Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Category: History of Gaming

Transition From PS2 To PS3

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post we are dealing with the step from Sony PlayStation 2, PS2 for short, to Sony PlayStation 3, PS3 for short. Today we are used to see a new gaming console from a manufacturer in about six to eight years after release of a system.

I think that the transition from PS2 to PS3 was a huge one. Lets start by comparing these two systems and actually their specs. PS3 has 256 MB of RAM while PS2 has 32 MB. This means that PS3 has eight times more randomly accesssed memory. We can proceed and compare the hard disk space of these two consoles. PS3 has, depending on the model at hand, a hard disk of 12 to 500 GB. PS2 doesn’t have a hard drive. Instead it uses memory cards that have at least 8 MB of space.

PS3 has a more powerful processor and it handles graphics with a stronger and more powerful GPU. The actual weights of the units are for PS2 0,6 kg and for PS3 2,1 kg. PS2 offers an AV output with SCART connector while PS3 is also capable to output AV signal with an HDMI connector. Also PS3 has more USB connections available.

PS3 has a capability for its user to view a movie with its Bluray drive while PS2 is able to play you a movie in a DVD format. PS3 enables also an internet connection through WLAN while PS2 only supports Ethernet connection.

What it comes to controllers PS3 has a controller that is called Dual Shock 3. It is a wireless controller. I have always used the cable with my controllers but there is also wireless function which some gamers do prefer. The button layout is slightly modified in comparison to the Dual Shock 2 that is the controller for PS2. The controller of PS2 is a wired one while there can be some other wireless controllers available also for PS2.

What were some of the most important games for these two consoles? For PS2 there were games like Gran Turismo 3 and 4, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Max Payne 1 and 2, Ratchet and Clank series and many others. As you can figure there were many sequels to some games that started on the first PlayStation, or PS1 for short.

Some of the greatest games for PS3 were Max Payne 3, Gran Turismo 5 and 6, Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5, Skyrim, Metal Gear Solid 4, Silent Hill Homecoming and many others.

All in all the transition from PS2 to PS3 was a huge one. While we could still use Full HD televisions while playing PS3 the graphics were totally clearer compared to what PS2 offered. I mean that you could still be playing PS2 with a CRT TV. Could you imagine playing a PS3 with one? I doubt that.

PS2 was released in 2000 and PS3 in 2006. Although PS2 has lower performance all in all it has sold way more units than PS3. The numbers are almost 159 million units for PS2 and about 87 million units for PS3. The production of PS2 discontinued in 2013 and the production of PS3 in 2017. You still might be able to buy a used  PS2 or PS3. Also I think that both of them can be played on a PC with a good emulation software today if you have a powerful enough computer.

Looks Like I’ll Be Playing Gran Turismo 6 For a Long Time

Posted on by Viljami

How I got to playing Gran Turismo 6 all over again? It started when I was going through PS1 games and I got to play Gran Turismo 2. It is a very good racing game but the graphics just seem too outdated. This happened many weeks ago. I was thinking about how I stopped playing Gran Turismo 6 for PS3 and I wanted to finish it. It was in my opinion  a better game than GT 2 would be. So, I started getting back into playing Gran Turismo 6.

If we consider that almost all Gran Turismo games are very good I can, in a positivite manner, say that Gran Turismo 6 is definitely in the top three of all GT games. I am not saying that it is better than Gran Turismo 4 which is by the way a game that has such a legendary status in gamers and racing fans minds. It might compete with GT 7 that was a very good game but was maybe a short one. I didn’t actually complete, that is to play the game and achieve everything that the game has to offer, Gran Turismo 7. I did finish it although.

How Long To Beat website tells you that it takes 44 and a half hours to finish Gran Turismo 6. When I look at the statistics that the game kindly offers I find that I have completed maybe 43 percentage of the game and I have driven maybe 19 hours. This is the actual point of this blog post. I think I still have a lot to play if I wish to finish or even complete Gran Turismo 6.

