Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: psx

How to Rip Your PS1 Games

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post we are going to go through about how to rip your PS1, PlayStation 1, games to rom files so that you can play with an emulator or a piece of hardware like Raspberry Pi 4/5. This way of copying your games for your personal use is completely legal. What is currently illegal is copying rom files of games that you don’t own and/or if you share some games that you have ripped to someone who doesn’t own that particular game. We are dealing with a sensitive legal issue right here and things can change, for better or worse, in the future. I don’t want to encourage you to break law in any way.

So you have your PlayStation 1 game. What else do you need? Here’s a list:

  • External DVD drive
  • A PC running, preferably, Windows 10 (this guide has been written using this OS)
  • Magic ISO Maker (the software that actually rips the disc and converts it to the rom file)

External DVD drives today cost something from 40 euros to maybe 60 euros. You don’t need a special DVD drive. You just need something that works. The DVD drive should be connected to your PC through USB. Many PCs today don’t have a DVD drive so you might need an external one. If you have internal DVD drive or something like that you can also use that.

The discs that PS1 uses are colored in black on the side that gets read in the DVD drive. That doesn’t stop the disc from being read. Note, also, that you can rip your PS2 games in this similar way if you are into emulating PS2 also.

You do need a special software. I am using currently Magic ISO Maker (trial version). However there are also some other alternatives. You might want to check them out also. Ripping the disc is pretty straightforward. You select “Tools” from the upper main menu. Then you select “Make ISO from CDRom”. There is a new window that pops up. Select your DVD drive that has the disc in it and make sure that you have connected the USB cable of the DVD drive to your PC.

Then you select your DVD drive from the drop-down menu. Now click the folder icon on the right side of the part that says “Output File” and choose the destination where you want to save the rom files and also give these files names. This doesn’t have to necessarily be the name of the game that is being ripped but that could make things somewhat easier. Then change the file format (“File Format”) to “BIN image file”. That way your game will be in a form of two files that are .bin and .cue. You need to copy both of them to your game library or the location that you are running your emulated games from.

Now make sure that there is Make CD Image selected from the radio buttons that is titled “Option”. Then just click “OK” button. Now the disc of your PS1 game gets ripped to a BIN-file and a CUE-file. You can rip multiple games and place them in some folder where you can have one game in one folder. That way you will find your games easily.

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.

Some Games I Haven’t Had Time to Play

Posted on by Viljami

Here I introduce to you some games that I haven’t had time to play. I have made many purchases just the last year. There are many games that just keep piling on my shelf. And I mean that these are very good games. Some of them are old, but they are definitely gold. You could call them “retro”.

Take for example the first Grand Theft Auto that I have for Playstation 1. It’s a great game even with some retroish graphics on it. The concept was revolutionary. Basically you just run around completing missions, stealing and driving different cars and just getting points for destroying the environment.

I have to tell you something about GTA. It wasn’t at first meant to be the kind of a game it is. I think the developers were at first aiming for a regular driving game. In the midst of the development process someone had an idea and they actually changed the direction of gameplay completely.

That’s enough about GTA for this blog post. I have also some Xbox 360 titles here. I was curious about Condemned as it is a horror and I think it is a survival horror game. And I do like survival horror games. Take Resident Evil for example. I just love it!

Other Xbox 360 games in my list of the games I haven’t got time to play are Colin McRae Dirt 2, that is a solid and high quality rally game, and Rockstar’s legendary game Bully. Did you know that the idea for Bully came originally from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games. I think it was the third game, THPS 3, that featured this character that was actually called “Bully”. So, they built a whole new game around this idea.

I of course have some games for latest gaming consoles I have purchased. There is one Swithc game here on my list. It is Crash Bandicoot – It’s About Time that is the fourth game in this series. The first three games of this series were originally released for PS1. Sadly, I haven’t had time to play this one.

We have still four games that we haven’t dealt yet in this post. They are Xbox One or Xbox Series X games. Fallout 4 is definitely something that would demand my attention for tens or even hundreds of hours. I know it’s a fricking good game. Damn, I have to find time for it!

