Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: ps2

Transition From PS2 To PS3

Posted on by Viljami

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (PS2)

Posted on by Viljami

Pro Evolution Soccer 6 is a nice football, or soccer, game for PlayStation 2. The graphics actually don’t look bad at all and it also feels kind of comfortable to play the game. While the newest sport game can today be a disappointment you can definitely pick a game like Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and play it for a while. I had to adjust the difficulty level a bit. There are five choices and I picked, finally, the second easiest difficulty level. I plaid with “Regular” difficulty level but soon found out that it was too hard for someone who hasn’t played a soccer game for a while.

When I did play with the “Regular” difficulty level I had a some, well, difficulties. I couldn’t make a run and this impacted so that I couldn’t get a goal. Also defensing was harder and the opponent was able to steal the ball more easily. As soon as I lowered the difficulty level a bit I discovered that I was able to make a goal and also to win a game. I first played with Lazio and then, as I started with a lower difficulty level, with Manchester United.

Now, I am not a huge soccer fan and I rarely watch it on a television (or maybe on a smart phone). However I do have a sort of passion for these good quality soccer games that we have seen many in the past decades. I used to play a lot of Pro Evolution Soccer 11 with my Xbox 360. My Xbox 360 broke down a while ago. I did try to clean it from dust with a can of compressed air but finally didn’t manage to get it to start a game. The problem was with it not running the disc. Everything else still works but I eventually removed it from my actual setup that is located in our home’s living room.

I do play lots of sport games. Sometimes it does feel like we are getting the same crap every year. It sometimes seems that we are getting the same game that was already released last year. The only way that the game was updated was that the rosters and teams were fixed. I have played especially the NBA2K series a lot. I do play also hockey games. I have to say that every sports game isn’t a bad game. There are definitely some great games that can be categorized as sport games. I can mention one of my favorite retro games and that game is NHL 94 for Sega Mega Drive.

I remember very clearly seeing some soccer games back in the 90s. There’s a lot of nostalgia involved with soccer for me. Back then, in Finland, there were only three, maybe four, television channels. It was pretty huge thing for us living here back then to have some soccer games shown on television. I watched when Jari Litmanen played in Amsterdam Ajax. He was an international soccer star, one of the best players in the whole world and he was also, of course, from Finland.

A video game like Pro Evolution Soccer 6 doesn’t cost a whole lot but it can bring some joy to a motivated gamer’s life. I found myself playing this soccer game already for some hours. I think you can get this game for maybe ten euros. If we compare Pro Evolution Soccer 6 with the latest soccer game that was released we can find out that there isn’t actually a whole lot that has changed. This seems to be the case with sport games. The sport doesn’t change but the video game does take a small step forward and this seems to be the case every year.

Alone in the Dark Series

Posted on by Viljami

I have played lots of games during my whole lifetime. I just thought that it might be interesting for readers of this blog if I would write about Alone In The Dark game series. They might not be the best of the best in survival horror at the moment but their influence to this genre is huge. There is also a new Alone in the Dark game getting released in 2024.

The first game in this series was published in 1992. If you were playing it back when it was released I think there is a chance that you played it on a PC. Some of the first three games of Alone in the Dark were also released for PlayStation during 1990s. There are a total of seven games in the series.

What makes the influence huge was how the camera angels were adjusted. It made the game a scary one. Also the game utilises 3D graphics in a way that was never ever seen back in 1992. The most popular game that took influences of Alone in the Dark was Resident Evil and it was released in 1996 at least for PC and PS1. I obtained a book about RE some time ago and I am hoping to get to read it soon. I just have to finish the book that I am currently reading so I can begin with the book. It is called “Itchy, Tasty” and it is written by Alex Aniel.

Games in the series that were released during the 90s were of good quality in the standards of the games of that era. I think it might be a waste of your time to get back to them seriously. Well, maybe if you want to experience something old. There might be a retro feel in them.

So, is there a game in this series that would be a nice game to play even today? If we take a look on two games that were released in 2001 and 2008 we can figure an opinion for this question. Let’s face it. These two games are poor games. They don’t live up to standards and they defnitely don’t match my expectations. Out of these two the one released for PS2, Alone in the Dark – The New Nightmare, is better but it isn’t in any way a great game. It has also received a score of 66 out of 100 in Metacritic.

While these two games weren’t so good there are of course excpectations gathered towards this new Alone in the Dark game that is set to be published this year (2024). The genre of survival horror might bem rising its head again since there are rumours about new Silent Hill and also Resident Evil games getting released soon. There was already a short Silent Hill game released recently. It was only for PS5 and its name was Silent Hill – The Short Message. The game was released for free and it takes maybe three hours to complete. So, it is a short game for the fans.

One of my favorite game shops is saying that the new Alone in the Dark will be released in 19th of April. It will be released for PS5, PC and Xbox Series S/X. You can buy the PC release for example from Steam. The game has received open and cheerful welcomes and many fans are expecting this game to be good. For now we must wait for some more information. There are some trailers and early previews of the game avaialble online. You can also order it in advance if you wish to play it as soon as is possible.

