Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Category: PC

Utilising PCSX2 for PS2 Emulation on a PC

Posted on by Viljami

I have lately played some PS2 games with an emulator called PCSX2 on my desktop computer. I did try to play some Xbox 360 games on this Windows PC but it seems that my computer isn’t powerful enough to run this game consoles games. The emulator I tried was Xenia.

I do have a powerful enough GPU and also I have enough RAM memory on my PC. It seems that the processor lacks some power. So, I am not able to run Xbox 360 emulation using Xenia emulator. This lead me to once again try also PCSX2 and check if my computer can run some PS2 emulation instead.

I own now already two PS2 gaming consoles that don’t work. The first one I received as a gift and the second one I bought for 110 euros about a year ago. Playing PS2 games on an emulator seems to be a good option for buiyng a PS2 console. The price of a PS2 unit isn’t high but if you keep buiyng one every year it can get expensive.

PS2 was originally released back in 2000. It was the first console to include DVD player functionality which made it very popular. It was produced all the way to the beginning of 2013 and was then discontinued. It sold 155 units worldwide which makes it the best selling video game console of all time. There were over 4000 game titles released for PS2.

Installing PCSX2 is pretty straight forward. During installation you have to specify where on your computer you have your BIOS file or files. So you need to have a BIOS from your PS2 system that you actually own to play PS2 games totally legit. You can install PCSX2 for Windows, Linux or macOS.

I use my Xbox Series controller that I have especially bought to play some PC games. It is manfactured by PDP and it is a wired controller so you have to plug in a cable. You don’t have to have a long cable after all. If you prefer a PlayStation style of a button layout you can also use a PS4 controller which is also called DualShock 4. I have no experience about the latest PS controller or DualSense.

The games seem to run smoothly on this emulator. The games I have played include Call of Duty 3, Rayman Revolution and Gran Turismo 4 just to name a few. With over 4000 games PS2 manages to bring something for every gamer. I suggest searching for more good games to play from internet as there are many lists about recommended games for this system.

It seems that todays PCs are powerful enough to run an emulator like PCSX2. While we might not be yet ready to have some more newer gaming consoles emulated on our computers the future of emulation seems to be going to a strong direction. I hope we get to see also emulators for systems like PS4 and Xbox One in the near future. I also hope that we can get those emulators to run on our PCs.

How Did Skyrim Impact The Whole Gaming Industry?

Posted on by Viljami

Skyrim had a huge impact on gaming industry. It has been released and remade for several generations of gaming consoles. Skyrim has also been released for PC. It was first released in 2011 which was the time for consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 to dominate the console markets.

What kind of a game is Skyrim? Have ytou ever played it? Skyrim is a game that gives you an open world for you to explore. You have main quests and also side quests to complete. Your character keeps progressing when you play the game. So, there is almost unlimited amount of things to do inside this game called Skyrim.

This isn’t the first Elder Scrolls game that has been released. I think some earlier games that remind a lot of it are Morrowind and Oblivion. There are also some other games in this series of games. This is the latest and all in all fifth game in the series. There have been rumours about a sequel already.

The game was a huge effort. Bethesda certainly knew what kind of a game they had in their hands. What I am concerned about is that these kinds of large games make it even harder for new games to be developed. I mean that we saw back in the 2000s many good quality games getting released very quickly compared to how long it takes today for new games to get to the markets. The demands are very high for a new game.

Gaming industry has grown. There are these huge projects that ever larger companies get their focus on. There is a lot of money involved. I am not sure if this is how I and propably many of you gamers out there wish things to be. We were content with our retro games earlier. Why wouldn’t we be content right now?

Games seem to go right now to a direction that focuses on making money. This is somewhat understandable. Money makes world go round or so they say. What this however means might be that we are going to see fewer independent developers. Maybe there are some small developers alive after thje next ten years but I mean – where would the rising new companies be that would take gaming to the next level. Currently we see huge releases that try to lure us to buy them over and over again on a new console. Just the old game with better graphics and so on.

Where is the innovation? I have been frustrated also in a fact that some things are just not available. I mean I am living in Finland. There are many great projects going on around the world and just so many of them are unreachable for me. I wish it wasn’t so. Take for example Analogue Pocket. I was very interested in this product but never bought one. We have seen Steam Deck and many of its competitors being released here.

