One of my subscribers brought some more good news from the world of PS2 Classics.
Now there is a way to convert PS2 titles to PKGs so they could be accessible through XMB icons like normal PSN titles without placeholders or managers or any of that stuff. Here’s how you can convert a PS2 title to a PS3-installable pkg. You will need ps2iso2pkg. Download it and unpack. The utility itself is an .exe file, which in fact is a disguised .bat file. The .bat source code is available in the Source folder. Some of the utilities the batch file calls requires Visual Basic 5.0 dll, so if you don’t have it on your PC, get it. I’ve showed how to obtain this library in the very first post about PS2 classics. Now place you game ISO image to ISO folder inside the utility, and the pictures you want to use as cover – to Images folder, and run the utility. It will ask you to enter digits from the disc code, enter them, and the name of the title. This name will be used as game title in the XMB. Hit enter and wait till everything completes. In the process you’ll have to click encrypt button, since obviously you can’t click on-screen buttons from a batch file, so just follow on-screen instructions. If everything goes smoothly, a pkg file will appear in the PKG folder. Copy this file and also the EXDATA folder to the thumb drive you going to install them from. The EXDATA folder is VERY important! As any PSN title requires a licence file to run, the converter uses that very placeholder licence file for title activation through reactpsn. I told about that in another post. This file is copied under different names, corresponding to the game title, so each new title requires the same file to be registered again by running reactpsn on your PlayStation 3. So first you install the game pkg, and then making sure the thumb rive plugged into the console has the exdata folder with licences, run reactpsn once. You should have reactpsn installed by now, if you don’t, the installation package is in the pkg file inside the converter. Each reactpsn run scans the thumbdrive for new licences and adds them to your PS3. This is the only way to run converted PS2 titles. Savegames are saved using standard PS3 memory card mechanism, which I showed in yet another PS2 Classics article. If you need to convert old savegames to PS3 standard format, use savegame converter.