Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Gaming Philosophy

Some Problems with Retro Hardware

Posted on by Viljami

As you have probably noticed I have been lately playing lots of PlayStation 2 games. My console is fairly new. What I mean is that I have only owned it for under a year or so. It is now malfunctioning. I am having problems with audio and video being cut off in the middle of playing a game like Need for Speed Prostreet or Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven. They come back after some seconds but what it comes to playing this is very disturbing.

Well what can you expect? This device is old. PS2 was released over 20 years ago. Would you expect some similar device, like computer, to function after this long of a time? Probably not.

This isn’t the first time that I am coming across issues with old hardware. I have had Xbox, Xbox 360 and earlier I had one other PS2 that started to malfunction. It couldn’t read the disc anymore. Dust can be one issue. One issue is that these old parts just aren’t reliable anymore after all this time that has passed.

You can, of course, try to fix the console yourself. This can be tricky. Not everyone is capable of doing this on their own. You can contact your closest electronic repair shop and ask them how much would they charge for the repairment of your console. There is also one more option and it seems to be an interesting one.

I am talking about emulation. You have retro games but you aren’t able to play them since your gaming console is broken. Why not make copies of them for your own use? I think it is reasonable since the console is broken, right? And with games that are on DVD this shouldn’t be an issue. What we know is that PS1 and PS2 games can be ripped to ISO files (files that end in .iso) with proper tools (software).

There are many options available. Some years ago I came across NVIDIA Shield TV. It is a device that makes your regular television a smart device that is basically operating on Android. You can install RetroArch to it. It is this kind of a forntend that you can run retro games on. It combines several emulator together. I found this to be handy with for example PS1 games. You could even hook your PS4 controller to the Shield TV with Bluetooth. You can install RetroArch on several devices. Windows and Linux are also supported along with Raspberry Pi.

You can also use a full Linux operating system on any PC that you can also hook up to any television that has the connectivity required. That is means to transfer video and audio from your dedicated computer to your television. One popular opertating system of this kind is Lakka OS.

Lakka OS boots up to its own user interface. You only need to go through some menus with your controller. This can be any USB controller that you might have. Lakka OS supports several retro gaming platforms including NES, SNES, Mega Drive and so on. The full list can be found from your favorite search engine. I can tell you that this list is long.

What I am most interested about concerning emulation, like using Lakka OS or RetroArch, is playing games of PS1, PS2 and GameCube. I can currently play my NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive and Master System games with my Retro Trio console and with the assistance of some adapters (Master System->Mega Drive adapter and SNES->Game Boy adapter). I also have a Mega Drive Mini also for playing Mega Drive games. I also play PC games. I also play games on newer systems like Xbox Series X, PS3, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. As you can imagine my setup is huge.

I hope this blog post gave you some ideas concerning playing retro games. The hardware isn’t perfect. It does wear out with time. Software emulation might provide a more stable way for a gamer to enjoy his/her retro games for a long time.

Nintendo Switch Games Do Not Take A Lot of Shelf Space

Posted on by Viljami

I have 23 games, exactly, for my Nintendo Switch console. Well, actually I have also some games that came only as a “code-in-the-box”. So, they didn’t have a cartridge at all. You can also buy games for Switch digitally so you don’t need even the box of the game at all.

Today I got for myself three more games for Switch. These games were Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, G-Darius HD and Signalis. I also bought a new game cartridge case that gives me space for 24 more games. It also has space for some memory cards. A case like this cost me about 18 euros. I find it comfortable to store my games in a case like this. And it is official licensed as a Nintendo Switch product.

Switch is also in all ways very comfortable gaming system because you don’t need a whole lot of space for it. You can even use it in portable mode if your screen or television is used by some other member of your family or your room mate or someone else. You can even buy Switch Lite which is cheaper model of Nintendo Switch that however doesn’t provide a possibiltity to connect to an external screen. I think Switch Lite costs today about 200 euros while you can get the regular Switch for a bit undeer 300 euros.

What makes my mind inspired is the thing how little of my shelf space is used by these tiny game cartridges. Nintendo has always been original, so to say, in it’s decisions with the design of it’s gaming consoles. This has been the way for a long time already. I am kind of glad that they have this courage to try out different ways to provide players this unique experience.

There have already been some rumors around that there would be a new Switch console to be released soon. Actually I heard it was coming next year (2024). I am not going deeply to the details but it was said that it would be capable to producing 4K graphics quality. We are living in exciting times!

