Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Author: Viljami

PS2 Games That Are Still Worth Playing Today

Posted on by Viljami

I have many PS2 games. I wanted to pick some of these games that I do still enjoy playing. Here in this image there are three games. They are Gran Turismo 4, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and Resident Evil Code Veronica. Yesterday I wanted, first, play Gran Turismo 2 on my PS2. I’ve owned that game for a long time but haven’t had time to get into it. I even removed some saved games from my PS1 memory card. As soon as I started the game I just couldn’t stand these awkward 2000s PS1 graphics. It was too muddy for me. So, I turned to Gran Turismo 4.

I wrote about Gran Turismo 4 earlier. It is definitely a great game for someone that loves racing and cars even in a technical point of view. So I started playing. I finished A International license which opened up some new competitions for me. I also drove some races with one of my favorite cars – Dodge Viper. I really enjoy Gran Turismo 4. I have only completed a bit over 12 percentage of the game. I have to say it has been fun playing this game. Graphics aren’t as nice as in some newer games in Gran Turismo series.

“Which Gran Turismo is best?”, one might ask? I really enjoyed the first game in the series. That was of course over 20 years ago. I think there have been many improvements in graphics and also on some other perspectives also. I liked the sixth game and also enjoyed the latest that was Gran Turismo 7. I have played third and fifth but I didn’t like them so much. This is of course my opinion and you can think however you want. All in all it is a great and realistic racing game series.

What about these two other games? There certainly isn’t a debate about if THPS 3 is a good game. I think I heard someone mentioning that it is among one of the best games of all time. That isn’t a light statement. It might be the best THPS game ever released. First Tony Hawk Pro Skater was and is a good game. The second comes very close but I think there isn’t a game in this series that can really beat the third THPS game. The graphics were as good as can be. They were definitely better than the graphics of the first two THPS games that were released for PS1.

Why did I pick Resident Evil Code Veronica? It’s just this traditional style of Resident Evil game with some upgraded and good looking graphics. It is still a traditional RE game and not something that we would play in first person view on a more modern hardware. It might be the last traditional survival horror game in this series of great games. Maybe there is something reminding me of those times in some Resident Evil Revelations games that were more recently released.

I am not satisfied about every PS2 game that I have acquired. I have recently bought Forbidden Siren, Ecco the Dolphin and Ratchet & Clank. Guess what? I didn’t really get into those. I just hadn’t enough time to learn to play them well. Also I am a bit sad about how PS2 games look on my 4K television. I know I should get a decent HDMI converter but I don’t know if it would make my mind any easier. Dual Shock 2 controller hardly makes things any easier for me, also.

There are some verry good games for PS2 that you might want to play even today. I am not so sure if you should get this system. I think it is also possible to play these games as emulation. There is so much about PS2 that I love. But there is also a lot about it that I hate. I never had PS2 when it was the latest system. It reminds me of an era of the past. It reminds me of watching movies as DVDs. Is that an experience I don’t want to forget?

It might be a time for me to move on and enjoy more about modern games. I have PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox Series X. PS2 might still remain as a system that I play sometimes. I just think it isn’t worth spending days on. It did enable a break for me in my streak of playing NBA2K23. NBA is just basketball and if you know anything about me and basketball you will understand why it keeps getting my interest so heavily. Did you see just a week ago as Finland played against Lithuania in Tampere. Did you see Lauri Markkanen? He is that Finnish basketball player that really made an impact on that game that was played. There were 13 000 people watching the game at the stadium.

Some Very Enjoyable First Person Shooters of 90s and Early 2000s

Posted on by Viljami

It was just yesterday as I started to play an old classic FPS game. The game was Quake II. I have to say that there is going to be a remastered version of this game released this year. I am of course very interested in this game. Quake is just so legendary as a PC game.

As I started playing I although noticed some flaws. If you compare this to modern FPS games you are likely to find out that when you shoot an object the impact isn’t so realistic or accurate. There has been lots of improvement in realistic shooting games since this game was released. I also started to wonder if I can come up with some other FPS’s of this era. Quake II was released in 1997. It is released very early in the life of FPS games. We must remember that Half-Life was released in 1998.

