Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

What Kind of a Video Game Shopper I Am?

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am going to describe what kind of a video game shopper I am. What games, devices and/or consoles I do buy? I make purchases often from different web shops and also sometimes from actual physically existing stores and I also sometimes buy games from flea markets that are located near where I live.

I got some inspiration from a recent purchase of some PS2 games. You can see the titles that I purchased in the featured image of this blog post. I did buy seven PS2 games and also one PS1 game that was a bit cheaper one since it was in a mediocre condition. It didn’t have the front cover and also the box was a bit damaged. Although the disc was in a good condition. That game is not visible in the image but I can tell you that the game was Ridge Racer Revolution. That game alone cost me nine euros.

I buy sometimes used PS2 and PS1 games. I currently don’t have a working PS2 in my setup. I do have a PSOne console that works just fine. I mainly use it when I do want to play something on a real hardware. It is nice to play some games that need several discs with it. After I have bought a PS1 or PS2 game I rip it with an external DVD drive to an ISO file and then transfer it to my retro computer. I have a Batocera setup and also Recalbox for Raspberry Pi 5. I use Recalbox for PS1 games and a bit more powerful PC for Batocera with which I play my PS2 games.

I have a medium sized collection of Sega Mega Drive games. I have only some tens of games that many of are the ones I already owned back in my youth. I did have also some PS1 games and a console that I unfortunately sold just before getting into studying into high school. I am still a bit confused about selling all that stuff. Back then I though I wouldn’t play games and I was thinking more towards my studying. I was thinking very differently back then because now I seem to still love playing video games and also retro games.

To describe me as a video game shopper a bit more thoroughly I should tell you that I do buy new games also. I have also a PS4 for which I own maybe one hundred games. I really haven’t properly counted them. I also have a collection of games for PS3. The newest consoles I own are Switch 2 and Xbox Series X. I also play some games on my Windows PC. Sometimes I play DOS games and I do have a small collection of big box games. So, I do buy new games and also PC big box games. Sometimes I even buy a game that is in its CD case only.

I bought a GameCube some years ago. I have some tens of games for it. I really actually play GameCube games today on an emulator. That goes with Xbox and Xbox 360 games also. I have owned an original Xbox and also a Xbox 360 but they eventually broke down and I decided to remove them from my setup. Luckily today there are good emulators for these consoles on a Windows PC that you can play many good games on.

Flea markets are fun places where you can find almost anything. I just recently found for example Need for Speed Payback for Xbox One for a cheap price of about six or five euros. Aside of being a video game shopper I also buy movies as DVDs, Blurays and 4K discs. I also like buying books from flea markets for a cheap price.

I like to buy some cheap games. As prices of retro games are going up I am going to try to keep the games that I own to myself and buy some more cheap games. I am not a person that would buy games that cost hundreds of euros. There is also a place in my hearth for emulation and game roms. If you are somewhat like me I can recommend to you a good website that holds many game roms and that site is called “Vimm’s Lair”. You can probably find it from your favorite search engine online.

Video Games Transition from Toys to Entertainment

Posted on by Viljami

Video games might have been considered to be somewhat childish back in the days. We gamers of course know a lot about this matter and might have a better point of view on the topic. What I am going to write you about in this blog post is how the large audience was thinking about video games.

With playing video games we basically went from games being considered to be some kinds of toys for small children. This was the popular way to think back in the early 1980s to maybe the middle of 1990s. The gaming console that actually made video games to be a seriously taken entertainment that was suitable also for adults was PlayStation 1. It was released in 1994. One the games that defined the new role video games was that game on this blog posts featured image. The game is Metal Gear Solid.

There were also many other good quality games that were released for PS1 when it was the most newest and most powerful gaming console on the markets. You can find a list using your favorite search engine but let me make a brief list of some of them right here. Games I want to include here are the first three Resident Evil games, first two Gran Turismo games, Final Fantasy series, Crash Bandicoot and Colin McRae Rally games. There are many others also that I haven’t included here.

The hardware was developing quickly. Suddenly it was possible to save your game. The optical CD-ROM discs could offer more space for a video game. It was possible to offer some tens of hours of playing time. This wasn’t the case with some earlier gaming consoles like Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Mega Drive. However PS1 didn’t have a hard disk. It relied on memory cards that could be purchased for your PlayStation console. This was how PlayStation 2 also handled saving games. The capacity of a PS1 memory card was 1 MB while PS2 had 8 MB memory cards.

The graphics of video games were moving strongly towards three-dimensional environments. The graphical content was improving in quality while professionals tried to do their job while the technology was improving in a fast pace. This was also for me personally a period of time that I started to think about some day being able to make a video game by myself. This can tell you just how strongly I was beginning to have a this sort of feeling towards gaming. I wanted to be involved in some way.

