Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: playstation

Some Undisputed Classics Released Again

Posted on by Viljami

There is no excuse for not knowing what these two amazing titles are: Asteroids and Space Invaders. These two games were very popular firstly in arcades back in the late 70s and early 80s. They were published by Activision and were later ported to consoles like Atari 2600.

You can only admire the quality of game design. As these games were meant to be played on machines that weren’t so powerful you had this certain style that you had to apply to the game. Another good game of that era is Arkanoid. Also Pong has to be mentioned here.

These games had only this one screen where the whole game took place. There were no scrolling screens like we could see later on in games like Nintendos Super Mario Bros, which came out a a bit later. There were also not so many colors as graphical capability was limited. I propably don’t have to mention anything about sound effects, music or audio at all. They were meaningless.

These games are classics. In twenty years designing games goes some steps further. This is unavoidable. The first PlayStation was capable of producing some very high quality graphics already. So it is comfortable to say that these games deserved to be re-made to a more modern system.

I bought these games for my PS1. I thought they are a fun addittion to my video game collection. They offer some re-designed graphics, sound effects, music and also methods to control the objects in the game.

The idea behind Asteroids is that you have a space ship that can shoot. Your mission is to cut a huge rock, asteroid, to small pieces by shooting it. You can turn your ship to any direction, like 360 degrees and give your ship a boost so it moves. It keeps moving, since we are in space, there is no gravity, to the direction that it has had a boost to unless you turn your ship to another direction and give it a boost again. The game ends if you hit a piece of an asteroid. You get to next level if you succeed in shooting the asteroid to tiny bits.

The other game here in this picture is Space Invaders. In this game you face a group of aliens. Your mission is to shoot all of them. So this is definitely a shooter. An alien disappears when you shoot it. You start from the bottom of the screen. You have some obstacles that you can use for cover if you like. Enemies keep moving towards you step by step. You win the level if you can shoot every alien enemy and you lose if they reach the botttom of the screen.

These games are not so expensive. I thought they were a fun addition to my collection. You can probably get one these like under 20 euros from your favorite retro game dealer. These kinds of classic games are an important part of gaming history. You can probably also find copios of these released for even newer systems. You can also try them out if you an emulator. I don’t know if it is possible to play these games’s original arcade version but maybe this would be possible in some kind of a gaming museum.

Also if you are into programming it could be a nice idea for a project to program a clone of Asteroids for example. You could use maybe JavaScript with some image editing software or something like that. Just keep in mind that while these games seem simple there is a lot going on in them and it isn’t an easy task to just remake one.

Competition Between Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation

Posted on by Viljami

Yesterday I ended up watching a video from YouTube. It dealt with some difficulties that Sega Saturn had and how it could compete against Sony PlayStation back in the 90s. The person that was interviewed was Hideki Sato. The interview took place in 2018. I will place a link to this video at the end of this blog post. So, just keep reading.

There were differences in hardware between these two gaming consoles. PlayStation was able to bring 3D environments to gamers while many Saturn games had 2D graphics that were based on graphics created with sprites. Although Sega tried to bring some developers that had some ability in designing 3D games they weren’t as successful. Sega did have games like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing that were also popular in arcades.

Sony had an opportunity to utilize hardware that they manufactured by themselves while Sega had to use contractors. Parts that were needed were different kinds of chips, processors and, for example, CD drives. Sega was more of a software and game development company. This was a matter that would be stressed to Sega by Sony several times. This was also the direction that Sega finally took later when also Dreamcast seemed to fail.

Sony also made it easier for other game developers to make games for their new console. We were then living the age of 1990s. Sony PlayStation was released in 1995 and so was also Sega Saturn. Sega relied on assembler code while Sony gave game developers a full SDK (“software development kit”) that they could develop their games with.

If you think that Saturn ended up selling 9 million units in its lifespan while PlayStation sold 102 million units it isn’t hard to figure that there were also much more games sold for PSX than there actually were for Saturn. As usually manufacturers have to sell consoles with a loss and make up with game sells. This was difficult for Sega and they made a strong loss in sales. They took a beating.

In the end of the 1980s when Sega’s last console, Mega Drive, or Genesis in USA, Sega had the most powerful gaming console in the markets. It competed mainly with Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short. This console also sold nicely. It sold 31 million units while NES sold 62 million units. With all this information available Sega wasn’t done with manufacturing their own consoles. After all, still, Sony was unbeatable. Sony has remained a top console manufacturer since it released their first console PlayStation. Microsoft entered the competition when their Xbox was launched in the beginning of the 2000s. Xbox mainly competed with PS2 but also with GameCube and Dreamcast.

When it comes to who won the competition between these two gaming systems Sony PlayStation is a clear winner. Saturn still remains a popular console in minds of serious retro gamers. It has games that are unique and cannot be found on other retro consoles. This topic seems to be very interesting. At least it is that way in my mind.

You can find the video that inspired me to write this blog post here.

PS2 Games That Are Still Worth Playing Today

Posted on by Viljami

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Biggest Differences Between PS2 and PS3

Posted on by Viljami

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New and Better Controller for Mobile Video Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Android Emulation Starter Guide

 

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.

