The same road back, more than twice as long.
Jak II came back the way the first game did, and it was the bigger job: about 700,000 lines of GOAL against Jak and Daxter's 292,000. OpenGOAL made it playable from start to finish in November 2023, and still calls it a beta. Phaethon took it over in July 2026 with 831 of its 847 files holding code, and every gap came with it from upstream.
The work since has been the disc's behavior again. The night sky had been drawing the Dolby Pro Logic II image from the legal screen where its stars belong, eyes in cutscenes drew black, the trees and plants stood still instead of swaying, and the sky flickered for a frame. All of that now matches the console, the logic ticks at 60 a second at any frame rate, and the subtitles moved onto the shared overlay, Japanese picture subtitles included.
- 01
The disc
The player's own copy. Its archives hold the game's compiled code and all of its art.
- 02
Decompiler
Reads that compiled code back into GOAL a person can read, type-check and change.
- 03
Compiler
A new GOAL compiler builds the source for a PC's processor instead of the console's.
- 04
Runtime
A kernel, a sound and file driver and a renderer stand in for the console's hardware.
- PS2Jak II ships.
- OpenGOALJak II becomes playable on PC from start to finish, as a beta.
- PhaethonPhaethon starts from OpenGOAL's tree.
- PhaethonThe night sky stops drawing the Dolby Pro Logic II image in place of its stars, and its one-frame flicker is gone.
- PhaethonEyes in cutscenes stop drawing black.
- PhaethonThe logic ticks at 60 a second at any frame rate, and 20 hand-written frame-rate patches are retired.
- PhaethonThe subtitles move onto the shared overlay, set in a font for every script.
- PhaethonTrees and plants sway in the wind as they do on the disc.