Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: space

Nintendo Switch Games Do Not Take A Lot of Shelf Space

Posted on by Viljami

I have 23 games, exactly, for my Nintendo Switch console. Well, actually I have also some games that came only as a “code-in-the-box”. So, they didn’t have a cartridge at all. You can also buy games for Switch digitally so you don’t need even the box of the game at all.

Today I got for myself three more games for Switch. These games were Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, G-Darius HD and Signalis. I also bought a new game cartridge case that gives me space for 24 more games. It also has space for some memory cards. A case like this cost me about 18 euros. I find it comfortable to store my games in a case like this. And it is official licensed as a Nintendo Switch product.

Switch is also in all ways very comfortable gaming system because you don’t need a whole lot of space for it. You can even use it in portable mode if your screen or television is used by some other member of your family or your room mate or someone else. You can even buy Switch Lite which is cheaper model of Nintendo Switch that however doesn’t provide a possibiltity to connect to an external screen. I think Switch Lite costs today about 200 euros while you can get the regular Switch for a bit undeer 300 euros.

What makes my mind inspired is the thing how little of my shelf space is used by these tiny game cartridges. Nintendo has always been original, so to say, in it’s decisions with the design of it’s gaming consoles. This has been the way for a long time already. I am kind of glad that they have this courage to try out different ways to provide players this unique experience.

There have already been some rumors around that there would be a new Switch console to be released soon. Actually I heard it was coming next year (2024). I am not going deeply to the details but it was said that it would be capable to producing 4K graphics quality. We are living in exciting times!

Nintendo Switch 2 would then be the newest gaming console that would be in the markets. There are of course many questions waiting to be answered. It might not be such a surprise if you would find some content even in this blog you are currently reading. I have touched this topic earlier. You can have a look in our archives if you are interested in what I have written previously about this subject. I have added some new elements to the user interface of this blog or website that should make it even a bit easier to find content here. Please use these means if you feel that you want to read more posts in this blog. Fell also free to drop a message to my guestbook.

It is truly amazing to find out that you can fit over 20 games to such a small space on your gaming book shelf. I have on the same shelf also some GameCube games and they take up way more space. This also is a feature that makes your NES games look like fools. They take so much space on the shelf while being also very small in tehcnical ways. Maybe the best way to store games would be to have an external SSD that would contain everything you have in your game collection. Maybe we are heading towards that, who knows?

New 2 TB SSD for PC

Posted on by Viljami

I have a small SSD, it has 256 GB of space and I also currently have a HDD with 500 GB of space. While the space that modern games take is all the time increasing I decided to get some more space. I think also I should have thought about this issue before I bought my PC. I bought it a year ago. If you are thinking about buying a new PC I can say that you propably need a large SSD to store all your games.

I finally decided to upgrade my PC with a new SSD that has 2TB of space. IT wasn’t cheap. IT cost almost 200 euros. But I wanted to make this investment so that I could play also the latest PC games. I have a good PC to play these games with so why not make the upgrade.

One of my favorite games on PC is Dirt Rally 2.0. It takes almost 130 GB of space. So one game can take almost 200 GB of space. IT makes me think about if 2 TB is also enough. Would you need even a bigger SSD? That’s when you start to think about your gaming budget. This 2 TB SSD cost about 200 euro. There were larger SSDs of this same model but the price would be 380 euros for 4 TB and 780 for 8 TB. If I would like to build a computer of my dreams I maybe would put some more money into this but for now 2 TB must be where I draw the line.

It would be nice to purchase the latest hardware but it would be finally a huge investment of money. If you think about how much would CPU and GPU cost and what other parts would you need the cost would be enormous. And it would cost way more than you would spend for a new gaming console like PS5 or Xbox Series S/X.

I bought my PC a year ago for just under 800 euros. I had to make some compromises. I couldn’t buy such a PC that would be perfrect but this purchase I was actually very comfortable with. I use PC for many other things also than for gaming. I use it to program and make music also and those activities don’t require so much from the hardware.

I am about to replace my 500 GB HDD with this new 2TB SSD very soon. I hope everything goes nicely and I get to install some games. Thanks again for reading. It is also nice that there is a sale on Steam that begins tomorrow so maybe I also pick up some new PC games.