I did get my thoughts to some 90s and early 2000s FPS’s. I actually have a copy of Kingpin, Red Faction and also Soldier of Fortune. I have finished Kingpin and Red Faction. I remember that I got stuck with Soldier of Fortune in some level as I played it with my Windows XP PC very many years ago. Today, I have also a retro PC. I should just install Soldier of Fortune some day and give it a one more try.

These games were released way before Call of Duty which transformed this genre to a new era. I first got to play the first Call of Duty back in 2006. I played it with my original Xbox. There are also many newer games like Battlefield and Doom and Doom Eternal. It is a bit sad that we haven’t seen a new Soldier of Fortune game after the third one flopped a bit. In its time Soldier of Fortune was as realistic as a shooter can be. You were even able to shoot your enemy’s leg off. This was a time when realism and brutality combined to form something new and also something a bit terrifying.

As has been stated many times we can say it one more time. Violence in video and computer games doesn’t directly produce violence in real life. I think this has been already proved scientifically. So there’s actually no debate on this matter anymore. There should be limitations of course. It might not be okay for a very young person to witness such a graphical violence. This everything was new to us back in the day. Of course we see this all the time. Graphics are improving and violence seems to still exist.

I can definitely recommend these three games. If you have them you are lucky. If you want to buy them on Steam or some other game store just go ahead. They also can tell you something about how PC gaming has evolved and continued to develop. There might be something else I should write here for you but I think I must stop here and wait for your response. I will keep writing these posts here now and then.

Concentrating More To Modern and Recent Instead of Retro Video Games

Posted on by Viljami

I have lots of games already for my Xbox Series X. The backlog is getting a bit heavy. I have given a though to my habit and hobby of collecting games. I started getting into retro games back in 2016. Since then prices of games that can be categorized as retro games has risen seriously. I have witnessed these prices to go up with games ending up 3 times more expensive than what they used to be.

Why has this happened one might start to figure. One thing about this issue is the rising popularity of collecting and playing video games. Both types of games are popular if we think about modern and retro. Modern games can be produced and delivered to almost as many players as there is a demand for. While we have witnessed some cases of games being produced too many for consumers to buy, I mean for example the ET Atari 2600 game, that the manufacturers have been left with several unsold copies in their hands. I think today this isn’t a big problem as also many customers buy their games as digital editions.

The people that used to play video games in the 80s and 90s are coming to an age that they have a bit more currency to spend to their dear hobby. Did you notice how quickly classic and mini consoles were completely sold out. The demand was huge. These are same consumers that are buying today most of games that are sold through different forms of delivery. Some are sold in digital stores that are available for players of PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo or PC.

Also it seems to be a common way to think that retro games should be bought instead of just downloading them and playing them directly on a gamers personal computer. There are of course many ways to achieve the emulation for these systems. People are spending lots of money to get their hands on some retro consoles. Some games are also very expensive. I have collided in some very heavy prices when I have gone through a gaming web shop. It seems like every interesting game has now got a double or even triple of a price compared to what these prices were back when I started collecting games.

There should be more options. There should be more devices that support older games or retro games. There should be ways to play these games on recent systems. We are in an era in which people are becoming a bit more technically knowledgeable than these last generations that were more into to games than into technology. Especially I see the 90s, maybe my generation, as a time that more players wanted to just play games instead of programming their own applications. You can think about how consumers of electronics were like back in the 70s or 80s. Things have changed a lot and are still constantly changing.

So it isn’t a thing for a young person and a hobbyist to build up a gaming system. At first you might want to buy a PC. Then you will need an operating system for it. I would prefer Lakka OS but there are also more options. So, this is a Linux operating system. It isn’t, today, legal to just download games as ROM files. You have to own the game that you download. That seems to be the rule of thumb here. While there are ways to convert your existing games to rom files I think this has been made too hard for an average consumer.

