Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: gaming

I Read a Lot

Posted on by Viljami

I have to make it clear – I like reading and I read a lot. This hobby that I have might not be so popular at this moment in our history and in our society right now. I have read tens of books during the last years. I actually don’t have any statistics to back this up. I only have this pile of books that is showed in the featured image of this blog post. I have read all of them.

I have this habit of putting a book that I have read to a pile. I have many piles like this. I also have a pile of books in my home that I haven’t yet started to read. I read one book at a time. Sometimes I abandon the book I am reading but this is not so usual as I can find many topics interesting  to me. These kind of rules help me to grasp on this hobby. At times I feel a bit amazed of how large these piles are.

“Why do I enjoy reading?”, one might ask. I have always been an introvert. This was apparent all the way through my childhood. I liked drawing. I stayed home for hours drawing. When I was seven years old I learned to read. I was nine years old when I started learning English in school. At first I read books written in Finnish. Lately I have picked up some books that were written in English. I have thought about also reading a book written in French or Swedish since I have studied both of them.

I haven’t really counted how many books I have read. I can make some conclusions. During my four week vacation I read four books. That makes one book per week. I don’t normally read at a pace this fast. The time I do spend reading is depending very much on what else I have to do. This includes working, cleaning the house and things like that. Also, my other freetime hobbies take up some time.

Some topics I am interested in when it comes to books are technology, future, science, physics, space, video games (of course), programming, computers, philosophy and phychology. I do read also fictive books (like that book written by Dan Brown that you can find form the image featured on this blog post).

I just wanted to impress this side of my life also. I read a lot. Currently I am reading a book about Linux and its creator Linus Torvalds. The book is titled “Kapinakoodi” that means “Rebel Code”. The book is a bit old but the topic is fascinating.

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!

Could This Be The Answer?

Posted on by Viljami

With all these hardware consoles you get a sense that there could be an easier solution. This answer would be in this case one single personal computer connected to the 4K telly with a single HDMI cord. It would take only one HDMI port. This isn’t a hallucination. There already are several computers available for this task. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the power that one modern PC today holds can handle almost any gaming console emulator from NES to PS4.

You would need one PC. This would cost something from 300 euros to several thousands of euros. You would also need a controller. I prefer Xbox Series S/X controller when it comes to emulator gaming. If you would like to change a controller between systems you would need to assign keys over and over again. You could be able to make a profile for every controller of every system. However it would be easier to play all systems with only one controller.

The first thing you need with this kind of setup is a reliable Linux operating system dedicated to emulation. At first it seems I would choose Lakka OS. It is a nice emulator that allows you to run several different emulators of different gaming systems. After setting up you don’t need to actually unplug your controller or get to your keyboard at all. So, I prefer Lakka OS. There are other operating systems available, like Retropie, Recalbox and Batocera. The last mentioned can be run from inserted USB stick without any other kind of installation.

If you want to play emulated games on systems like GameCube, PS2, original Xbox and Sega Dreamcast, you will need a powerful computer. I would say that you need more than a Raspberry Pi 4 can provide. I am not going to give you detailed specifications here. We can of course check what are the recommended requirements for an emulator like PCSX2. We can get to a conclusion that you would need at least 8 GB of RAM and a GPU with something like 4 GB of VRAM and capability to run DirectX 11 or OpenGL 4.5. Well, what about the processor? The processor would need to support AVX2, have a rating of 2600 and have four cores with or without hyper threading.

This kind of an emulation station could be your solution to this very interesting question. As prices of games are ricing this would make your wallet heavier at least for a while and enable you to play lots of retro game content. There is of course also the question about breaking every copyright law that exists. This is a difficult matter. Let’s just say that it is not legal to load hundreds of games from internet for free. While this is illegal there seems to be very few choices. You can pay hundreds of euros of games that cannot or are very hard to rip to ROM file and play with your emulator. Some emulators need also the BIOS of the system they are emulating.

Nintendo has been busy bringing its retro content available for those that have an online Nintendo account. You can probably figure how popular retro games currently are. It must be stated that it would be nice, for us game hobbyists, to be able to somehow get our hands to this content for a reasonable price. Playing original games on original hardware is becoming more and more expensive. And it must be said that game consoles don’t last for several decades and must be at some point at least repaired.

