Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Category: Retro

The Highlights of Xbox Series X

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am going to go through how I actually feel and think about some experiences of Xbox Series X. We are going to take a look at this console while its lifespan has lasted right now almost five years. There are new consoles going to get released, some this year, some later, and it is a good time to take a look back on what this console, Xbox Series X, had to offer. Soon it will not anymore be the newest console.

I remember back in 2020 that I was thinking about how my PS4 would not be the newest console anymore. In the fall of 2020 we saw PS5 and Xbox Series S/X released. Being the newest gaming console can be a sort of a responsibility. We are used to seeing new consoles getting released every about seven years or so. While PS4 hasn’t been the newest console in years I, and many other gamers, have been playing on their PS4s during these years. I am very glad, since I haven’t to this day bought a PS5, that the newest games for PlayStation were also available for PS4. Some of these games are Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man (the first and Miles Morales) and God of War (the first game and Ragnarök).

Back in 2021 (I wasn’t the first one to absorb this time) I first bought Xbox Series S. We were well in the pandemia which begun already in 2020. There was a huge shortage concerning about PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. There were lots of consumers that would had liked to buy a console but couldn’t. I would have bought an Xbox Series X at first but it just wasn’t available. I finally got my Xbox Series X maybe a year later or something like that. Nintendo, in the mean time, was selling lots of Switch consoles as the shortage didn’t affect it so much.

I ended up buying also Xbox Series X because I already had a 4K capable television and I liked the thing that Series X had more space for installing games and it provided the means to watch actual 4K movies through optical 4K discs. I also ended up buying the official disk space upgrade. I always thought it was very expensive. I did buy the option that included 1 TB of extra space. Xbox Series X also provided a better screen resolution and was more powerful in running the games.

Besides playing games Xbox Series X provides the ability that actually lacks in PS4 of playing music CDs. It is also capable to watch DVDs, Blurays and 4K movies that are sold as optical discs. You can also enjoy games and movies in digital format. I have had a smart television so I haven’t actually used my Xbox Series X as a media center. I do watch video content on my TV and I don’t actually use my Xbox console in that way.

I would like to mention and give some thanks to the Xbox app that I installed on my Android smart phone soon after I had installed my Series X. It is very nice. The way you can share and save your actual screenshots is very nice. I have to say that PS4 performs poorly in this manner. Using PS4 you have to have a USB memory stick to move your screenshots to your PC where you can then transfer them to some social media whenever you have a need like this. Nintendo also doesn’t perform so swiftly in this field. The Xbox app is very functional and many of these Series X screenshots I have shared at Instagram or in this blog have been processed using the app. You can also see from the app how long have you been playing a game and also track your overall Xbox gaming score.

What about the games? Lets first talk about the backwards compatibility. Series X i compatible with 63 out of 989 original Xbox games, 632 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games and all of Xbox One games. This makes the game library very strong. The console already has almost 3000 games that you are able to play. There is an idea also that if you like to play more Xbox 360 and/or original Xbox games you would actually like to have a dedicated and original console also. There are options to emulate the hardware also. But when it comes to Xbox Series X is does provide a nice, although not complete, support for older Xbox games.

Some good older games that can be played on a Series X are old Call of Duty series’s games, original Alan Wake, first three Bio Shock titles, some Silent Hill games, Max Payne series (first three games), Quake I and II, Split Second, Skyrim, Halo series and the Master Chief Collection, just to share some of my favorites. Some best new games, in my own opinion, include titles like Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport, Resident Evil 8, Alan Wake II, Diablo II Resurrected and Control.

All in all I have enjoyed Xbox Series X. Would I have done without it? In have to say maybe. I could have utilized an old Xbox 360. I could have bought only a new 4K movie player. There were only so few actual new games that got released. Right now my thoughts are into the soon to be released Nintendo Switch 2. It is getting its release 5th of June. It is very soon. Switch 2 then becomes the first game console in this new generation of consoles. I think Xbox Series X did well.

Today and also yesterday I have spent some time playing Hogwarts Legacy with my Series X. I finally found some time to do this. Also I am not going to  buy a new game for Series X for a while. I am going to wait for Switch 2 to get released. If I am a fortunate one I will buy Nintendo Switch 2. But that means that it is very much available soon after the launch. Happy Sunday to you my dear blog reader!