One option would be to make some or even all old games available to digital game shops. This has been already accomplished. Some retro games are sold and some you can get to play if you have an account that you have registered and payed for. Is this enough for gamers? I think there are ways to keep playing the most important games that exist but there should be more discussion on this issue. We might some day face a problem that we cannot play every game that we would like to. I think some games are just too big, important and interesting to just be left out of our options about what game to play next.

My point here is, my dear reader, that I have thought about these matters and I have decided to play mainly recently released games. I don’t yet know how long I am going to keep this up. Maybe til the end of year or something like that. I just think I have spent lots of money in retro games that aren’t bringing me actually anything worth experiencing as a video game addict. Games that I do play, have been playing and will keep playing from now on are especially these recent titles. I do have also an interest towards Xbox One games since they are backward compatible with Series X. I have played NBA2K23, Diablo IV and Far Cry 6. NBA2K23 seems to take forever to be even near of a completion of the game. So, there is a lot to play for me.

I am also waiting and looking to get FFXVI for my Series X. It is, to my knowledge, appearing to the Xbox store in December of this year. I also have a Nintendo Switch that is also my second newest gaming console after Series X. I am not finding PS4 so interesting at the moment. I kind of skipped Hogwarts Legacy. The next game I am waiting to get to play is probably Forza Motorsport. I don’t know if I am ready to play some Starfield. It is an interesting new game from developers of Skyrim. It is going to be released 6th of September this year.

The Biggest Differences Between PS2 and PS3

Posted on by Viljami

I’ve played, maybe the last month or so, mainly PS3 and PS2 games. PS2 was released in 2000 and PS3 was in stores 2007 (in Europe). Between these seven years we saw a very strong development and advancement in technical aspects when it comes to video game consoles and the technology they use. Not only did these newer games look better. They also felt better. So also the way that games were made, how the menus felt like and looked like and how controls felt like advanced. I am going to now dive deeply into these differences between these two very popular video game consoles.

PS2 sold more than PS3. There were 153 million units sold of PS2 while PS3 sold 80 million units. I had to look up these numbers and they are only directional. While looking at only the sales numbers you cannot truly determine which one of these two consoles is better. And I think I am not going to go into this debate of which one would be better. We are going to just find out how things developed and how these two individual consoles differ from each other.

First of all we have to consider how PS3s technology is more advanced than PS2s. PS3 had a hard drive. My hard drive can hold 320 GB. There were different models and they differed from each other a bit. One PS3 model was also backwards compatible with PS2 games. All PS3 models had backwards compatibility to PS1 games. PS2 didn’t have a hard drive and you had to have a memory card for saved games. This memory card had 8 MB of space. We have also seen memory cards as big as 128 MB also. I just have had some bad experiences of these third party memory cards and I have had my saved game data corrupted. I haven’t had any problems with Sony’s own memory cards.

While PS2 could handle already some pretty neat 3D models PS3 was way more powerful when it comes to 3D models and the ability to display graphics. You can firmly figure the difference between the sharpness of the picture that these two consoles provided if you think that PS2 had a solid DVD support while PS3 had a support for Bluray discs. There were some technical aspects related to this graphical matter but I am not going to go so deeply into it.

Hardware in PS3 was in every other way more powerful. We are talking about several tens of times. It was a very big technical advancement. How were controllers different? With PS2 you had a very nice controller. It was connected with the same type of connector that was used with the first PlayStation. PS3 had a wireless controller. You could, like I always do, connect it with a wire so you wouldn’t run out of battery at all. PS3 had USB connectivity also. The wireless connection was established with Bluetooth technology. The names of these controllers were Dual Shock 2 and Dual Shock 3. They look very same when you look at them. By the way, I have lately been playing my PS3 with that controller that is also in the featured image of this blog post. It is Spartan Oplon and it is also compatible with PC.

