Need Help with PS2 games!!!

Okay, I'm getting seriously depressed here.

A friend of mine just gave me his playstation 2 (slim), since he's pretty much never used it and he knows I'm just dying to play some games only available on this consolle (mainly FF and Kingdom Hearts... I'm a fan ;) ).

He taught me how to "mod" it (using Swap Magic 3 and just pretty much covering up the two switches to make the playstation think the lid is closed), and gave me all the games he owned.

First, I tried the original games, and they all work marvelously. Then, I tried his backups, and half of them work (including PES 2006, Obscure II, and God of War 2), whereas the other half starts loading but gets stuck before you actually get to play (including Call of Duty 3, Metal Gear Solid, GTA San Andreas). At first I thought I must have done something wrong with the "mod", but once I saw that a few were working correctly I assumed there was simply something wrong with the non-working dvds (my friend hasn't played with it in a long time, he doesn't even remember if there ever was a time he could play any of the games I can't load).

So, I finally decided to try playing the games I actually wanted to play. I downloaded FFX, unzipped it, burned the ISO file on a dvd (Infinity DVD; I used Nero and the speed was 8x), but once I popped it into the consolle it did nothing, just one big black screen. I started researching on the net a bit and found out one has to be super careful with speed and dvd quality, so I tried burning the same game on another dvd (TDK TTH02,which I found out is supposed to be top-notch), again using Nero, and with a speed of 4x. Same result.

Finally, I tried another game (still FFX but another ISO, this time a bit smaller), same TDK dvd, using DVD Decrypter; completed successfully, yet still nothing, just a black screen on my playstation.

Am I doing something wrong? Once I have one .ISO file, am I not supposed to simply be burning that on a dvd? Could maybe the fact that a few non-original games work be simply a coincidence and I have something wrong with my ps2? Yet, why do the dvds I burn not even start loading? Even the other games that don't work at least *do* something, they start loading properly but get stuck somewhere along the line... should I try another game? Or am I making some sort of mistake?

I'm sorry for the uber-long post but I'm really going crazy here, I've tried to look for threads with similar problems but nothing seems to work...

Thanks in advance!

ok to play a downloaded ps2 game you need to patch it with esr patcher, just google. Dra the iso into the patcher then burn the iso, hey presto working games x

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actually here is the patcher

http://www.mediafire.com/?2mi0iymx1en

Thank you so much! You've been incredibly helpful :)

Actually, you've solved half the problem: now the game starts loading ("Squaresoft" credits and all) but then I get a black screen again, before i get any chance to play (or get to the main screen, actually). Any ideas on what the problem could be?? Do you think it's the game or the consolle?

i recommend using verbatim dvd's not had any issues using them and i got em for under £20 on amazon for a 100 disc spindle, as to your actual problem though since you can run original games it cant be the laser, or so i assume, how comes you didnt opt for the FMCB mod it runs alot better imo

Oh wow

er yeah do not patch your games with ESR if you are just using swapmagic 3

ESR is a softmod installed and used via another softmod called FreeMCBoot aka FMCB

seen as you have the SwapMagic it is easyish to install

Once done you do not need the lid sensors blocked and you can boot DVD backups without a boot disc, directly on the PS2 system

PS2 CD burns will not work though, but alot of games can be converted to DVD, plus most games are standard DVD5 sized... with a few exceptions of CD games and DVD9 games

When you can I recomend sticking to DVD5 backup media, DVD9 backup media can be a bit of a strain on the poor PS2

(Note just because originals work does not = backups will :P)

Anyway a re-burn may well solve the issues (without the ESR patch), burned backups need to be in very good condition to work and preferably burned onto very high quality media verbatims seem to get the best result for most of us... I will go further and recomend you get the +R variety