Nintendo Switch 2 would then be the newest gaming console that would be in the markets. There are of course many questions waiting to be answered. It might not be such a surprise if you would find some content even in this blog you are currently reading. I have touched this topic earlier. You can have a look in our archives if you are interested in what I have written previously about this subject. I have added some new elements to the user interface of this blog or website that should make it even a bit easier to find content here. Please use these means if you feel that you want to read more posts in this blog. Fell also free to drop a message to my guestbook.

It is truly amazing to find out that you can fit over 20 games to such a small space on your gaming book shelf. I have on the same shelf also some GameCube games and they take up way more space. This also is a feature that makes your NES games look like fools. They take so much space on the shelf while being also very small in tehcnical ways. Maybe the best way to store games would be to have an external SSD that would contain everything you have in your game collection. Maybe we are heading towards that, who knows?

Reasons to Keep Playing

Posted on by Viljami

As I was growing up video games really made me feel like a hero. There was this combination right in front of my eyes of technology and excitement that made my imagination go wild. I remember how graphics looked like and in my mind they are hugely exaggerated. I can understand this today when I look at any NES game that I witnessed back then. My mind plays tricks on me and I just can’t make it stop even if I wanted.

Of course there has to be a balance in life in overall. You don’t want to play all your life as you don’t also want to be working or studying all the time. You have to keep yourself exercising enough and eating well so you stay healthy and also live a good life. There are many sides to life. And there are so many things you can do.

What brought me to gaming was the technology and also the entertainment that it offered. While I was a kid I started to learn things also in school. I was good in mathematics. When I was maybe nine or ten I figured that I wanted to be an engineer. They had to utilize mathematics to develop technical devices. Soon I found out how video games basically were made. They were constructed with a programming language. There are many other things about how games are made also, like generating graphics, composing music and sound effects among many other things, but this programming stuff seemed interesting to me at that moment.

So I am a kid that is good at maths and likes to play video games. Video games are made with a programming language. This is what made me to think that I would like to create games. I wanted to be able to create all these amazing worlds and characters and plots and schemes that I had stumbled on while I was playing video games. This is what sparked my mind and made me feel interested towards mathematics and computer science.

Now that I have already some knowledge of programming I can say that it necessarily doesn’t require a high level of understanding of mathematics. You can definitely start programming even if you are bad at maths. I have to say that nowadays there are many tools for you if you don’t like writing code. There are many game development engines that you can use. And there are also many other areas in game development besides pure programming.

How can games develop you? You definitely get some training with your motor skills. You get this sense of how what you are doing with your hands is affecting what you are seeing ans that is happening in front of your eyes. Of course when you are young your motors are stronger and keep developing faster than when you are older. You are watching something that is happening. This develops your visual sense and even your three-dimensional comprehension. When you are young these skills that I mentioned are fast to develop.

I also have to say that I learned a lot of English from playing video games. You are right now reading this text that I have written fully in English. I am a native speaker of Finnish. I have learned English in school and in my spare time reading and writing and to some extent even speaking. I haven’t studied or worked in any other country besides my home country. So, this is how I got started with my English. I am still trying to learn it today. No one is perfect.

Games are also very entertaining. When PlayStation was released it took only some years for video games to become also popular amongst young adults. Today people of every age are playing. There is just so much more that games can offer when compared to music, books or movies. I am not saying that games are better. I think they are different.

Can you learn programming through playing video games? I think you can learn some game design but you don’t directly learn it with playing. You need to study some programming to actually get to a level that you can achieve something as technically challenging as making a whole video game. Knowing how to program can give you some deep insight of how games are working. I have learned to understand more about games and what happens in the code and see it also while I am playing.

There are some reasons to not to spend all of your time playing video games. There are also other things in life besides games. You definitely have to keep doing your work or keep studying. You have to take some responsibility. You also have to eat and exercise to keep yourself happy and healthy. You can in a way be addicted to playing games. This addiction is very different from a drug addiction that deals more with a chemical addiction. If you can’t do anything else in your life you can actually be addicted also to games. Basically you are then addicted to your own habits and you might need to prioritize your life again. And I know that very few people are actually addicted to video games. There are way more people understanding the balance in life than there are people addicted to gaming.

There was a story about a guy that played a video game for several moths continuously. What happened to him is very sad. He lost his wife, job and basically all of other things in life that he had. This is what can happen. But I must stress that this is very rare and people tend to understand everything that they have in life and they want to maintain their physical and mental health,

If you are feeling that you have had enough of video games you can try to center your focus on to some other things. You can read a good book. Go do some exercise. Have a nice conversation with someone you like or someone you love. Watch a movie or a series. Do some work or study and don’t forget to eat and do it also as healthy as you can.