Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Modern

Playing Some Tony Hawks Pro Skater On Nintendo Switch

Posted on by Viljami

I have now played THPS 1+2 for a bit over seven hours. It really makes me to go back, with an amount of nostalgia, to this game series that so many of us still do love. I am playing this on Nintendo Switch. I have also this very neat controller that is actually Pro Controller. I think it is the best way to play sports games and many action games and also driving games. I do not have a driving game currently for Switch but it might be a fun to have one some day.

I first started playing the first THPS game on PS1 back in the 90s. It made a huge impact on me as a player of video games. Skateboarding has been popular but that hasn’t always been the case. Some other famous skateboarding games are Skate or Die for NES and Skate series. I also have to mention a game called OlliOlli right here. But if you think about THPS back in the end of 90s you have to consider that it made skateboarding a very popular field of extreme sports.

How it feels to play it once again remastered one might ask. I think that these developers have made a great job. The music is  a big part of the game. In the original game it at times felt like the music stopped too soon since the runs were only one or two minutes long. In this remake they have kind of corrected this issue and the music track continues to play more constantly.

All these tricks are present in this remake. You can grind and manual to get some points in your run. You can also do air tricks like grabs and also flip tricks. You get more points by combining tricks as creatively as possible. This guarantees a good score of points for you. You have different attributes that you can add points to also. So your skater is also developing all the time as is also the case of your actual skills in playing the game. There are many famous skaters for you to choose from. Of course Tony Hawk is included as well.

THPS has been released in many forms for many different consoles. One of my favorite games in this series is THPS 4 for GameCube. Switch offers you a decent an similar way of control that was utilized in the original game for the first PlayStation. I am talking mainly about the layout of buttons. Pro Controller doesn’t differ so mmuch from Dual Shock controller that is actually the game pad of PS1.

It is nice to play this skateboarding game once again. I feel so much of this nostalgia. At the same time I am glad that this remake turned out to be a good game in overall. While it does require good reflexes I can compensate a bit on my skills in playing this game. Who knows how many hours I did spend on this one. I mean especially the first game. I picked up also THPS 3 for PC back in the early 2000s. Today I have also a copy of that game for my PS2. I am also glad that my PS2 is currently working and that I can utilize it perfectly. Although I haven’t recently played any particularly excellent games on it. I am hoping to get some time to play Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven and also continue my campaign in Gran Turismo 4. I would like to complete it but it seems to take a long time and also a deep dedication if I wish to finish it.

I think this is all for now. Hope you are feeling nice. This game I think is available nicely and it doesn’t cost so much if you are buying it for Switch like I recently did. It is also available for any other modern gaming consoles including Series S/X and PS5 and PS4. It is available also now on Steam for PC so if you are more into some personal computer gaming I guess you can check that out.

Nintendo Switch Games Do Not Take A Lot of Shelf Space

Posted on by Viljami

I have 23 games, exactly, for my Nintendo Switch console. Well, actually I have also some games that came only as a “code-in-the-box”. So, they didn’t have a cartridge at all. You can also buy games for Switch digitally so you don’t need even the box of the game at all.

Today I got for myself three more games for Switch. These games were Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, G-Darius HD and Signalis. I also bought a new game cartridge case that gives me space for 24 more games. It also has space for some memory cards. A case like this cost me about 18 euros. I find it comfortable to store my games in a case like this. And it is official licensed as a Nintendo Switch product.

Switch is also in all ways very comfortable gaming system because you don’t need a whole lot of space for it. You can even use it in portable mode if your screen or television is used by some other member of your family or your room mate or someone else. You can even buy Switch Lite which is cheaper model of Nintendo Switch that however doesn’t provide a possibiltity to connect to an external screen. I think Switch Lite costs today about 200 euros while you can get the regular Switch for a bit undeer 300 euros.

What makes my mind inspired is the thing how little of my shelf space is used by these tiny game cartridges. Nintendo has always been original, so to say, in it’s decisions with the design of it’s gaming consoles. This has been the way for a long time already. I am kind of glad that they have this courage to try out different ways to provide players this unique experience.

There have already been some rumors around that there would be a new Switch console to be released soon. Actually I heard it was coming next year (2024). I am not going deeply to the details but it was said that it would be capable to producing 4K graphics quality. We are living in exciting times!