What about the backwards compatibility of these two consoles? Sony was already making their policy of backwards compatibility with their decision to not support PS2 games on PS3. As you might know PS4 didn’t have a backwards compatibility at all. So even PS3 games couldn’t be played with PS4. Today, also you might know, PS5 supports also games of PS4. I am not going to talk about Xbox backwards compatibility here. It is more wide but it also has its flaws. As an issue backwards compatibility is technical and complex. I must say that emulation has advanced lately. This is nice as you can achieve a very good emulation of PS2 and also today PS3.

I think you cannot strictly say if one of these two consoles is better. Neither was it my point right here in this blog post. If this blog post that I am writing has some deeper level (as my writings sometimes have) it could be that the technology of video games made a huge step between the release of these two video game systems. I have concluded here some main points for you to think about. I have to also mention one more point. Where game design and gameplay come these were also advancing quickly between 2000 and 2007. We saw some steep advancements in this area also. Actually this advancement was so huge that it makes me think that games have come a long way. And I like PS3 games. Heck. I might like them even more than PS2 games.

Some Notes About Grid 2 for PS3

Posted on by Viljami

I have spent most of this day right today with a racing game that I thought would be nice to get into again and after some time. It has been originally released in 2013 for PS3. It has been developed  by Codemasters. They are of course very well known from their efforts in bringing some high quality rally racing games to video gamers. So this is something that differs a bit from what we are used to see from them. So, this is a game that brings you racing on different kinds of asphalt roads.

I remember how it was with me, games and game consoles back in 2013. While I was a student back then it wouldn’t have been possible for me to buy this game in 2013. I remember that it cost about 60 euros back then. I even remember thinking very long about buying this some months after the release for 40 euros. I just didn’t have the money. I know it would have been a very nice game for me to play with my PS3.

Time went by and I found this very nice racing game available for a decent price. It eventually cost me 20 euros to finally get this game after some years of its release. It has been several years since I first gave this game a serious try. I tried continuing to play from where I left off. It didn’t work. I couldn’t immediately jump in and continue playing. I started playing this game right from the beginning.

Grid 2 has some differences if you compare it to games like Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport. It also cannot be described as a very realistic game like Dirt Rally for example. What it is that makes it a bit different? It is simply put the controlling of the car or how it feels to drive. You have this way to drift your vehicle. You have to also break and slow down your cars speed but also there is this drift type of element which makes the driving a bit special (in a good way after all).

I don’t clearly recall how long did I spend playing this game today. It might have been something like 5 hours. I did manage to get a grip to this game. The website that I use for checking how long a game lasts says that it takes 17 and a half hours to complete Grid 2. Completing Racedriver Grid, the first game of this series, takes, according to the website, 20 hours. I think they might have shortened this sequal a bit. I think I can complete this game if I just spend enough time playing it.

I have also played some Diablo IV and lots of NBA2K23. It is just that NBA2K takes months to finish meaning mainly that you win the championship with your team and get to maximize your stats. So it is not even possible to complete it in a month. At least not for me. I decided to play Grid 2 because I wanted a change for a while. I also keep thinking about different games that I already own and if I will have some day time to play them or even complete them. That is why I sometimes change a game. It might sound irrational. That is just the way it is. Grid 2 is also available for PC and Xbox 360.

Should Retro Games Be Declared as Public Domain?

Posted on by Viljami

How popular are old NES or SNES games? Just think about how popular were NES Classic Mini and also the one that had tens of SNES games on it. I remember that I was working in a game shop as we had hundreds of customers that had ordered a NES mini. They had to wait moths to get one. This same happened with SNES mini. Although customers started to understand and not order a device that couldn’t even be delivered in a reasonable time.

This is exactly the matter when we are talking about the popularity of retro games. These games were released 30 or 40 years ago. They aren’t properly available to us gamers. Nintendo has made them available on their web service. That alone doesn’t make me want to pay for the subscription. You can get a console, maybe original NES or some other type of console, that you can play original games with. This however is expensive. You might have to pay 40 euros for a game. Some games are sold for hundreds or even thousands of euros.

Publishers seem to be holding on to these game titles. How does this make sense? If someone buys a used game from a game shop that is a private entrepreneur how does this give any more profit to the publisher of the game? There have been many sore comments on Facebook ads of this certain web shop that offers money for used retro titles. They pay you about fifty percentage or maybe even less than that for your rare games of the price they are actually selling it. This makes producing and downloading so called pirated copies of these games popular and tempting.

