PS3 emulator devs have a massive update on netplay, touting online support for co-op Metal Gear, classic fighting games, and more

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker — (Image credit: Konami)

Options for online play on RPCS3 have quietly been building up over the past few years, and the devs behind the popular PS3 emulator have just shared a massive update detailing a whole lot of recent compatibility gains in some of the best PS3 games.

The RPCS3 devs have just uploaded a new video detailing recent compatibility updates for RPCN, the emulator's matchmaking server. "GalCiv, one of RPCS3's lead developers, has been hard at work improving RPCN, allowing for many more PS3 games to be played online," as explained in the video description. "Not only are more games supported, but we now support adding friends to your RPCN account and inviting them to matches similar to how it worked on PSN on a real PS3! Some games even have working leaderboards."

You can check out the video above for some highlights or just look at the whole compatibility list for yourself, but there are some notable standouts. The biggest for me is Peace Walker in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Taking strong cues from Monster Hunter, this game offers bite-sized stealth missions and boss fights with extensive co-op support which remains pretty unique to this day. Now you can easily enjoy that co-op experience through RPCN.

Some other notables include fighting games like Soul Calibur 5, Virtua Fighter 5, Tekken 6, and Tekken Tag Tournament 2, all of which let you enjoy proper 1-on-1 matches. There's support for loads of classic racing games, the original Demon's Souls, and heck, you can even get a Minecraft server going if you really want to play the PS3 version.

Netplay for older emulators has existed for ages, but online PS3 games are dependent on modern server infrastructure in a way that older titles are not. To that point, many of these games require community-run custom servers, so it's entirely on dedicated fans to keep these servers alive.

Many official PS3 servers remain online to this day, but the end of official support is effectively inevitable. That's why it's so fantastic to see emulator devs already building community-run solutions.

The RPCS3 devs recently turned their attention toward solving PS4 emulation.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.