Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Gaming Technology

Some Notes About Game Boy Color

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I write to you about Game Boy Color. Playing video games with a handheld device seems to be interesting. At least that’s what it is to me. Nowadays you can load an emulator to your smart phone and play games like this. You can even get a game controller that uses Bluetooth. Why would you bother to buy a real hand held console? Should you buy one or not? In this blog post I am trying to answer these questions.

I have right here, in that featured image, Game Boy Color. It was first released back in 1998. I think I bought it last years summer. So, the console has been with me for a while now. I bought it for 80 euros. You might be thinking of getting yourself a Game Boy Color. So, let me tell you some facts about this model of a handheld gaming system.

Let’s start with the bad facts. The screen is very poorly lit. You really have to focus your eye for it. The lighting has to be almost perfect for you to enjoy playing with this device. That must be the biggest bad fact about it. Actually I think we can move on to describe what is good in this device.

You can adjust the sound volume very nicely. It has this sort of a wheel that you can roll. You can also plug your headphones in. This makes playing in a bus or a train much more private and you don’t also annoy other passengers. The sound quality is adequate. I mean it’s way nicer than for example PC speaker. The device is powered with two AA batteries. There is also an option for an external power supply unit. The connection type is 3V and the plug is of size 2.5mm x 0.7mm. You can probably get this kind of a power supply unit for maybe 20 euros. I recommend buying one that you can adjust the output and the size of the connector. Let me make this clear – the power unit doesn’t have to be precisely designed for Game Boy Color so you can use this kind of an adjustable unit.

You can play Game Boy games on Game Boy Color. Of course there are some newer games that are only supported for Game boy Color. Game Boy Color reminds a lot of Game Boy that was released about ten years earlier. If you are thinking of playing Game Boy games I also recommend an adapter that enables you to play Game Boy games on a SNES. This adapter can cost something like 35 euros. This way you don’t have to suffer from the bad screen. Let’s tell you also that there are several other ways to play Game Boy games and this includes emulators also.

What are some good games? From Game Boy I definitely recommend Super Mario Land, Link’s Awakening and Pokemon games. As is with these old retro type games usually there are a lot of poor quality games available also. Some of these are trying to act as some sort of ports of these really famous and popular games. I can just mention games like Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto. So as you can probably imagine the power of this system is not so great. But there definitely are some good games made for you to play on a Game Boy Color.

My Game Boy Color is a bit broken. What I mean is that the power switch doesn’t seem to function at all. So I power up the device by inserting two batteries and that’s when the device turns on. Another way would be to use a power supply unit. The thing that the power switch was broken probably made the device’s price lower. I don’t know if some talented electrician could fix it. And when it comes to fixing I can tell you that there are many professionals that do repair and even mod old electronic video game consoles including Game Boy Color. It is a popular mod to replace the display. I don’t have information about how much would it cost. I know that there isn’t a service like this available in my home country (Finland).

Let’s summarize. Should you get yourself a Game Boy Color? I think you should consider this decision wisely and deeply. The price is a bit high. Playing with this bad type of screen makes it a bit awkward. Although the device provides a good entertainment for for example a long road trip. The design is very strong and I can figure that it can take some hits and not being broken easily. In today’s era of sensitive electronic devices these features are a welcome exception. Or, if you don’t have any money left in your pocket, you can just buy a Super Game Boy or use an emulator. Think wisely.

Does Emulation Really Hurt Someone?

Posted on by Viljami

You can spend hundreds of euros to retro video games. Where do these games come from? Some games are sold for a low price to shops that sell games that sell them forward at a more realistic price. This is how this field functions. You really cannot blame them for running a business like this. You have to get your living from somewhere. And game shops are very valuable for us game hobbyists in that they deliver us many games, consoles and all this other stuff, also, that we need to keep our hobby in a big role in our lives.

How about individuals that are selling their old video games? Once again there is this issue of money involved. You have something valuable and someone wants add just that game to his or her collection. Why not sell your game? Of course you cannot sell it at such a high price that the game shop is selling it. This makes sense, right?

Well, some people try to find a game at a low price and then sell it to someone with a higher price. This is familiar to many of us. It’s called scalping. I did notice this rice in prices. I bought Silent Hill 3 for PS2 in 2017 from a game shop. It cost me 15 euros back then. Recently I saw this same game. Its price was 75 euros. Actually, I don’t want to get rid of this game so I am not going to sell it. But if I was after an economical win situation I would probably sell this game.

So the money goes right here to the individual that is selling the game. Alternatively this amount of money goes to a game shop. This doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that big game companies are telling us that it is harmful to their business that consumers are installing emulators and running rom files on them instead of buying a physical copy of that game.

It might be the case that these huge companies would like to make more remakes out of old games. Why not bring more of those mini consoles to the markets? There would certainly be a demand for original Xbox mini console or a GameCube one. This isn’t however anything close to the reality. This is only a dream. While we have seen many classic mini consoles there isn’t going to be one made out of every legendary retro game console.

What if you bought a really powerful computer that would have enough disk space for a huge collection of game roms that could run these games on different emulators? I certainly find this option appealing. I do like buying and collecting old hardware and games. Just that I have faced issues with old hardware. They don’t seem to last for a long time. Dust might be the enemy. And I don’t have the skill necessary to fix these consoles. Currently I have several broken consoles in my storage in my apartment. It might be nice to get them repaired but I am currently also considering of getting a computer with some retro emulation so I wouldn’t have to worry about games not functioning.

Where should you start with this new idea? There are complete operating systems dedicated to retro game emulation. These are open source so they don’t actually cost you anything. You just have to have a powerful enough computer if you want to run games of PS2 or GameCube. If there is enough power in your PC you can even run PS4 games on an emulator, today. You can install, of course, emulators on your laptop or desktop. I myself am interested in this idea of having a PC that I would only use for console emulation. So, I don’t want to run Windows 10 or even any regular Linux operating system. There is something better for retro gaming.

I am talking about a retro gaming operating system. It works like this. You just install the OS and then upload the rom files, that are the actual games, to it. Then you plug your game pad and start up a game. You only turn the PC off or on and you have this simple but effective user interface that you can operate with your game pad. This is what I am talking about.

I am going to mention Lakka OS and Recalbox at this point. I have some experience with Lakka OS as I had it on a PC for maybe some months some time ago. I really liked this system. Although I found out that I wasn’t able to play anything that would require some serious power. I could run PS1 games but I would have liked to run PS2 and GameCube on this system. I just lacked the power. I am hoping that I would be able to get a more powerful PC for this purpose.

You can definitely find out more about Lakka OS and/or Recalbox. You will find them through your favorite search engine. These kind of setups can also run earlier games, like SNES or NES or something else, smoothly. Recalbox is supporting several tens of different video game consoles. Always also be critical about these thoughts I have provided here. Please use your own caution and thought when trying to accomplish your game library. Remember who put these games together and have an appreciation towards them. That might be another topic for another blog post. So, I think that’s it for this time. Thanks for reading!

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.