About Modern PC Controllers

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post deals with controllers for PC. I have used these three different gamepads for gaming on Windows 10. I don’t know, exactly, how these controllers work in Linux gaming. So, that part is out of the context of this post. Let’s get to it!

There are three, mainly, three controllers I have used. They are Sony Dualshock 4, the controller of PS4, Microsoft Elite Pad, that is designed for Xbox One and, my latest addition, PDP Neon Carbon that is used, mainly, with Xbox Series S/X. All these gamepads can be used with Windows 10.

Dualshock 4 (the red controller in the image) needs an app so it can be used. That app is DS4Windows. This gamepad works very well with PC. Only thing that is really annoying is the mapping of buttons. As I have learned by my experience, Windows apps tend to map controllers as Xbox One or Xbox Series S/X controllers. This is a bit irritating. I think this issue can be solved. There are for example USB dongles that can be used as a solution. As I noticed this problem I had a quick fix for it already – I changed to my oldest gamepad that is Elite Pad (the one in the middle in the image).

Buttons have been configured correctly when you are using Xbox One’s gamepad. It is often taken care that a controller that can be used in a Xbox Series console will be compatible with Windows also. I think you can even take a Xbox 360 controller and plug it in so you can use it to play with a PC.

By the way, all these controllers I have been using have had a wired connection. I haven’t even tried to get bluetooth to work with these. Why would I do that? My desktop doesn’t even have a bluetooth itself. I use a bluetooth dongle for a wireless connection whenever there is a need for such. It also seems that all these three controllers have a USB-to-micro-USB connection. Even the third gamepad, that is meant for new Series X, also sports a micro-USB, instead of the most popular, USB-C. This however makes only a little difference. And basically all you need is a cable that has about a metre or one and a half metres of lenght.

So, I was very involved in this and I was using the Elite Pad. It is of a very good quality. It was expensive and it has served well over ten years of use. After all, it started to break down a bit. There was a part, that I think was originally glued to its place, that I had to remove. It was sticking out and the controller didn’t fit so nicely anymore. I decided to get a newer controller. Of course my thoughts were to buy a controller of Xbox Series X. I had some thoughts about DualSense, but since Xbox and Windows go well together, I decided to go for the Xbox on this one.

It first seemed that the replaicment would definitely be a combo of wired and wireless. It would be an Xbox Series X controller. I first thought that I would buy the official controller. I made my way to a store. I found out that they were actually out of these controllers. I noticed an optional model. It actually was this PDP Xbox Series X controller.

The controller was only 45 euros or so. So it was 20 euros cheaper than the official controller. When it comes to gaming this kind of a swing can be a gamechanger. And that’s how it was for me in this situation. I got the gamepad and went home as a happy duude.

First thing I noticed with this controller was that it doesn’t have a battery included. It is a wired controller. It has a functionality and you can remove the cord. This might seem useless but it actually makes sense in a way. You can replace the cord if you are on the move or if it gets damaged in some way. It is very light. The feel is awesome. I like this controller and I haven’t noticed anything to complain about. It is compatible with Windows 10 and you don’t necessarily need any app to use it in this way. There is some sort of an app avvailable as a donwload.

We can have a tiny summary here out of this blog post. I am very content on my new controller. It is a nice update to my old Elite Pad. I have to say that Elite Pad really served very well for its price of 130 euros. It has an option to load a battery in it. It also has some adjustments and a bit of weight for the controller to feel good. It was although time to move on with it. You can also try to use PlayStation controllers with a PC. Some games might feel better this way. I didn’t go through Linux or Mac gaming in this blog post but as you can probably figure there is a wholea other world in that way also.

Are You Ready?

Posted on by Viljami

Xbox Series X was released November 10th 2020. It has been about two and a half of year. It has been a successful and popular gaming device. PlayStation 5 was released at almost same time. Nintendos latest gaming console was Switch and it was released in 2017.

Are you actually ready to buy another console? There have already been some information leaked about the new and upcoming Xbox console. It has been six years since Switch was released. It would make sense that Nintendo would release the next new console in this new console generation.

I think Xbox Series X has still a lot to give. I think also that it will sell even more when it becomes available more openly aand freely. There have been some difficulties in delivering consoles to consumers to buy them since this gaming systems release. I am still kind of waiting for some great game titles for this console.

Technology companies keep pushing new hardware in the direction of consumers. This isn’t a new fact. You can see this clearly. Just take a look at smart phone manufacturers. This matter is present also in personal computers. Even some software companies are pushing people to update to their operating system that actually runs on a computer that has to be powerful.

The question seems to be – where are these new and amazing games for Xbox Series X? We haven’t seen many game titles released recently. We have seen games like Hogwarts Legacy and Elden Ring. But I still think that there is a need for some attracting new games for todays newest game console.

What about our screens? Would you update your gaming television also if there would be a new game console released tomorrow? Would you have to make that update? Would you like to make that update? And finally what would it cost? Would we be gaming with screens that are even sharper than 4K? There are so many questions.

