Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: History of Gaming

Playing NBA 2K14 on PS4

Posted on by Viljami

How I got in to playing basketball games? First I started to get interested about these kinds of sport games as I was already playing basketball. It was my hobby for 7 years. Then I stopped playing as I wanted to concentrate to studying more. The first basketball game I ever had was Super Real Basketball. It was a game for Sega Mega Drive. It wasn’t the greatest game or the most realistic. But that’s how I started to get into basketball games.

The game that really caught my attention was NBA Jam. I played it in arcade in the 90s. It became my favourite game at that time. I liked also very much Mortal Kombat. These were the best games for us to play in arcades. I usually played with my friends in arcades. Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam are so great titles that I still play these original games on my Sega console even today. There have been many games released later that had better graphics and controls and so on. I still like these original games also.

NBA Jam was a hit in arcades all over the world. Sure, it was appealing and attractive. It wasn’t so realistic. There was NBA Live series that was trying to create games that were more detailed. I didn’t like this series so much or get into it. I remember playing some basketball games on PS1. But the best games that were dealing this sport were yet to be released. I have also played many basketball games on Xbox and PS3. I just didn’t so much get into them. I have to mention, in this context, a very good basketball game for PS2. That game is NBA Street vol 2 on PS2.

NBA 2K14 isn’t the latest basketball game but it surely is the one I have played the most. This game was also among the first games I bought for my then fresh and shiny PS4. I started creating a character. My imagination started flowing. I created a player that was 6 feet tall. He played as shooting guard. I added some base skills to ball handling, passing and 3-point shooting. When the game, and new season starts, you don’t first get to play. You might get 5 minutes at court to prove your skills. Then you start to get more playing time as your character progresses.

NBA 2K14 has many dimensions in it. I found it appealing as I have some history inside basketball. I have learned new ways to look at this sport. I have tried to make some kind of a game myself. This has not been easy for me. I would like to create some kind of strategy game. I went on to play 2K14 for maybe 100 hours as I developed my characters skills to overall of 99 and managed finally to win the MVP and the championship. This is a very good game. I think it brings some role playing games’s elements to sport gaming. As I had achieved almost everything the game had to offer I moved to NBA 2K18. I didn’t like it so much. This time I created taller character that played the position of power forward.

The legacy of Colin McRae Rally

Posted on by Viljami

Now that Dirt 5 is coming to us later this year it would be nice to think about how Codemasters started this whole rally game thing. So it was 1998 and PS1 was the best and most popular gaming system out there. We had already seen some really good racing games. Gran Turismo was released early in 1998. The first Colin McRae Rally game was good, but in my opinion, the second game was even better. It had some awesome physics modeling that made it the most realistic rally game of its time. Back then racing games were mainly played with gamepad instead of a wheel and pedals. This made playing not so realistic but also really fun and it also demanded a good concentrating.

Two first games were popular. Third game, Colin McRae Rally 3, was released on the next generation of gaming consoles. It was released for PC, PS2 and original Xbox. I really liked this game also. Graphics are better than in the first two games but the feeling and controlling is very much like in these first two games. Colin McRae Rally 04 and Colin McRae Rally 2005 followed some years after. It tells a lot about this games popularity that there were so many games released. It actually had competitors. One really good simulation rally game was Richard Burns Rally. Some players thought that Colin McRae games weren’t actually the most realistic racing games that existed. That was about to change. But it took several years for Codemasters to develop its most realistic rally simulation game yet. I am talking about new games that were released to PS4.

Dirt series started with Colin McRae DiRT. It brought nice rally driving experience along with some other kinds of vehicles for players to drive with. It was a good racing game. It was followed by Colin McRae Dirt 2 and Dirt 3 that were both released, also with the Dirt series’s first game, on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. I talked about how Codemasters were also beginning to develop a racing game that would be more realistic. The game, which also has a sequel, was Dirt Rally. It was released for PS4 along with PC and Xbox One. It brought realistic driving experience to players that could even use wheel and pedals to play this racing simulation.

Surely there are many racing games and even series’s of racing games. Colin McRae Rally is still very important to me and close to my hearth. It introduced me to rally games. I also played other racing games, but not really any other rally games. With Dirt Rally 2.0 and Dirt 4 released already some years ago rally game fans will know where they are turning their heads to as they need some more rally gaming experinces. The saga continues as Dirt 5 will be released later this year.

Creating the sound of Mega Drive

Posted on by Viljami

Music has always been a big part of video games. From the earliest soundtracks of Commodore 64 to the CD quality output of the first Sony PlayStation this genre of video game music has been developing as time has progressed. PS1s sound cannot be classified as chiptune. We are here going to concentrate to earlier sound worlds of consoles and especially to Sega Mega Drive. If you didn’t already know I am going to also mention that Mega Drive and Genesis are basically the same. The name Genesis was used in USA. But the consoles are the same.

Commodore 64 wasn’t as powerful as Mega Drive. It still plays a big role in the development of video game music. Many good principles of making music were first introduced to music producers when there were C-64 games soundtracks created. Back in 80s the music was generated with applications called trackers. It differs in many considerations from music production today. Today it is common for a musician to have a fairly powerful personal computer, software and a keyboard and a microphone. At some times producers used hardware synthesizers and even samplers (mainly hip hop). Today it is common to have virtual intruments that are called VST instruments or to put short VSTi’s. There is also effects which are called VST effects.

So how does modern music production relate to retro games music? It is interesting because many artists or hobbyists are still interested in the worlds of sounds that were created over 20 years ago. They still sound freash. Even if they have this sort of a retro feel. It is still interesting how they actually managed to get quality sound out of these primitive devices. This sound is actually a genre that is called simply “Chip Tune”.

I am going to tell you how you can basically build this sound and compose as original chip tune artist. You first need a VSTi host app. I prefer free one so you can download a program called LMMS (Linux Music Making Studio) that runs on both Windows and Linux. I prefer also Linux and VSTis don’t even work today on Linux. Then you will need a proper free VSTi. We are going to use a synth called Genny. You can see this posts featured image. That is the GUI of Genny. Don’t be afraid of the look of this image – it has many ready-made presets so you don’t necessarily have to make your owns.

In LMMS you load a thing called VeSTige. That’s the actual host for VSTis. Then, if you have already Genny’s .dll-file downloaded, you can load it up to VeSTige. It’s that simple. Feel free to change presets and play sounds from your MIDI- or even regular keyboard. Nice! If you have any difficulties just try to search with Google for additional tutorials and tips. I am not going to tell you everything about VSTis and LMMS, but I am very sure that you will find information about these if you proceed to create your own tunes with these tools. This was just a few words about generating some chip tune music. Bye, for now!