Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Gaming Philosophy

Things to Explore in Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

Video games have already been here to entertain us for some time now. I haven’t had the opportunity to play every game of every era. You could say that I have been active from 1980 to this day. I haven’t seen everything in gaming. I hope to still see lots of more cool stuff be it old or new. If we think that first games were made back in the 60s there seems to be a lot to explore. But what are the most interesting games and platforms? What is important to know and what you can safely skip?

Lets think beyond home consoles. Things we had before Nintendo or even Atari 2600. Personal computers were also around in this moment and I will get to them later in this blog post. But the thing I want to write about here are games that we played in an arcade. Today there are things like MAME that enable us to play historically important video games we had in arcades some time ago. There’s lot to explore here and you start with your own PC just by getting an emulator. So, that’s one area to explore.

There are home console systems that I haven’t had a chance to own or even play on an emulator. Considering retro games there’s a certain way to get into these games that fascinates my mind. I have been thinking about buying a powerful and small in a physical size computer and installing an operating system to it that is dedicated to retro gaming. We already have Linux based operating systems like Lakka, Recalbox or Retropie. In this way I could explore systems like Neo Geo, Dreamcast, Atari Jaguar and Saturn and even more. There are some bad gaming systems also. Some of them are actually so bad that they are interesting. I recommend that you try them out first before buying a console like this.

What about some handheld consoles? For a long period of time I thought I could really play any handheld on my mobile phone. This is actually only part of the truth. I have found playing Gameboy games on SNES device with an adapter very satisfying. There are also adapter for GameCube that enables this same functionality. It is an expensive option. Nintendo has released many interesting handheld devices. I personally find Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS very interesting indeed. I could also get my hands on PSP or Vita that are Sony’s handheöd consoles.

There are also devices like Steam Deck that can bring you a solid gaming experience. I have read about new Asus device coming soon. It is called Asus ROG Ally and it costs 800 euros. IT is basically a computer that runs Windows 11. So, you can do also many other things with it. The thing I’m a bit concerned about is that the device provides only 2 hours of battery life. This means that you can only play games with it in runs of two hours. This, of course, isn’t an issue when you are playing this in your home. You can also hook it up to a television and use a Xbox Series S/X controller if you wish to do so.

There are also many new games and systems that I am interested about. You might have noticed already that we aren’t getting as many games ass we used to back in the days. There are however many good quality games that you can enjoy. This means that you have to follow the media a bit and keep yourself well informed. I can mention one game that is currently cvery promising. That game is Alan Wake 2. This will be released later this year.

I am also very interested in almost everything concerning Sega. I have already gathered a small collection of Master System games. My love for Sega begun in 1993 when I owned a Mega Drive. I find Sega CD, 32X and , well, actually every Sega console that was released after Master System, very interesting. I also have a good book about Sega that I enjoyed very much. I am always looking some more books to read about games.

There seems to still be a lot to explore. I have collected games now in some sort of meaningful way for about five or six years. I have played games longer than that but in 2017 I started to rally get this hobby going. I have my setup of nine game consoles and I have also some other devices that I can play video games on. I am trying to keep up with what’s going on in gaming globally.  I have written posts for this blog since 2020. It is a really nice hobby and I think this blog has been a success at least in a way that it has attracted so many people here as visitors. Maybe I find some day some way to get also some income also from this website. That’s it. Thanks for reading!

Simulation vs. Reality

Posted on by Viljami

I was playing Dirt 4 as this idea entered my deeply focused mind. As you might know, as a gamer and reader of this blog, Dirt 4 is a rally game that has said to be somewhere in between a simulation and a totally arcade type of driving game. Of course I am once again playing with a game pad instead of a driving wheel. So, that makes it more of an arcade style of play. But what I actually wanted to represent and deal with this blog post is that how can playing something, be it simulation or not, to actually give you a perspective on how to approach a skill or some activity in real life and in reality?

Games can give you an idea of something, for example driving a car. This activity is not real driving. It is something a bit similar. Of course there are no risks. If you would really actually drive a car over 160 kilometers an hour on a road somewhere in the shore of lake Saimaa, Finland, you would have to really have some skills and know-how to even operate the car. There is this thought of driving and kind of a fantasy that are combined when you play a rally game.

Can playing games give you some skills that you can actually use in real life? Yes. Definitely. Sometimes these matters are technical details of the computer and what it does when you play one of your favorite games. I am many times thinking about technical and programming related matters when I am playing a game. I might think about how this particular game works, how it collects your input and keeps, sort of, count of the total progression of the player.

