Every tool, and whether anyone still maintains it.

The classic memory card exploit. Boots into a homebrew launcher at power-on.

Installs to a standard memory card and runs the moment the console powers on, with no button presses. Nothing inside the console changes. Fails on some late SCPH-900xx boards, which is where the Fortuna family takes over.

Open-source reimplementation of Fortuna, with the widest console coverage of anything here.

Reaches SCPH-18000 through SCPH-90010 plus the PS2 TV, across ROM 1.10 to 2.30, in three ROM-specific variants — which is why its installer matters. It does not auto-boot: you trigger it via Browser, memory card, then back out twice.

Puts the FreeMcBoot experience on top of OpenTuna, restoring auto-boot on late consoles.

Maintained fork of FunTuna, the Fortuna-based FreeMcBoot equivalent for slim consoles.

Minimal bootloader that initialises the console and hands off to homebrew.

Not an exploit itself but what runs after one. The usual launcher on consoles where the FreeMcBoot menu is not an option.

Exploits the built-in DVD player, so a burned disc runs homebrew.

The standard bootstrap when you have no modded card and no second console. Which image you need depends on your DVD Player version, not your model number.

Small, fast, modular PS2 device emulator — presents storage to the game as if it were the disc.

Aims for almost zero mass: it sets the game running on the console's own hardware paths and stays out of the way, which is why it clears titles heavier loaders trip over. Needs a front end such as NHDDL for browsing.

Game browser for Neutrino. Scans your devices for ISOs and launches the one you pick.

Reads ATA, USB, MX4SIO, MMCE, HD Loader partitions, the network and memory cards. ISOs may sit up to five directories deep, outside its reserved folder names.

The long-standing default loader — artwork, per-game settings, every storage backend.

Mature and extremely well documented, at the cost of staying resident alongside the running game, which costs compatibility on some titles. MX4SIO support arrived in 1.1.0 and exFAT in 1.2.0.

Small launcher that reads hdd0:/__common/OPL/conf_hdd.cfg and starts OPL from the HDD.

Drop-in replacement for PS1DRV, the console's own driver for running PS1 discs.

Built by reversing both original drivers — the older PGIF one and the Deckard one — into a single unified driver covering nearly every model. Adds automatic PS1 video mode switching and a PS2 HDMI fix. Its author describes it as beta.

Revives Sony's Japan-only BroadBand Navigator dashboard as a modern game launcher.

Built around the internal hard drive, with ISO loading and SAS support. Comfortably the most popular front end in this space.

A PS3-style XrossMediaBar interface for the PS2, driving Neutrino underneath.

Fully Lua-scripted, extensible dashboard. No public repository to track.

A fork of OPL from neutrino's author. Its README matches upstream's, so nothing documented sets it apart.

OPL with coverflow listings and a per-game toggle to hand the game to Neutrino.

Continues Krahjohlito's uOPL, adding MMCE and ATA hard drive support and a per-game loader core setting.

The file browser everything else is launched from. Memory cards, USB, HDD, network.

Used for copying saves, formatting drives, and installing everything else. Its HDD manager is how an APA drive gets formatted on-console: MISC → HddManager → R1 → Format.

Maintained patches for OSDSYS and the HDD browser, based on Free McBoot 1.8.

A modern alternative to the stock FreeMcBoot menu, with a configurator that can import an existing FreeMcBoot config and reformat it.

DVD Player and system update manager for the PS2.

Formats a PS2 HDD as APA from Windows and installs games. The current tool for the job.

Connects with the drive attached over SATA or USB, or over the network via OPL's NBD server so the drive never leaves the console. Reads ISO, BIN/CUE, ZSO, Zip, 7z and Rar, and manages the __common, __.POPS and __system partitions. Supports drives up to 2 TB.

Alternative APA drive manager, wrapping hdl_dump and pfsshell in one GUI.

Installs games to an APA drive, running on the PS2 itself as a network service.

Acts as a TCP server that the HDLGManClient Windows app sends games to, at roughly 4 to 6 MB/s over ports 45061 and 45062. Can also pull from the console's own disc drive or a USB stick.

Windows GUI for installing games to, and managing, an APA-formatted PS2 drive.

Sector-level disk writer. Writes __mbr.raw to a bare drive so it boots FreeHDBoot.

Copies MBR, boot records, partitions and the space between them, which is exactly what writing a prepared APA boot partition needs — an ordinary file copy will not do. Closed-source freeware from HDDGURU, so there is no repository to track.

Formatting utility that exposes partition scheme, filesystem and cluster size directly.

The usual choice for preparing microSD cards and USB drives, because the settings that matter here are all visible rather than hidden behind defaults.

The SD Association's own formatter. Safer than Rufus, with less control.

Tests whether an SD card is counterfeit by writing and verifying its full claimed capacity.

Fake cards report a large size and silently discard anything written past their real capacity, which presents months later as random corruption. Worth one pass on any card before you trust it.

Read and write benchmark for PS2 storage backends.

The tool behind the throughput figures used across this site.

The maintained firmware for SD2PSX-family memory card emulators. Use this one.

Extends the original with PS2 game ID switching, MMCE support, settings files and per-device builds. Releases carry a separate .uf2 per board — psxmemcard.uf2 for a PSxMemCardGen2, not sd2psx.uf2.

The official upstream firmware for SD2PSX. Quieter than the fork, with no tagged releases.

The most active community fork continuing BlueRetro.

SD2PSX-based memory card emulator with an OLED screen and USB-C.

Stores an unlimited number of PS1 and PS2 saves as virtual cards, and on MMCE-capable firmware serves games to Neutrino and NHDDL as well.

8BitMods' commercial memory card emulator, covering PS2 and PS1 saves.

SD adapter for memory card slot 2, exposed to the console as block storage.

The cheapest way to a real library on any model. Measures 1.15 to 1.5 MB/s depending on the console, under the 2.2 MB/s needed to emulate the DVD drive cleanly, and neutrino's author estimates only around 60% of SD cards work with it at all.