Things to Explore in Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

Video games have already been here to entertain us for some time now. I haven’t had the opportunity to play every game of every era. You could say that I have been active from 1980 to this day. I haven’t seen everything in gaming. I hope to still see lots of more cool stuff be it old or new. If we think that first games were made back in the 60s there seems to be a lot to explore. But what are the most interesting games and platforms? What is important to know and what you can safely skip?

Lets think beyond home consoles. Things we had before Nintendo or even Atari 2600. Personal computers were also around in this moment and I will get to them later in this blog post. But the thing I want to write about here are games that we played in an arcade. Today there are things like MAME that enable us to play historically important video games we had in arcades some time ago. There’s lot to explore here and you start with your own PC just by getting an emulator. So, that’s one area to explore.

There are home console systems that I haven’t had a chance to own or even play on an emulator. Considering retro games there’s a certain way to get into these games that fascinates my mind. I have been thinking about buying a powerful and small in a physical size computer and installing an operating system to it that is dedicated to retro gaming. We already have Linux based operating systems like Lakka, Recalbox or Retropie. In this way I could explore systems like Neo Geo, Dreamcast, Atari Jaguar and Saturn and even more. There are some bad gaming systems also. Some of them are actually so bad that they are interesting. I recommend that you try them out first before buying a console like this.

What about some handheld consoles? For a long period of time I thought I could really play any handheld on my mobile phone. This is actually only part of the truth. I have found playing Gameboy games on SNES device with an adapter very satisfying. There are also adapter for GameCube that enables this same functionality. It is an expensive option. Nintendo has released many interesting handheld devices. I personally find Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS very interesting indeed. I could also get my hands on PSP or Vita that are Sony’s handheöd consoles.

There are also devices like Steam Deck that can bring you a solid gaming experience. I have read about new Asus device coming soon. It is called Asus ROG Ally and it costs 800 euros. IT is basically a computer that runs Windows 11. So, you can do also many other things with it. The thing I’m a bit concerned about is that the device provides only 2 hours of battery life. This means that you can only play games with it in runs of two hours. This, of course, isn’t an issue when you are playing this in your home. You can also hook it up to a television and use a Xbox Series S/X controller if you wish to do so.

There are also many new games and systems that I am interested about. You might have noticed already that we aren’t getting as many games ass we used to back in the days. There are however many good quality games that you can enjoy. This means that you have to follow the media a bit and keep yourself well informed. I can mention one game that is currently cvery promising. That game is Alan Wake 2. This will be released later this year.

I am also very interested in almost everything concerning Sega. I have already gathered a small collection of Master System games. My love for Sega begun in 1993 when I owned a Mega Drive. I find Sega CD, 32X and , well, actually every Sega console that was released after Master System, very interesting. I also have a good book about Sega that I enjoyed very much. I am always looking some more books to read about games.

There seems to still be a lot to explore. I have collected games now in some sort of meaningful way for about five or six years. I have played games longer than that but in 2017 I started to rally get this hobby going. I have my setup of nine game consoles and I have also some other devices that I can play video games on. I am trying to keep up with what’s going on in gaming globally.  I have written posts for this blog since 2020. It is a really nice hobby and I think this blog has been a success at least in a way that it has attracted so many people here as visitors. Maybe I find some day some way to get also some income also from this website. That’s it. Thanks for reading!

Some Thoughts About a Book

Posted on by Viljami

There was a huge clearance at a very popular mall in Helsinki some weeks ago. I didn’t find anything except two books. The first one was about games and how they shape you and your personality. The another, in which I am not going to go so deeply in, was about astronomy. But I will tell you a bit about this book about gaming. I have read the book. It was written in Finnish and I don’t know if it is going to be translated or is translated. Anyways, I will write about it.

The book is written by Aleksandr Manzos. I hadn’t heard of him earlier and this was first book of his that I have read. I haven’t even read any of his articles. There is a note on the back of this book that introduces him as a journalist and especially some sort of a gaming expert. He has written many books. The book basically tells a story of how video games have made an effect to Manzos throughout his life.

The name, “Pelattu elämä – miten pelit tekivät minusta minut”, can be translated, a bit freely thought, into “how gaming formed me and/or changed my life”. There is a kind of a wordplay here also that cannot be easily translated. “Pelattu” means “played” and “pilattu” means “spoiled”, so he has changed that one letter right there in that word and he is making a slight joke there.