Gran Turismo 6 isn’t a perfect game. Graphics are nice. They are not as nice as with GT 7. This must not be a surprise because GT 7 was released for PS4 and PS5. We didn’t see a release for Xbox as we didn’t see Forza Motorsport on PS. That has been the way since the war between PS and Xbox first became. Noways we do have some conversation about some these exclusive titles getting released for both Xbox and PS. This makes sense since a game like FFXVI is getting a release for PC and it might even be released for Xbox also.

I don’t clearly know if my controller is working fully. I checked if there would be any professional level game pads for PS3 available. This made me a bit disappointed. I only saw some Spartan Oplon controllers, which I do have a  one piece that is presented in this image next to this blog post and also there were some basic Dual Shock 3 controllers also available. I do have a racing wheel but I have to confess that I am not so into racing wheels. I just never got the hang of it and I have played with a controller since the end part of 1990s when I was getting first into these Gran Turismo games which then has lead to me to this day which I seem to be spending playing Gran Turismo 6.

Is Gran Turismo 6 a good racing game? Definitely. Should you spend almost 45 hours playing it? Well, if you do enjoy it, then go ahead. But if it feels like you have seen the whole game after 20 or so hours I advise to you to think about this decision again. I do have games that I have played hundreds of hours but these games are kind of a special cases, like NBA 2K games for me (:D). I had an idea of a blog post in which I would have discussed with you about how long would be the preferable time to spend on a video game but this current topic seemed more interesting to me. Anyways…happy Saturday to you, my reader. We’ll see each other when you read my next blog post. Take care!

PS3 Games Are Still Playable (But For How Long)?

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post is all about PS3 games and how you can play them today. PS3 has some thousands of game titles that were released through the history of the console that started its way into gamers hearths in 2007 in Europe. PS3 was released already in 2006 in North America and Japan. Its manufacturing stopped in 2015 to 2017 depending on where you happen to live.

Although the manufacturing of the console did eventually stop there are lots of used consoles still available in gaming stores world wide. Also there are lots of used games available. So, you could imagine that the console has a bright future ahead. Is this the case?

Xbox is well known of its backwards compatibility. Xbox 360, One and Series X are all partly backwards compatible. Sony made some decisions about this matter. One thing that affects the playability of PS3 games today is that PS4 never was compatible with any earlier PlayStation games. So, this includes PS1, PS2 and PS3. PS5 supports also PS4 games but not these PS3 games that were in large part released as physical copies.

PS3 games can be played on PS3 consoles. We have many different models with some models being partly backwards compatible with PS1 and PS2. I do have discovered that my PS3 has a lousy PS1 performance. It just has a terrible delay that makes playing PS1 games a nightmare.

PS3 is a very durable gaming console. How long will these used devices last in use? This might be a critical matter if we, the gamers, can’t have any newer consoles that could enable playing PS3 games. Shouls there be a sort of a mini console released of PS3? What would the gamers think about this?

As the performance of PCs gets better as time progresses we might see emulators taking over when it comes to playing PS3 games. There is already an emulator for PS3 games and the name of the application is RPCS3. It’s requires a PC with a fast CPU, GPU and 16 GB of RAM. SSD is also recommended.

So, to summarize we can say that there are many good games that are important for hobbyists world wide. It would be a damn shame if all these PS3 games would be unplayable in the near future. There are however many ways to avoid this situation. I have provided some ways and there might be something else we can do also to preserve these PS3 games so that they would be just games that we forget some day in the future.

Getting Into PS1 (What Games Should You Play?)

Posted on by Viljami

There are thousands of games for Sony PlayStation 1 that have been published since the console was released in the middle of 1990s. The amount of games can be overwhelming especially if you are new to PlayStation 1. In this blog post I am going through some of the best games for PS1 in different genres from roleplaying to 2D and 3D platformer games.

Lets start with RPGs. Roleplaying games usually take longer to finish. It is improtant to know something about the game that you are about to start to play. First RPG for PS1 that comes to mind is, of course, Final Fantasy VII. While there are more RPGs, also, this must the most improtant out of all of them. It practically brought the Final Fantasy series to Europe and made it a popular game world wide. You can also check titles like Breath of Fire, Grandia, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story and Suikoden.