Is Sega Saturn Worth Your Time?

Posted on by Viljami

The story of Sega Saturn is, might I say, interesting. It was released in 1994 in Japan and in 1995 in Europe and North America. So, it was a competitor of the first PlayStation gaming console. To begin with Sony made its consoles price a bit lower. It had an edge because Saturn had already been released when the talks began about PlayStation and its pricing. If we look at sales numbers we can see that Sony sold a bit over 100 million PlayStations worldwide while Saturn sold somewhere around 15 million units also worldwide.

Why would you bother to take some time to get to know to a loser like this? Things aren’t always as clear as they might seem. There are some reasons why Saturn sold so badly. After all the sales figures can only tell so little about the variety of games, even some exclusives, that you just couldn’t experience elsewhere. Today Saturn is being recognized as an important part of history of video games. It sadly lost to its competitor or competitors as it couldn’t adapt as quickly to video games moving on to three-dimensional graphics. This was somewhat a start of an ending for Sega’s game console efforts. This wasn’t however its last misfortune but that’s another topic for another blog post.

How can you play Sega Saturn today? The legit way is to buy the hardware needed. You are then going to buy a Sega Saturn. It might cost around 200 euros. Maybe a bit less if you don’t buy it from a game shop. Maybe a bit more if the condition of the device is very good. You are going to also need some actual and physical games to play. Saturn games are somewhat rare to find. We haven’t seen and I doubt that we will ever see some sort of a mini console made out of Saturn. This might be a bit sad.

While always taking account on what is legal and what is not. Let me remind you that if you are going to play Saturn games on an emulator you would have to dumb your consoles BIOS to a file. Also you would have to rip every game from a Saturn type of a game disc that you actually own. Otherwise in terms we are going to an illegal zone.

If you consider game preservation it is definitely nice to have these places online like “Vimm’s Lair” (check from your DuckDuckGo search engine if you wish) that provide you with every single Saturn game ever released. If there aren’t any places that you can buy your Saturn games how are you going to manage to acquire a collection of Saturn games and maintain also a working Saturn console? Now that’s a question. What might the current copyright holders think about that? I think that if you don’t release remakes, or even even collections, of these classic titles the option seem to be very clear.

If you go for the emulation option it is nice to have a Rapberry Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM and install a Recalbox operating system to it. After that you are going to have to move your game roms and BIOS file to a proper location. You can then enjoy the game play using Xbox Series controller or some other USB connectable controller. I myself prefer the Xbox Series controller. If you choose you can also install, like Mednafen, on your Windows PC. The games run very well also there but it might be clumsy if you want your screen to be presented through a true television instead of your PCs screen.

After discussing about some philosophy about old retro-type games we can now finally present you which games to choose to play. The first one that I can recommend is Radiant Silvergun. It is a smooth space shooter where you control a space ship and move from bottom to up shooting these enemies that appear on the screen. A true space shooter is this game. This game was also recently remade for Nintendo Switch. So, you might want to check it out also.

Next game I am going to introduce to you has been also remade recently. The game is House of the Dead. This is something that you would probably play preferably with a optical gun but you can also play it with a controller. The game is very nice. You just shoot things that appear to the screen. You also need to reload your weapon almost constantly and try to not to shoot friendlies.

Two other games I like mention here are Panzer Dragoon and Nights Into Dreams. These are very good games. Panzer Dragoon is currently available for Switch. I don’t know why so many of these remakes appear for Switch. While making a list of best games on Saturn you cannot forget Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing which come directly from Sega. You probably can dig on and on and find more games that you like. If you need more games try Sonic games and Sega Rally.

Super Punch-Out!!

Posted on by Viljami

Super Punch-Out!! is a nice boxing game for Super Nintendo. It is kind of a remake made out of the NES title Punch-Out!!. It includes updated and better graphics and also very unique opponents that have special ways to box. For example the last opponent of The Minor Circuit, Bald Bull, has a punch that knocks you down to the floor no matter how much health your boxer has. Piston Hurricane has a long combo that you must dodge if you wish to win this boxer.

I really like how the game progresses. It is a bit repetitive as any 16-bit eras game can often be. In Super Punch-Out!! you have to box against the same opponents in the same tournament some times to achieve the progressing. I like how the opponents are designed. They look nice. I managed to get through Minor Circuit. There are also two other tournaments that you can compete in after you finish Minor Circuit. There is also one more tournament that is called Special Circuit. So, there are four tournaments in total in Super Punch-Out!!.

