“I was just excited to get it up and running,” says nostalgia-chaser and PC gamer Richard Wyman. “It was definitely worth the six hours fine-tuning the emulator and the CPU upgrade.”



Richard is referring to the 2004 classic Sly 2: Band of Thieves, the second installment in the iconic Sly Cooper series. The PlayStation 2 game, playable on PC via the PCSX2 emulator, is a childhood favorite for Wyman and many others, along with similar-era PS2 series such as Jak and Ratchet and Clank.



“You just get hit with this wave of nostalgia when the game first boots,” says Wyman, showing us how he’s able to get 14 frames per second in the game’s menu screen. “The convenience is the best thing for me—I’ve got ROMs for all of my favorite games on a folder in my desktop, and the internet says I can just ignore the letters I keep getting in the mail from Sony!”



Wyman’s computer includes an i7-8700K processor, 32 gigabytes of memory, and a GTX 1080 Ti with 11 gigabytes of VRAM; a steady lead ahead of the PlayStation 2’s 294 MHz processor, 32 megabytes of RAM, and ability to play DVDs and CDs.



“Honestly, there’s nothing like playing the classics the way they’re meant to be played,” says Wyman, playing the game with an Xbox controller while his CPU fan screams in the background, cracking under the load of imitating a small black box that is currently sitting, fully functional, in Wyman’s parents’ attic. “I don’t even mind when it crashes. It reminds me of when Dad would come turn it off and make me hold the flashlight while he yelled at the car.”



At press time, Wyman had blown the circuit breaker for his wall outlet while overclocking his CPU well beyond what would be considered a reasonable level—reportedly attempting to “clear the 20 FPS barrier.”

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