Nintendo Switch 2 would then be the newest gaming console that would be in the markets. There are of course many questions waiting to be answered. It might not be such a surprise if you would find some content even in this blog you are currently reading. I have touched this topic earlier. You can have a look in our archives if you are interested in what I have written previously about this subject. I have added some new elements to the user interface of this blog or website that should make it even a bit easier to find content here. Please use these means if you feel that you want to read more posts in this blog. Fell also free to drop a message to my guestbook.

It is truly amazing to find out that you can fit over 20 games to such a small space on your gaming book shelf. I have on the same shelf also some GameCube games and they take up way more space. This also is a feature that makes your NES games look like fools. They take so much space on the shelf while being also very small in tehcnical ways. Maybe the best way to store games would be to have an external SSD that would contain everything you have in your game collection. Maybe we are heading towards that, who knows?

Reasons to Keep Playing

Posted on by Viljami

As I was growing up video games really made me feel like a hero. There was this combination right in front of my eyes of technology and excitement that made my imagination go wild. I remember how graphics looked like and in my mind they are hugely exaggerated. I can understand this today when I look at any NES game that I witnessed back then. My mind plays tricks on me and I just can’t make it stop even if I wanted.

Of course there has to be a balance in life in overall. You don’t want to play all your life as you don’t also want to be working or studying all the time. You have to keep yourself exercising enough and eating well so you stay healthy and also live a good life. There are many sides to life. And there are so many things you can do.

What brought me to gaming was the technology and also the entertainment that it offered. While I was a kid I started to learn things also in school. I was good in mathematics. When I was maybe nine or ten I figured that I wanted to be an engineer. They had to utilize mathematics to develop technical devices. Soon I found out how video games basically were made. They were constructed with a programming language. There are many other things about how games are made also, like generating graphics, composing music and sound effects among many other things, but this programming stuff seemed interesting to me at that moment.

So I am a kid that is good at maths and likes to play video games. Video games are made with a programming language. This is what made me to think that I would like to create games. I wanted to be able to create all these amazing worlds and characters and plots and schemes that I had stumbled on while I was playing video games. This is what sparked my mind and made me feel interested towards mathematics and computer science.

Now that I have already some knowledge of programming I can say that it necessarily doesn’t require a high level of understanding of mathematics. You can definitely start programming even if you are bad at maths. I have to say that nowadays there are many tools for you if you don’t like writing code. There are many game development engines that you can use. And there are also many other areas in game development besides pure programming.

How can games develop you? You definitely get some training with your motor skills. You get this sense of how what you are doing with your hands is affecting what you are seeing ans that is happening in front of your eyes. Of course when you are young your motors are stronger and keep developing faster than when you are older. You are watching something that is happening. This develops your visual sense and even your three-dimensional comprehension. When you are young these skills that I mentioned are fast to develop.

I also have to say that I learned a lot of English from playing video games. You are right now reading this text that I have written fully in English. I am a native speaker of Finnish. I have learned English in school and in my spare time reading and writing and to some extent even speaking. I haven’t studied or worked in any other country besides my home country. So, this is how I got started with my English. I am still trying to learn it today. No one is perfect.

Games are also very entertaining. When PlayStation was released it took only some years for video games to become also popular amongst young adults. Today people of every age are playing. There is just so much more that games can offer when compared to music, books or movies. I am not saying that games are better. I think they are different.

Can you learn programming through playing video games? I think you can learn some game design but you don’t directly learn it with playing. You need to study some programming to actually get to a level that you can achieve something as technically challenging as making a whole video game. Knowing how to program can give you some deep insight of how games are working. I have learned to understand more about games and what happens in the code and see it also while I am playing.

There are some reasons to not to spend all of your time playing video games. There are also other things in life besides games. You definitely have to keep doing your work or keep studying. You have to take some responsibility. You also have to eat and exercise to keep yourself happy and healthy. You can in a way be addicted to playing games. This addiction is very different from a drug addiction that deals more with a chemical addiction. If you can’t do anything else in your life you can actually be addicted also to games. Basically you are then addicted to your own habits and you might need to prioritize your life again. And I know that very few people are actually addicted to video games. There are way more people understanding the balance in life than there are people addicted to gaming.

There was a story about a guy that played a video game for several moths continuously. What happened to him is very sad. He lost his wife, job and basically all of other things in life that he had. This is what can happen. But I must stress that this is very rare and people tend to understand everything that they have in life and they want to maintain their physical and mental health,

If you are feeling that you have had enough of video games you can try to center your focus on to some other things. You can read a good book. Go do some exercise. Have a nice conversation with someone you like or someone you love. Watch a movie or a series. Do some work or study and don’t forget to eat and do it also as healthy as you can.