Remote play brings a second player to streamed PS2 games
The headline feature in ARMSX2 2.8.4 is Remote play, which lets another person join a running PlayStation 2 game from a separate device. The host starts a game, opens the in-game menu, selects the blue Friends icon, and chooses either Host on this Wi-Fi or Invite online. The joining player uses Remote play from the library menu and controls player 2 with a physical controller or ARMSX2’s touch controls. They do not need their own copy of the game.
On the same Wi-Fi network, the hosted game can appear automatically to the other player. For an online session, the host can send a six-character code, which remains valid for 10 minutes, or share an invite. Both players must use matching ARMSX2 versions, with support beginning at version 2.8.4 and later matching releases.
The host remains in control of access. A join request opens an Accept or Decline prompt in the in-game menu, and streaming does not begin until the request is accepted. On-screen notifications indicate when a player joins or leaves. Player 2’s controller rumble is also sent back to the joining device.
The stream travels directly between the two devices rather than through an intermediary server. For online sessions, the code is used only to exchange the connection messages, while ARMSX2 attempts to ask the router to open a port when possible. Direct connections are not possible on every network, so online Remote play will not work in all connection setups.
Hosting is supported with both the Vulkan and OpenGL renderers. On Android 17, hosting over the same Wi-Fi network requires the Nearby devices permission. The joining player can display stream statistics on screen, and local-network sessions offer Wi-Fi QoS marking to help routers that prioritize traffic by marking network packets.
Texture-pack imports are easier to manage
The plus button on the Texture Packs screen now opens a file picker for importing packs in .zip or .tar.zst format. A separate folder button preserves the existing folder-based import workflow, giving users a choice between selecting an archive and choosing an unpacked directory.
EE recompiler changes reduce emulation work
Version 2.8.4 includes update 827 for the EE recompiler. The Emotion Engine is the main PlayStation 2 CPU, and a recompiler translates its instructions into code that can run on the host device. Reducing the work required for those emulated cycles can leave more processing time available for other emulator tasks.
The project reports measurements on a Snapdragon 865 showing roughly 5–6% fewer EE cycles in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, 1.5–3% fewer in Shadow of the Colossus, and about 2% fewer in Final Fantasy X. These figures describe reductions in emulated EE cycles, not guaranteed frame-rate gains on every device or game.
Several games receive targeted rendering fixes
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Dark Alliance II now avoid repeatedly discarding and uploading their textures every frame through a game-database correction. The texture cache also retains more of the material these games draw. On Vulkan, their water areas no longer wait for the GPU to upload textures, addressing a separate source of rendering delay.
Spider-Man 3 receives a software-renderer optimization for its large number of small palette-based sprite draws. Those sprites are now copied directly from the emulated PS2’s video memory instead of passing through the rasterizer. The change targets the cost of handling many small draw operations in that rendering path.
Save-state loading is corrected with MTVU enabled
A fix addresses save states used with MTVU enabled. Loading a state could restore an outdated VU1 program and its data, potentially causing incorrect drawing or other game behavior after the load. VU1 is one of the PlayStation 2’s vector units, so restoring its program and data is necessary for the emulated machine to resume the same computational state as when the save was created.
The correction targets errors that appeared during state restoration for users running with MTVU enabled.
Licensing information is now available in About
The About screen now lists ARMSX2’s GNU General Public License version 3 or later license alongside the licenses for the open-source libraries included in the application.
ARMSX2 remains a native ARM64 PS2 emulator
ARMSX2 is a free, open-source PlayStation 2 emulator based on PCSX2. It emulates the console’s hardware through interpreters, dynamic recompilers and a virtual machine that manages hardware state and PS2 system memory. The project’s fork focuses on native ARM64 performance, with its shared core targeting ARM64 systems across Android, iOS and iPadOS, macOS, Windows and Linux, as well as gaming handhelds.
The emulated system is the PlayStation 2; the host device is the phone, computer or handheld running ARMSX2. The documented requirements also include a BIOS dump from a legitimately owned PS2 console. ARMSX2 2.8.4 was published on October 17, 2026, with Android APK variants for newer and legacy SDK targets.