For me a dream like making your own video game has been in my mind since those days. I was 14 years old when I bought my PS1 console. Exploring these games three-dimensional environments was a very fun thing to do. I was amazed how now also some persons that were over ten years older than me had an interest towards gaming. The shift from being considered as toys to being a seriously taken form of entertainment had begun.

For me playing video games has been a hobby. Programming a full game is a project that takes a lot of work. There are many easy to use tools available today. Today I am working in the field of information technology but making video games is not my current job. I have actually found some other ways to be involved. I know a bit about programming but I am not so confident in being a professional programmer today.

It can be a subject of debate if SNES or PS1 was the first console to have games that could be considered as serious entertainment also for adults. One console that is usually mentioned in this discussion is Sega’s last console Dreamcast. Dreamcast was more powerful than PS1. It was on the markets only for some years and then it was discontinued by Sega. It is a common matter to say that playing PS1 was like listening to rock while playing Dreamcast was like listening to jazz.

Gears of War – Ultimate Edition

Posted on by Viljami

Gears of War – Ultimate Edition is a remake of the original Gears of War that was released for Xbox 360 back in 2006. It was also released for Windows. It is an exclusive game for Xbox. There has been some discussion about exclusive games and we have already seen a Gears of War game released for a PlayStation 5. We also have seen Silent Hill 2 (remake) getting released as a digital version for Xbox’s latest console which are Xbox Series X and S. Also now when Nintendo also has its very powerful console, Switch 2, it is also possible for it to compete. Nintendo does have these own type of games it likes to release that are quite different from what some other consoles have.

While Gears of War is a already a strong brand among game enthusiasts I personally haven’t played it a lot. I do have some experience on playing the first game in this series on my Xbox. I really cannot remember if I was playing on my Series X or 360. I enjoyed the game but couldn’t beat it after all. I just got stuck and finally lost interest. I hate when I end up in this situation. I would like to play the game with a flow mode and play it all the way to the end. Fortunately it isn’t today such a shame to look up some advice online if you need some.

Gears of War – Ultimate Edition seems to be a perfect game if you want to catch up before trying to play games like Gears of War 4 and the fifth game in the series that is titled just “Gears 5”. There is still a lot for me to play when it comes to Gears of War titles. Ultimate Edition was released in 2015 right before Gears of War 4 was released. That moment was 2016.

I can very much recommend Ultimate Edition especially if you haven’t played any Gears of War games before. It is obvious that in this game it is necessary to aim well and keep yourself in cover almost constantly. It takes several hits to drop an enemy. You also get to throw some grenades. There are many types of enemies that are trying to come and get you. You have some teammates that can die and when that happens you can also revive them. I really only play the single player mode but there is a multiplayer of some sort also available. The camera angle is in third person or over-the-shoulder.

I have only spent something like two hours playing Ultimate Edition. I really like the game. I am playing it now on my Xbox Series X with my Elite 2 controller. It did cost almost 150 euros. The regular Xbox controller does cost if there aren’t any discounts something like 60 euros. I can definitely feel the difference. The Elite controller is more responsive and sensitive enough. It might be also a good purchase if you are into eSports and/or some competitive gaming. It is a bit sad that Microsoft doesn’t offer such a high quality controller as a default but that is just the way it is. You nowadays sometimes have to pay a bit more for quality. I also did buy some years back the official extra disk space unit which was for me the 1 TB version. This was also a very expensive purchase but it also improved the experience in overall.

I was checking a day back or something like that about if I should get an Xbox One console. I found out that consoles One and Series X do support the same amount of original Xbox games. If One would have supported more of these I would have been very interested in getting one. The amount of original Xbox games supported is only 63 out of all over 2500 games. As I do have loads of original Xbox games the only ways for me to play them seems to be buying a working used Xbox or playing these games on an emulator.

I also have lots of Xbox 360 games that aren’t supported by Series X. So I would need also maybe a used and working Xbox 360 console. Question seems to be how long will these consoles last if I purchase them? It seems to me that I will be playing these games on emulator. The options seem to be Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB of RAM) and Recalbox and my old desktop PC with Batocera installed. I actually think that with Batocera it is possible if you have a powerful PC to play games up to PS3 and Xbox 360. Actually I think that also PS4 emulation might be possible at least soon.

I did find some more games from my gaming shelf. I picked the first Forza Horizon, Xcom UFO Unknown and Army of Two and also one Xbox One game that was Alien Isolation. We are going to see a sequel for it soon I think. I have tens of Xbox 360 games on the shelf just waiting for me to get to play them. I wish I had more time to play also these titles.