Are huge companies going to release these huge games in the future also? They take at least 40 hours to finish. Thy might take several hundreds of hours of your precious time. Where does this lead? We would need some fresh ideas from programmers, designers and form the people that make graphics and 3d models and even soundtracks to games. And the question here is also how are the currently young people going to get into the industry and start shaping our world of games again to a more bearable form.

What Is Abandonware?

Posted on by Viljami

Have you heard about abandonware? Does it actually mean that you can just copy abandonware and can it be in some way profitable for the original developer of the game? In this blog post we are trying to get a thorough answer to these questions.

There are many websites that provide some old games that you can download and install them to your PC. Many games are or can be played on a modern personal computer with a modern operating system. There are games also available for emulators. Some games require a special software application like DOSBox. So it is possibly to play old DOS games with a new PC.

The case of abandonware concerns console game and computer games. Some game companies, like Nintendo, like to stick with their old copyrights and try to ban and make copying old, or retro, games totally illegal. They are acting like this even when clearly there is not a clear option for them to collect a price for this kind of a game that is already some tens of years old.

Some companies publsih remakes. Some companies totally abandon their game. This is where the term gets its true meaning from. What then means public domain? Could games be released in public domain? This means that you could re-publish a game of this kind and even take some parts of the game and make a new game out of it with paying nothing for the original developer.

What would it mean if we had all old games in a public domain? We wouldn’t have to pay for our retro games. There would be more websites sharing these games. There would be a lot of exploration and even research done by playing these games and getting to understand their content.

There are many games currently classified as abvandonware right now. You can find a deeply involved website titled “My Abandonware” that provides ten of thousands of games for you to download. You can download games like Silent Hill 2 or Need For Speed Most Wanted for free. If there is a game that is currently in any form commercially avaialble this is mentioned and it isn’t possible to download it as a free copy but there might be a demo version available.

I have written here in this blog earlier that we are having difficulties of maintaining and keeping old games, I am talking about games that are 20 years old or even older than that, available. Are we supposed to just forget these games? I thinkthey have high value even if nobody has a way to buy them.

What should we do? Should we make every 20 year old game totall free? Should we allow some other parties to make more good remakes out of all these old games? Could large companies like Nintendo provide more opportunities to buy and maintain a collection of old and retro games?

We are having this business that is very profitable for game shops. You buy a physical copy of an old game and the price is very high. You keep the game for years. Of course you have the original gaming system. But what happens when the game gets so old and the divece you are playing on has become broken? Do we just delete this stuff and move on? I think we should think more about maintaining old games and trying to remember also in the future what they are all about.

Basically a game ends up as abandonware because the original owner of this game doesn’t find a way to make the game somehow profitable again. Every game can be profitable when it gets released. After many years the owner doesn’t care about the game and so it becomes abandsonware. There is an issue also with the copyright. It is hard to make a remake out of a gaem that is abandonware. This is why public domain would be a consideration.

Does Emulation Really Hurt Someone?

Posted on by Viljami

You can spend hundreds of euros to retro video games. Where do these games come from? Some games are sold for a low price to shops that sell games that sell them forward at a more realistic price. This is how this field functions. You really cannot blame them for running a business like this. You have to get your living from somewhere. And game shops are very valuable for us game hobbyists in that they deliver us many games, consoles and all this other stuff, also, that we need to keep our hobby in a big role in our lives.

How about individuals that are selling their old video games? Once again there is this issue of money involved. You have something valuable and someone wants add just that game to his or her collection. Why not sell your game? Of course you cannot sell it at such a high price that the game shop is selling it. This makes sense, right?

Well, some people try to find a game at a low price and then sell it to someone with a higher price. This is familiar to many of us. It’s called scalping. I did notice this rice in prices. I bought Silent Hill 3 for PS2 in 2017 from a game shop. It cost me 15 euros back then. Recently I saw this same game. Its price was 75 euros. Actually, I don’t want to get rid of this game so I am not going to sell it. But if I was after an economical win situation I would probably sell this game.