Maybe the favorite genre in PS1 games for me is racing. The first racing game that comes to my mind is, once again and of course, Gran Turismo. There were two Gran Turismo games released for PS1. If you are new to Gran Turismo I suggest that you start from the first game. Other good racing titles include Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2.0, Ridge Racer (at least Ridge Racer Type 4), Need for Speed series and Driver 1 and 2.

PS1 has also some great FPS games in its game library. While the graphics aren’t as impressive as with some later releases in this genre with some newer hardware. My first suggestion if you are interested in FPSes is Medal of Honor and the sequel Medal of Honor Underground. There was also a port of Doom and also Final Doom and I think these are also worth of getting into. I mention here also Alien Resurrection.

What would a list of the most significant PS1 games be without some survival horror games? If you’re into this genre you have the opportunity to check and play the games that almost started it all. I am saying almost because maybe the first survival horror game that was ever released was Sweet Home and it was originally designed for NES. Games that I have in mind right here are Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3, the first Silent Hill and Clock Tower.

Lets take a look at some fighting games that were released for PS1. Fighting Force 1 and 2 delivered some classic street fighting in a 3D environment. Games like Mortal Kombat Trilogy and many versions of Street Fighter brought you some 2D fighting while Tekken series and Battle Arena Toshinden presented some fighting content in 3D. I can also mention Bushido Blade here. If you are into stealth style of fighting you should check Tenchu and also the sequel for it.

There are also some very good 2D and 3D platformers for PS1 and I have to mention some good games in this genre also. We cannot forget Crash Bandicoot. There were a total of three games released for PS1 in this series. Spyro The Dragon is also one good game in this genre. If you like 2D platformers check the first Rayman and also Oddworld Abe’s Oddysee and the sequel to it.

Other good games that I haven’t mentioned yet in this list are: Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2, Metal Gear Solid, Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, all sport games, Spider-Man series, Wipeout, Tomb Raider series, Castlevania Symphony Of The Night and all other titles that you might find just if you look deeply into the PS1 game library.

There must and there has to be a game that I forgot. And of course this is the list of most important PS1 games in my opinion. You might have a different idea of it. If there are thousands of games there also have to be some hidden gems and you have to spend some time with PS1 to get to know these games. But anyways I hope you did find something from this blog post. I hope this gives you some sort of an idea of what games you shoudl play when you are starting to get into PS1 and its huge game library.

Some of The Limitations of 16-bit Era

Posted on by Viljami

I have recently stumbled on to two great games that were first published for the 16-bit game console era. The first game I am going to mention here is Turtles – The Hyperstone Heist. It was originally released for Sega Mega Drive in 1992. You can also play it from the collection of Turtles games that was just released a while ago. I am talking about The Cowabunga Collection. You can pick it up for 40 euros from Xbox Store if you want to.

The other game that made me think about the topic we are going to go through here is Super Castlevania IV. It was released for SNES in the 90s. There were three Castlevania games released for NES before this fourth game was released. This is a good video game that has action and also some mediium level puzzles that the player has to solve. The Hyperstone Heist is basically a “beat-em-up” in just the way that you could imagine a Mega Drive fighting game to look, feel and sound like. Actually we can say that it reminds a lot of Streets of Rage games.

These two games do offer a challenge for a gamer. They are both great games. It just seems to me that these games have some sort of limitations. They are over 30 year old games after all. What are these limitations? That seems to be the reason for me to write something like this. Lets go over some points that I am right now thinking about.

Back in 1990s you didn’t have a way to save your game. So, as a starting point the games were designed to be played in a one session. In Super Castlevania IV there is a password option. Before anyone even had an idea of some sort of a memory card, that were later commonly used in gaming consoles, passwords were a way for a player to continue playing the game even after you had powered off your console. The issue was that lasting memory was expensive. The consoles did have sort of memory but it wasn’t for means to save a game.