 

Some Problems with Retro Hardware

Posted on by Viljami

As you have probably noticed I have been lately playing lots of PlayStation 2 games. My console is fairly new. What I mean is that I have only owned it for under a year or so. It is now malfunctioning. I am having problems with audio and video being cut off in the middle of playing a game like Need for Speed Prostreet or Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven. They come back after some seconds but what it comes to playing this is very disturbing.

Well what can you expect? This device is old. PS2 was released over 20 years ago. Would you expect some similar device, like computer, to function after this long of a time? Probably not.

This isn’t the first time that I am coming across issues with old hardware. I have had Xbox, Xbox 360 and earlier I had one other PS2 that started to malfunction. It couldn’t read the disc anymore. Dust can be one issue. One issue is that these old parts just aren’t reliable anymore after all this time that has passed.

You can, of course, try to fix the console yourself. This can be tricky. Not everyone is capable of doing this on their own. You can contact your closest electronic repair shop and ask them how much would they charge for the repairment of your console. There is also one more option and it seems to be an interesting one.

I am talking about emulation. You have retro games but you aren’t able to play them since your gaming console is broken. Why not make copies of them for your own use? I think it is reasonable since the console is broken, right? And with games that are on DVD this shouldn’t be an issue. What we know is that PS1 and PS2 games can be ripped to ISO files (files that end in .iso) with proper tools (software).

There are many options available. Some years ago I came across NVIDIA Shield TV. It is a device that makes your regular television a smart device that is basically operating on Android. You can install RetroArch to it. It is this kind of a forntend that you can run retro games on. It combines several emulator together. I found this to be handy with for example PS1 games. You could even hook your PS4 controller to the Shield TV with Bluetooth. You can install RetroArch on several devices. Windows and Linux are also supported along with Raspberry Pi.

You can also use a full Linux operating system on any PC that you can also hook up to any television that has the connectivity required. That is means to transfer video and audio from your dedicated computer to your television. One popular opertating system of this kind is Lakka OS.

Lakka OS boots up to its own user interface. You only need to go through some menus with your controller. This can be any USB controller that you might have. Lakka OS supports several retro gaming platforms including NES, SNES, Mega Drive and so on. The full list can be found from your favorite search engine. I can tell you that this list is long.

What I am most interested about concerning emulation, like using Lakka OS or RetroArch, is playing games of PS1, PS2 and GameCube. I can currently play my NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive and Master System games with my Retro Trio console and with the assistance of some adapters (Master System->Mega Drive adapter and SNES->Game Boy adapter). I also have a Mega Drive Mini also for playing Mega Drive games. I also play PC games. I also play games on newer systems like Xbox Series X, PS3, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. As you can imagine my setup is huge.

I hope this blog post gave you some ideas concerning playing retro games. The hardware isn’t perfect. It does wear out with time. Software emulation might provide a more stable way for a gamer to enjoy his/her retro games for a long time.

My Take on Tenchu Wrath of Heaven

Posted on by Viljami

Tenchu Wrath of Heaven is the third game of series of Tenchu games. This game was released in 2003 for PS2. The first game of the series was released for PS1. This is also where my interest in this game series came to exist. I really enjoyed playing it. The name is officially Tenchu: Stealth Assassins.

Lets go over shortly about what kind of a game we are dealing with. I played Wrath of Heaven recently. This is not a review. I actually didn’t get too far inside this game. That is mainly because of its difficulty level. There are two characters to choose from. Both of them have ten missions that you can go through. I selected Rikimaru. The other character is Ayame. So, the first mentioned is male and other one is a female. There is also a third character but you have to unlock that feature by completing parts of the game.

This is definitely a game that depends heavily on stealth combat. The easiest way to defeat an enemy is to sneak behind its back where you can finish the enemy with one hit.If an enemy sees you before you strike you enter a combat mode and defeating of the enemy becomes much more heavier and you will probably loose a great deal of your health. In this kind of battle the enemy can take from three to five or even six hits to be defeated. You can try to block hits. Enemy is also very good at blocking your attacks. So battling is way more risky than catching your enemy off guard with a stealth attack.

Battling can be frustrating. There isn’t many ways you can better your situation during a battle. It isn’t a matter of skill. It is more about luck. You can try to block every attack of the enemy and try to hit as many times as you can but that’s about it. I think there is something in the source code of this game that makes winning battles a bit randomized. Timing your attacks doesn’t seem to matter as much and hits that are successful seem to come randomly.

Your weapon is a sword. You also have some health potions and also a grappling hook that you can move with. Sometimes while playing the levels seem like a maze. Poorly aged graphics of PS2 cause also some difficulties. It might help a bit if you have a PS2 HDMI adapter. I use my 4K TV to play also PS2 games with and a CRT TV would probably display the graphics of this game better. You will also get better graphics if you are playing this with a PS2 emulator.