So the money goes right here to the individual that is selling the game. Alternatively this amount of money goes to a game shop. This doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that big game companies are telling us that it is harmful to their business that consumers are installing emulators and running rom files on them instead of buying a physical copy of that game.

It might be the case that these huge companies would like to make more remakes out of old games. Why not bring more of those mini consoles to the markets? There would certainly be a demand for original Xbox mini console or a GameCube one. This isn’t however anything close to the reality. This is only a dream. While we have seen many classic mini consoles there isn’t going to be one made out of every legendary retro game console.

What if you bought a really powerful computer that would have enough disk space for a huge collection of game roms that could run these games on different emulators? I certainly find this option appealing. I do like buying and collecting old hardware and games. Just that I have faced issues with old hardware. They don’t seem to last for a long time. Dust might be the enemy. And I don’t have the skill necessary to fix these consoles. Currently I have several broken consoles in my storage in my apartment. It might be nice to get them repaired but I am currently also considering of getting a computer with some retro emulation so I wouldn’t have to worry about games not functioning.

Where should you start with this new idea? There are complete operating systems dedicated to retro game emulation. These are open source so they don’t actually cost you anything. You just have to have a powerful enough computer if you want to run games of PS2 or GameCube. If there is enough power in your PC you can even run PS4 games on an emulator, today. You can install, of course, emulators on your laptop or desktop. I myself am interested in this idea of having a PC that I would only use for console emulation. So, I don’t want to run Windows 10 or even any regular Linux operating system. There is something better for retro gaming.

I am talking about a retro gaming operating system. It works like this. You just install the OS and then upload the rom files, that are the actual games, to it. Then you plug your game pad and start up a game. You only turn the PC off or on and you have this simple but effective user interface that you can operate with your game pad. This is what I am talking about.

I am going to mention Lakka OS and Recalbox at this point. I have some experience with Lakka OS as I had it on a PC for maybe some months some time ago. I really liked this system. Although I found out that I wasn’t able to play anything that would require some serious power. I could run PS1 games but I would have liked to run PS2 and GameCube on this system. I just lacked the power. I am hoping that I would be able to get a more powerful PC for this purpose.

You can definitely find out more about Lakka OS and/or Recalbox. You will find them through your favorite search engine. These kind of setups can also run earlier games, like SNES or NES or something else, smoothly. Recalbox is supporting several tens of different video game consoles. Always also be critical about these thoughts I have provided here. Please use your own caution and thought when trying to accomplish your game library. Remember who put these games together and have an appreciation towards them. That might be another topic for another blog post. So, I think that’s it for this time. Thanks for reading!

The Future of Physical Content

Posted on by Viljami

Best Buy has announced that it is not going to sell physical copies of DVDs, Blu-Rays and 4K discs anymore in the near future. This is the way things are going right now. Consumers are moving on to digital media when it comes to games and movies. It doesn’t help that there are consoles that enable you to play older retro games and also new games on discs.

Is the physical media going to disappear? We don’t know the exact answer. I think there is always going to exist some gamers that need to have their game as a physical copy. These copies might be some kind of collectors editions that have a little more higher price than the regular standard version of the game. We have already witnessed an increase in in prices of games be that they are digital or physical. So, the amount of games sold as physical copies has been decreasing but I think we are not ready to move on to a world without these discs that we have our games on even today.

This is very interesting and I have recently been reading a lot about this matter. If you think about upcoming game releases and purchasing a copy of your favorite upcoming game beforehand I think digital is way easier and more trustworthy to be handled when it comes to delivering the game. Just last summer when Diablo IV was released I wanted to order it beforehand. You can probably guess how it went, right? Game developers don’t want their games to be released before their actual release day so they won’t let game shops deliver these games too early. This problem doesn’t exist in a digital world.

I have to admit that I like to own a physical copy of my game. Well, maybe not every game, right? Big box games still look good on a gamer’s bookshelf. There are many ways to view this matter. Having loads of games can be a challenge if you are considering to collect these games. I have loads of games on my bookshelf and I had to move some of them away from this bookshelf because they take so much space.

