Namco arcade hardware joins the library
ARMSX2 2.8 adds emulation for Namco System 246 and System 256 arcade boards. The implementation covers the boards as complete systems, including CD, DVD and hard-drive images, CHD files, settings memory, security dongles, input hardware and the faster clocks used by System 256. The supported cabinet controls include buttons, coin inputs, racing wheels, drums, twin levers, light guns and touch panels. The game database includes 55 arcade entries with fixes carried over from PCSX2x6, according to the release notes.
The new Namco screen appears in the game library's left-side menu below Texture Packs. It guides users through selecting an arcade-games folder, downloading the required boot files, locating an arcade BIOS and importing games. The boot files are downloaded once and are approximately 1 MB. The notes state that a 2 MB System 246/256 BIOS dump is supported. An arcade BIOS appears separately as Arcade in BIOS Location and does not replace the console BIOS used for PlayStation 2 games.
Games can be imported from disc or hard-drive images together with their matching security dongles, in either order. Soul Calibur II also supports importing its Conquest card. Gzipped dumps are unpacked while they are copied, files below 8 MB are rejected as dongles, and cancelling stops the import. Imported titles can later be removed from the same Namco screen.
Arcade titles receive dedicated controls and artwork
Imported arcade games appear in the library with an ARCADE badge and dedicated covers using flyer and title artwork in both available cover styles. An Arcade games only switch in the library overflow menu filters the collection to these entries.
Controller layouts follow the cabinet arrangements used by the PCSX2x6 implementation. Select acts as a coin input, racing games use the left stick for steering and the triggers for pedals, and specialist controls receive layouts for drums, twin levers and light guns. Light-gun and touch-panel games use the touchscreen. The in-game menu includes Insert coin controls for both players, along with Service and Test options, and save states are supported.
The project attributes the board emulation to work from PCSX2x6 by israpps, Tovarichtch and DiscoStarslayer, with the ARMSX2 port and arcade cover pack credited to jpolo1224.
Texture-pack browsing is rebuilt
Version 2.8 replaces the texture-pack menu with a cover-based browser. Online packs are displayed across pages of game covers, with each entry showing its pack name, creator, creator image and installation status. Searches can target a game, pack, serial or creator, while sorting is available by game, serial or creator.
A creator view lists the available contributors and their packs, with Back returning to the previous page. Filters include Popular Today, All, My games and Installed. Downloads continue after the browser is closed, and their progress remains visible in the texture screen.
Opening a pack displays its creator, source, tip jar and social accounts when available, together with the texture type, installation status, size and Download control. The release notes say that source links come from the Texture Packs Archive and can now point to a creator's own page instead of a mirror or archive page. The browser opens on Popular Today, which contains the ten packs installed most often that day using anonymous counts. When viewing All, Shuffle presents a random page on each turn. A new track, “November Snow” by The Cynic Project, plays over the library music while the browser is open and yields back to the normal music when it closes.
Input behavior and device support receive focused updates
Controller navigation now separates moving through a switch from activating it. A flips a switch, while Left and Right move between choices. Sliders, steppers and choice rows continue to respond to Left and Right. This prevents directional presses from changing switches they pass over and makes repeated taps behave consistently.
The on-screen display can now show CPU and GPU temperatures on Exynos phones, whose sensor names differ from those on other devices. GPU Driver downloads also list ARMSX2 libmali packages for Mali-G615 and Mali-G715 hardware, and only for those GPUs.
Fixes target Android timing, graphics and long sessions
A Galaxy S22 Ultra issue that could reduce emulation to one frame per second or less is addressed. The device's timer could report an invalid frequency, causing the frame limiter to wait for several seconds on every frame. ARMSX2 now checks the frequency against the system clock once and retains the validated value.
Combo hotkeys now work regardless of which key is pressed first. CHD files with parent images can also find those parents when the games folder is opened through Android's folder-access system.
Long OpenGL sessions on Mali GPUs no longer accumulate memory in a driver cache that grew with each draw. The Analog Sticks switches now update immediately when tapped instead of waiting for the tab to be reopened.
The release fixes a rendering problem affecting text and letters at two-times resolution and higher when the Native half-pixel offset is enabled. In Vulkan, the Gran Turismo 4 menu could display an extra shadow row, while We Love Katamari title lettering could acquire an unwanted edge line.
Several GS multi-threading problems are corrected. Large draws could overrun the draw buffer, frame-rate detection and frame skipping could read registers after a later frame had changed them, and changing downloads to Unsynchronized during a game could leave multi-threading enabled. Texture replacements could also be shut down while a draw was still running, while a scan-mask fix could remove every other line from some draws. These corrections address stability and visual consistency in affected configurations.
Thread scheduling reduces wasted CPU work
GS multi-threading no longer keeps a CPU core busy while its graphics thread waits for the back thread to catch up. The waiting thread now sleeps. The back thread is also placed next to the GS thread rather than being assigned without regard to core type, including little cores.
The release further skips setup work in sprite-heavy situations when nothing will read the resulting data. The notes specifically cite Spider-Man 3 as an example. Together, these changes are intended to reduce unnecessary processor use while preserving the benefits of multi-threaded graphics processing.
ARMSX2 remains an ARM64 PS2 emulator
ARMSX2 is a free, open-source PlayStation 2 emulator based on PCSX2. It runs PlayStation 2 software on ARM64 phones, computers and gaming handhelds using native ARM recompilers alongside interpreters and virtualized hardware-state management. The project README identifies support targets across Android, iOS and iPadOS, as well as macOS, Windows and Linux desktop systems.
The fork's central technical goal is native ARM64 just-in-time recompilation for the PlayStation 2's main processor, I/O processor and vector units. The README reports that its native ARM64 binary can boot the PlayStation 2 BIOS, with 2D games already playable and 3D games running. A legitimately owned PlayStation 2 BIOS dump is required for the console-emulation side of the software; the separate arcade BIOS requirement applies to the newly added Namco System 246/256 support.
ARMSX2 2.8 is available in Android packages for armv8.2 devices using SDK levels 30, 33 or 35, plus a legacy armv8.0 package using SDK 26. The release notes also mention an ASTC conversion tool for texture-pack creators on Windows and macOS, but that tool is separate from the emulator update.