Sine Mora EX – A Modern Space Shooter

Posted on by Viljami

I wrote a post some time ago about space shooters. I have played many nice shooters mainly on Mega Drive. So the thought about getting into a more recent game in this genre was interesting. Sine Mora EX is modernized side scrolling two dimensional flying and shooting game. Graphics are clearly today’s graphics, there are some modes to choose from, you can save the game and play with two players cooperatively.

I bought this game, again, from some sale a while ago. The price was very low. I think it was about ten euros. The game has been released in 2017. I checked how long would it take for an average player to get through this game and the website tells me that it takes about two and a half hours. I have played it now for five and a half hours. As I’m not a professional game player it takes some time for me to finish especially this type of game. The genre isn’t one that I would have lots of experience with. But things do get interesting as I delve deeper into what this game has to offer.

Basically your mission is to avoid ammunition that is shot at you and at the same time you have shoot your enemies before they kill you. You get, I think, randomly some updates to your weapon and more time and some other important updates. You can even get a shield for you plane. When you get hit you loose all your weapon upgrades that give your weapon more power and you can then collect them back to you if you are fast enough. There are also updates for your planes speed. Time can run out. You get more time when you kill enemies or get an update. When you get hit you lose also time. You have ten lives and when time finally runs out you lose one life and you have to start from the latest checkpoint.

The game is exciting. It may seem to be a bit repetitive as games in this genre might sometimes be. As I played this game today I spent many hours playing it. So it keeps you well captured while it still is a smaller and more of a casual game. It’s nice to play this type of game that doesn’t require so much work in getting into it and actually learning how to play it. It can be a nice introduction to this whole genre. I hope I have the time to learn to play this game a bit more. In overall this game is good and it delivers a nice shooting experience tweaked into a modern gaming experience.

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/

Short Retro Moment

Posted on by Viljami

So this game is actually “Space Commanders”. It was released as a DOS game back in 1983. This is actually a game that I remember playing as a very young kid. This was made possible by the fact that I was extremely interested in computers when I was a young boy. There really weren’t any real violence in this game or I was too young to understand it. It is a game where you shoot objects but thanks to poor graphical presentation the deeper meaning of this game didn’t really come clear. Nowadays it is more important as the graphics are better to make sure that the content of the game is appropriate.

This is actually a clone of well known classic called “Space invaders”. I tried Space Commanders after so many years. It’s design is very interesting. I could be interested to see its source code. I don’t know if it is possible. Maybe I use my favorite search engine to find more information. I didn’t see, at least yet, who has designed this game.

I see already some structures in this game. I mean I understand some concepts and some designed features. I almost see the code in front of my eyes but not so clearly. The game works like this. You have a space ship that you can move to up, down, left and right. You can also shoot a bullet. Your mission is to shoot these, we can call them invaders, that are moving towards you. The game ends when invaders reach the bottom of the screen. Invaders move in, is that, six rows or in some kind of a formation. I don’t describe the movement so accurately.

There is a high score chart. It holds only the best score and the score gets deleted if you exit the game. After you have shot all the invaders you get back to where the game started and you face the next group of enemies. They  are a bit faster this time. At the top of the screen there is a randomly appearing space ship that moves from left to right. If you shoot it you will get a bonus score. When you get 10000 points you get one ship more for you to use. So you have limited lives or fighting ships to use.

This was a nice short moment for me to play my dear, now so retro, game. I remember playing the EGA version while this game was in CGA. I mean actually that this game is black and white while EGA version had some colors. It definitely brought some memories to my mind. And if you wonder what kind of a computer I played this with back then I can tell you that it had a 286 processor. I can’t remember accurately any more details about the computer.

There’s Something About Space Shooters

Posted on by Viljami

There is a genre of video games that is called “shoot-em-ups” or “shmups” for short. These shooter types of games have been in my mind since I was a child. I am not sure where I picked up these memories. It was probably from some arcade, restaurant, bar or some other place that I spotted a game or few that were about space, shooting and monsters. The game I have in my mind, or the memory of it, takes place in some space related environment. There are blinking dragons and a flying star fleet ship that is shooting that thing.

