Are we misremembering what PS2 games looked like?
I think we are. Because it’s about time the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube era got its comeback—and not many indie devs are even trying.
I went looking at YouTube footage. God of War. Ratchet & Clank. Grand Theft Auto III. And almost none of it looked right.
Most of it was stretched to 16:9 when these games were made for 4:3. A handful supported widescreen, sure, but that wasn’t the norm.
And the jaggies? I don’t remember them looking that raw. CRTs hid a lot with interlacing. They blurred the edges, softened the movement. The PS2 looked smoother than the sharp pixels you see now.
But YouTube is filled with emulated footage. Nothing wrong with emulation—I use it myself. But much of it has been upscaled and filtered to look “modern.” Which misses the whole point.
People still say the PS2 is too modern to be retro. That’s wrong. It came out 25 years ago. It’s as retro now as the NES was when the PS2 first launched.
If you want the real PS2 experience, you need a CRT. And CRTs aren’t being made anymore. They’re getting expensive, and they’re vanishing.
That’s why I want indie devs to aim for the authentic PS2 look. Not a parody. Not a cleaned-up facsimile, but the actual thing. Because if younger generations saw what the PS2 really was—they’d understand why it mattered.
You could use emulation filters to kind of get the CRT look, but yeah, definitely not the same.