I recently bought Back 4 Blood for Xbox Series X. It got my attention when it was published. I was about to buy it then but another FPS came to my way. That was Call Of Duty Vanguard. I figured that I don’t want to get too games that are similar.

We have two games left. The first one is GTA – The Trilogy that has three GTA games on it. I wrote about how I made the decision to buy this game already in this blog in an earlier post. There also one big game that I haven’t had, once again, time to get into. That is Alien Isolation for Xbox One. It had actually a cheap price and I thought that it had some value for me as a game blogger and a gamer in general.

There you have it. The games I would like to play, the games I have to play. This is something to consider when browsing for new gaming purchases. Keep in mind what you already have and also that you won’t have time for every game.

The Original PlayStation Controller

Posted on by Viljami

So I bought Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 about a week ago. I was going to play it with the PSOne console that I’ve had for about five years already. I got my PSOne from a flee market for a low price of fifteen euros. It has worked since the day I bought it. I’ve had no issues.

I had a cheap accessory controller for PSOne. I figured that I would need a gamepad that would be more accurate and that would feel better. I first checked some prices of DualShock controllers. DualShock 1, which was for PS1 originally, was sold for about 25 euros. I found DualShock 2 and it would cost from 35 to 40 euros. As you might already know DualShock 2 was the original controller for PS2.

I have a PS2 console also. It is currently broken. It was finally not able to read any of my game discs. I still have about fifty or sixty games for PS2. So I still have some controllers. I just didn’t yet know or remember if they were in a reasonable shape and could I use them with my PSOne.

As you might also know PS2 was backwards compatible with controllers of PS1. So these controllers work with PS1 and PS2 and of course PSOne can use also them. You can play PS1 games also with PS2. And to mention also PS3 can be used to play them.

Unfortunately my only DualShock 2 controller was a  bit broken. It had been for many years in storage. It didn’t fully recognize a press to the right on the controller. I had another controller which wasn’t original one. It felt a bit wack also. I had to buy a new Dual Shock 2. I thought it was worth it.

Only a week had gone since I had ordered my fresh and cool skateboarding game. I made a new order to the same store one more time. I just had to buy also some other games. I might write something about them later. I have tested the controller and it works very nice.

Something New in PlayStation 1 Emulators – DuckStation

Posted on by Viljami

I keep my eye on YouTube. I watch videos there. Gaming is one of the topics that I am most interested in. It doesn’t come as a surprise that there are countless videos about Xbox Series S. I found a very interesting information from one specific video that introduced a way to play PlayStation 1 games on your new Xbox.

This is possible through a new retro game emulator called DuckStation. I am not going to go to all the details of how playing PSX games this way is actually possible. After all it is possible. You have to enter to Xbox Series S in a “developer” mode. Then you will have to install DuckStation and tweak the settings. Of course you need also the BIOS and roms of all the games you are going to play.

DuckStation is a very powerful emulator application. You can enhance your graphics a lot and it is promised that you can play old PS1 games with a 4K resolution. Why would you want to use your new Xbox for this? Maybe it is because it has a limited hard disk space or maybe you just haven’t found the most interesting games for this new console. What ever the reason for you to be interested in DuckStation is it can provide you an experience on retro gaming once again with all your classic PS1 games. DuckStation is also available for Android and Linux and Windows.

I am not so interested in this way of using my new console for retro gaming. I prefer to play my emulated PS1 games on a PC. There are many reasons. One is that you can choose to use Dual Shock 4 controller through DS4Windows. I prefer to use my controller this way instead of using the new Xbox game pad. Playing PS1 games with Xbox’s controller? That’s definitely a no from me. When considering it this would be a good way to expand your collection of games a bit. Maybe you can play Xbox with a different controller somehow?

You can find more information about DuckStation from the link below:

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/DuckStation

Studying Physics in Colin Mc Rae Rally 2.0

Posted on by Viljami

Colin Mc Rae Rally 2.0 is a very interesting game in many ways. I wrote recently about different strategies you can have in this game. Now I would like to return to the physics and how this part of the game is handled. I think this game was the first rally game and also among some first racing games that I really liked (Gran Turismo was also great) and got into. It was released for PC and PS1. I played both of them.

