Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Gaming Philosophy

Who Is This Guy (Super Mario)?

Posted on by Viljami

What’s the game you start to play when you want a nice platform game and you don’t mind if it is a bit retro? Of course you play Super Mario Bros or Super Mario Land or Super Mario Bros 3 or the New Super Mario. Whatever your choice is one thing is certain – there are lots of options here. That’s basically because there seems to be no limit to how many and how varying game titles have been released in this video game characters lifetime.

The featured image of this blog post is the cover of a book about how Nintendo and Mario “conquered” USA. Of course this character made its way into the minds of all gamer’s across the whole wide world. Super Mario was chosen to be the main character that represented the whole Nintendo as a company. There are lots of games and also some other material in which Super Mario has been used.

But who is this guy actually? We get to understand that he’s a plumber. He has a brother named Luigi. I think he’s a plumber too. Mario has the tendency to try to be a hero and he is always trying to save the princess. Mario is a bit softer than Sega’s mascot Sonic. Basically Mario is a product of the beginning of 80s while Sonic seems to be from the end of 80s and also from the beginning of 90s.

Of course all the real hardcore retro gamers know that Crash Bandicoot took the title of the most fascinating video game mascot back in the 90s. But you have to realize that Mario was the first of them. Nintendo was the brand that made gaming great again after Atari had effed up the whole game with it’s foolish strategy on releasing poor quality video games. Basically, back then, Atari just got too greedy.

And only Nintendo is able to come up with this kind of material. At the same time it seems a bit naive and childish but do you know what kinds of mushrooms he actually is able to consume? A mushroom that looks like Amanita Muscaria and makes him to grow. Wow! How did that happen and how did it happen so fast. Maybe there is something more to it than we at first can observe. Maybe parents should look after their children despite the fact that Nintendo seems to be so settled with its in game content.

Super Mario remains as a character that is a bit mysterious. You don’t get to talk with him in deep conversations. You might remember him from your childhood. Is he the one that is responsible for luring all these people in to video gaming? There haven’t been so many interviews or story lines in games that would have described his personality. Yet you definitely recognize his voice as he says “It’s me…Mario!”.

Why are things this way? Maybe it has everything to do with how under developed video games were. We had two dimensional pixel graphics and the audio quality was poor. There just weren’t enough space for this character to form some kind of a more progressed image in our minds. I think this is also a strength for him. He is kind of abstract figure. He was made to be simple and easy to approach. So Mario is at the same time very simple and also very attractive in a mind of a determined retro gamer.

Still Trying to Beat This Game

Posted on by Viljami

I am still trying to beat Burnout 3 – Takedown. I have played it for about nine hours and I have completed 40 percentage of it. During the weekend I had some time to play this game. I played for about three hours. I had some other things that I just had to do. I spent some time making music and also seeing some friends also.

Today it seems that I don’t have so much time for playing video games. Working makes me a bit tired. I have to make a choice of how to spend these free hours. It can be a difficult choice sometimes. I also read a lot. I have been reading a book about a music band System of a Down. Just yesterday I read thirty pages.

The book is written in Finnish. I read also books that are written in English. It would be fun to some day read a book that would be in French or maybe Swedish. I have studied these languages just to get my knowledge to a higher level and also as a hobby of some sort. I studied French in high school. Swedish is compulsory in school in Finland.

I checked from the website that tells you how long it approximately takes to complete a game and it said that Burnout 3 takes 14 hours to be completed. If my calculations are correct it would take me way more time to beat Burnout 3 Takedown. It would be something like 20 hours. At least I think so.

There are some other games that I would like to play. I just haven’t got the time to thoroughly get into them and even beat and complete them. It’s easy to start a game. It’s also easy to get into a game. After some hours the game starts to be more challenging. I am noticing about my playing habits that I don’t complete most of these games I start to play. This is how the markets work. Today, gamers aren’t completing their games. They just move on to another game and it’s a bit sad to me.

This brings us once again to the sad conclusion that there are too many games available. You can think about this for a while. You have new games and then you have retro games. My gaming library consists of both new and retro games. That makes me think I have some older games that I would like to play and I also have these new  and even upcoming games that I woul like to play.

But what the heck! I am going to get these new games. Just thinking about releases like Diablo IV and the new Forza Motorsport makes my hearth beat a bit faster. What are some games you just have to play in your lifetime? I think there are too many to even mention. And I think you’ll have to find the ones that you want to play and even complete and you have to find them yourself.

Having a Break From a Game?

Posted on by Viljami

This week I have spent almost five hours playing only Darksiders Warmastered Edition. It’s not actually a new game anymore. It was released in 2019. It is a good game and there is no argument. And to back this up I can say that it has a score of 77/100 on metacritic at the moment. You must also take in consideration that it is a remaster of a game that was originally released in 2010.

Playing Darksiders is fun. But sometimes a gamer needs a break. Some of this games puzzles had me almost sweating. When I first started playing it was Thursday. I took a break and continued to play it again today for almost three hours. There are things like meeting other people and working so I cannot play every day. So I have to take breaks. But how long of a break can you have from a game and still come back to it to finish it eventually?

I don’t have any data to back up my opinions and thoughts. As with almost any of my experiments the greatest source that I have is my experience. So I have had long breaks while playing a game. I think the longest break was maybe two years. It happened when I played Silent Hill Homecoming. Well, I didn’t finish this game. Finishing a game has become for me a rare occasion today. I have a big backlog and the time I can spend on a game is decreasing all the time. I didn’t have that problem when I was younger.

Sometimes it really helps if you are honest with yourself and just give up and start playing a game all over again. There must be some sort of recommendation for how long you can play one game, right? If we think about concentration I guess you can keep yourself concentrated for from 45 minutes to about three hours. That comes from my experience. It actually comes from playing games but you can also think about how long can you concentrate for a lesson while you are studying.

So, there’s a limited time that you can spend playing a video game. Why are games so long then after all? This has everything to do with the medium in which games are released. The amount of disk space that games take is increasing all the time and this has happened for a long time already. First there were CDs, then DVDs. Today we are seeing games that take over 30 hours to beat common.

There are things you can consider when thinking about how long of a break you can have and do you actually have time for playing. One important thing is how long does it take for a game to be beaten. You can find this out as there are websites that can tell you how long a certain game takes to beat. You can choose the kinds of games that you like and that you do have time to play and also finish. Driving games don’t take so much time while some RPGs can take hundreds of hours. I hope you have enjoyed these thoughts. Just remember that there is lots of information that you can find online.