This game is very difficult. I did get to mission 3 while playing with Rikimaru. I got frustrated with this particular mission. First of all the level is very difficult to move in. Controls aren’t as good with Dual Shock 2 controller. After I finally beat the level I had to face a boss. I could defeat the boss. But there is a but. There was another boss right after the first one which was way harder and of course I couldn’t defeat it. Then I died and had to start the mission three all over again. That makes me want to use a cuss word but I am however not doing that. So, I basically stopped playing.

The game might seem more to your like if you are familiar with these earlier entries in this series. I only have some experiences with the first game. For those of you readers that aren’t yet familiar with Tecnhu series I definitely recommend that you first play a bit of the first game before getting into this one. My opinion might change if I find the other character more into my linking some day. But today I might just change to another game for PS2 since I have lots of games for it.

I sometimes think that all games of this era of PS2 and its competitors aren’t always very good games to play today. Main points for this are poor graphical quality and outdated controls. Sometimes it just feels that many things are way better in today’s newer games. But also I have to tell you that sometimes you can definitely have this feeling of nostalgia. It just depends so much of the game. I have had some happy moments of nostalgia with some PS1 games. How poor are graphics and controls for those? It is nice that you can play PS1 and PS2 games on your PS2 console.

Right now I am going to continue my Sunday. I might play some other PS2 games that I have. I haven’t had time for all of them. I haven’t even tried every game that I own for this system. I have maybe 70 games now for PS2. I am definitely going to publish this post and add something about this post to Instagram and Facebook also. Did you know that I have a page on Facebook also? Well, now you know! Happy day for you the reader of this blog post!

Xbox Series X Has a Nice Backwards Compatibility (But Far From Full)

Posted on by Viljami

My Xbox 360 has been suffering. It doesn’t read game discs anymore. Otherwise it is fully functional. I tried opening it a bit through the disc unit as was insturcted on an official guideline I found from internet. I read from the guide that you should first power the device off, remove all cables and then try to push the wheel of the disc unit so that it opens up a bit. This was instructed to do with paper clip that has been straightened. Then you should bloww some compressed air to it.

I did mangae to do this and it fixed the problem. I was able to start a game once again. Then some weeks went by. I wasn’t playing anything with my Xbox 360. I played my other game conmsoles. As you might know Xbox 360 has a backwards compatiblity with original Xbox games. 463 games out of all 996 published are backwards compatible. We can make a quick calculation and find out that this makes 46,5 % of all games that were published for original Xbox.

If you think about PS3 and PS4 and their backwards compatibility you can propably figure how differently Microsoft and Sony deal with this issue. PS4 wasn’t at any moment backwards compatible at all. This pissed off some people. You were able to play PS1 games on PS3. Some PS3 models you are able to play also PS2 games with. PS5 however has limited backwards compatibility for PS4 games.

Xbox Series X, the latest Xbox, is fully compatible with older Xbox consoles’s games. However every game is not supported. There are 63 original Xbox games out of 996 and 633 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games compatible with the latest Xbox console. Xbox Series S doesn’t even have a disc drive so apparently it doesn’t support older consoles’s game discs. All Xbox One games are compatible with Series X.

With this information available I decided to remove my oddly acting Xbox 360 from my current setup. This meant actually that I had to remove also tens of games from my lineup. I like to keep every game that I am able to play with any console in my setup in this huge shelf. I had to remove many Xbox and Xbox 360 games.

I have now only six original Xbox games left in that shelf. The picture related to this post shows my current games that I am able to play with my Xbox Series X. I didn’t count the games that I removed so carefully. I think I set aside maybe 70 games in total. I had to put games like Halo 1 and 2, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 and many others to storage. These were games that I haven’t had time to get into thoroughly.

I would like to be able to play every game that has ever been released for any Xbox system. This is just the way that things go. You are updating your setup and getting into some new or retro consoles. You don’t actually play every game that you own. Some games and systems you just have to set aside at least for a while. Xbox 360 is an old gaming console. It was first released in 2005. I bought my Xbox 360 as a used copy. This was about six years ago. So maybe it was time for me to move on.

Games do get old. Systems do get old. There are many games that you just can’t play, buy or enjoy in any way no more. I think there should be something that could be done to this issue of great games just disappearing somewhere. We seem to be still moving so fast forward that we can easily completely forget a nice old game.

I don’t know the exact answer to this question. Will there be in the future some websites or collectins of old games. Are we going to be able to finally play these games with an emulator? Would it be nice to have a museum that could hold many old games? I know that there are already some websites that are dedicated to old Commodre 64 games. They have archived thousands of games which are also available as downloads.

There cetainly is some knowledge about gaming that also I as a gamer have been able to develop in myself. From the moment when I first gazed at a video game in some arcade I have been curious to find out more about games. I went as far as studying the field. I dreamed I would be able to make a game or something similar. And I think I am not alone with my knowledge and I think this is an interesting topic all in all.

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.

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