The book begins with a story about Fallout. You might know this role-playing game. So you get to choose your gender. And Manzos makes very clear that he likes to pick a female character instead of a male one. He then explains how he likes to play as a female. He likes to pretend that he is a she. He continues to talk about this and explains that this doesn’t affect his sexual orientation and he says he is a straight person in that way. He just likes sometimes to be a cute person just like the picture besides his note in the book that introduces him shows.

There are lots of topics that are dealt with in this book. There is lots of thought about the characters in games and how you in a way empathize with them. Manzos writes about video games in the 90s. He is born in 1988 so he is about the same age as I am and there are lots of same influences in games that I can share with him. He talks about Final Fantasy VII and how it brought FF series to European gamers. There is lots of history that he explains in this book. The reader gets to think about worlds of different games from shmups to roleplaying and also to Tetris and Mass Effect.

I have to admit that it was a bit awkward to first read about how Manzos felt about playing as a female character. It was a sort of thing that you have to process a bit. I enjoyed reading this book. I think this writer has many interesting thoughts about games and personality all in all. I kind of have to give him props for his attitude on his personality. I am a bit lame about this matter. I have enjoyed playing as a macho male character in many games. Maybe that isn’t always how people want to present themselves. And it is now crystal clear to me that he is truthful in a way that he even gets to talk about sexuality. This is a sensitive subject. It is easy to misunderstand someone that has opinions in this matter. There are so many people in the world and I think they are all unique.

There are lots of books about games and gaming available worldwide. I have a privilege to live in a country in which language this kind of a material gets published. There are also many journalists that also have a privilege to write about games here in Finland. One other writer whose books I really like is Juho Kuorikoski and he has written many good books. As I don’t know if this particular book is going to be released in English I don’t know what this blog post has to give to an international English speaking game fan. I wanted to write something about this book. It was an interesting read.

Easy to Get Into, Hard to Master

Posted on by Viljami

My original idea was to start playing just something on GameCube. I had already played Need for Speed Underground for a while. However my GameCube started to malfunction. So I turned to my Xbox 360. It is always a reliable option that you can actually run NFS UG 2 on. So I started playing a new game again without finishing something I had started. That made me wonder about what I am going to write about here today in this blog post.

Gaming systems can be expensive. Actually manufacturers sell their consoles at a lower price than they even spend producing them. This amount of money is gathered back through games that are sold. Gaming consoles enable gaming. Games bring game companies their money which then brings salaries to game designers and all the other people that are involved in the process.

People are buying games because they are attracted to them. They might find a remake or a sequel satisfying because they have played the original game. There is lots of consumers considering gaming to be a great hobby. Back in the 90s video games were thought to be for children. Now those persons that were playing video games as a child are grown ups. This is how the world changes. Today gaming is the biggest business in the world! Even movie and music industry aren’t as popular.

There is this kind of a formula that keeps coming up. You buy a game because you are interested in it. You have maybe read a review or two. You have seen the trailer and maybe a bit of game play. You buy the game, finally. You have start somewhere. This is when the game is easy. You spend lots of time trying to figure out how to control the character or interact in some other way. You are trying to figure how to play the game.

Then you start to really get into the game. You start figuring out how to succeed and process in the game. There are harder parts. There are easier parts. You might have to check something from YouTube or some other source. You might have to read a chapter of walk through. If possible you try to figure out and solve the problem you are facing in the game by yourself.

After all you have played the game for several hours. Maybe three hours, maybe ten hours or maybe several tens of hours. Some games, like for me, NBA 2K22, you have to spend hundreds of hours. Today I have played over 100 hours of this notorious basketball game. And I feel that I haven’t yet mastered it. I haven’t completed it like 100 percentage. It takes a lot of time to master a game.

So this is the way games draw you into them. But what do you do when you get stuck or the game becomes only a source of frustration? Do you abandon the game you have only some weeks or days ago bought? Well, that is sometimes the case. You change the game that you are playing. Because you feel it hasn’t got anything to give to you anymore. Today there are more and more games that are like this.

Expectations for a game have risen. Maybe you could be satisfied even more if you would spend more time on more better game? How could you find out what game you end up palying for hundred hours instead of buying many games, like tens of games, that you only play for two hours? That’s a tough question. And the stakes are, as you can imagine, very high. I have in recent years bought only some, maybe five or even less, new games in a year.