There is no doubt that the way CMR 2.0 handles the part of physical modeling was in its time revolutionary. I know lots about games but I also have studied a bit of physics. I have learned physics mainly through school and by studying it in a school of applied sciences. However I am not a physicist. I am more of a software designer. So I know about some coding stuff also. This might open this fact a bit of how I find thinking about these subjects extremely interesting.

I haven’t seen any source code from this game. This is a commercial game and its code isn’t open source. I think for many of the fans of this game this doesn’t come as a surprise. The game was hugely popular. Releasing it as a freeware would be, well, stupid, you might say. However there are some very interesting details that open up for me as I play this rally game.

Let’s think about friction. It deals with surfaces. In a car you can have different tires that behave differently on different surfaces of road. So this is one thing. While driving on icy or snowy road you might want to use chains with tires. While driving on tarmac you want to use soft tires. And on wet surface you use special tires that perform nice on for example wet tarmac. Same goes for muddy surfaces or roads that are of gravel. You have to have a good grip on the road you are driving and friction can give you this.

There is a force that is effective on any road that you can drive on the whole planet Earth. It is called gravity. You have to have good and sufficient suspension in your car. On roads that are bumpy you have to have more suspension for overcoming the differences of altitude. Too much suspension is not good either if you drive on flat road.

You can also break and accelerate. You turn the wheel in right direction at a right time. The key is to try to steer correctly or at least keep the car moving as fast as possible. If you don’t break at a correct time you get to grass or some other surface that slows you down. Crashing also slows you down. This has everything to do with a thing called momentum. If an object doesn’t receive any push to any direction it keeps moving with the speed it has to the direction it is moving. At different time there is different amount of push to the vehicle. If nothing gets pushed the car keeps moving. Bigger objects take more power to get moving and are slower to stop moving. So the more mass you have the slower you are.

I think this is enough physics. I repeat what I said earlier. This is not so precise of a study. I haven’t seen any source code and I didn’t describe my theory so thoroughly. I hope this motivates you to learn more about physics. You can find more information using your favorite search engine. I definitely feel that you will get more excited about this particular rally game.

Space Invaders for PS1

Posted on by Viljami

Since I recently played Space Commanders, that is a Space Invaders clone for PC, I decided to pick up this PS1 game titled also as Space Invaders. I bought it some time ago but I haven’t really played it.  The price of this game was low. That’s one reason I decided to buy it. Back when I made the decision to buy this game I had already many items in my mind that I wanted to order. It kind of came with the other stuff that I ordered.

It is basically the same game that especially retro game fans know. The original game was released in 1978 as an arcade game and it was also released for Atari 2600 in 1980. Graphics have been improved for this PS1 release. It doesn’t introduce three-dimensional graphics. There is also some slight modifications made in the game play. Activision was the publisher of this PS1 version of this game.

All in all this is  a nice little game. It didn’t keep me playing for a long time. It is although interesting to me at this time of my hobby as a game enthusiast. It is  not difficult to figure out why this game was popular when it was remade for PS1.

As I read the Wikipedia page of Space Invaders I realize that there was a big difference in the arcade version and the console (Atari 2600) version of this game. During that period gaming consoles located at home weren’t as powerful as specially crafted devices that were placed inside arcades. I really don’t know much about their technology.

Things like game consoles and computers are things I know a bit more about. If you are interested in arcade machines and games you could play with them you might want to check this site: https://www.mamedev.org/

Thinking About Strategy in Colin McRae Rally 2.0

Posted on by Viljami

There are basically two ways to think about your car settings in Colin McRae Rally 2.0. You can concentrate on driving and copy the best settings from a strategy guide (which is actually available through internet for free) or you can actually test your car with different settings and change them to your own liking. Testing your car to find a good setting can take time. In this text I would like to describe how these settings take impact on your car in this game. I will tell you what each setting will do. So let’s get to it!

There are different settings in this game for tires. Basically you have slick tires that are good for stages that are mainly driven on tarmac. Spikes are good for ice. There are also settings for wet and dry mud and wet and dry gravel. So yo have to choose your tires based on how the surface of the road is. This is pretty simple. You just choose a right tires for each type of road surface.

