15 years later, the PS2 gets a Minecraft port, and it actually hits 30fps

The Sony PlayStation 2 and Minecraft have something in common: they are the best-selling properties in their respective categories. Let me explain. The PS2 is the highest-selling gaming console of all time, with more than 160 million units estimated to be sold. That’s about 1.5 times the PS4, and a little short of two times the PS5’s lifetime sales. Minecraft, on the other hand, is the most-sold non-arcade video game of all time (Tetris remains the absolute leader otherwise).

Despite both being icons in their own categories, it’s ironic that Minecraft was never officially released for the PS2. While it did arrive on the PS3 after its launch in 2013, there have been tireless efforts to “demake” Minecraft for the PS2, and even the older PS1. However, these builds required modified hardware or the creation of the entire game from the ground up. Those efforts, however, have finally led to a developer porting the game, which now runs without a modded console, almost 15 years after its official release.

Developer @OptiJogos on X (via Retrododo) recently posted about being able to port Minecraft Pocket Edition (MCPE) version 0.6. That’s because infinite worlds cannot be run on the PS2’s archaic hardware. The port runs natively on the PS2 without any hardware mods and can achieve frame rates above 30fps — a significant feat for the 32MB (yes, megabytes) of RAM.

What it takes to run Minecraft Pocket Edition on the Sony PS2

In a video (thank goodness, for YouTube’s auto-dubbing!), the developer says they were able to utilize Minecraft’s recently leaked source code to develop the PS2 port. The tricky bit, according to them, was adapting the game to run on the PS2’s GPU, officially called the “emotion engine.” So, they coded a custom “OpenGL adaptor” to solve the issue.

To bypass the RAM bottleneck, they took steps like rendering only the portion of the game that’s in front of you, lowering the resolution, disabling some animations, and freezing other features in the PS2, such as the internet, while the game was running. They also disabled graphics settings, such as fancy graphics, smooth lighting, and vignette, to reduce RAM usage. And what it led to was a smooth and usable version of the game, which the developer decided to rename OptiCraft.

You can download the Minecraft ROM for PS2 here, and then run it through the console if you’re still holding on to it. If not, you can also run the ELF file through any popular PS2 emulator, such as AtherSX2.