I’ve been playing a ton of PlayStation 2 lately, and I keep forgetting just how many co-op games are hiding in this library. It’s genuinely one of the biggest libraries in gaming, and no matter how many of these games I dig through, I always find a new one I’ve never touched.

This isn’t really a hidden gems video. Some of these games are just okay, but I think they’re all worth trying at least once with a second player. So here are 11 co-op PS2 games you’ve probably missed.

ONIMUSHA: DAWN OF DREAMS

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams isn’t obscure at all — it’s a Capcom game, and if you own a PS2, there’s a good chance you already know it. What you might not know is that it has a secret co-op mode. Both players hold L1, L2, R1, and R2 on their controllers, and once you hear a sound cue, you know the code worked.

You can’t co-op from the very start, though. You have to reach the third stage, where a new character joins your party, and that’s when player two can take control of her. For a game that was never built with co-op in mind, it works surprisingly well. The main issue is the camera — it’s stationary, so it’s easy to lose track of player two, and honestly, this would’ve been a much better fit as a splitscreen game. To be fair, the camera is bad in single player too, so don’t let that scare you off from trying it with a friend.

GETBACKERS

GetBackers only came out in Japan, and it’s based on the anime and manga of the same name. It’s a 2D sidescrolling beat ‘em up with 3D backgrounds, which sometimes doesn’t work in games, but here I think they pull it off.

This isn’t the best beat ‘em up I’ve played, and the moveset is pretty simplistic, but the special abilities are a lot of fun — think Dragon Ball Z-style energy blasts. I really like the art style, and you can choose between different characters, unlocking more as you go. There’s a lot of dialogue and cutscenes in Japanese, so if you don’t understand the language, you’ll want to skip through those. You don’t need to understand any of it to enjoy the beat ‘em up gameplay, though. The PS2 had a massive amount of anime games that never made it to America, and this is one of them worth tracking down.

G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is based on the 2009 movie — yes, the one with Channing Tatum that I’ve never actually seen. Most licensed games aren’t very good, so people tend to just skip past them, and this one came out pretty late in the PS2’s life, in 2009, well after the PS3 had already launched. By that point a lot of people had already moved on from the PS2.

But surprisingly, this game is pretty fun. It’s a straightforward run-and-gun shooter — not complex or deep, but it’s not really trying to be. It has drop-in, drop-out co-op, plenty of shooting, and destructible environments. It kind of scratches an old-school itch that wasn’t really common in the PS2 library. It’s not one of the best games ever made, but it’s better than you’d expect.

ARMY MEN: GREEN ROGUE

Sticking with the same idea, Army Men: Green Rogue is another licensed game — this time based on toys — turned into a run-and-gun shooter. Gameplay-wise, it’s very similar to the G.I. Joe game above. It also has drop-in co-op, and you’re mostly just running around shooting and picking up different weapons.

It’s actually even more simplistic than G.I. Joe — there’s no cover shooting or anything like that. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. There aren’t many games quite like this on the PS2. This isn’t secretly one of the best PS2 games nobody knows about, but it does prove a point I keep coming back to: giving even a mediocre game a two-player option elevates the whole experience.

SPACE INVADERS: INVASION DAY

Space Invaders: Invasion Day never came out in the US on PS2 — it was exclusive to PAL regions and Japan, where it was called Space Raiders. It did eventually make its way to the US on GameCube. This one actually turned out to be pretty good. It takes the classic Space Invaders formula and gives it a fresh coat of paint, moving the action to a third-person perspective.

You control two humans moving left and right at the bottom of the screen, shooting down waves of enemies, with some boss fights mixed in. It's basically the classic formula with updated visuals, and I don't hear people talk about this one much. Teaming up with a friend to see how high a score you can get is honestly pretty addicting.

TWIN CALIBER

Twin Caliber only came out in Europe, and I'll be honest — it's not the highest quality game. The voice acting is terrible, the production values aren't great, and the gameplay is kind of weird. But I actually love this game, and I really didn't expect to.

