How to Play PS2 Japanese Imports (Discs) on a PS3

As many of you know the Sony PlayStation 3 is region free for PS3 Games. Historically it's always been well known that PS2 and PS1 Games are region locked on a backwards compatible system.You would be forgiven for thinking that the only way you could play your favorite PS2 Japanese Imports on a PS3 is through a PS2 ISO File. Many have said what I'm about to show you isn't possible. But what if there was a way that you could actually take your physical import disc and insert it into your PS3 and it worked. Today I'm writing this tutorial as a proof of concept to show that it can work and it does. For this guide you will need the following items.



Prerequisites -
+Backwards Compatible PS3 running Rebug REX CFW. I'm using a 60GB CECHA-01
+Rebug Toolbox
+The Japanese PS2 Game of your choice. (I'll be using Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+)

The first thing you need to do is enable debug options in settings. This can be done easily by scrolling all the way over to settings on the XMB and pressing
L1 + L2 + R1 + R2 + L3 + Dpad-Down.

You should see this once that step has been successfully completed.



Once you have successfully enabled Debug Settings you can proceed to the next step. Go ahead and open up Rebug ToolBox. If you scroll over and down you should see an option that looks like this. Go ahead and set the Debug Menu Type to DEX. Please note this is completely safe to do and only changes the menu options available. It does NOT modify your flash or change your console kernel from CEX to DEX


Once this is done you can now proceed to the next step. Exit back to the XMB and go to debug settings. Scroll down a bit and you will see an option that says "Fake Other Region". Go ahead and enable this. It will look like this

Note - Please be aware that this setting is stored in memory and will need to be re-enabled upon reboot.

Once all of that is done you are now ready to play your Japanese (Or Any Other Region) PS2 Game just by inserting the disc into the PS3. In the Video Below I demonstrate this working with Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ but you could use any game as long as you have a backwards compatible PS3. In addition this should also work for PS1 Imports as well although I haven't yet tested that.



That's it for this tutorial. Enjoy Playing your entire collection of Imported Discs on your PS3
P.S. My Apologies for the crappy video quality and the horizontal view. It's meant to be just a Proof of Concept Video.

 

That's definitely another way to do it. To each their own I guess. I just like being able to take a disc and pop it in and boom it works. No Backing up to the HDD, no having to obtain an ISO Backup. For people who have large collections of imported PS2/PS1 Games that just wanna pop the game in and play I see this having some value for them. Not to mention there's virtually no other guide that exists on the internet for playing actual import discs on a BC PS3. But I can also see your argument to on using backups for disc preservation. But in all reality nothing lasts for ever either. Discs eventually stop working, Hard Drives don't last forever. You can't lose either way is what I'm effectively saying.