What is a possible solution and also my humble tip for you gamers? Here it is. Buy new games just some weeks after releasing. Then you can find out if they are full of bugs. Also their price will come down quickly even if they are popular games. You can also buy good but old games. You dive deep into retro gaming and find games you never thought even existed. nd always compare the price of a new game.

The Last of Us

Posted on by Viljami

I have been watching, and also enjoying, the movie series The Last of Us on HBO. If you check IMDb for a rating you will see that it is 9,2 out of 10. Sometimes the movie that I like doesn’t receive such a rating. This time it does. There have been already six episodes of this TV series. I have enjoyed this series so far very much.

If you aren’t familiar with this game or the series I can explain the main plot. There is a certain kind of fungus that actually turns people into zombies. There are only few survivors that haven’t, at least yet, been infected. There are some main characters in this tv series. I think the series does a great job in describing these characters. That is also the strongest feature in this series.

The series is based on the game. Just in 2020 we got the latest The Last of Us game. It was called Part II. The first game after all was released already some time ago. It was released in 2013 for PS3 and it was developed by Naughty Dog. You might remember this game development company from a classic game called Crash Bandicoot. They have also released a game seiries called Uncharted.

The Last of Us was released to PS4 as a remaster in 2014. This is the moment that I first got into The Last of Us. As there are many similarities in the situation that the game presents it is understandable that it maybe wasn’t so popular during the pandemic. Or maybe the hype is all because of this? Who knows.

The game is as good as you can figure. I can recommend it, defnitely. So the TV series has been popular. It brings together some very detailed personalities that live their lives after this tragic disaster that ended the human populations accomplishments.

I can definitely recommend The Last of Us for anybody. You might have played Last of Us games or not but you have to see this. I am not aware of any release outside of HBO. This might make you to consider getting HBO if you don’t already have it. What finally made me order HBO was a series called “Winning Time”. Since I am and always will be a basketball fan I enjoyed that series also.

Where It All Begun (And Where Are We Now) With Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

I am a game hobbyist that started playing video games as soon as I was old enough to interact with a keyboard and a mouse. Some years later I was gaming on a Sega Mega Drive and some years after that I got my PlayStation. This was the beginning of my hobby.

Today video games are more popular than ever. There is a large amount of money involved. There are also many independent developers. There seems to be some people that really love video games. There seems to be a lot of games released mainly for making lots of money.

There was once a time when video games were a true form of art. You can take for example the game I am currently playing now. I also wrote a blog post about this game. The game is Remedy Entertainments Max Payne. You can see that this title was a success both artistically and financially.

I think I don’t have to point out any of these big companies that try to release very big games. It seems that when the stakes are too high there is a strong propability for the game to also fail completely. The failure will be financial and you definitely wouldn’t call it art in any way.

The involvement of money is one thing that is effecting the whole industry today. I kind of miss the artistic side of gaming. I have nice memories of playing all those PlayStation 1 titles. It is said that playing PS1 is kind of listening to rock music. And playing Sega Dreamcast is like listening to jazz music.

Why was Dreamcast a failure? To put it simple it didn’t sell that well. It did sell 9 million units. That wasn’t enough. We can compare this to how PS2 sold. That was way over 100 million. Even Xbox and GameCube sold over twice of what Dreamcast ended up selling. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are the leaders of todays game console markets as Sega has already made it clear that they aren’t going to release another new console.

Does it seem that you are getting fooled? This might not be the case afterall. If consumers keep buying those titles that they find the most satisfying there might be a brighter future for gamers and gaming. You just have to be aware of the situation. If you are a gaming hobbyist like I am you definitely want to keep up with this field. There is the mainstream. But there definitely does exist an opportunity to pick the games you really want to play. I think that there is a way to have good experiences in gaming. There is an alternative.

There are loads of games, old and new, for you to choose. Don’t have the latest console? Don’t worry about it. You can pick yourself a Xbox 360 or some other older console. It doesn’t cost you as much and you can have a really good time. There are many ways to get some good quality games for your personal computer.

There is always a way and also a place for art inside gaming. It might not be the deepest art you will ever see but it does have a value for gamers. Observe your possibilities. What you are buying is usually a way for also a gamer to influence what is going to be available in the future.

