Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: 90s

Fighting Force (PS1)

Posted on by Viljami

Fighting Force is a fighting game in three-dimensional world for PlayStation 1. It was released back in 1997. I remember this game very well. I did only play the demo version of this game back in the day but decided now just some days earlier to give it a try. First I checked if it would be a game that would require a long playing time. As I usually do I went to How Long To Beat and checked this matter. Playing this game through would take approximately three and a half hours.

So, it is a bit of a short game but I decided to start playing it and I already felt it would have something to give to me as a retro gamer and a huge fan of PS1 games. I would compare this game to some fighting games that were released earlier for Sega Mega Drive. Of course the graphics are three-dimensional and better than what Mega Drive was able to offer. Although the playing style, you basically just beat your enemies up, is very similar. You get score bonuses and health updates. You also get to use melee weapons and even some guns and grenades. The amount of ammunition is very limited. Grenades make a very powerful explosions and you often end up hurting yourself also in Fighting Force.

It takes a while for you to get really into Fighting Force. I played the game through with one of the four main characters – Hawk. You also get to choose the difficulty level from easy to medium to hard. This does give this game some replay value. In this game you can hit or kick. Jumping is also possible. You can also try to kick your enemies while you are running to make a kick in the air or try to slide on the ground and hit your enemies. It is necessary to try to pick up health bonuses or weapons that these enemies do drop. You can also wreck your environments. At the end of a level you might get continues if you have gathered enough of a score. There are possibilities at some points also to save your progress which feels comfortable.

There is a bit of a variation between the enemies in Fighting Force. Some of them keep healing and you have to beat them quickly or they will heal themselves fully. Some enemies can hit you with a strong punch and you have to run away from them at times. Some enemies can give you electric shocks that make you hit the ground. It is also important to try to kick your enemy if it gets knocked to the ground for a while. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time to understand these basic tactics when you are trying to beat this game.

Back in 1997 Fighting Force was a new PlayStation 1 game. Now it is a solid peace of gaming history. It was very interesting to go back to this game. You can compare it to some of the greatest games of this era. I am comparing it to maybe the first two Resident Evil games which offered something very similar graphically but that had already a deep plot and some more advanced ways to make the player more involved to playing the game. While Fighting Force is a bit simple as a retro video game it still manages to offer something for a retro gamer and a PS1 fan like myself.

If you have a chance to play this game and you do like PlayStation 1 games I can definitely recommend Fighting Force. Just don’t expect too much of it as a game experience. It sure can bring some memories and also nostalgia to a retro gamer. It was nice to go back in time and play this game for some hours.

Some Turtles Stuff

Posted on by Viljami

I was playing today a fairly new Turtles game called Splintered Fate for Nintendo Switch. I was playing it on my Switch 2. Just recently I have also bought the Turtles movie trilogy in 4K. I also had the Cowabunga collection that features plenty of Turtles games from the past. I am a big fan of Turtles. Of course I have been a fan since I was a child.

So the trilogy includes the original movies that were made back in the beginning of the 1990s. I like to own this collection. Having these movies as 4K is very nice as an experience. When I was a kid I was so young that I wasn’t able to go to see the first two movies in a cinema but the third one I at least got to see. I am watching these movies with my 4K television and Xbox Series X. I did also get a sort of a discount. Currently the trilogy does cost about 76 euros. Also I have to remind that these movies don’t have Finnish subtitles. I liked to tell you about this in case you my dear reader are from Finland or from any other non-English country and are wondering about this matter. I didn’t actually find any difficulties with the level of English I have currently.

The Cowabunga Collection features many retro games from systems like NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive / Genesis and also from arcade. It is kind of nice to have the disc and also the cover case. Although I wouldn’t mind if I only had this collection as a digital edition. Also many of these games are already available for me to play on my retro computer that happens to be my Raspberry Pi 5 that runs Recalbox. But if you like to get into some retro style of Turtles games and happen to also see this collection available I can definitely recommend it.