There are however some settings that aren’t so clear on what they have effect on. Well, actually “gearbox” isn’t so complicated. You can set your acceleration to maximum level but then you loose some top speed. And you can also set your top speed to maximum and you will lose some acceleration. Good acceleration is nice for stages that have many corners and high top speed is better on stages that have long straight parts. That makes sense doesn’t it.

“Suspension” can be adjusted to soft setting on stages that are bumpy or that have many jumps. When driving on flat stages and also stages that have tarmac on their road it is recommended to adjust suspension to hard. You can also adjust your breaks and power of your car to have a tendency to under or over steer. And finally the last setting you have to worry about, that is called “Steering” tells you how sensitively you can steer your car. It can react fast or it can react a bit slower to how you turn your driving wheel (or press the buttons if you are playing this game with a game pad).

If you don’t like to fiddle with the settings and you want to just drive here’s a link to the strategy guide of Colin McRae Rally 2.0.

Some of my experiences with Gran Turismo

Posted on by Viljami

I first played Gran Turismo on Sony PlayStation. It was my first full game that came with the used console I had bought. My PS1 had also some demo discs included. I didn’t really get in to using racing wheel. And the game didn’t in my opinion necessarily need one. PS1 had many great driving games. I definitely enjoyed also Colin McRae Rally series as its first two games were released on Sonys first gaming console.

Gran Turismo was something amazing. It was released in 1998. It brought realistic graphics and gameplay to console gaming systems racing games. You could also test and upgrade your vehicles. You could buy new cars and tune them and buy more parts. It had over 150 different cars. You got money from completing races and finishing on top positions. There just were so many goals you could try to achieve. Think for example collecting all the cars the game offers.

You can see the second Gran Turismo game on this posts image. I never really played that. I didn’t play GT3 or GT4. But the game I did play some years after getting into the first game was the fifth game of this series. Racing gamers have seen many good games that were developed after the first Gran Turismo. I can name for example Richard Burns Rally and Dirt 3. In my humble opinion GT5 doesn’t come close to these. It is named as Gran Turismo 5 and it is a good game. But…do you have to play it just because it has a strong brand and some earlier games in this series were good? Is that good enough reason? I don’t think so…

Gran Turismo 3 and 4 were great games. I broke my PS2 a while ago so I couldn’t play these on it. And I don’t know if these games have aged well. Racing fans just have so many alternatives to turn to. Dirt Rally 1 and 2.0 have been released and also we can add Dirt 4 to this list. There is already one new Gran Turismo (Sport) that was released for PS4. There does exist some good racing games available only for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. We are not going to go there…

How Resident Evil (1/2/3) made you feel anxiety?

Posted on by Viljami

The first Resident Evil game made you feel anxiety in a way that was never seen before in history of horror games. There was formed a new genre that would be called survival horror. Resident Evil took strong influences from adventure games and converted it to be presented in three dimensional world. We had seen already some Alone In The Dark games that used different camera angles to deliver its horror to us players.

Resident Evil had some shooting and zombies took lots of bullets. You had only limited amount of ammo. You had to think when is a good time and place to save the game. This was also limited. This was a result of some very clever game design that made you actually feel like it then felt. I think today you wouldn’t have so many chances of creating tension inside a game this way. In almost every modern game, if you can compare it to original Resident Evil, you have the opposrtunity to save the game and change camera angle. You rarely find these kinds of effects used in todays games.

The first three games of the series were released on PS1. I think the second RE game was the best of these. And it stands out today as one of the best games that I have played on PlayStation 1 gaming console. This was my first touch to horror gaming. I have found some good games inside this genre later that include some titles that represent a modern view of Resident Evil. Only horror game series that comes even close in comparison is Silent Hill. And if you have a debate on which one’s better that is an endless discussion. They both have their own styles and there are lots of different games included. Let’s just say that comparing them is difficult.

If you want to get to know RE better I suggest that you start from the first game of this series. If asked, I would prefer the original rather than a remake. All of the three first games are good. Resident Evil Zero is also very good and playable. If you have played newer RE games I advice you to also check the earlier games as you will probably find them very interesting.

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