It took me some hours just to complete Minor Circuit. The way you actually play the game is simple but can take some time to adjust to. Super Punch-Out!! utilizes the SNES controller that already had several buttons along with directional buttons. This makes playing the game more easier and I think it makes the game also more enjoyable. You could think about some of the limitations of Sega Mega Drive controller that only has three buttons along the directional buttons.

You actually play Super Punch-Out!! with two buttons that you can land a punch with. If you press also forward button your boxer tries to land a punch to the head of the opponent. If you don’t press forward the punch gets directed to stomach area. You can also block and try to dodge your opponents punch. You can dodge to back or to left or right. You can also block a punch directed to your head or stomach area.

Every punch you attempt doesn’t necessarily hit. I think there is some randomness about when your punch actually hits. You cannot actually see clearly when to attempt to punch. And every opponents punch also doesn’t land also. This makes the game a bit more entertaining and more funnier to play. Some people might say that this makes the game a bit less realistic. I think this just improves the overall game-play after all.

There is another boxing game for this era of 16-bit gaming that I also like. This game is Greatest Heavyweights and it was released for Sega Mega Drive in 1993. If you like boxing games I think you will like Greatest Heavyweights also. If we compare this game to Super Punch-Out!! we can definitely see how Nintendo has invested in designing the details of the game. The characters are all very unique compared to Greatest Heavyweights and it tries to be more realistic and this might even seem to be a bit ordinary. In any way both of these games are very good products and very solid as video games.

All-in-all there are several good video games released originally for Super Nintendo. I think Nintendo dominated the field after it was released. I think the progression can be seen clearly from NES to Mega Drive and then to SNES and on to Sony PlayStation 1 and onward from there all the way to today’s devices. The technology seems to be developing even further. Sometimes it is definitely nice to play these retro games and try to enjoy these devices and the ways that they utilize the technology of their time.

When Games Had No Graphics at All

Posted on by Viljami

We’re you playing video games when there were no graphics at all? This screenshot is the featured image of today’s new blog post. As you can see there is only text content for the player and no graphics. You can see the title, “West of House”, and the score. You can also see how many commands you have given in the game. That value is displayed as “Moves”. There is also an opportunity to save a game. You progress in the game with writing commands like where to move and what items to pick up and how to use them. The player also has an inventory system that can be displayed with a proper command.

This game is a text adventure game called Zork 1 – The Great Underground Empire. It was released originally in the beginning of 1980s. As you can probably already figure the first computer and video games were many times very moderate when it comes to graphical performance. They had no graphics. Some of the best text adventure games that I have come across include the first version of the adventure game Leisure Suit Larry. There was also an interesting game called Colossal Cave Adventure. It was one of the first games ever released on computer. It was released already in the 1970s.

It is interesting for me to look back in the video game history as I am such a young person that games for me have always included graphics of some type. When I was a small boy I played many DOS games on our family’s PC. Even some of the adventure type games, many of them were released by Sierra, had some sort of graphics. Later we saw games from Lucas Arts that even had an user interface that utilized some mouse interactivity. So, these games had already a real user interface.

Playing a text adventure game that has no graphics can be very charming. Early in the game you become used to the limitations. While there are many functions in the game they are a bit harder to figure and image. So, this leaves a lot to your imagination. You have to figure out what are the main commands that can make you progress in the game. It helps if you have some experience in playing adventure games be it that they would have had some kind of graphics. You can get into text adventure games more easily if you know concepts like items, maps and/or inventory systems. In some games your character even has some kind of development that can be based on for example experience points. Your characters abilities can sometimes open new opportunities like some new function that is enabled as your character has a more advanced ability. Sometimes there can be a new option inside some conversation dialogue. This all is based on charaters abilities like intelligence, luck or strength that can have a value like a number from 1 to 10. So, this number increases when your character goes up a level. Sometimes you may have options on how to develop your character. Character progression is however considered to be more of a character of a role playing game. Most text adventure games aren’t considered role playing games.