Some limitations could be circled with clever game design and programming. Game designers had to know the console they were developing the game for very well. I don’t have a clear idea of what programming language was actually used but I am guessing the code that was used was sort of C and/or pure assembly code. You shouldn’t underestimate the talent that game developers back then had.

Why is the era called “The 16-bit Era”? What this basically means is that everything from background graphics to sound effects would have had to be in 16-bit format for the processor to be able to handle them. This was a huge step from using only 8-bits. Some 8-bit consoles include Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System. 16-bit consoles include at least Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. What this also means is that graphics were more detailed and sounds and background music also. Later there were even 32-bit and 64-bit consoles released but they did belong to other and newer console generations.

The music that had to be compressed is today called “Chip Tune”. This music genre has its roots in as deep as Commodore 64. You can enjoy many music tracks of this genre online. You can try your luck and trying to find something interesting. If you’re interested just make a search with this genre as a search term.

You know back in 1990s we didn’t have 3D modeling in our video and computer games. Instead there were animations that were created using sprite sheets. They were basically some 2D images that were sort of rotated to create a feel of constant graphical flow. We could have a character in our game that had a way to display which way it was currently running. This is one significant limitation. Although you can’t really compare these two ways to create graphical output since they can create very different kinds of results.

You had way less going on while you were playing. Do you know these modern action RPGs? They handle and use a way more data than game consoles did in the 90s. This is one limitation. The last limitation that I am going to mention here is the quality, or maybe the lack of it, when it comes to controllers and game pads. If you are playing on an original system this can be a serious limitation.

There are many ways to play these games of 16-bit era. You can get your hands on an original and physical copy of the game and the console. You can download an emulator, a game file (actually not so “legit”) and connect a USB game pad to your PC. You can also get a collection, like Cowabunga one, for your modern gaming console be it Series S/X, PS4/PS5 or Switch,

What Are Some Reasons to Play Older Games?

Posted on by Viljami

First it has to be said that there are many reasons to play also older, or to use the right term, retro games. In this blog post I am going to explain and give some reasons that I and many others still play so to say old games. While there are many reasons to still play these games there are also reasons to play the newest games instead.

There are many things that have advanced in gaming technology. Happenings are processed more quickly since there is more memory to be used. Also, we have seen larger games. They contain more details. They have more complex scenery. These worlds offer even larger areas to be explored. The artificial intelligence of other characters than the main character has been improving.

This of course has a huge effect on what is actually happening while a player plays a video game. The game processes more data. The input of the player is analyzed more thoroughly. Some old games offer some nice game design solutions and today many game developers can make use of what was already designed in a game maybe even thirty or forty years ago. While technology has advanced also we have to remember some of these good solutions that old games had and still have.

One reason to go back to older games is of course the nostalgic feel that you get while playing a game that you have some memories with. You clearly remember the first time you started playing a game. You get the first reaction that you had and it reminds you of the feel that you had back then. The game hasn’t changed but your situation does have. The last time I had this kind of feeling was while I was playing Sonic Origins Plus. I got caught into nostalgic feel when I started playing the first Sonic The Hedgehog game. It was a huge game and also a huge character for Sega, The year that I first played this game was, I think, 1993. It brings back so many memories.

What about the way that we get to play retro games? It is a huge advantage to older game if it is easy to play it. I am talking of course about the importance of backwards compatibility. I have this way that I organize all my games. I keep these games in these two shelves that I am actually able to play with any console I have. I keep my other games in a storage. I do this because I think it is not so reasonable to keep games visible that I am not even able to play. Sometimes I like to demonstrate a game for someone visiting our home and sometimes a visitor picks up some game that he or she would like to play. And of course I myself can pick any game that I would like to play.

If you want to play retro games you have two different ways to do it. These ways are using original hardware or using an emulator. There has been a lot of conversation about emulation. I am not going to talk about so much of is emulating even legal or anything else like that. Lets just say that it is an option. Some think it is totally illegal and in a way it is. On the other hand preserving older games can be very valuable. After all we have to some way keep in touch with our video game history.