I just today read a story that was dealing with the ability to play old games that were released in 2010 or earlier. This is actually very hard. The writer was very concerned about older games just disappearing somewhere. These games are valuable in a certain way. Future game designers can learn a lot from old games. Someone might be willing to play these games. And many are having this certain appeal to these games now and also in the future.

What would be the solution? I think that certain games should be made a public domain. You could download them and share and even maybe modify them freely. We should have devices available that could convert the game cartridge to a rom file and they should be easily available. There could be devices dedicated to this in libraries or maybe in some other places. I have to tell you that we are already seeing all sorts of video games available in libraries already today.

So, to conclude, we should, in my opinion, share these old games and make them as widely available as possible. We already have these most important video game systems emulators available. Someone might support legalizing some mild drug. I am right now stating that I support the freeing of retro games. This is even today illegal. Who is this statute working for one might ask. I am not supporting or saying that you should break law. That is not the case. I am saying that we should change the law since it seems that old games are getting hard to play and to enjoy.

A Neat Find from a Local Flea Market

Posted on by Viljami

You don’t have to necessarily guess what I found from a local flea market. While looking to the image right above this blog post you can see that it is an original CD-ROM of the legendary FPS game Quake. What you can guess is how much did I pay for it? It cost me two euros. Yes. That is right. Two euros. I am a bit tempted to sell this forward for maybe ten or fifteen euros but I decided that I would like to keep it.

I already figured when I decided to buy this that this game isn’t going to work on my modern Windows 10 PC. Fortunately I have a dedicated PC that runs Windows XP. I am going to play it on this old PC. I also understand that there are versions of this game available for Switch, PS4 and Xbox Series X. I think I made the right choice when I decided to buy this game. While re-use centers don’t necessarily always have the right ways to analyze the stuff they are selling I am willing to support them with buying a game for two euros.

There is one cool feature with this CD. It does play the games official sound track if you insert it to a CD player. I think this was why they had it in the audio CD section of this re-use center that I bought it from. I was actually a bit surprised that this disc didn’t have even more value. I have seen some CD-ROM PC games that were for sale for maybe 30 euros. This is of course a price of a game shop and those prices are always a bit high. This is due to some expenses that these special stores have like rent for example. I am very content in this latest purchase that I made. It is definitely a good purchase. Two euros. Wow!

I actually have a holiday at the moment. I have spent it sleeping, reading and playing. I have been just relaxing. I did spend some time in a hotel. And we are going to our family’s summer cottage next week. My wife has her holidays at the same time. We have spent some time together, of course. So, I have had a lot time for these activities I described a bit earlier. Today I had time to go to three different flea markets at Myyrmäki, Vantaa.

Quake has gained lots of attention lately. So I guess that here’s some more hype for the game. I am also waiting to get to listen once again the soundtrack of this game. The soundtrack was produced by Nine Inch Nails. If you like old school first person shooters then why not give Quake a try. Back in 1996 it was something different. It is a good game and a legendary game also.

A Great Movie for a Total Fan of Resident Evil Series

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am taking a view to the movie Resident Evil – Welcome to Raccoon City. This movie was released in 2021. I am seeing this movie for the first time. I really don’t know if it was here in Finland in film theaters at all. At least every theater would have been closed anyway. So, I watched this movie as a 4K Ultra HD copy on my 55 inch telly with my Xbox Series X. In many ways this is related to playing video games. I am likely justified to write this here.

I am watching a movie on my Xbox Series X and it is about the strange incidents that happened in 1998 in Raccoon City. There is a company called Umbrella Corporation that has something fishy going on in this small city in USA. The movie is based on at least the first two games. You will have a benefit in a way for seeing this content if you have played Resident Evil 1 and 2 or maybe even the recent remake of RE2.

