PlayStation 2 Emulation
Manufacturer: Sony / Release Date: 2000
The longtime best-selling console enjoyed a 12-year run thanks in part to a great and varied game lineup, but its success is also owed in part to doubling as a DVD player at a time when those were still kind of expensive. It was also the first console to be designed in a very forward-thinking way in terms of future expansion, with USB and Firewire ports and space (in the "fat" version) to install a hard drive. Over 1,800 games ended up being released for the PS2 during its commercial heyday and there continues to be something of a homebrew scene thanks to how readily moddable it has become.
PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide For PC
Recommended Emulator: PCSX2 (Windows, Linux, Mac)
PCSX2 is recommended as it has great compatibility and very good speed with only modest system requirements. Computers in the "low-end" range can run it, though laptops in this category will likely need to be set to the lowest graphical settings and may still choke on some of the larger and more graphics-intensive games. A low-end desktop or a mid-range laptop should handle anything you do with it just fine.
It runs "out of the box" in a self-explanatory way and requires very little fiddling to get individual games to run. Certain games do require little tweaks, but you can easily Google the solutions whenever you run into a problem. I've yet to see a game outright not work at all with it (though little graphical glitches are not uncommon).
PlayStation 2 discs can be run on your computer via any standard DVD player (see links below for external USB models).
So PCXS2 usually works great right out of the box, but you might want to do a little bit of jiggerin' and configgerin' for your personal setup. The proper settings and plugins and such do vary by rig, but in general you're going to want the graphics settings to use the most recent DirectX hardware version for max speed (plus set it to 1280:960 resolution to start out, then you can try higher resolutions from there to see what your system can support). However, some games do have issues with hardware rendering (most notably the Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank games and the Ace Combat series) so you may have to switch to DirectX software for some.
And I dunno where you would get PS2 ISOs because that's not very legal and very cool, but these folks over here might be able to help.
Other Files Needed:
PS2 BIOS (EmuGen) - Extract and add to the PCSX2 "bios" directory, then select a bios file from the configuration menu after starting it up
ImgBurn - for ripping playable image files of your PS2 discs
Peripherals:
USB adapter for PlayStation controllers
PC USB PlayStation controller clone
Links:
Region-free modding guide for actual PS2s