I have many gaming consoles in my setup. One part of my gaming setup has been already for some years these cool mini consoles. There have been mini consoles available for devices like PlayStation 1, NES, SNES and Mega Drive along with systems like C-64. You could of course just download an emulator for your PC and play these games but… Is it legit or legal? After all you are paying for something very interesting and valuable right here. The problem is that there just isn’t a mini console available made from all gaming systems. For example we are currently missing original Xbox and Sega Dreamcast mini console.

We talk on and on about what is the right way to play our retro games. I think the most important issue is that there has to be a connection between the old world of video games and the new world of video games. We have to somehow document our past. There are just so many games that game designers can take influences from. I think that it is a value for a game designer to know a lot about games. Of course if you know good games you can also design good games, right? You know the logic and what appeals to gamers.

Think about John Romero, one of makers of the classic FPS game, Doom. I mean, he started with playing old games in arcades. He played hundreds of hours of Pacman. He also had influences from Dungeons and Dragons, NES, SNES and Mega Drive games. And look what id Software did with Doom. It definitely revolutionized the way that we consume video games even today. Some games of this same era are Diablo and NHL 94.

So, it might not be possible to play every retro game. Do we have what it takes to document our video game history? Who has the power and responsibility to pass on these important lessons to our younger generation that doesn’t recognize all these older games? There can definitely be something to learn form them. While modern systems have the most power they also need the design. That’s where older games come into play.

Doom Guy – John Romero

Posted on by Viljami

Doom Guy is a book by John Romero that has been published in 2023. In short words it describes the creator of such games as Doom, Quake and Daikatana, just to name a few. The book goes through his whole life starting from being a child of an alcoholic father and some other issues he had as a young child growing up.

The beginning of the book is kind of sad. But I can appreciate that Romero is so honest. Ultimately the story is a happy one all in all. Yes, it is a happy and amazing story of how a hobby that involves spending hundreds of dollars to play video games in arcades transforms to a career that molded the whole video game industry.

The story begins from about 1970s. In the 80s was when John Romero was already actively developing some kinds of computer games. There was going on a transition from games that took only one screen in use to some games, like Super Mario Bros 3, that were played as they scrolled along to the sidesof the screen. The screen was scrolling to the players movement. This was, back in the days, something that required the newest technology.

Apparently there were games like Commander Keen released by Apogee. Later, when the company started getting their actual form, they decided to call the company “id Software”. And the “id” in the name was pronounced like it was written (not like “ai dee” an more like “id”). This team also had a very talented and hard working member – John Carmack. Carmack focused mainly on the hardcore programming while Romero also programmed and made sure on his his part that the vision that they were moving to was the right one. Romero also made many tools the team used and had his fingers in designing new levels for their games.

So, Doom was a revolutionary game. Before that game id Software released a game called Wolfenstein – 3D. Doom was released in 1993. Their next big game would have the name Quake. It was originally ment to be more of a phantasy type of a role-playing-game. Quake was actually a game that can be described more like a FPS game with very nice graphics. So, the team had to make some adjustments and start in a way to move towards a different goal with this game. Eventually this lead to Romero leaving id Software and go on to work at Ion Storm that was a new game company.

I have to mention that role-playing palyed a strong role in the team of id Software being about the most innovative game development team in the whole world in the 1990s. They especially enjoyed session of Dungeons and Dragons. Romero brought the vision and Carmack workd long hours programming these amazing games. They also had people working as level designers and as producers of music. They had also people working with the business side of the company.

John Romero has been successful in his career. We have, throughout the whole history, witnessed also some of his games being somewhat flops. This was the fact with a game called Daikatana. It was a disappointment for many of Romeros fans. The writer, John Romero, still adds a thought that you kind of have to fail some times to learn and to succeed. This seems very sensible to me.