This movie is rated 5,2 out of 10 in imdb. It has received some criticism. Of course hopes have been very high. We have had movies based on this survival horror video game series which isn’t such a surprise, but these movies have been of low quality. Even Milla Jovovich wasn’t able to save them. I don’t like these movies at all. I hate to even having to mention anything about them.

How did I like the movie? Were there anything I would have liked to work a bit  differently? Well, it’s a nice package. It is causing me anxiety in a similar way that the games used to when I picked them up back in the 90s and even recently I have this gloomy feeling if I start to play them. My only possession remaining from these games is a copy of the original RE2 which I think is the best out of the first three games. Now we must remember that there have been remakes and also some more recent RE games made, like for example Resident Evil Village.

This movie centers around happenings in Raccoon City when the zombie apocalypse starts. There are characters like Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield. There aren’t any superstar actors which can be also a good thing. The movie opens these strange incidents a lot and it has more going on than what can be achieved what it comes to the main plot of the whole story that is being told through first three games. At least that’s how I felt. Even my wife enjoyed the film although she said that it was scary and caused a bit of anxiety for her. The movie is actually forbidden for age under 16.

I think this was a good movie. Although it was nothing compared to the Last of Us story that was brought to us also some time ago. I watched that thing on HBO. This RE movie was one of my first films that I got as a 4K disc. These things are expensive, you know? I paid 30 euros for this movie. It has also the Bluray version and it came in a steel book. I can definitely recommend this movie to you especially if you like RE.

 

Some Characteristics of a Realistic Rally Game

Posted on by Viljami

Here’s two difficult and also very realistic or so to say simulation type of rally games. The first one I have right here is Richard Burns Rally for PC. It is already a bit old game but it’s also still very popular and liked game. The next one we have right here is a newer, it’s actually from 2019, rally game called Dirt Rally 2.0. The end of the name, two point o, comes from an early rally game called Colin McRae Rally 2.0. I don’t know why they actually decided to add that “point o” to the end originally but I think it sounds and looks nice. CMR 2.0 is one of my all time favorite games and it was released for PlayStation back in the 1990s.

How is it to play a realistic rally game one might ask. They are preferably played with a racing wheel and pedals. I however played these games with a gamepad. Richard Burns Rally is older game so I played it mainly with my Logitech RumblePad 2. I have Dirt Rally 2.0 for PC as a digital edition and I also have this game right in this featured image for PlayStation 4. While it is possible to play these both with a gamepad you have to think about lowering the difficulty. You have to consider turning some driving assists on and adjust the driving skills of your opponents. Both of these games can also be played against real human players through internet or maybe even local area network.

As these games are difficult to play you have to concentrate well to handle the car and to succeed in the progress. These games are not very forgiving ones. There are many differences if you compare a realistic rally game to a fun game like the one I already mentioned – Colin McRae Rally 2.0. The controls are more precise. There is a constant feel of danger. You can easily destroy your good stage time and even, if things go really bad, total your car so you get disqualified from the whole event.

Playing Colin McRae 2.0 is a lot of fun. You drive your car, make mistakes, even bad ones, but you still progress. Playing a game like Dirt Rally 2.0 makes you feel that any mistake you make, even a small one, can be disastrous. There is an appeal to both of these games. They aren’t necessarily a good game and a bad game. I just think they are very different kind of games.

As you may have already found out I am a seasoned racing gamer. My roots as a rally gamer go as deep as the roots of Colin McRae Rally series’s go. I was a fourteen year old kid as I stumbled on CMR. I think this was the moment when my deep interest towards rally gaming started. This game was actually so good that I remember that my good friends older brother that was already almost 30 years old became interested in playing PlayStation and eventually bought one for himself. Don’t ask how is it possible that my friends brother is over ten years older than me and my friend. I don’t have an answer to that question.

There are many racing games that I like and have gotten the opportunity to get into. It might be interesting to go through that list here. First on PlayStation 1 I played Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2, Driver and Gran Turismo. On original Xbox I got into Colin McRae 2005 and Burnout 3: Takedown. Later I played Dirt 3, Need for Speed Shift 1 and 2, F1 2010 and Gran Turismo 5 on PS3 and then I proceeded to PS4 with Dirt 4, Dirt Rally 1 and 2 and Gran Turismo 7. I have played also some titles on Xbox 360 and PC. There are many good racing game titles for PS2 also.

