Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Gaming Philosophy

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.

Thousands of Games – How to Choose What to Play?

Posted on by Viljami

There are thousands of games, new and retro, out there. How can you even try to choose which ones are worth your while? We are going to go through this matter in this blog post. I am trying to give you some perspective once again. This fact has been in my mind lately. I just recently got to see one particular game that was somewhat interesting. It was a NES game and it was a Turtles game also. The game was “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 2 – The Arcade Game”.

I started playing. I figured that many Turtles games, especially some of them from that 16-bit era, are really nice games. This was a game from the 8-bit era. When you are playing video games on a NES you’ll always get these limited options on how to control the main character in the game since there are only so few buttons. This seems to be the baseline when you are playing NES. There’s nothing new here. Nintendo actually corrected this matter with their release of SNES.

But what I realized was that the game was actually a bad one. I didn’t feel like trying to even think about trying to beat it. You only get to try to hit an enemy and jump with also some movement involved and that’s how the game tries to build up a challenge. The graphics are poor and while music is nice for a NES game it cannot compete with some games like this on some newer systems. I stopped playing the game, I had spent maybe half an hour playing it.

This is the reality. Every game that has been released isn’t going to be a good game. You do want to think about what games you are going to be playing. Finishing a video game does take usually ten hours or maybe even some tens of hours. Some games can give you hundreds of hours of time to play. I have spent several hundreds of hours playing NBA 2K games. Also if you are into role-playing-games you get to spent almost certainly some hundred hours while playing them. How do you make the choice of what to play after you finish a game? Does every game have to be a great one if you are going to play it for a long period of time?

We can approach this matter in a certain way. There have been thousands of games released since the beginning of the era of video games. There have been many games available in arcades. Also home consoles and personal computers have lots of games. If there are thousands of games how many of them are still today good choices to choose a game that you actually want to play? You can try to find some games that are appreciated in the gaming community. This includes games that have received good reviews and games that are recommended to you by other gamers. Maybe they are your friends online or in real life.

What about “hidden gems”. There are some games that aren’t so well known but are still offering you some value if you choose to play a game like this. These games can also be recommended by someone. Also you can by yourself try to find games that interest you. This is where it comes as a handy fact that games almost always have a genre of some kind that you can think about while trying to choose what to play. You can be interested in a genre and find a new game to play.

How many games are there actually? First matter that comes to my mind is that PS1 and PS2 have both over 10 000 games in their game library. I think NES has maybe 900 games. Sega Mega Drive has about 1000 games in its game library. There is a huge amount of games available for PC and also for any modern game console. This amount of games is also increasing all the time. You get a sense of this fact that there are loads of games available.

I don’t really know how many good games there are out there. I mean those games that really are going to interest you so that you want to try to beat them. If we think about NES and all of those games that were released for it I think there are just maybe from 10 to 20 games that can actually give you a nice experience in the year 2026. Of course it depends on what games you like to play. Also you have to remember the nostalgia. Games that you played in your days of your youth can bring you joy if you decide that you still want to play them.

Older games aren’t necessarily games that you should play. In overall they are poorer in graphics, audio matters and also in their basic design. Sometimes it is better to choose a remake of the game. This can offer improvements in many ways. Older systems do offer nostalgia and some perspective of how games used to be. Just be a bit cautious when considering about getting into some of these games.

Thoughts About Buying New Games

Posted on by Viljami

This is the blog post about my thoughts of buying more new games. I wanted to let you, my dear readers, to know that I have already a huge amount of games. Some of them can be considered retro games and some of them are newer releases. I do play modern games on my PC, Switch 2 and Xbox Series X. To this day I haven’t bought a PS5 gaming console. Now my selection of video game consoles that are in my setup and connected to my 4K television is huge. There simply isn’t room anymore for a console like PS5 that takes loads of space. I read somewhere that the unsual height of the PS5 console is due to a heat sink solution used in the console.

I do play also retro games like NES, SNES and Mega Drive. I also have a GameCube hooked on my TV. I am not sure if it works. I haven’t played it in a while. Last time I played something on it I think I got a disc read error. I also have a PS4 and a PS3 hooked on my TV. I have also a Raspberry Pi 5 that holds Recalbox that I use for retro emulation. Finally on the left side of my TV I have a PC that holds Batocera as its operating system. I use it to run Xbox and PS2 emulation. For Raspberry Pi and the PC I use Xbox Series S/X game controllers. I like them and I think they are of a great quality.

I have loads of games. I took the image that is presented as this blog posts “Featured Image” to demonstrate the situation. Just some days ago I sorted all the games that I have on these two large shelves. I did make some room as I got rid of all DVDs that were sitting on these shelves. DVDs aren’t so precious to me today. I do watch some DVDs sometimes but having hundreds of them lying on a bookshelf is kind of wack thing to have in your living room. We are living the year 2026 after all.

So, I don’t have a lot room for more games. I don’t necessarily need new PS1 games. I have some very good games in my collection. I haven’t played all of them. I don’t necessarily need more PC big box games. I have over ten big boxes already along with some modern games as “collectors editions”. I actually very much like to play all the games that I end up buying. Its been a long time since I finished some game. I think the piles are getting bigger and I seem to have less and less time to play video games. Remember the post I did about some PS3 and PS2 games that I bought. I have barely touched those games. I did play 15 hours of the Need For Speed Most Wanted but that was all I got to play. That purchase included many games that were also very interesting.

What about buying more digital games? Look. I have hundreds of digital games. I have over huhdred games in Steam and almost hundred games also on my Xbox Series X’s Xbox Store. The reason and also the way that I have bought so many of them seems to be somewhat common for any digital video game consumer. You get  ahuge discount and you buy tens of games at one sitting. Then you wonder around thinking which one of these games should you install. Even if you end up installing something interesting you don’t actually get to play it a lot. That’s the way I view this situation. People have more games but less time to play. If you are a young person, for example a student, you don’t have money and that seems to be a limiting matter.

I am interested in some new releases that we are going to have available soon. There is System Shock 2 Remastered getting released 29th of May. Forza Horizon 6 is getting released 19th of May. There are some other interesting new releases also. There have been some conversations and presentations about the new Neo Geo console. It might be interesting too. I just don’t seem to have aany space left for a new console.

What about retro games? Am I going to buy annything new soon? I think no is the answer. I have loads of retro titles sitting on the shelves. Also prices of older video games are going up and up. You don’t even find that many games from flea markets because someone is making a side hustle with buying every retro game for cheap and selling it at a higher price. I think also that I have invested, if that is the right word, my money already enough to support my local game shops.

Sometimes I turn to emulation. I don’t so much see that it would be harming the game business so much. It is good to keep consumers interested in also retro gaming. There are many good ways to buy totally legitimately retro games. I mean the collections for modern consoles and remakes and also mini consoles. I think some games are so expensive that gamers cannot afford them. Sometimes I think that for preservation means it is signifant that we have ways to share old games. After all the developer that developed the game in the first place cannot receive in many cases any more money because the game isn’t availalbe legitimately.

I think this is enough about me and my slight frustration against my ever growing collection of games. I do have this dear hobby. If it costs me some money so be it. Some people buy cars. That’s an expensive hobby too. Have a nice end of the week and see you again soon!