I encourage you to try for example Zork 1 or its sequels. You can get an idea of the surroundings of the space or room you are in with a command like “look around”. Then you are beginning to find some points and items that you can interact with. The score tells you about your progression in the game. Text adventure games are a bit limited but they can be a fun way to experience something new. They sure tell us a lot about the history and origins of video and computer games. The first Zork game is considered abandonware and you can download it from internet and install it through Dosbox. You can maybe use a frontend like D-Fend Reloaded that I am personally using for this purpose.

 

The Huge Library of PS2 Games

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post is about PS2 games. Sony’s sequel to PlayStation was a huge success in many ways. There are almost 3500 games that have been ever released for this gaming console. In this post I am trying to create a picture of the whole meaning of this huge game library and how things are with games today.

PlayStation as a video game console affected the whole industry very strongly. Playing video games transformed from something you did for two or three hours sometimes to playing tens or even hundreds of hours of any game you chose to play. Before the first PlayStation we saw video games that weren’t so appealing especially for grown ups. Gaming was considered to be a thing only for young people and children.

This way of thinking changed when the first PlayStation was released. PS2 went even further and brought some advancements. PS2 is today the most popular gaming console ever. Even consoles like Switch, that’s still in production while I’m writing this, or Xbox 360 or the newer PS4, haven’t been able to sell as well.

PlayStation had many games that presented us gamers new kinds of worlds in a three-dimensional environment. PS2 games made these worlds even more deeper. As the console was released in the beginning of 2000s we saw many unforgettable and great games. These PS2 games were just some years ago very cheap but the prices have been rising recently as this seems to be the current trend for retro game titles.

As there are many games included in PS2 games I want to give some personal recommendations in case you are a complete PS2 games “beginner”. You can already find these PS2 games from the picture I took. These seem to be the latest PS2 games that I’ve have played or bought recently. I have to say that I have had some bad luck as my PS2s have broken. I have had two PS2 consoles already.

I was going to give you some recommendations of PS2 games. I liked Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven a lot. It can be a difficult game. Also I have to mention maybe the best driving game ever – Gran Turismo 4. It is a PS2 title definitely. We have also in this picture Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3. It is a very good skateboarding game. It might be the best in the series. Ratchet & Clank is a very nice three-dimensional platformer slash action adventure game. The content of this game is suitable for people of every age.

Some other popular and good PS2 games are Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Gods of War 1 and 2, Silent Hill 2 and 3, Resident Evil Code Veronica X, Ecco the Dolphin – Defender of Future, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Colin McRae 3, 4 and 5, some very good Need For Speed games, Hitman games, The Sims 1 and 2 and some fighting games like Tekken and SoulCalibur and also some roleplaying games like Final Fantasy X. There are some FPS games, like Call of Duty and Black. I have to mention also a game called Bully.

If you are going to try to get into PS2 games these games are just something you can start with. Try to get familiar with a genre you find the most interesting. You might be into strategic games or adventure or action games or you might want to play some roleplaying games. Try and test and find your favorites. There are so many PS2 games out there.

While there are many PS2 games to get into the system has its limitations. These include awkward controllers and that there really isn’t a hard drive in the world of PS2. So, you have to use memory cards. Graphics could be better. You might face some nostalgia if you played PS2 games in the past.

The system has its limitations but all-in-all it is in my opinion something you just have to try. I have well over 50 games already in my personal PS2 games library. There seems to be many good games that PS2 has to offer.

The Last Issue of Pelaaja Magazine

Posted on by Viljami

So, it’s a bit over twenty one tonight and I just received Pelaaja magazine as delivered in mail. I don’t know why the deliver was so late. Well, anyways, there’s also a book that I am currently reading in this featured image of this blog post. The book is about Snapchat (“How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars”). I find it very interesting and I am about hundred pages through this book at the moment. The book is written by Billy Gallagher.

The fact that I just received mail brought me the idea that I’ve been thinking about already for some days. I did already know that this issue of Pelaaja would be the last one. I was just waiting for the mail to be delivered so I could start writing this blog post. I knew that I was going to receive the issue sooner or later. So, this is the real news. Pelaaja is going to stop getting printed and it is going to be merged to another Finnish gaming magazine called Pelit. So, I, and also all the other readers that have a subscription paid already are going to get their still remaining magazines in their subscriptions delivered as Pelit magazines. We are also getting one issue of this magazine as a some sort of a bonus. Then we can make a new subscription to Pelit or just quit our subscriptions. This is how it seems to be going.

