Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Some of my experiences with Gran Turismo

Posted on by Viljami

I first played Gran Turismo on Sony PlayStation. It was my first full game that came with the used console I had bought. My PS1 had also some demo discs included. I didn’t really get in to using racing wheel. And the game didn’t in my opinion necessarily need one. PS1 had many great driving games. I definitely enjoyed also Colin McRae Rally series as its first two games were released on Sonys first gaming console.

Gran Turismo was something amazing. It was released in 1998. It brought realistic graphics and gameplay to console gaming systems racing games. You could also test and upgrade your vehicles. You could buy new cars and tune them and buy more parts. It had over 150 different cars. You got money from completing races and finishing on top positions. There just were so many goals you could try to achieve. Think for example collecting all the cars the game offers.

You can see the second Gran Turismo game on this posts image. I never really played that. I didn’t play GT3 or GT4. But the game I did play some years after getting into the first game was the fifth game of this series. Racing gamers have seen many good games that were developed after the first Gran Turismo. I can name for example Richard Burns Rally and Dirt 3. In my humble opinion GT5 doesn’t come close to these. It is named as Gran Turismo 5 and it is a good game. But…do you have to play it just because it has a strong brand and some earlier games in this series were good? Is that good enough reason? I don’t think so…

Gran Turismo 3 and 4 were great games. I broke my PS2 a while ago so I couldn’t play these on it. And I don’t know if these games have aged well. Racing fans just have so many alternatives to turn to. Dirt Rally 1 and 2.0 have been released and also we can add Dirt 4 to this list. There is already one new Gran Turismo (Sport) that was released for PS4. There does exist some good racing games available only for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. We are not going to go there…

Childhoods Favourite – NHL 94

Posted on by Viljami

I wrote recently about Sonic The Hedgehog and how it was my first Sega Mega Drive game. I am going to present to you another game that I liked to play on this gaming system. It was Electronic Arts’s NHL 94. I remember it well as a game that was fun to play and which delivered awesome playability and challenge. You could play just one game. There was possibility to play an All Star game. There were no national teams but I remember how I found many Finnish players on various NHL teams. I think best of them were Jari Kurri and Teemu Selanne. Selanne played in Winnipeg Jets with another Finnish player Teppo Numminen.

You could also start a Playoffs series. I think there was a possibility to play the whole season but as there were no way to save your game that would have been pointless. You could adjust the difficulty level and the length of a period. Big part of this game were the statistics. Players had different abilities such as speed and shot and passing accuracy. Sometimes players were injured. The game kept record of user stats. I remember how I tried to make the crowd cheer more because I wanted to break the record of the desibel levels of the crowd.

I played this game a lot. I think it’s the game I played most on my Mega Drive. NHL 94 was released also on SNES and Sega CD. There was also a release for PC that was simply titled “NHL Hockey”. It had official NHL license. Wikipedia states also that many people think that this is the best sports game ever released. According to my text above I don’t think this becomes as a surprise. It was developed as two dimensional point of view. If you like to play older NHL games I can tell you that I also like NHL 97. Maybe I will write a post also about that game some day.

Tony Hawks Pro Skater is making a comeback

Posted on by Viljami

I was first introduced to Tony Hawks Pro Skater as a young teenager back in 1999. It was the golden era of Sony PlayStation 1. I’m not much of a skater. I mean I had a skateboard but I think I started skateboarding too old. I didn’t learn the tricks. The toughest trick I managed to do was pop-shove-it. And some of my friends had fun at my expense because of that. But that’s enough about my skateboarding skills.

Skateboarding is fun to watch. At the end of 90s some game developers thought they could create a game based on this style of sport. This was also a good opportunity for Tony Hawk to gain some more recognizability. The game was an absolute hit. It made kids want to start learning real skateboarding. And it did bring this sport more fans and hobbyists. It made skateboarding very popular.

If you liked the game or why not the whole series or maybe just the three first ones or what ever – there is going to be released a new game with better graphics that maintains the playability of the original one. This release includes THPS one and two. The release date is currently set to September 4th. There might be delays coming to this releaase because of situation with Corona virus.

So the game brings THPS to some newer consoles. Activision hasn’t released a THPS game after 2015 when THPS 5 flopped badly and received bad reviews. If you have played this game you propably remember the sonudtrack. In this new release there will be almost all tracks that appeared on original games but some are going to be missing. This is happening because of licensing problems. This small HD collection will be first released on Xbox One and PS4 and might be available for newer consoles later.

So we are waiting to see if this collection brings us a game with good quality. It’s been a while. I think I am going, once again, have these nostalgic feelings I sometimes tend to have. Lets hope it will be a good THPS HD version of the first and the second game. And lets hope that the release isn’t going to be delayed, well, at least not badly.