Windows 95 on a PlayStation 2: An Impressive Mod, But No Doom Gameplay

Alright, so there’s this YouTuber Jace from MetraByte — a channel that’s all about what they call “silly tech.” No clue why I watched the whole video, but it was kinda hypnotizing. Jace thought it’d be fun — or maybe just maddening? — to try and cram Windows 95 and Doom onto a Sony PlayStation 2. Yep, you heard that right. Old-school meets… slightly less old-school?

So, Windows 95 sort of worked, after wrestling with it for ages. But Doom? Nah, that didn’t wanna play ball at all.

Both these things are seriously ancient by 2025 standards. Windows 95 popped up in 1995 — like, I was probably watching cartoons then. And the PS2 came out in 2000, when everyone was excited about chunky graphics and DVDs. You’d think the PS2 would breeze through this retro tech magic trick, but nope. It’s this Frankenstein mash-up of trying to run x86 stuff on Sony’s MIPS architecture. Plus, Windows 95 has a known rep for being kinda quirky — and not in a cute way.

Jace’s setup was hilarious. Picture a modded PS2 paired with a controller that had a QWERTY keypad sticking out of it. Toss in a USB stick and hard drive — no idea how they didn’t lose any of this — and then, there’s this bunch of files packed on: a PlayStation .ELF file for some homebrew excitement, DOSBox and Bochs emulators, and boot disks or image files ready to roll. You can almost hear the console groaning under all that.

At first, Jace played around with DOSBox but hit a wall, or maybe 47 walls, trying to get that Windows 95 desktop to show up. Ha, mad scientist vibes for sure! Then they switched to Bochs — who even names these things? — which is apparently more accurate but soooo slow.

The video, in all its glory, captures Jace’s struggle — and kinda feels like watching someone with a really stubborn jigsaw puzzle. Every tiny step took forever, limited by the PS2’s old-school I/O capabilities. And if you can believe it, though the process seemed to take years, Jace finally saw the setup screen for Windows 95 on that PS2. Honestly, it probably felt like spotting a unicorn.

And remember, this wasn’t smooth sailing. Constant system complaints, errors popping up here and there, and about a million things to fix just brought chaos. Still, Jace pushed through. Heroic, or maybe a bit stubborn?

14 hours later — yeah, 14 whole hours — Windows 95 was setting up on the PS2. Jace used Paint without a mouse, which was like, why? And Doom95? It just laughed and sat out like the world’s grumpiest old-timer.

Anyway — wait, no — what was I saying? Oh right. All in all, this might sound bonkers, but it’s oddly satisfying to see someone dive into such a nutty project.

If you really want all the deets, there’s Jace’s whole saga on YouTube. Watch it only if you’ve got the patience of a saint or just love seeing where madness takes you.