Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: History of Gaming

Differences between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter

Posted on by Viljami

I finally managed to get my hands on original Street Fighter II SNES cartridge. It is not a rare or expensive game. But it is definitely a good fighting game and has earned its position as one of the greatest fighting games ever.

There is however competition. Street Fighter games are always compared to Mortal Kombat series’s games. Back in the 90s these two were the best fighting games that any decent arcade, or a video gaming console, had to offer. It was before we got these 3D styled fighting experiences like for example Tekken or Virtua Fighter.

The competition between these two brands was furious. Nintendo wanted to get more young players to enjoy their games. There is no blood in Street Fighter II. In Mortal Kombat you have these deadly fatalities that can be executed after you have beaten your opponent . This was also a time when consumers were becoming more aware of violence in video games.

I played Street Fighter II for a while. It got me to understand how it is different when compared to Mortal Kombat. The latter was released for Sega Mega Drive and the first one was a SNES title. First thing that caught my attention was the differences between controllers.

The way you play these games is almost identical. There is one fighter against the other fighter. The moves are however different. You do have kicks and punches and you can throw your enemy to the other conrner of the screen. Mega Drive doesn’t have shoulder buttons in its controller while SNES does have. Button layout is a bit different when compared between these two gaming consoles.

Mortal Kombat is the one of these two that shows elements of brutal violence. Street Fighter doesn’t show you blood and violence is a bit more cartoonishly expressed. Is it okay to show how violence in real life affects your victim? I don’t have a clear answer. Both of these games are violent. Do you have a problem with it? Well, I don’t as I think of it as fantasy. I do understand that you might have to have a conversation with younger palyers on this topic at some moment.

While this might not be a good time for a discussion about violence in video games but it is a time for me to try to finish this blog post honestly. Both of these fighting games are great. Maybe I should say that I like both of them and that they both have their own strengths. So I can recommend both of them if you have the ability to also play both of them.

Xbox Documentary Series on YouTube

Posted on by Viljami

It’s been 20 years from the release of the first Xbox or should we call it original Xbox. This was Microsofts successful attempt to get into game business. The path was rough. There were several obstacles on the way.

So the history of this gaming console has been collected to a form of a documentary series. It has six episodes in it that are about 40 minutes per episode. It is possible to view this series from YouTube for free. I can definitely recommend this for someone that has been interested in gaming for a while or to someone that just finds this content somehow interesting.

I have watched five episodes out of six. They have covered topics like the dominance of PlayStation as a gaming device in consumers living rooms and how Microsoft felt that their business was in danger. They just had to react and go from producing software to creating some hardware in the form of a new game console. It wasn’t always clear that there would be a product like Xbox now is in the markets.

So the first chapters describe how Microsoft started in the gaming business. I think everyone that has been involved in consuming games can say that they remember these problems that Xbox 360 had. There were so many consoles returned. It was said that the console was rushed. It wasn’t properly tested. So lots of products ended up returned. Microsoft handled this problem as well as they could and it cost it a lot of money.

I am going to watch the last episode of this series soon. The story is now in the beginning of the battle between Xbox One and PS4 and how Xbox declared that its console would fit perfectly in almost everyones living room. It is also clear that Nintendo had to play its cards in this game also. Did you know that Microsoft made an offer to buy Nintendo way back? If you are interested in this documentary series you can find “Power On: The Story of Xbox” from YouTube.

How Many Buttons Can You Handle?

Posted on by Viljami

First of all I am sorry for not posting anything for a while. I haven’t had time, effort and, or, motivation to write here. So it’s been three weeks since I last posted here. But, now it’s time for me to write something for you guys. As you may have noticed I have added some advertisements to this blog. Maybe I get something out of this. I don’t know and we’ll figure out as I keep writing these stories here. I am trying to write something at least once in two weeks or so.

So, I decided to make a bit of a comparison between game controllers. In that featured image we have a NES controller. Now that’s about as old of a game pad as can be. Or do you remember something more older or simpler? Now, it has only buttons A and B, select, start and the directional control. There are older controllers but basically it doesn’t come much simpler than this. And look at the shape of that thing. It’s actually a piece of block with all those sharp edges.

To make this comparison as concrete as can be I chose the other game pad to be the standard Xbox Series S/X controller that I got shipped with my Xbox Series S. This controller has Y, A, X and B buttons, two thumb sticks, a button to control directions, four shoulder buttons and four more buttons. As you can notice I have acquired a cable for my controller so I don’t need to keep changing batteries all the time. This game pad is also very neat, good looking and fits in the players hand smoothly.

It is definitely simpler to play NES games. While playing Xbox Series S or X games you have lots of going on. Your ways to interact in the game is more diverse. As you might have or might have not heard there is actually a limit for things that a human being can handle at a time. That’s why all the menus in the user interface usually have limited amount of choices that the user has to make. This isn’t directly what is happening here but this gives us a view to what’s really going on as you are playing a game.

Remember those annoying selections you have to make when you make a phone call. You are given maybe three or four choices and you have to press a number corresponding to the selection. The user is unable to see the options that he or she has. So that’s an example of bad user interface design. I know this isn’t exactly what is going on but this is just an example of these psychological rules that our brains use to work.

So we have a more advanced controller here. As you can see the shape has been developed to be more friendly for the user. You have more options but also more responsibility. You have the ability to move accurately the cursor. So the thumb stick can actually replace the control of computers mouse. There has been almost thirty years and you can clearly see that things have in this matter progressed. I probably have to say that this controller is also if used so completely wireless.

One important thing I have to mention while we’re on this subject. It is important that the user can get out of the game and exit from it and maybe even pause the game for a while. Both of these controllers have this option. While using NES you can hit the right button to pause the game. When using Xbox Series S you have the option to pause and exit the game mode and kind of return to the operating system mode. You can also think about how this works with virtual reality. You definitely need a way to pause the game at any time you have to.