Pelaaja has been around for quite a while. The magazine was founded back in 2002 in October. Pelit, the other still remaining Finnish gaming magazine has been around for some time longer. Actually I remember reading Pelit already back in the middle of 1990s. I think it was established in maybe 1980s (it was actually founded in 1992). Pelaaja has for a long time provided a solid competition. I have bought some Pelit magazine issues. I have never subscribed to it. I have been a subscriber of Pelaaja for several years.

Back in the wild 2000s there used to be several printed gaming magazines. There are too many to mention or to even remember. I think we had a magazine called Peliasema that was focusing on PlayStation. Actually the word “peliasema” is somewhat translated as “play station”. Well, I had to make one more search through a search engine right here just to find that this was actually true and not just my imagination. It was founded in 1998. It was sort of a spin-off of Pelit and it featured some gaming journalists that were also writing articles to Pelit. So, there was some competition already in the field when Pelaaja was founded.

It is somewhat hard to trying to realize that Pelaaja has been actually discontinued. I thought that this magazine would have been up and running for a long long time. There are many trips, for example to our summer cottage, that I picked up the latest Pelaaja from gas station to have something fresh to read while enjoying summer, or winter, here in Finland. Pelaaja has been there for a long time and now it seems like there is a part of gaming journalism missing at least here and right now.

The direction for printed media is that we are getting less and less actual, physical, printed content and the news can be read online from your closest display that can be a smart phone, a tablet or a computer screen. More and more content is published digitally. More and more content is getting released for free online. And this has been the direction for already some time. I do enjoy very much reading content that has been printed to a paper as you can probably see from this blog posts featured image. I don’t have a e-reader device and my tablet is very poor and I almost never use it. Almost every book I read is a physical copy instead of a digital one.

In the last issue ever of Pelaaja we are going to deal with the new Doom game that is getting released next month. I am going to get that game. I know this already for sure. The last two Doom games were great ones. We are going to read more about Wreckfest 2, Housemarque, a Finninsh game company, turning 30 years and also some other very interesting content. I hope this is a good read. If its anything like every earlier issue of Pelaaja I am going to like it. So, thank you, Pelaaja, for everything and farewell!

Some Notes About PC Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

With all my video game consoles I am also very deeply into PC gaming. In this blog post I am going to write to you about my experience in PC gaming in 2025. What games do I play, what kinds of hardware and software I use and how can a PC be utilized to also play some retro games be it that they are on any platform including consoles and older PC gaming systems like MS-DOS or older Windows. I am not so deeply involved in Linux or Mac games. I have only played several Windows and DOS games. I think that Linux gaming is a very young field at this moment but things are moving forward all the time. Linux is today able to play many games that were available only for Windows systems earlier. We are not going to go so deeply into Linux gaming as I have at this moment a Windows 10 installed on my PC.

Some old school gamers might be a bit confused since many PC gaming hobbyists are utilizing a game pad today. Originally PC gaming was very focused on playing with a mouse and a keyboard. I once handed a game pad to my friend, he’s a total PC gamer and has been playing for a long time already with a PC, and he just couldn’t figure out how to even put the controller in his hands. He was trying to handle it like it would be a keyboard. This is just to remind you that some PC gaming enthusiasts are very keen on playing with this somewhat old school controlling method. Back in the 90s it was almost impossible to picture someone playing a FPS game with a game pad. This changed when games like Halo and Call of Duty became popular within console gamers.

Console and PC gaming has become closer and closer to each other. There used to be these two separate groups that favored PC or console games. Of course PC even today cost a lot more than consoles. It is somewhat ridiculous that some players demand same performance from devices like Xbox Series X and PS5 that is present in PC gaming. It has been some kind of a law of nature that consoles are cheap to buy and the profits that console manufacturers make are made out of selling software and mainly games for these systems. There are many ambitious and huge games while some games are developed by indie developers that don’t have so much expectations or technical ability in the games they are releasing. I think this is mainly a good thing. Not every game has to be a huge success after all.

