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Okay, if seeing the best retro consoles like the PS2 Slim being chopped up and turned into a handheld homunculus makes you squeamish, you'll want to look away. While there are some eloquent attempts at miniturizing Sony's second system on the internet for portable play, this certainly isn't one of them, and yet, boons like better battery life than the Steam Deck OLED and full controls make the cursed creation sort of alluring.
If you're familiar with James Channel, one of my favorite retro gaming tinkerers and chaotic modders, you'll know what comes next. Just like the diabolical OG Xbox handheld that emerged just before the ROG Xbox Ally X, the PS2 handheld is a ripped-up slim console with the disc drive fully exposed, like a flywheel, complete with a cheap LCD screen slapped on the front.
Naturally, the retro handheld is held together with duct tape, or a "roll of housing" as James so eloquently calls it. Some of you might put the YouTuber's reluctance to carefully cut down console boards, or even 3D print a shell for said creations, as sheer trolling. I'd argue that, as much as the bananas approach is supposed to be entertaining, it highlights some really interesting PS2 hardware elements and demonstrates what's actually achievable when adding contempoary mods.
It's easy to get distracted by the Frankenstein's Monster PS2 handheld, but a chunk of the video features James fixing the console's optical drive. If you're into detailed console repairs, you'll dig the process, as it involves using a clone of Sony's internal calibration tools known as PMAP (or PlayStation 2 Mechacon Adjustment Program), to tweak the system's EEPROM data. Doing so can help the laser read discs if it's having issues, in turn saving the need for hard-to-find drive parts.
The freshly repaired disc drive is then precariously sandwiched between the main board and a cheap sat-nav LCD screen, but that's potentially less offensive than the crunched-up MadCatz controller underneath. Again, this whole project is deliberately "lazy" and involves snipping away at things like the Dualshock and memory card ports before mounting them elsewhere, and while the process is horrific, it does help the portable retain elements like full controls and save compatibility.
The cherry on top of this sliced-up PS2 Slim Sundae, though, is the battery. This time, James has opted to bolt a 10,000mAh power bank to his creation, complete with its tiny LCD status screen. Remarkably, the cells can power the sixth-gen console for over an hour and still have 71% capacity to spare, meaning it could theoretically run for around 5 hours. Those figures put modern gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck and Switch 2 to shame,
I should note that James isn't the first modder to make a portable PS2 using real hardware. You can even seemingly grab systems with a real motherboard at Aliexpress that swap the drive out for flash storage, but those somehow feel less inspired than having a high-speed disc flying next to your face while you play racing games. Said disc launches out of the machine like a banned '80s action figure toy just as the video ends, and while that signals that you shouldn't try this at home, the entire experiment makes for an excellent peek at the old console's innards.
Using Valve's handheld to play PS2 games? Swing by the best Steam Deck accessories and best Steam Deck docks to enhance your big screen setup.