All in all Romeros book offers some very satisfying details about these games that he has been working with. There is also some very nice insight to how games were designed at this time around 1990s. I can definitely recommend this book for any fans of id Softwares games or to somenone who wants to learn how the gaming industry was back in the 90s.

A Word or Two About N-Gage

Posted on by Viljami

So, I read a book about N-Gage. It was a phone slash hanheld gaming console that was developed by famous and legendary Finnish phone company Nokia. The way that Nokia tried its hand in also gaming business just shows how huge the company was. It had the money and power to make it.

Finally N-Gage proved to be a flop. As it wasn’t a successful product it did open up many doors to Finnish gaming developer companies. N-Gage sold 3 million copies worldwide. If you consider that Sega Dreamcast sold 9 million copies and was a failuire for Sega you can get a picture of how the market was back then.

If we think about Nokia a bit we can figure that it was at its time a huge leader in personal phones markets. After all iPhone that was first released in 2007 took the crown from Nokia and a new generation of smart phones started to conquer the markets. Things changed quickly as Nokia depended on phones that had buttons while IPhone had a touch screen.

Smart phones took a step to this new direction. In 2014 Microsoft bought Nokias mobile phone business. For a while we had a smart phone that was called Nokia Lumia. Soon it was clear that Nokia couldn’t compete even when it had a partner like Microsoft. Rest seems to be a history and it tells us of the success of Android and iOS mobile devices.

The roots of Nokias phone games are actually very deep. I have some personal experience about this also. Back in 1990s I had a Nokia 5110 that had “matopeli” that can be translated to “worm game”. It was a casual game that you could start playing while waiting for the bus for example. With N-Gage Nokia was actually targeting some more serious gamers.

N-Gage was an ambitious attempt from Nokia to get seriously into gaming business. You can think how interesting it would have been. The markets were growing all the time. We saw at the same time how Microsoft entered the competition with its Xbox gaming console.

N-Gage had its critical flaws. When you wanted to change the game you had to turn off the device and remove the battery. Only after that you could change the game cartridge. The way you actually talked to N-Gage was a bit akward. You had to place the phone sideways on your ear. Also, the screen was placed just like in every phone model and it had more height than width which was a different approach compared to other gaming devices of time.

Nokia was trying its hand in a new field. This wasn’t cool with other big gaming companies. There were lots of memes moving around where people were mocking N-Gage. It was difficult to enter the field of video gaming. There were some negotiations with Nintendo about some co-operation but this never lead to anything. Sega seemed also interested in supporting Nokia. There were huge game titles like Tony Hawks Pro Skater that were introduced for N-Gage, also.

While N-Gage seems to be a flop it did affect the gaming industry at least locally in Finland. They had resources and money that they brought to the industry. I must mention here also the best selling N-Gage game: Pathway to Glory. It received good scores from reviews of different internationally known video game magazines.

N-Gage wasn’t a huge success. It does have a small group of supporters. I am not sure if this book that I read, “Fantastinen floppi”, is available in English. So, its a bit akward that I am writing about this book here in this blog that I write to in English. However I thought that it would be cool just to tell you all about the book.

NES Games That Are Still Relevant in 2024

Posted on by Viljami

You might not spend so much time with NES games as you do with modern games that directly aim to keep you focused for tens or even hundreds of hours. This has everything to do with quickly advancing technology. Designing games goes forward also when the developers learn more and more and more hobbyists are starting to get into the world or playing video games. In this blog post I go through some NES games that are, in my opinion, still relevant today.

There are practically hundreds of games in the whole gaming library of NES. If you don’t have a clue what gaming console I am referring to I can tell you that NES comes from words Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a retro console that was introduced to us, gamers, in 1983. I have picked up these five games that I own. These all are very good games and I can definitely recommend them.

I have a Retro Trio console that plays NES, SNES and Mega Drive games. I can also use an adapter to play Master System or even Game Boy games. These adapters I have bought for a cheap price. I think I paid just under 40 euros for the Master System adapter and maybe 35 euros for the game boy adapter. It is very nice to play Game Boy games this way. The screen is very clear and bright compared to the screen of Game Boy or Game Boy color. There are some other ways also that you can play Game Boy games but lets not get carried away too much.