I have lots of PC games in the form a DVD or CD-ROM disc. Today it is coming more and more common to see a PC that doesn’t have a optical disc drive at all. Many setups available don’t include the drive at all. My personal solution to this was to first buy an external DVD drive and just recently I got also a Bluray disc drive. It was a bit expensive. It cost me about 150 euros. I haven’t seen any Bluray Ultra HD 4K disc drives that would have been available in any web shop that I encountered online. This is the actual format of the latest video game consoles.

Gamers are buying their PC games mainly from places like Steam and GOG (“Good Old Games”). There is also the consideration about abandonware. This means that some games aren’t available to be purchased at all and the copyright holder doesn’t really mind if someone is sharing the game for free to be downloaded. You can run a search on your favorite search engine, like DuckDuckGo, or some else, to see some of these games. My favorite place to find abandoned PC games is “My Abandonware” that is a website that holds thousands of games. Soe games are tagged as “commercial” and this means that you aren’t able to download them at least from this site. Some popular abandonware games are the original Silent Hill 2 – Restless Dreams, Black and White 2 and Need for Speed Most Wanted.

It is also possible to play many retro games on a PC. This subject is a bit controversial. Some game companies, like Nintendo, are telling us that emulating older systems is piracy and illegal. Some consumers think it is totally all right to play these games that are downloaded from some gaming website. The law says that for example to use a PS1 emulator on a PC you have to extract the BIOS from the PS1 that you own and then rip every game from an original CD that you own. Then you are perfectly legit with this matter. We are not going to go so deeply in this topic ether. Let’s just state that emulation is possible and there are emulators available that emulate devices like GameCube, PS2, N64 and PS1.

When it comes to operating systems Linux has gained some popularity. At October Windows 10 users are forced to update to a Windows 11 system or then pay some more to keep using their Windows 10 systems. Some lucky people just need to update their operating system while others, that don’t have a compatible PC for this upgrade, are going to have to buy a Windows 11 PC.

How about the issues of performance? How powerful PC can run the latest games and how much does it cost? I have currently a systems that has 16 GB of RAM, a video card memory of 8 GB, a lousy CPU that actually isn’t compatible with Windows 11 or 12 and a 2 TB SSD drive (along with a 250 GB SSD that holds my Windows 10 system files). I also recently bought, finally, a screen that is 28 inch and can display 4K resolution graphics. I am going to upgrade to a PC that has at least 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB SSD, and a video card that has 8 GB of video memory. Also I need good and compatible CPU. This system should be able to run games like the new Silent Hill 2 and Final Fantasy 16. This kind of a computer is going to cost me about 1300 euros. I bought my old PC with a price of 750 euros back in December of 2020. So, it is already a kin do f time also to update my computer to enjoy some modern PC gaming. I think this is all this time and we’ll see in a new blog post later.

Playing Some Gran Turismo 4 (Again)

Posted on by Viljami

I am playing Gran Turismo 4 once again. This game is in my opinion the best one in the series. Not to say that there would be any really bad games in this racing game series. I was thinking about writing a ranking about how I think Gran Turismo series’s games are compared to each other. While I think Gran Turismo 4 is the best I think the first game and also GT 7 were also very good games. It has to be mentioned that the first game deserves some credit about its innovative approach to racing. That game was the one that sparked the series into its way to success.

I have played, since I recently started playing it from the beginning, for about 14 hours. I am always complaining about retro hardware breaking down so now I am going with PCSX2, the PS2 emulator for PC Linux/Mac/Windows. I do have also the original game that can be ripped from DVD with a computer and an optical DVD disc drive. Actually, I recently bought myself also an external Bluray drive and I am hoping to get to rip some PS3 games also. I might write about that also later in a new blog post. Lets just see how my plans are going to be developing.

I am playing this game with a game pad. I am using an Xbox controller because it is so cleverly compatible with my current PC setup. I am running a Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM and a neat GPU that has 8 GB of video memory. I do have also a SSD that can hold 2 TB of data. I think for modern gaming 1 TB would be enough. The weakest link in my setup might be my personal computers processor/CPU. So, its quite clear that I am also going to have to upgrade my computer later this year. I also have some news about my screen/monitor. I finally upgraded to a screen that has a 4K resolution and is also a bit bigger. The size is 28 inches. Compared to my old Full HD 22 inch display this one is clearly better.

