Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

The Role of SNES In The History of Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

There was a time in history of gaming when SNES was the most powerful and the most newest gaming console in the markets. This period of time was followed by many years of dominance from Mega Drive, or Genesis as the system was called in the USA, that in turn was a following of dominance from Nintendo Entertainment System, or for short, NES. What had happened earlier, before Nintendos dominant era, would be known as video game crash. It was a time when video games weren’t selling so well. NES begun the new era when video games started to begin to be popular again.

What makes Super Nintendo, or SNES, so significant is reflected in these games that were released for it. They were beginning to look like something that could be considered a true form of art and not just some entertainment for kids. There were stories that were told through these games. There were some limitations about the amount space available and also some considerations about how to, for example, save a game with this technology. However the progression was fast and SNES had its time when it was actually considered the greatest gaming console of all that were available.

Now, you can debate on which one is better, Mega Drive or SNES but actually the way I see it is something like this. NES was the best during 1983 to 1988. Mega Drive dominated from 1988 to 1991. And SNES was the greatest console between 1991 and 1995. After that it would be the era of PlayStation 1 which would continue all the way to the era of the generation in which PS2 would belong to. Take this as just an idea and not something I could somehow actually prove to be true. This is a sort of a theory.

How were the games that were released for SNES? I would point out that there were games like Street Fighter II and Super Mario World. They were full of action and included graphics that were very impressive at their time. There were also some role-playing games that I think moved gaming very much forward at this time in the history of gaming and playing video games. These games brought us closer to the games that could be later found on PS1. I think that when PS1 came actually as popular as it would show to be we were actually starting to realize the full potential that video games actually had. RPGs on SNES were something like a bridge to more complex and modern gaming.

So, the whole scene of gaming was advancing very fast at this time. Everything I have told you here makes me think how little I have spend playing SNES. I have several RPGs to explore if I choose to go to that path. I am thinking that this system, SNES, has some great games. But the question in my mind seems to be “are they actually worth playing”? I ma thinking this because they are old games. I don’t have so many memories of playing SNES back in the 90s. I have more memories about Mega Drive.

I am still thinking about this. Some good games for SNES include titles like many of Final Fantasy titles, Secret of Mana, Dragon Quest VI and III, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. It also had many good games that weren’t actually RPGs. These titles include Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox and F-Zero just to mention some of them.

If you are a retro collector you must have heard how there was a device that would have actually been a Nintendo console that would have had a CD drive of some kind included with it. This was actually something that would have been a collaboration of Sony and Nintendo. We never saw this machine and Sony went on to release its own gaming console. PlayStation, later. This leaves my imagination with many possible outcomes of what we would have had as video gamers if it would have come to reality.

SNES is a huge part of history of video games. As I am more of a Mega Drive and PlayStation 1 fan I have lots of playing to do if I wish to get into SNES a bit more. There is a lot to explore. Some games might not be ones that I will spend tens of hours or even hundreds of hours playing since they are already a bit old as video games. I might play some newer video games instead. However it is great to acknowledge how these games shaped the way we experience gaming today.

PS5 Is Way Ahead of Xbox Series S/X

Posted on by Viljami

Xbox Series S/X has sold since its release only about 28 million units to this day. This means sales all the way from the end of 2020. It has been five years. Do you know how much Xbox Series’s main competitor, PS5, has sold? Sony’s newest gaming console has sold about 84 million units. It was also released in the end of 2020.

What about Nintendo? Nintendo Switch has currently sold about 154 million units. It was released already in 2017. So, it has had some more time to sell than its competitors. These figures describe worldwide sells. I am not so often offering links to any material. I don’t know why. I guess I am not used to it. But, this time, I am making an esception. You can find the figures from THIS Wikipedia article.

There have been many rumours. Some people are referring to times when Sega dropped out of the console markets. That time its main console was Dreamcast that was able to sell only 9 million units during its few years that it was available. To compare the sales to something measurable we can take PS2. It managed to sell 160 million units during the time it was manufactured and available as a new console. This comparison is descriptive since Dreamcast and PS2 belonged in the same console generation.