We have already seen how things are today with PC games. Steam and many other online game stores have taken over the markets. You hardly ever see a DVD drive on a PC. If you like you can of course get a drive that you can use by connecting it to your PC with a USB cable. It is although easier to just buy the game from Steam or some other web shop. I myself have a special retro laptop for playing older PC games. It runs Windows XP. It works very nicely.

If we are talking about PC games you have this constant feel that you have to buy newer operating system and/or newer computer that has a good GPU, CPU and SSD hard drive. This is a reason to keep consumers to pay for their ability to use a computer be it for playing games or for some other use. Everybody needs a PC today, right?

What about older games? I think there is something a bit wrong in this way of thinking. We should make sure that old games are available for us in the future also. These retro consoles aren’t going to last for 20 years. We have to come up with solutions to these questions so we won’t loose our precious history in video gaming. This is at least how I am thinking right now here and today.

Playing Some Tony Hawks Pro Skater On Nintendo Switch

Posted on by Viljami

I have now played THPS 1+2 for a bit over seven hours. It really makes me to go back, with an amount of nostalgia, to this game series that so many of us still do love. I am playing this on Nintendo Switch. I have also this very neat controller that is actually Pro Controller. I think it is the best way to play sports games and many action games and also driving games. I do not have a driving game currently for Switch but it might be a fun to have one some day.

I first started playing the first THPS game on PS1 back in the 90s. It made a huge impact on me as a player of video games. Skateboarding has been popular but that hasn’t always been the case. Some other famous skateboarding games are Skate or Die for NES and Skate series. I also have to mention a game called OlliOlli right here. But if you think about THPS back in the end of 90s you have to consider that it made skateboarding a very popular field of extreme sports.

How it feels to play it once again remastered one might ask. I think that these developers have made a great job. The music is  a big part of the game. In the original game it at times felt like the music stopped too soon since the runs were only one or two minutes long. In this remake they have kind of corrected this issue and the music track continues to play more constantly.

All these tricks are present in this remake. You can grind and manual to get some points in your run. You can also do air tricks like grabs and also flip tricks. You get more points by combining tricks as creatively as possible. This guarantees a good score of points for you. You have different attributes that you can add points to also. So your skater is also developing all the time as is also the case of your actual skills in playing the game. There are many famous skaters for you to choose from. Of course Tony Hawk is included as well.

THPS has been released in many forms for many different consoles. One of my favorite games in this series is THPS 4 for GameCube. Switch offers you a decent an similar way of control that was utilized in the original game for the first PlayStation. I am talking mainly about the layout of buttons. Pro Controller doesn’t differ so mmuch from Dual Shock controller that is actually the game pad of PS1.

It is nice to play this skateboarding game once again. I feel so much of this nostalgia. At the same time I am glad that this remake turned out to be a good game in overall. While it does require good reflexes I can compensate a bit on my skills in playing this game. Who knows how many hours I did spend on this one. I mean especially the first game. I picked up also THPS 3 for PC back in the early 2000s. Today I have also a copy of that game for my PS2. I am also glad that my PS2 is currently working and that I can utilize it perfectly. Although I haven’t recently played any particularly excellent games on it. I am hoping to get some time to play Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven and also continue my campaign in Gran Turismo 4. I would like to complete it but it seems to take a long time and also a deep dedication if I wish to finish it.

I think this is all for now. Hope you are feeling nice. This game I think is available nicely and it doesn’t cost so much if you are buying it for Switch like I recently did. It is also available for any other modern gaming consoles including Series S/X and PS5 and PS4. It is available also now on Steam for PC so if you are more into some personal computer gaming I guess you can check that out.

Playing Some Spyro The Dragon (Spyro Reignited Trilogy)

Posted on by Viljami

During this weekend I had an opportunity to play Spyro The Dragon with my PS4. In this blog post I am going to introduce to you this awesome 3D platform game that made a serious impact on how we play video games today. It was first released for PS1 in 1998.

There is a great difference between a 2D platform game, like Super Mario Bros 3 or Sonic The Hedgehog, and a 3D platform game like Spyro The Dragon. The first thing that comes to my mind is how do you position the camera inside the game. In Spyro The Dragon you move your character and rotate the camera at the same time. In 2D games you don’t have to worry about moving your camera all the time. In Spyro the jumping feels also a bit like floating which emphasizes the sensitive and complex three dimensional positioning used in the game.