Playing racing games with a gamepad has been the most comfortable format of playing racing games for me. I have later used Xbox One and Xbox Series X gamepads for playing these games on a Windows PC. Windows has a nice support for Xbox gamepads. You can also hook up a PS4 controller very easily using a free app called DS4Windows. You can find it from your favorite search engine very easily. I have also earlier written about DS4Windows on this blog.

If you want to experience a realistic rally game you can spend some money and get yourself a racing wheel and pedals and I also recommend that you get a racing chair also. This can however take up a lot of space from your game room and it also costs you a lot of money. I think you can play racing games with a gamepad and at least get started in this way your journey to the world of racing games.

One good thing about racing games is that you very rarely get to experience a real accident where someone really also gets hurt. This is of course a point on any game. We can take a war game for an example, right?

New and Better Controller for Mobile Video Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

I just got this piece of joy by mail. It is Turtle Beach Atom which is a controller for mobile devices. Actually it’s for smart phones. It cost me only 70 euros. I have seen this model being sold for about 100 euros. So, I got some discount.

I have been thinking about bringing my retro gaming to a zone of emulation. You know that you can fit every released NES game to a 237 MB of disk space. And all SNES games would take 1,7 GB. If you consider it you can probably get a micro SD card that has 128 GB of space for maybe 20 euros. That should hold a lot of games.

Of course only the required disk space isn’t the only matter that comes to consideration. You would certainly like to have a system setup that can handle as many high quality retro games on as many consoles as is possible. I figured that you need at least 512 MB of RAM, about a half of a GB, for running a Dreamcast emulation. I started to think about getting a new phone. It would cost me about 200 euros. I checked some smart phone models. They all seemed to have 2 or 3 GB of RAM. Then I remembered that I have an old phone laying around. So, I decided to use that.

Of course only the RAM that is available is not everything that an emulator needs. My old phone has decent level of performance. The model is Huawei P10 Lite. It is an old phone from 2017. I haven’t used it since the beginning of 2021. That is when I bought a new phone. Let’s consider some specs of my P10 Lite. It is capable of displaying Full HD quality video. That’s 1080 x 1920 pixels. It has 3 GB of RAM. It has a processor that is octa-core which translates to “4×2.1 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53”. I am not a big specialist on multiple core processors. The phone only has 32 GB of space so it definitely needs a memory card. I did have one laying around so I decided to put it to good use.

I set up some emulators. Duckstation was one that I installed. I also installed Retroarch which can handle many systems. I aimed for being able to play at least systems including GameCube, Dreamcast, PS1 and Nintendo 64. You don’t actually need a lot of power for playing games on systems that are older than SNES. I didn’t think to play newer systems like PS3 or Xbox 360. Some might want to play also PS4 on an emulator. That would require a higher permance personal computer. I am not saying it’s not possible.

So I am currently charging the battery of my Turtle Beach Atom controller. I have installed already some games. I picked one game from here and another game from there. PS1 emulation seems to be running fine and I am able to play N64 games also. Even only this is very satisfying. I remember having some tough luck trying to set up a Lakka OS based system some years ago and then I struggled with PS1 and Dreamcast games. I had an old PC that could quite handle the performance.

I am ready, soon, to try to test some games. At this time things seem to be working fine. I have to wait for about 2,5 hours for the battery to charge. It was then promised that the controller would be functional for 20 hours. This is a huge upgrade to the controller that I used with smart phones earlier. I have written a blog post about it in this blog earlier. I have broken the glass of my screen of my P10 Lite. I didn’t want to show it. That was the reason why I didn’t include ít to this blog posts featured image.

I hope this blog post gave you inspiration. There is a very good guide for someone that wants to build or assemble a system like this for retro gaming. Here is the link:

Android Emulation Starter Guide

 

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