I was actually thinking about this when I handled my Nintendo Switch the other day. How does a game consoles price take a form? You can get the newest Nintendo console for about 300 euros. But, yes there is a but, you don’t get a decent gaming controller with the system. You have to buy a new controller also. I had to pay 70 euros for a good controller also. Xbox Series X had a controller invcluded with the system. But, yes there is a but also here, I had to buy a cable for the controller. Eventually I bought a battery and a charger also. They were cheap after all.

So, there’s a price that you pay for the gaming system. There are also other matters that might make the price even higher. And of course you have to buy a game or two if you want to enjoy your new gaming console. I am not so excited about these new and upcoming gaming consoles. I am hoping that there will still be some nice gaming titles to be avaialble for Xbox Series X and PS5 and also Nintendo Switch…and why not even for PC.

The State of Final Fantasy Series in 2002

Posted on by Viljami

Only some days ago I got a copy of Final Fantasy VI. I do have all other FF games that were released for the first PlayStation. These games are VII, VIII and IX. And also one game that I don’t actually own is Final Fantasy Tactics.

There has always been a sense of strategy in FF games. They also offer you a nice and long story and the ability to develop your character or even characters. I have this habit of not giving a name for a new character and to go with the name that is as default. That way you can have a discussion on a certain character if you have a friend that also plays these role playing games. I love also chocobos…if you don’t know what they are you propably haven’t played FF as much as some of us have.

I first got into FF as I got Final Fantasy VII for PlayStation back in the end of 90s. I really liked the game. It was maybe two years old when I got the game but it still had a lot to offer. This makes me, again, to think how stupid for me it was to sell my PS1 and all the games I had. It was actually the summer of 2000 that I finished FF VII. I had a long vacation in that summer. I was just about to start in high school and I did actually in the fall of year 2000.

Final Fantasy has its roots in NES and also SNES. The first FF game was released for NES. There were some games released for SNES. Back in 2002 when FF VI was brought to PS1 there was already a new PlayStation console available for gamers. It features graphics that make you think very strongly that this is actually a SNES game ported to PS1 that can also be played with PS2. My edition actually holds a  playable demo disc for PS2 that has Final Fantasy X in it.

What was going on with this title back in 2002? We had already seen many FF games for PS1. FF X was to be soon released. It was the first FF game that had an audio dialogue. All of the earlier games of this series’s dialogues were only in text format. It seems that releasing also FF VI brought something more for the fans of this series. It also brought some money for the developers of this game.

I have only started playing this game. It seems to be very good RPG. I don’t mind if the graphics are simple. I haven’t played so much FF games on SNES. So, graphics are just fine. You do need a PS1 memory card, if you are playing this with PS2. The game actually fits on only one CD. I know that FF VIII was delivered in a package of 3 or 4 discs.

Is Gran Turismo 4 The Greatest Racing Game of All Time?

Posted on by Viljami

Although I have still not finished Resident Evil Village I picked up Gran Turismo 4. I have thought about playing GT4 for a while now. It is said to be maybe the best game in the series and it is definitely a very good racing game. It is definitely the best racing game for PlayStation 2.

Another very good racing and actually a rally game of this era is Richard Burns Rally. It was for propably a decade the most realistic racing simulation to be found. It was released also for PC and original Xbox while Gran Turismo 4 was released for PlayStation 2 with exclusive righs. Richard Burns Rally lost its spot as the best rally simulator since there were newer games released in this genre. I can mention titles like Dirt Rally and its sequel Dirt Rally 2.0 just to name some games.

I am playing GT4 with a game pad. The game supports also many tpyes of driving wheels. It would be nice to play it this way. I do have a driving wheel  but I am too lazy to try to learn using it. I would also like to have a decent driving chair. I currently don’t have one. But the game supports driving wheels and why not pedals also.

In Gran Turismo 4 you start with no license and also no car. You have only 10 000 credits. I started with getting a driving license. The first license and also the easiest to get is B license. There are several other driving licenses that give you access to competititons.

You have to upgrade your car if you wish to get some credits. Then you can upgrade your car more and maybe after a while you get a new more powerful car. Sometimes the game gets a bit repetitive because you have to compete in same chllenge for many times to get enough credits so you can make some progress. This can be dull at times.

Gran Turismo 4 has hundreds of cars. Getting a good car can be hard at times. You have to buy some upgrades to get to fiddle with your cars settings. The first thing I got to adjust was the transmission. You can set your car to have a high maximum speed with a lower acceleration level or the other way around. So, you can also make your car accelerate fast which then lowers the maximum speed. This can be handy in tracks that have lots of slow corners and not so much straights.

Graphics are a bit dated. Controls defnitely aren’t. There could be more decent music tracks in the soundtrack. I am talking about these nice tracks that we had in the first Gran Turismo. If you are thinking if you should return to the first game we can consider that if you haven’t played Gran Turismo 1 or 4 at all I think the fourth game would be a good way to start getting into Gran Turismo. I also liked very much the latest game of this series, Gran Turismo 7, that was released last year for PS4 and PS5.

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