There are many things that Spyro can do. You can jump, float or fall after jumping, blow some flame out of your throat and run and rush against enemies. There are various enemies that our main character encounters. Some can be defeated by rushing on them while some are defeated by blowing out a flame. Some enemies need also something extra if you want to defeat them.

The main goal in Spyro The Dragon is to progress. You achieve this by freeing dragons and collecting gems, or as they are called in this game, treasures. Some gems are more valuable than others. They can have a value of one, two, five or even greater than that. Defeating enemies also gives you gems. If you have defeated an enemy earlier in the game you get a point. If you get enough points you get an extra life. There are also particular extra lives that can be collected.

The game play feels very nice in overall. There are lots of puzzles to be solved including how do you get to some area that has a dragon to be saved or some gems to be collected. I don’t even understand how this game was originally released for PlayStation 1 in such an early moment in video gaming.

Is Spyro a bit childish game? Maybe so, but I think that it offers problem solving and deep thought and challenge while also being a game that the whole family can enjoy and play. The trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, consists of three first games of this series. I am currently playing it with my PS4. It is also available for PC and the latest Xbox and also for Nintendo Switch. It was released already in 2018.

So, the original Spyro The Dragon was released in 1998 by Insomniac Games for Sony PlayStation. It is considered a very strong and well-known piece of gaming. It definitely stands out being a platform game designed to be played in a 3D environment. If you haven’t played Spyro The Dragon games earlier this trilogy release might be a good point to start your experimenting. It also isn’t a pricey choice as a game. I bought it some weeks ago for 20 euros as a used copy for PS4. There are also many Spyro games released for many consoles in the history of gaming. This trilogy introduces three first games of the series.

Is Diablo III (Switch) Worth Playing in 2023?

Posted on by Viljami

Diablo as an RPG series is definitely something. The story first started back in 1997 when the first game of this series was released. My first experiences playing Diablo were achieved as I played it on my PS1. I remember my brohter playing it more than I did. He really liked the game. There were many limitations compared to Diablo 1 on PC. I can definitely confirm this.

The second Diablo game was so effing awesome that I spend one weekend six hours straight playing it. This happened in 2000 and I was playing it with a PC. Playing this fast-paced game trying to find rare and powerful items and developing you character made me an addict. I ended up finally finishing the game a bit later.

Diablo has brought action to role-playing. It might have created a completely new genre of video games. It was among first real time role playing games. As turn-based games have their supporters moving and making attacks in real time is really something else. It is said to have taken inspiration from this hockey game of Sega Mega Drive called NHL 94 which was released only some years earlier.

Blizzard had really hit the jackpot. There are many other games, like some strategy games, that were released. I am talking of course about Starcraft and Warcraft. Games seemed to be moving forward and starting to form as real time games where quick thinking is definintely a requirement.

Today, we are seeing the rise of Diablo 4. It has been released for latest consoles just couple of months ago. It has received good ratings from many reviews. We are still waiting for it to take its final form as there are many updates and patches also being applied to this game.

Is it still relevant to go back one step and play some Diablo III? After over ten years of being developed, the third game of Diablo series was released, finally, in 2012. It even caused a serious problem in which the internet was heavily used and the connection was finally lost. This happened globally when Diablo III was released. The game required the player to connect after the game was installed.

We are still waiting how Diablo 4 will take its final, or at least stable, form. I found Diablo III to be a bit of a disappointment when it comes to graphics. Well, the game is over ten years old. I am currently playing it with Nintendo Switch. Controls are fine. I am satisfied in what the game actually offers. It can take tens of hours to finish Diablo III one more time.

I really like graphics of Diablo 4. Also, I really like the game pad of my Xbox Series X. It is a bit better than Switch’s Pro Controller. I really think Nintendo should include Pro Controller or a similar to the package in which the console is sold in. It is cheaper than some other consoles although. We are also hearing some rumours about the next Switch console being released next year. We might see, finally, 4K graphics in a Nintendo console.

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.

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.

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