Sometimes, like when I play a basketball game, I start to think some matters that are related to real life basketball. There are lots of facts that you can connect to a video game. A game is always some sort of a representation of what it is trying to model. These models come from real life. Of course games can represent an idea of a game, also. There are types of games that you like to play and there are these genres that tell us about what kind of a game it is.

Playing games is an activity for mind but also for the body. This is why we have eSport events and it is completely understandable, today, that you can compete in playing games. Some games, like chess, are purely for mind and some games even test our nerves and reaction times. That is why some games you can compete in as a professional only if you are a young person.

There might be a way to think through your physical performance in some activity with playing a game about it first. If you think about basketball or driving you have to be able to explain to others what you are doing and how. For example, if you are a coach, you have this vision that no one in the team doesn’t have. You know how players in your team are feeling, what are their skills and you have also an approximation of how they will perform in the game that you are about to participate in soon.

It might be easier to make a game out of some sport than it would be to create a sport out of a game that doesn’t have anything to do with reality. Are we actually always modelling real life when we create a game? We definitely talk about games a lot. There is lots of going on in a game and in a real life. These all things kind of keep mixing up in our minds. Definitely games brings us a way to express things. Sometimes we mix reality with fantasy.

I am really into Java programming. This programming language has a lot to do with models that are made out of real life objects. It is called object oriented programming. If you are interested in this type of thinking I encourage you to seek more information. I don’t have a degree or a deep knowledge in psychology or philosophy. I still wanted to write about this matter. Maybe you got something out of this blog post. I will write a post again, soon.

Some Thoughts About a Book

Posted on by Viljami

There was a huge clearance at a very popular mall in Helsinki some weeks ago. I didn’t find anything except two books. The first one was about games and how they shape you and your personality. The another, in which I am not going to go so deeply in, was about astronomy. But I will tell you a bit about this book about gaming. I have read the book. It was written in Finnish and I don’t know if it is going to be translated or is translated. Anyways, I will write about it.

The book is written by Aleksandr Manzos. I hadn’t heard of him earlier and this was first book of his that I have read. I haven’t even read any of his articles. There is a note on the back of this book that introduces him as a journalist and especially some sort of a gaming expert. He has written many books. The book basically tells a story of how video games have made an effect to Manzos throughout his life.

The name, “Pelattu elämä – miten pelit tekivät minusta minut”, can be translated, a bit freely thought, into “how gaming formed me and/or changed my life”. There is a kind of a wordplay here also that cannot be easily translated. “Pelattu” means “played” and “pilattu” means “spoiled”, so he has changed that one letter right there in that word and he is making a slight joke there.

The book begins with a story about Fallout. You might know this role-playing game. So you get to choose your gender. And Manzos makes very clear that he likes to pick a female character instead of a male one. He then explains how he likes to play as a female. He likes to pretend that he is a she. He continues to talk about this and explains that this doesn’t affect his sexual orientation and he says he is a straight person in that way. He just likes sometimes to be a cute person just like the picture besides his note in the book that introduces him shows.

There are lots of topics that are dealt with in this book. There is lots of thought about the characters in games and how you in a way empathize with them. Manzos writes about video games in the 90s. He is born in 1988 so he is about the same age as I am and there are lots of same influences in games that I can share with him. He talks about Final Fantasy VII and how it brought FF series to European gamers. There is lots of history that he explains in this book. The reader gets to think about worlds of different games from shmups to roleplaying and also to Tetris and Mass Effect.

I have to admit that it was a bit awkward to first read about how Manzos felt about playing as a female character. It was a sort of thing that you have to process a bit. I enjoyed reading this book. I think this writer has many interesting thoughts about games and personality all in all. I kind of have to give him props for his attitude on his personality. I am a bit lame about this matter. I have enjoyed playing as a macho male character in many games. Maybe that isn’t always how people want to present themselves. And it is now crystal clear to me that he is truthful in a way that he even gets to talk about sexuality. This is a sensitive subject. It is easy to misunderstand someone that has opinions in this matter. There are so many people in the world and I think they are all unique.

There are lots of books about games and gaming available worldwide. I have a privilege to live in a country in which language this kind of a material gets published. There are also many journalists that also have a privilege to write about games here in Finland. One other writer whose books I really like is Juho Kuorikoski and he has written many good books. As I don’t know if this particular book is going to be released in English I don’t know what this blog post has to give to an international English speaking game fan. I wanted to write something about this book. It was an interesting read.