I am hoping to get to play some more new games with a new Windows 11 PC. I have already bought Final Fantasy XVI and Starfield from Steam but my hardware is too poor in performance for me to play them currently. So, I have bought these two games but never even installed them. I am also very interested in getting into the new Silent Hill 2 remake that has received a lot of good reviews. I hope I will get to update my PC in about 2 months. The move to Windows 11 from Windows 10 is going to be scheduled to October. So, for me, this is the final deadline for the upgrade.

This week we also finally got some news from Nintendo concerning the release of Switch 2. The price is going to be 470 euros and 510 euros when you buy one game bundled. This game is going to be Mario Kart World. It is already possible to make an order at least here in Finland. The actual release will be 5th of June this year. I am waiting to get my hands on the new console. I am probably going to get at least Hades 2 and maybe the new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 when it gets released in July.

What more do I have to say about Gran Turismo 4? It was originally released for PS2 in 2005. The graphics are just amazing and I think that they even hold up against today’s racing games. It is very nice to play Gran Turismo 4 with a 4K display and some graphics settings tweak and the screen just screams as the beautiful graphics are getting displayed. There hundreds of real cars that need some updating and tweaking of settings. You can start with buying a transmission that can be set up to get a better acceleration for your vehicle while your top speed does drop. You can have yourself a strategy about different tracks that different types of corners and parts where you are just driving full speed ahead. You have to play some tracks several times to gain some credits so you can advance and buy a new car. You also have some missions to complete to get a proper driving license. Winning series’s of races is being rewarded with a car also.

Clone Your Memory Card in PCSX2 Emulator

Posted on by Viljami

We are dealing with a PS2 emulator that is very capable and that provides you a good quality of emulation for your PC. PCSX2 is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS. Its system requirements include 2 GB of video memory and 8 GB of RAM. There are some requirements also for the CPU or processor. A 64-bit operating system is also a requirement. The recommended system settings are a bit higher. PCSX2 has a good and comprehensive website where you can also look for more details.

PCSX2 utilizes virtual memory cards that are files that have a filename that is ending in *.ps2.  Now, the standard memory cards have 8 MB of space. So, you have to use these memory cards just to save your progress in a game. I am currently playing, once again, Gran Turismo 4 and it takes about 1,5 MB just for the save. There were already some other saves and the emulator printed a message for me saying that the memory card is already full.

So, what do you do? You can of course start your PS2 with no disc inside so that it goes to BIOS. Then you can delete some saved games. You can access BIOS within PCSX2 by first clicking, on your upper left corner: System->Start BIOS. You should do this while there isn’t a game running. Now you can get an access to your memory card by selecting Browser->Memory card on your emulated virtual PS2.

However there is another and more practical way to handle this situation. With no game running on your PCSX2 head over to Settings->Memory cards. Now, click Open… button that is located on the right side of the part that reads Memory cars – Folder: and the location of your virtual memory cards or the files ending with .ps2. Click that button (Open…). Now these files are showing in your operating systems resource manager or the application that you actually handle your files. Now make a copy of the file. This memory card file should preferably be empty. You can empty the file within your PS2 system and then make a copy of the file. You can also leave an empty memory card file that you can copy or clone when you need more space for your saves. I know that I am not going to closely to how the memory card gets copied in your operating system, be it Linux, Windows or Mac, but I think you can manage to do this and will get the idea that I am telling you.

Now, move to your PCSX2 graphical interface. You should be in a windowed view and you should see every memory card file that you have in this specific folder. Make sure there is a tap on your memory card slot 1. Click the “eject” button.  Now the virtual memory card gets ejected. Next you must drag-and-drop your new and preferably suitably named memory card file to the slot that was emptied earlier. Congratulations! You have now a fresh virtual memory card to be used with your PCSX2 emulator. You can now click Close on the window and continue using your PCSX2 emulator.

PCSX2 is a very capable PS2 emulator. It makes playing all almost 4000 PS2 games a smooth experience. I found out that tweaking some graphics settings and also settings found from within the game you could actually make the visuals more detailed. You can manage the settings by going in PCSX2 to Settings->Graphics. From Display I changed Aspect Ratio to 16:9. It can be set to standard 4:3 that is the original aspect ratio. You can also change, from Rendering tap, your Internal Resolution. I changed it to 6x Native (4K UHD). You have to consider how powerful your host PC is. I have a compatible CPU, a video card with 8 GB of memory and 16 GB of RAM. I haven’t had any major issues while running PCSX2 with these settings.