Of course this isn’t any real game. It was some unknown game that I had seen somewhere. It is however true that there were games like this, space shoot-em-ups, in the end of the 80s in arcades (for example). When the hottest gaming device was Sega Mega Drive they marketed the gaming console with a promise that it would bring arcades to living rooms of our homes. Maybe the graphics weren’t as impressive but they were something at that time. They were a bit more detailed than those NES games we had seen some years earlier. And the sound that was generated was better in pure quality also.

The screenshot that is related to this  blog post is taken from a game that is called Gynoug. I’m not sure if it is qualified as a space shoot-em-up but it for sure is a shoot-em-up. This game represents the genre. Playing this game can give some view about the it. It is often said that Mega Drive games are hard to play and that they repeat themselves a lot. I am mentioning also the fact that there was no way for the player to save the game and this caused the game usually to be very repetitive. I can understand this better when I think about what kind of a deal it was to design and program a game in 1990s. So the game development methods weren’t as advanced as nowadays. Maybe someone should desing more new games for Mega Drive today?

The influence these games gave to the whole industry of game development is undeniable. The key to success inside space shoot-em-ups is to move to correct direction at correct time and shooting all of time and accurately. I can already see how programmers coded the behavior of the monster you are shooting. Often you can recognize the pattern. Then you move according to where you see you have the position that enables you to not get hit by a missile or any other particle that is headed at you. This can be fun. Nowadays you do see the limitations of the games designed in the past. Althought there is a lot to learn from these games. I definitely recommend you to play some shooter game like this. This game can be Zero Wing, M.U.S.H.A. or Gynoug but there are also other good ones.

Introducing Cash Invaders (MS-DOS) (2002)

Posted on by Viljami

When the file sizes were smaller and graphics simpler there was a time when small games (I don’t know if there’s a good, English, term for these) had a place in a players hearth. Maybe they even had their place inside the computers operating system and more precisely the file system. That depended on how well the user of the computer had organized his or her hard drive space. You had to remove games sometimes to free some space. So you just couldn’t launch all of them. You had to make a choice.

Nowadays you rarely need to go through your hard drive trying to figure out what software to keep installed. You sometimes have to. I think it is stupid and slow. Did you nag about PS4s small hard drive? Do you think PS5 has too small amount of space included? Well, think about me trying to expand my hard drive, by updating my hardware, to be about 16 GB in the beginning of the 2000s. Do you get the picture..? We are super retro right here, you know.

If you have never played Space Invaders you might not get why I am writing about this clone of a classic. I actually didn’t play the original game but I did play a cloned game that was called Space Commander. The idea is to try to shoot some sort of “space bugs” that are moving slowly towards the player. Bugs are moving row after row. There are some good strategies for trying to beat this game but I think we are not going to go inside them so deeply. If these bugs reach the player the game is over. As a some sort of plot the game describes that these things you are shooting are aliens and you are a space soldier trying to block their way from destroying the whole planet Earth.

Cash Invaders saw the daylight in 2002. For me there is no nostalgia. I didn’t play it back then. It caught my attention as I was going through a library of DOS games found from the internet. It takes about 420 kilo Bytes of space. As I am crawling through internet to find more information about the game I arrive at a website that is dedicated solely to Cash Invaders. I feel happy. I didn’t find this through Google. I found it the way I have always found interesting homepages – through web pages that are linked to each other. On this website you can find the download of some versions of the game and there’s also a list of high scores. You can also find some pictures. The website is funny and I feel some nostalgic vibes when I read the contents and see the graphics.

This is the website

So there’s 100 levels. I reached level 16 on my first attempt. I read that the developers used some sampled sounds (from a movie “Independence Day”). Some sounds were taken from other smaller games. The graphics of the game are nice. A bit of 3D modelling also included. The game is nicely designed. I have only played a bit of this game so I didn’t get to the “cash system” but I think there is a way to upgrade your space ship as you collect coins from destroyed bugs. In overall it is a very nice and small DOS game that I can warmly recommend to any player that likes DOS content. See you on the next post. Have a nice day.

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