It plays like a mix between an on-rails shooter and a third-person shooter, and it was clearly built to be a co-op experience from the ground up. There's a loose story about a cop breaking a prisoner out, and the two of you team up to shoot down zombies and other creatures attacking the prison. The dialogue and voice acting are over-the-top and pretty ridiculous. You each control two guns and can switch between two control modes — one where each stick controls an arm independently (which I found really hard to manage), or one where a single stick aims both guns while L1 and R1 fire them separately. You have zero control over your character's movement; they just walk forward automatically and plant in place once they hit a new area. Once you get the controls down, though, this turned out to be one of the biggest surprises in the whole PS2 co-op library for me. It's a legitimate hidden gem.

ALIEN SYNDROME

There was a PS2 remake of Alien Syndrome, but it only came out in Japan. It's a pretty faithful remake as far as level structure and objectives go, but now it's a twin-stick shooter instead of the original format. My own history with Alien Syndrome comes from the NES version, which actually had co-op and was pretty fun, and the Sega Master System version, which only had alternating two-player and no co-op at all.

The gameplay here is the same as you'd expect — you run around rescuing hostages, then head to the exit for a big boss fight. Visually it's nothing impressive, but it did the job for its time. They did make the enemies noticeably grosser than the originals, with slimy sound effects to match. Maybe that makes me a little bit of a psycho, but I actually kind of love that addition. This is another one that ended up being a lot better than I expected.

I.Q. REMIX

I.Q. Remix is a Japan-exclusive sequel to Intelligent Cube on the original PlayStation, and it’s the one entry on this list that plays nothing like the rest. It’s really a puzzle game, and I had to Google how it worked before I could make sense of it. Cubes roll toward you across a floor, and your goal is to destroy as many gray cubes as possible before you get flattened. Wait too long and the edges of the stage start closing in, so there’s a constant pressure to keep moving.

The whole campaign is playable in two-player co-op, and it turns into a real strategy game once you get the hang of it. Destroying a black cube speeds up the floor collapsing behind you, while green cubes are the key: blow one up and it leaves a marker, then when cubes roll over that marker you can hit triangle to clear out a whole chunk of them. You and your partner have to actually talk through the best path together. It’s one of the most unique games I played for this list, and I don’t hear anyone in the US talk about it, total hidden gem.

SENGOKU BASARA 2 HEROES

Sengoku Basara 2 Heroes is a Japan-only release, and it’s basically Capcom’s answer to Dynasty Warriors. If you’ve played any musou game before, you already know what to expect: huge battlefields, one hero mowing down hundreds of enemy soldiers, flashy special attacks, the works. The whole story mode is playable in splitscreen co-op, so you and a friend can each pick a warrior and clear the campaign together.

There’s a ton of untranslated Japanese text and dialogue, but none of it gets in the way of the hack-and-slash gameplay, which is really the whole point. It never got much attention outside Japan, which is the main reason I wanted to include it here. If you’re already a fan of Dynasty Warriors, this scratches exactly the same itch.

SENGOKU VS. GENDAI

Sengoku vs. Gendai is another Japan-exclusive 3D beat-em-up, part of Capcom’s old Simple 2000 line of low-budget titles. A lot of games in that series are pretty rough, kind of like Wii shovelware, but every once in a while there’s a genuine standout, and this one’s a lot cooler than I expected. It does get repetitive since you’ll lean on one main attack most of the time, but it also throws in guns as a fun wrinkle, limited by a meter under your health bar, and holding L1 locks onto an enemy so aiming isn’t a hassle.

Overall it still feels like a budget title, but nothing about it is egregiously bad, the biggest issue is just the repetitiveness and lack of variety in moves and enemies. I actually stumbled onto this one the same day I was researching for this video, which is exactly why I love digging through the PS2 library, there’s always something new to find.

RAGING BLADES

Raging Blades never made it to the US, but it did release in Europe and Japan. 3D beat-em-ups have a reputation for not working well, hit detection or camera problems tend to be the norm for the genre, but this one actually feels solid. It has classes and a roster of different playable characters, so there’s more variety here than in a lot of the other beat-em-ups on this list.

I don’t hear many people talk about this game, but I really like it, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s into beat-em-ups. It’s one of the better 3D entries in the genre, and another example of how deep the PS2’s co-op library really goes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

That’s 11 co-op PS2 games you’ve probably never heard of, and this is really just part one. The PS2 library is so massive that I’m always finding new co-op games I haven’t played, so there’s a good chance more lists like this one are coming.

If there’s a game you think I should track down for part two, let me know in the comments. And if you want even more recommendations right now, check out my Top 20 Co-op PS2 Games video. Thanks for watching.