What about the Switch game – Splintered Fate? I am actually still playing this one and I have only spent a bit over two hours playing it. It is cool how they have made the game as a Turtles themed one. The game reminds me a lot about Hades. I used to play Hades about a year or two ago. Also there was Hades II released just some moments ago. There is a lot of repetition. I think that it would have been nice to see a deeper story evolving during the game but the game actually isn’t a bad one.

This tiny collection is just a part of my huge collection of video games and movies. I wanted in this blog post to display it to you my dear readers and tell you about my passion towards Turtles. I know I have some other collectibles also but I think a huge part of them are still in my parents house where I lived my childhood in back in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. I did have Turtles action figures, some comic magazines and also a board game. I also had a pair of running shoes themed with Turtles but I think they aren’t anymore in any condition at all. Actually I think we threw them eventually away as is usual with old clothes.

Some of this Turtles stuff is related to my childhood closely. I sometimes like to reminisce about all this stuff. It brings me so many memories. I used to watch Turtles cartoons especially on weekend mornings. We used to wake up with my brother because we were used to waking up since we were in school every weekday morning as is usual in where I live.

So, Splintered Fate is a decent video game. Cowabunga Collection offers a lot of nostalgia. Turtles 4K Trilogy offers you the collection of these original movies. If you are interested in this stuff just look around in your favorite shop of games and see if they have these available. Splintered Fate is also available for PC and PS5 and Xbox Series S/X as is also The Cowabunga Collection and they are both released as a digital and also a physical copy. There was my take on Turtles for this time.

 

Aladdin (Sega Mega Drive)

Posted on by Viljami

Aladdin is a very good Sega Mega Drive game. It isn’t a long one but it surely is of a good quality. It only takes about two to three hours to complete. This is what we were actually used to back in the beginning of the 90s. So, I am writing this whole blog post about this game Aladdin.

As there have been some discussion about the release of Neo Geo console I have to make a brief comparison of these systems. Sega Mega Drive as a gaming console had a completely different strategy if compared to Neo Geo. The latter one seemed to invest in power and also had a higher price. Mega Drive was competing with Nintendo’s NES and was a whole lot cheaper gaming system. This also meant that the games weren’t as impressive graphically. This did also mean that Mega Drive was available to more consumers and was way more popular than Neo Geo.

Sega Mega Drive is also very important to me personally. I do have today maybe 40 games for this system. I do have also still every game that our family had when I was kid back in the 90s. I have kept them and haven’t sold any of them. I also have the console which is replaced in my gaming setup by Retro Trio since it you can play also SNES and NES, and also Master System and Game Boy games with the adapters I own, games. This way my setup doesn’t take so much space. I sometimes use real hardware and sometimes I play games with an emulator. I do buy games for Mega Drive at times and Aladdin is one these games that I have bought.

I remember buying Aladdin for a decent price. I think it was 40 or 60 euros. And this was already maybe two years ago. It might be difficult to try to find the actual physical copy of the game from a web shop. It is a bit of a rare game although it isn’t the rarest of all Mega Drive games. What really makes some games expensive is if they are good games and if there have been only a low amount of copies produced in the first place.

Aladdin as a video game gives everything that a Mega Drive game can give. The 2D graphics look beautiful on the system. The game is all about slight problem solving combined with platformer elements and some moments of action. The main character can jump and sling his sword at the enemy characters that usually take maybe three or four hits and then they disappear. There is a lot of jumping and path finding. The game play fits perfectly for Mega Drive’s original pad that only has three buttons along with the start button and the directional buttons.

I can definitely recommend Aladdin if you like games from this era. Playing this game is a must if you love Disney’s Mega Drive games. There was this certain appeal in these two-dimensional environments. The graphics look very nice. The game doesn’t last but only two to three hours as I already mentioned in this blog post.

Today is Saturday and it is also the time for schools to shut down for the summer vacation times here in Finland. I do remember when I was that young. It has been a long time. I also do have a summer vacation. It is for four weeks. In Finland it is common to have a long summer break be it that you were a student or an employee. I know that it is common in USA to take only a two weeks break at maximum per year. This is how different some things are if you compare USA and Finland. This is actually my 400th post to this blog!