You can of course take your chance and use any NES emulator to play NES games on your PC. If you are going with this option I definitely recommend to get a replica of the original NES controller that you can attach with a USB cable. This brings the certain sense of authenticity to your NES games. These physical copies can be a bit pricey. They can cost anything from I think 15 euros to even 100 euros. Some rare games are even more expensive. So, I totally understand if you go the emulator way at least when you are just starting to get into NES games. The USB controller I mentioned earlier has a price tag of maybe 20 euros. I have never got into troubles with the compatibility and you can probably get it to work easily even if you use Linux.

You can sense that for example Super Mario Bros, that was released in 1988, has this certain lightness in the whole gaming experience. I mean the fact that it uses only so little memory. You can talk about randomly accessed memory or even hard disk. As I think you have witnessed NES doesn’t have a hard disk at all. You can use saved games in some games since they have an extra battery that enables long term memory usage. With emulators you can of course go around this and use saved states that come with your favorite NES emulator. So, this is one more reason to use software emulators instead of old retro hardware.

Graphics are two dimensional in these games. Sound is of course pretty terrible. If you are deeply into “chip tune” musical genre you might even like it that way. I personally think it is some kind of miracle how they could program the music for these games with all these limitations. Same goes to the overall design of these games. There are over 600 NES games that were released. These five are the ones that I have managed to grab. I have a total of maybe ten or twelve NES games in my collection. I did buy these all already some years ago. I can definitely say that I enjoy these games even if they are old and even if the time keeps moving forward. I think Nintendo did  agret job!

What Made Tomb Raider So Appealling?

Posted on by Viljami

I wrote some time ago about Tomb Raider and how it’s 3D modeling made an impact to the whole industry. Now, we have seen Tomb Raider trilogy remake and I think it’s time to get back to this game once again. I actually got the remake collection and gave it some hours. The question here clearly seems to be that how and why was Tomb Raider so popular.

First of all I have to say that this game was a product of its era. 3d worlds were just beginning their story. The controls are clunky and not so good if we compare them to some more recent video games. There are many situations that you have to face when playing Tomb Raider today that just make the game seem a very old one.

The biggest problem seems to be how you control the main character Lara Croft. Jumping is hard and the camera is at times in a very bad angle. These 3D environments aren’t so impressive as they appeared to be back in 1990s. Tomb Raider was released in 1996. I have a copy for PC and PS1. The original game, that I happen to have in the form of the original CD, I think, can be updated so that the graphics will look even sharper.

What about the main character? Lara appears to be a female. This was still an exception back in 1996. Lara Croft was definitely one of the first female main characters. Of course these games are directed to these nerdy guys that are also into 3d and C++ programming. This was, back then, something for the real nerds.

You can feel the excitement as you play the original game. You get to interact with some very edgy and exciting environment. This can, of course, bring you many memories and make you feel the nostalgia. You start to think how could you yourself create a 3D game like this. And this game also gave programmers many ideas not to say anything about a mod that was available that made Lara seem to be totally naked in the game.

I really like Tomb Raider. Would I spend tens of hours playing it once again. Well, maybe not. Time has progressed heavily. Biggest flaw is the controlling of Lara. It just makes playing the game a pain. If you pick a good 3D game from an era of maybe even five years after 1996, say 2001, you can get something much more enjoyable. Why would you pick this one when there are many better games available.

How about the PS1 version that we have on this featured image right here? Well, it is the same game that was released for PC but with worse graphics. It is nice to handle Lara with Dual Shock controller. You can also pick a retro PC, one that has 486 processor, and play the game.

In conclusion, I don’t recommend going back to the world of Lara Croft. The game was something different. Take a note on the use of the word “was”. I know how inpiring this game was. Its impact was enormous. It broke the ice for something bigger and better. So, I suggest you get something some years newer for a new game that you would like to play.

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