I ended up using PCSX2 because my PS2 always kept breaking. I don’t know if it is because all this dust that you must have seen in my pictures here on this blog. Is it because of the poor overall quality of these game consoles or what. In any way I just find it easier to rip my PS2 games to my PC and then utilize PCSX2 to play them. I don’t get to play with a real PS2 controller but I think that is not so important. Okay then – I hope you found something interesting from this blog post. See you again soon!

Two Different Approaches to a Rally Game

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post is about how you can approach a game or specifically a rally game. So, a game has graphics, sound and overall game-play and also some rules of how to create the physics in the game. From this point of view you can try to create a popular game and a game that is nice or/and a game that is as realistic as possible. I am taking a look at two rally games right here in this blog post and right now.

Dirt 3 is part of a legendary rally game series that originates from legendary PlayStation 1 game Colin McRae Rally. There was also a sequel released for PS1 and it was called Colin McRae Rally 2.0. Dirt 3 is also a sequel to games called Colin McRae Dirt and Colin McRae Dirt 2. So, this game has a bit shorter title. These games were released for PS3 and Xbox 360 and also for PC. Dirt 3 can be played on Xbox Series X as it is backwards compatible. Every Xbox 360 game isn’t compatible in this way. Dirt 3 has now two sequels called Dirt 4 and Dirt 5. Codemasters made also two games called Dirt Rally and Dirt Rally 2.0. later.

Dirt 3 was released 2010. I remember back in the day when I just had to buy this game as soon as it was released. I remember paying 60 euros for this game. At that moment I only had one video game console and that console was PS3 back then. Dirt 3 takes an approach of trying to be as realistic as a rally game as can be. The camera can be adjusted and it is tightly following the car. There are some options here. Usually I adjust the camera angle so that I see the road as closely as possible. If you make a mistake you can pause the game and go back to where you made the mistake and try to correct the way you did drive.

There has been some time since Dirt 3 was released. It is a very good game. I like the background music a lot. You don’t hear any music while you are driving. There is something important in this game as it seems that you can also hear your cars performance. We can also say that the team that was involved in developing this rally game was a large one as it had, I think, hundreds or at least tens of people working with the rally game.

What about Art of Rally? It was released roughly about ten years after Dirt 3. The approach is slightly different as is obvious already. Graphics are somewhat basic. They aren’t even trying to aim to be as realistic as can be. This also makes the game lighter to run and so this rally game doesn’t require so powerful hardware. I have this game for Nintendo Switch and lately bought it also for PC through Steam. It cost something from 25 to 30 euros. The “deluxe edition” is somewhat more expensive but only about 5 euros or something like that.

Art of Rally has a very good physical modeling. What it lacks in pure graphical performance it compensates on game-play and overall realistic feel it is able to generate. It feels nice t and realistic to drive the vehicles that are in this rally game. Cars in Art of Rally aren’t real cars. Their names are just something that has been generated by the developer. Dirt 3 does have real drivers and also cars. It would be awkward in my sense to play Art of Rally with a steering wheel and pedals while Dirt 3 gives you everything concerning a simulation type of a rally game. I do play currently both games with a game-pad.

There are only a few people that worked in the development of Art of Rally. The music is in the background while you are driving. I like also the music of this rally game. So, I adjusted the volume settings so that I can clearly hear the music while I drive. I set the engine volume of the car a bit lower, actually way lower, than it was as a default. Art of Rally has a career mode. I recommend that you play the career mode through. It is a nice experience all in all. There are many ways in both of these games that you can drive with your friends in a multiplayer mode but I am not so into playing with other people through network or internet connection.

So, these two games bring you a bit different and unique take. Should we appreciate clever software design or even a form of art more than some video game that is realistic and seems to demand a more powerful hardware? Nintendo Switch was released in 2017 and it has tens or even hundreds of good games that have been released on it. It isn’t the most powerful console but it definitely can deliver some good quality games. Also the next Switch console has been rumored to be as powerful as a PS4 which is, by the way, also a cheap console that still seems to have some players place in their hearths. Should we always go for the most expensive choice or is there a room for some games that just don’t compete in this way at all. Could there be a cheaper or somewhat different option? And this is the question I am leaving you to ponder this time. See you soon again!

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