLE in controller settings for a better experience.

Note for Time Crisis 3: This game requires prior calibration of the light gun in service menu. Hold the Test buttons, go in "I/O Test" then "Gun Initialize" and press the Pedal button to calibrate the gun (shoot at the center). This only needs to be done once.

Taiko Drum Support

For Taiko no Tatsujin games, the following buttons are mapped:

• Left Men (面) : L1
• Left Fuchi (ふち) : L2
• Right Men (面) : R1
• Right Fuchi (ふち) : R2

Driving Support

For driving games, the following buttons are mapped:

• Wheel : Left Analog Stick X +/-
• Gas Pedal : Left Analog Stick Y +
• Brake Pedal : Right Analog Stick X +

General Troubleshooting

Failed to open CHD file

There are a lot of dumps out there that are not in the proper format, especially for games using CDs or DVDs. The emulator expects CDVD images to be compressed using chdman's createcd or createdvd command. If they are not, you will get an error. To check if a game uses CDVD or HDD images, look inside the associated arcadedef file for cdvd or hdd settings.

It's possible to use chdman to verify whether your CDVD image is really a CDVD image. Use this command on your image:

chdman info -i image.chd

If you see CHT2 metadata in the output, it means your image is a CDVD image. If you see GDDD metadata in the output, it means your image is a HDD image and that it needs to be converted to CDVD.

Conversion from HDD to CDVD can be done this way:

mv image.chd image.chd.orig
chdman extracthd -i image.chd.orig -o image.iso
chdman createcd -i image.iso -o image.chd

Building

Getting Started

First you'll need to clone this repo which contains the emulator source code, alongside the submodules required to build Play!:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/jpd002/Play-.git
cd Play-

Building for Windows

The easiest way to build the project on Windows is to open Qt Creator and direct it to the CMake file in /project/dir/Play-/CMakeLists.txt. Qt6 or 5 should be installed before start building. Registration required.
You can also build the project using Visual Studio or cmdline, for that you must follow these instructions:

To build for Windows you will need to have CMake installed on your system.

mkdir build
cd build

# Not specifying -G will automatically generate 32-bit projects.
cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 18 2026 Win64" -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:\Qt\6.10.2\msvc2022_64"

For Visual Studio 2026 solution, just double click on Play.slnx in "build" folder and follow GUI instructions.

You can now build the project by opening the generated Visual Studio Solution or continue through cmdline:

cmake --build . --config Release

Note: --config can be Release, Debug, or RelWithDebInfo.

Building for macOS & iOS

If you don't have CMake installed, you can install it using Homebrew with the following command:

brew install cmake

There are two ways to generate a build for macOS. Either by using Makefiles, or Xcode:

mkdir build
cd build

# Not specifying -G will automatically pick Makefiles
cmake .. -G Xcode -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=~/Qt/5.1.0/clang_64/
cmake --build . --config Release
# OR
cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=~/Qt/5.1.0/clang_64/
cmake --build .

To generate a build for iOS, you will need to add the following parameters to the CMake invocation:

-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../../../Dependencies/cmake-ios/ios.cmake -DTARGET_IOS=ON

iOS build doesn't use Qt, so omit -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=...

Example:

cmake .. -G Xcode -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../deps/Dependencies/cmake-ios/ios.cmake -DTARGET_IOS=ON

Note: iOS builds generated with Makefiles will not be FAT binaries.

To test your iOS builds on a device, you will need to setup code signing:

• Set CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED to YES on the Play target.
• Set your code signing parameters in Signing & Capabilities tab in Xcode.

To build with Vulkan on macOS, just make sure the $VULKAN_SDK environment variable is set with the proper path.

