History of Gaming Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

Aladdin (Sega Mega Drive)

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Viljami

Aladdin is a very good Sega Mega Drive game. It isn’t a long one but it surely is of a good quality. It only takes about two to three hours to complete. This is what we were actually used to back in the beginning of the 90s. So, I am writing this whole blog post about this game Aladdin.

As there have been some discussion about the release of Neo Geo console I have to make a brief comparison of these systems. Sega Mega Drive as a gaming console had a completely different strategy if compared to Neo Geo. The latter one seemed to invest in power and also had a higher price. Mega Drive was competing with Nintendo’s NES and was a whole lot cheaper gaming system. This also meant that the games weren’t as impressive graphically. This did also mean that Mega Drive was available to more consumers and was way more popular than Neo Geo.

Sega Mega Drive is also very important to me personally. I do have today maybe 40 games for this system. I do have also still every game that our family had when I was kid back in the 90s. I have kept them and haven’t sold any of them. I also have the console which is replaced in my gaming setup by Retro Trio since it you can play also SNES and NES, and also Master System and Game Boy games with the adapters I own, games. This way my setup doesn’t take so much space. I sometimes use real hardware and sometimes I play games with an emulator. I do buy games for Mega Drive at times and Aladdin is one these games that I have bought.

I remember buying Aladdin for a decent price. I think it was 40 or 60 euros. And this was already maybe two years ago. It might be difficult to try to find the actual physical copy of the game from a web shop. It is a bit of a rare game although it isn’t the rarest of all Mega Drive games. What really makes some games expensive is if they are good games and if there have been only a low amount of copies produced in the first place.

Aladdin as a video game gives everything that a Mega Drive game can give. The 2D graphics look beautiful on the system. The game is all about slight problem solving combined with platformer elements and some moments of action. The main character can jump and sling his sword at the enemy characters that usually take maybe three or four hits and then they disappear. There is a lot of jumping and path finding. The game play fits perfectly for Mega Drive’s original pad that only has three buttons along with the start button and the directional buttons.

I can definitely recommend Aladdin if you like games from this era. Playing this game is a must if you love Disney’s Mega Drive games. There was this certain appeal in these two-dimensional environments. The graphics look very nice. The game doesn’t last but only two to three hours as I already mentioned in this blog post.

Today is Saturday and it is also the time for schools to shut down for the summer vacation times here in Finland. I do remember when I was that young. It has been a long time. I also do have a summer vacation. It is for four weeks. In Finland it is common to have a long summer break be it that you were a student or an employee. I know that it is common in USA to take only a two weeks break at maximum per year. This is how different some things are if you compare USA and Finland. This is actually my 400th post to this blog!

Thoughts About Buying New Games

Posted on April 22, 2026 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!

A Book About Rovio and Angry Birds

Posted on February 23, 2026 by Viljami

The blog post right here is about a book about Angry Birds. The name of the book is The Slingshot Formula and it has been written by Pascal Clarysse. One reason for me to start reading this book was the matter that Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, is a Finnish gaming company which is very much my dear home country. Read along as I briefly describe how the story of Angry Birds was told in this book that I finished reading just a while ago,

The book tells us readers a story of three young men, later formed to Rovio Entertainment, that take part in a mobile game development contest back in 2003. They all study then in Helsinki University of Technology (that later in 2010 became Aalto University as many big universities were combined). They actually come up with several games. Angry Birds is actually their 52nd game when it gets released back in December of the year 2009.

Angry Birds is a game that anyone can play. It might be a casual game. The developers wanted to make the game as easy to get into as possible. Then they achieved something with the game-play that had the players hooked. Angry Birds is a very popular game. It made into a worldwide pop culture icon. This was seen when there were huge collaborations with NASA and Lucasfilms Star Wars. There was eventually a movie and many other products that featured Angry Birds bird character. One popular product was a red pillow that featured the bird character of the game. Finally, in 2023, Sega acquired Rovio with a deal of 1 billion dollars.

I read the book. I liked it. With all this about a great Finnish game I have to be honest and tell you that I have never played any of Angry Birds games. I am not a huge fan. That goes to all mobile games for me. But if considered that there is a book written about a Finnish mobile game development company I might pick a book like that and just read it. I did like the book. I can recommend it to you if you are into startup companies and if you maybe want to try something like this by yourself also.

I found this book from this huge book store in Helsinki. I don’t want to advertise the place but it is my favorite book store since it has such a large selection of books to choose from. As I bought this book I also picked a book about this food delivery company Wolt and another book that was about artificial intelligence. The Slingshot Formula does cost 25 euros. It is written in English and that is the language that my copy also has been written in. It’s nice to have some language skills, isn’t it? You could probably seek it from a library if you are into borrowing books. There might also be a possibility to read this book as an electric copy.

The book is somewhat lengthy. It has a bit over 300 pages. Pascal Clarysse describes the main characters in the book with a nice detail and shares soem knowledge about different roles that these people had with Rovio and Angry Birds. There were many professionals involved from graphics design and programming all the way to musicians and also some financial specialists that made this phenomenon of the icon of Angry Birds as successful as could have been possible. Angry Birds are today known in all corners of the planet Earth and even beyond it. They actually did send an Angry Birds themed pillow into a NASA space station. Today Angry Birds is a very well-known brand and an icon.