Still own the game disc, but don't have a PS2.

[Cookie]

I recently found my Drakan TAG cd, but my playstation is long gone. Is it possible to use an emulator in order to play it on pc? I miss this game, and I really crave for it.
Do emulators work with original disks?

[Arokhs Twin]

Yes, PCSX2 works great, get one or two hangups when saving games but other than that it works fine. In fact I think it will only work with original disks. You just need to find the PS2 bios as it does not come with the emulator. I played TAG on my 37" TV in upscaled hi-def. You will get black bands down either side though but no big problem.

[Cookie]

I have found the bios files on the web, and I am able to run the game. Works well, but my disc is continuously buffering. Not only it makes a hell of a noise, but I also get some lag spikes every now and then. It's melting my cd! And the graphics look like they're set on 800x600 res or even lower.
I think i'll stick to torrenting a ISO copy of the game and just mount it and play that way. I don't want my disc damaged, this thing is pure gold.

[Arokhs Twin]

I found that as well, I made an iso image of the original game disk so the original is not worn out.

[Cookie]

this guy is playing in HD on pcsx2, how is that possible?

[Arokhs Twin]

You can set the video output resolution & aspect ratio, when I said HD it's not full HD; the original game was 640x480 (NTSC) or 720x584 (PAL) so I used 1024x768 on my TV. At 1280x1024 & 1280x720 the text was a bit fuzzy.

Don't forget when the game was released flat screens were a rarity. 640x480 on a CRT looks OK.

[Cookie]

i seem to have forgotten to paste in the link, which led to a misunderstanding. I meant this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjeqqjgE-C4

[Arokhs Twin]

I think he's just doing what I did - connect my PC to a TV via HDMI and set PCSX2 to 1280x720 or 1366x768 full screen resolution. It depends on what resolutions your TV supports and your video card can output.

The game looks MUCH better on a TV than a computer monitor.

[Cookie]

I messed through the video options of the pcsx emulator and it's indeed widescreen now as I set it to be, but although I set the custom res to 1366x768 (native laptop res), it still looks like a much lower res....should I make a screenshot of my options and post it here?

[Arokhs Twin]

Yes if you like but it looked terrible on my computer monitor as well even though it was in HD res it looked smeared and blurry as if like you say in a much lower resolution. No matter what video options I chose it looked awful but it looked fine on the TV at normal viewing distance.

My settings:-
TV HDMI out set to 1920x1080 in video card options
PCSX2 set to 4:3 aspect ratio
1024x768 screen resolution
Tried 1280x720 & 1366x768, works but everything that is circular is stretched and out of proportion.

Booted game up in windowed mode and dragged it on to the second display (TV) and hit alt+enter to switch to full screen. Guess it is the original game resolution of 720x584 scaled up to 1920x1080 by PCSX2.

[Cookie]

nevermind, I did some further scavenging through the options and I got it working! Well, the HUD looks really bad, but the game itself is at native resolution now. Those are my options:

http://i.imgur.com/yBCqyLe.png
http://i.imgur.com/vC5LwKU.png
--------------
gameplay:
http://i.imgur.com/h9iJjGB.jpg

yes, it's stretched, but at least it's widescreen


PS. you play with a controller, I reckon? Is there any way to use my ps2 controller on my laptop and NOT buy a dedicated PC-PS2 controller?

[Arokhs Twin]

Glad you got it working. Looks OK to me but there are one or two graphical glitches - it does this on mine as well and its probably just the emulator. Nothing to worry about.

I used my PS3 controller via USB with unofficial software and drivers - I don't think there is an easy way of using a PS2 controller with a PC. I think an xbox360 controller or compatible would be fine - it's what I was going to buy until I got my PS3 controller working which was quite tricky.

[Cookie]

I guess I'll just have to buy one, then :<
Keyboard controls....just NO. It's playable, but it's a pain.

Also, what glitches did you spot? It looks alright to me...

[Arokhs Twin]

Lines around the HUD and on my game some textures were black or dots around world objects. Didn't happen very often so it does not spoil the game. I'd recommend keeping multiple saves though as mine crashed a few times.

[Cookie]

Well, I'm going to run it via a virtual disc, so I hope crashing won't be a problem....
And yes, I see even the guy in the playthrough had that HUD glitch, so I suppose there's no way of getting rid of it.