On iOS, you will need to add this to your CMake command line:

-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$VULKAN_SDK

Building for UNIX

if you don't have Cmake or OpenAL lib installed, you'll also require Qt. (preferably version 5.6) You can install it using your OS packaging tool, e.g Ubuntu: apt install cmake libalut-dev qt5-default libevdev-dev libqt5x11extras5-dev libsqlite3-dev

On UNIX systems there are 3 ways to setup a build. Using Qt creator, makefile or Ninja:

• Qt Creator

  • Open Project -> Play/CMakeLists.txt

• Makefile/Ninja:

  mkdir build
  cd build
  

  # Not specifying -G will automatically pick Makefiles
  cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/qt56/
  cmake --build .
  # OR
  cmake .. -G Ninja -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/qt56/
  cmake --build . --config Release
  

The above example uses a backport repo to install Qt5.6 on Ubuntu Trusty.

Note: CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH refers to the Qt directory containing bin/libs folder. If you install Qt from their official website, your CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH might look like this: ~/Qt5.6.0/5.6/gcc_64/

Building for Android

Building for Android has been tested on macOS and UNIX environments.

Android can be built using Android Studio, or Gradle:

• Android Studio:
  • Files-> Open Projects-> Directory To Play/build_android
  • Install NDK using SDK manager
    • Edit/create Play/build_android/local.properties
    • OSX: Add a new line: ndk.dir=/Users/USER_NAME/Library/Android/sdk/ndk-bundle replacing USER_NAME with your macOS username
    • UNIX: Add a new line: ndk.dir=~/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle
    • Windows: Add a new line: C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\ndk-bundle
    • Please leave an empty new line at the end of the file.

Note: These examples are only valid if you installed NDK through Android Studio's SDK manager. Otherwise, you must specify the correct location to the Android NDK.

Once this is done, you can start the build:

• Gradle: Prerequisite Android SDK & NDK (Both can be installed through Android Studio)
  • edit/create Play/build_android/local.properties
    • OSX:
      • Add a new line: sdk.dir=/Users/USER_NAME/Library/Android/sdk replacing USER_NAME with your macOS username
      • Add a new line: ndk.dir=/Users/USER_NAME/Library/Android/sdk/ndk-bundle replacing USER_NAME with your macOS username
    • UNIX:
      • Add a new line: sdk.dir=~/Android/Sdk
      • Add a new line: ndk.dir=~/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle
    • Windows:
      • Add a new line: sdk.dir=C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Android\sdk
      • Add a new line: ndk.dir=C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\ndk-bundle
    • Please leave an empty new line at the end of the file.

Note: These examples are only valid if you installed NDK through Android Studio's SDK manager. Otherwise you must specify the correct location to Android NDK. Once this is done, you can start the build:

cd Play/build_android
sh gradlew assembleDebug

About Release/Signed builds

Building through Android Studio, you have the option to “Generate Signed APK”.

When building through Gradle, make sure these variables are defined in a gradle.properties file, either in your project directory or in your GRADLE_USER_HOME directory:

PLAY_RELEASE_STORE_FILE=/location/to/my/key.jks
PLAY_RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD=mysuperhardpassword
PLAY_RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS=myalias
PLAY_RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD=myevenharderpassword

Then, you should be able to use assembleRelease to generate a signed release build.

cd Play/build_android
sh gradlew assembleRelease
# or on Windows
gradlew.bat assembleRelease

Building for Web Browsers

Building for the web browser environment requires emscripten.

Use emcmake to generate the project:

mkdir build
cd build
emcmake cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_TESTS=OFF -DBUILD_PLAY=ON -DBUILD_PSFPLAYER=ON -DUSE_QT=OFF

Upon completion, you can build the JavaScript/WebAssembly files using this command line:

cmake --build . --config Release

This will generate the JavaScript glue code and the WebAssembly module required for the web application located in js/play_browser. Here's where the output files from emscripten need to be copied:

build_cmake/build/Source/ui_js/Play.js -> js/play_browser/src/Play.js
build_cmake/build/Source/ui_js/Play.wasm -> js/play_browser/public/Play.wasm
build_cmake/build/Source/ui_js/Play.js -> js/play_browser/public/Play.js

Once this is done, you should be able to go in the js/play_browser folder and run the following to get a local version running in your web browser:

npm install
npm start

Browser environment caveats

• Write protection on memory pages is not supported, thus, games loading modules on the EE might not work properly since JIT cache can't be invalidated.
• No control over floating point environment, default rounding mode is used, which can cause issues in some games.