Dark Cloud or Dark Chronicle, I can’t remember which is the PS1 and which is the PS2.

Some arcade-y faves of mine:

Gradius V: a classic horizontal scrolling shooter, it gets hard quickly! (This is the game series the Konami code originates from)

Neo Contra: a twin-stick shooter inspired by B-movies, also kinda hard, and incidentally also a series that made the Konami code famous.

The Red Star: a bit obscure I think. It’s a twin-stick with both shooting and melee. I like the girl’s fast melee moves a lot, you need to use combos to juggle your enemies. I think this one got a bad reception because it arrived quite late in the life of the PS2 and was a bit underwhelming graphically.

SSX Tricky!!! One of my all time favorite games, i still replay it about once a year.

I personally like Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2. I can’t tell you how much I got out of them on an actual PS2 growing up and now on emulator.

Hot Wheels: Beat That! Looked it up, and maybe it’s nostalgia making me blind to how bad it actually is, but I don’t remember it being a 50/100 metacritic score bad, even the last time I played less than a year ago.

Crash Twinsanity. I loved this Crash Bandicoot game and think it holds up well enough in the gameplay department. It’s a long game, so I have less quarrels suggesting it.

Dokopon Kingdom. This is a long and chaotic game. There are probably settings and stuff to get around it, but you might end up like me and have some real seizure level texture glitches that require you to fully restart the game in order to fix. And who knows, maybe in the year or so since I last played, maybe they have fixed whatever issue the game has being emulated.

Black.

Mortal Kombat. The one that actually plays like a linear world story, not limited to arena.

Just a side note on Final Fantasy games: you can literally start anywhere. They are all (except like X-2 which is explicitly a sequel to X, and the first time they did that) completely independent of one another.

And since you’re talking PS2, I think most people would tell you to start with FFX. It’s a fantastic game and a great representative of the PS2 era. The graphics hold up surprisingly well.

Sweet jebus. You’re jumping into one of the biggest (if not the biggest) game console libraries ever. There’s a lot to pick from, and… there’s a lot of trash too.

It may not be to everyone’s taste, but I really enjoy the Burnout series. Each title brings something new to the table, and the music and energy just don’t let up. The only problem here is the brutal load times between every level, which on emulation, probably aren’t going to be an issue for you. The licensed soundtrack is also something of a time-capsule now, so it may be worthwhile on that point alone.

There are a few Castlevania titles for the PS2 as well. These are a fun departure from the side-scrolling formula, and seem to have learned a few tricks from Devil May Cry. They deliver on mood and challenge, but I wouldn’t rank them as high as the GBA or PS1 titles. Still, they’re fun to play.

If you wind up short on recommendations, I’ll add that PS1 titles should get an honorable mention here. The PS2 is fully backwards compatible with the PS1, so those cream-of-the-crop titles kinda/sorta count. For a lot of us, that was a big part of the experience of owning one of these machines as your library just kept growing into the new console gen. But you’ve probably already heard of Metal Gear Solid, Symphony of the Night, FFVII, WipeoutXL, Tony Hawk, and so on.

Most of my favorite games are already on all the “Top PS2 Games” lists, but my absolute favorite video game of all time is Steambot Chronicles, which got pretty much no attention at all. It’s really fun, with nice cell-shaded graphics and a bunch of stuff to do from piloting a big customizable robot to shooting pool to excavating fossils to decorating an apartment to playing a bunch of musical instruments with unique rhythm minigame mechanics! There are a bunch of dialogue options, too, affecting things from minor shifts in how your friends talk about you to a complete alignment shift to the enemy’s side, which obviously leads to a few different endings. Regardless of what ending you get you can still do the postgame content, though, so you don’t have to worry about getting any kind of “bad” ending. I’ve played it more times than I can count, and just keep coming back every year or two.

Dark Cloud

I found Ratchet and Clank 3 in the thrift store today, they gave it to me free because I bought a large stack of large plant pots too

SingStar.

Ace Combat games are so much fun.

One of my favorite games of all time is Dark Cloud. It starts feeling completely alone, and you bring the world to life. The atmosphere and soundtrack are top tier.

I played Shadow of the Colosses on my Potato PC with PCSX2. Took a bit of fiddling with the settings but it ran great afterwards. It’s one of my all time favourites. It’s an open world boss battler where you defeat giant climbable monsters. They are only vulnerable in specific spots though so in order defeat them you need to figure out how to reach those. The atmosphere is incredible though and the best part of it. If you want try it I highly recommend being hesitant to look up hints for this one since figuring out bosses is the most fun part.

I really recommend Genji and THUG2