Who Is This Guy (Super Mario)?

Posted on by Viljami

What’s the game you start to play when you want a nice platform game and you don’t mind if it is a bit retro? Of course you play Super Mario Bros or Super Mario Land or Super Mario Bros 3 or the New Super Mario. Whatever your choice is one thing is certain – there are lots of options here. That’s basically because there seems to be no limit to how many and how varying game titles have been released in this video game characters lifetime.

The featured image of this blog post is the cover of a book about how Nintendo and Mario “conquered” USA. Of course this character made its way into the minds of all gamer’s across the whole wide world. Super Mario was chosen to be the main character that represented the whole Nintendo as a company. There are lots of games and also some other material in which Super Mario has been used.

But who is this guy actually? We get to understand that he’s a plumber. He has a brother named Luigi. I think he’s a plumber too. Mario has the tendency to try to be a hero and he is always trying to save the princess. Mario is a bit softer than Sega’s mascot Sonic. Basically Mario is a product of the beginning of 80s while Sonic seems to be from the end of 80s and also from the beginning of 90s.

Of course all the real hardcore retro gamers know that Crash Bandicoot took the title of the most fascinating video game mascot back in the 90s. But you have to realize that Mario was the first of them. Nintendo was the brand that made gaming great again after Atari had effed up the whole game with it’s foolish strategy on releasing poor quality video games. Basically, back then, Atari just got too greedy.

And only Nintendo is able to come up with this kind of material. At the same time it seems a bit naive and childish but do you know what kinds of mushrooms he actually is able to consume? A mushroom that looks like Amanita Muscaria and makes him to grow. Wow! How did that happen and how did it happen so fast. Maybe there is something more to it than we at first can observe. Maybe parents should look after their children despite the fact that Nintendo seems to be so settled with its in game content.

Super Mario remains as a character that is a bit mysterious. You don’t get to talk with him in deep conversations. You might remember him from your childhood. Is he the one that is responsible for luring all these people in to video gaming? There haven’t been so many interviews or story lines in games that would have described his personality. Yet you definitely recognize his voice as he says “It’s me…Mario!”.

Why are things this way? Maybe it has everything to do with how under developed video games were. We had two dimensional pixel graphics and the audio quality was poor. There just weren’t enough space for this character to form some kind of a more progressed image in our minds. I think this is also a strength for him. He is kind of abstract figure. He was made to be simple and easy to approach. So Mario is at the same time very simple and also very attractive in a mind of a determined retro gamer.

Are We Already Past Golden Era?

Posted on by Viljami

Games are definitely different than they used to be. Things aren’t the same. There is something almost magical about these games we today call retro games. They were games that were brand new when I was a kid or a teen.

Game developers today seem to be cautious. They don’t take risks and I think that they even like to keep it simple and make games that are going to bring them profits surely. Games are a big business. There is this certain economical responsibility. Every year games get bigger and better. Technology keeps developing. People are more into games than ever before.

So when was the so called golden era of video games? As I was growing up I picked up a lot of titles. I started playing some hours with Sega Mega Drive. Then I moved on to PlayStation and then to PC and to original Xbox all the way to the recent games that I have been also playing. That’s a long trip. Nothing will ever be like what it was when I first got to play Half-life or Diablo II back in the end of 1990s.

In my opinion we today lack inspiration and innovation. Games have advanced in graphics. There has been a lot of progress also in the design of games. Every game today seems to have elements of games we used to call role playing games. But where are the game changing innovations?

It might help for me to deal with these ideas and thoughts if I would think of it from a young persons sight. What would it be like to grow up around all this technology? Smart phones definitely have made an impact to our lives. You can play games also with mobile devices. There is even a possibility to buy a game pad for your mobile phone and play something with an emulator. So it is possible to use your phone as a retro gaming device.

The whole world keeps moving on and changing. Today you can write your thoughts on a blog and release your pictures on social media. There are lots of complications. We have divided our presence into physical and virtual. We are able to enjoy electronic devices and also to work with them.

How much does playing video games still feel like it used to feel? I don’t know. I might not even be a person that actually plays all the latest games. I do like retro games. But still I have ot ask again and one more time – are we already past the golden era of gaming??

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