There were many reasons why PS2 was so successful. First matter that comes to mind is that it featured a DVD player. Many consumers would need to buy a DVD player anyway at that time. So, it was comfortable to buy a PS2 since you got sort of two devices at a one price. PS1 had been a success and PS2 would seem to continue the path that its predecessor started. There were many games released to PS2. “How many, actually?” one might ask. I would make an online search and find that there were almost eleven thousand games released for it worldwide.

We can think for a moment about how gaming is popular as a hobby right now. There are new games and retro games. There are gamers that have been gamers for all of their lives. There are young gamers and there are old and middle aged gamers. Actually, today, there aren’t anyone at any age that wouldn’t be active in playing video games at some level. Even my parents have a relationship with games since they have to hear my speak and maybe even read my words about video games. To say it simply I can only say: “Gaming is now more popular as a hobby than it has been ever”.

Lets return to the beginning of this topic I had in my mind when I started writing this blog post. Why is it that Xbox Series S/X has sold only so little compared to its main competitors? One thing that comes to mind is games. We haven’t seen a lot of Xbox exclusive games in this console generation. PS5 has offered some. It has featured Silent Hill 2, Astrobot and the latest Ratchet & Clank game just to name some of them. Well, we could mention also God of War. So, the lack of exclusive games can be one reason.

Xbox Series S/X is not the lowest selling Microsoft game console to this day since original Xbox sold fewer units during its lifespan. Xbox One sold about 58 million units and Xbox 360, being the most sold Xbox console ever, about 84 million units while the original Xbox sold only 24 million units. So, Xbox Series S/X has sold 4 million units more than the original Xbox did.

Original Xbox has its special place in the history of gaming. It also has a special place in my hearth among some other legendary consoles, like Mega Drive, NES and PS1. The thing I remember from back in the day when Microsoft first got into video game business and released their original Xbox console was that everyone hated Microsoft. It was absolutely amazing factor that seemed to push the sales down. That console just couldn’t, at least not yet, compete with Sony.

We are going to see what will happen with Xbox Series S/X. We are currently waiting for more information about PS6 and some details about when it is going to get released. Sony has stated that there might be PS5 support until as long as 2031 or something that. We might not see a new PlayStation yet in a long while. Right now also gamers have confirmed that our PS4s are still actually very much functional. “Why to release a new console so often?”, one might ask. This might be the question that leaves us pondering some more. So, have a nice rest of the week for all of our dear readers of this blog!

Some Features of Optical Discs

Posted on by Viljami

Some time, not so long ago, we used to use optical discs way more and in a different way compared to how it is today. I have recently been playing lots of PS2 games using an emulator. I have these PS2 games in their original form. That is on these game discs. That copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 also has a documentary film also on another DVD. DVDs aren’t also so popular anymore. We are used to streaming our video content. If you prefer physical copies you can buy movies on Bluray or 4K.

Some things have changed. We do buy games, sometimes, as physical copies on optical discs. When we do we use the disc to install the game. Part of the installation process is handled through internet connection. Back in the days, in the early 2000s, we had game consoles like PS2 and GameCube. They utilized optical discs in a different way.

If we inspect our PS2 video game console we can see that it doesn’t have a hard drive at all. So games are basically on optical discs. It is the disc that holds almost all the data. There are memory cards used that can store the save files. These memory cards could hold only 8 MB of storage. GameCube is very much like PS2 in this way. It did handle smaller optical discs and it also had to use memory cards. Lets mention Dreamcast here, also.

What about the original Xbox? It actually had a hard drive. This makes playing a game like Max Payne a bit more of a pleasure since loading games from same save spot can make the game very repetitive. That’s why I find playing Max Payne on the original Xbox than on a PS2 console my preferred way to enjoy Remedy Entertainments masterpiece more enjoyable. I think it is best played on PC. But you probably get the point here.

So, the games were played from DVDs. This made the disc very valuable. If it had a scratch the game would stop playing. Sometimes the console you were playing on did break so that you couldn’t play it anymore since it couldn’t read optical discs anymore at all. There are ways to fix consoles, all right, but just let me say this. I have found it way more pleasurable to install an emulation system on a PC with a dedicaded operating system and just ripping my PS2 games to some .iso-files and playing them again and again, fully functioning, from a fast SSD hard drive. You basically have to rip your PS2s BIOS and also the games to enjoy gaming this way. After all it is very easy to rip a PS2 game. You just have to use an external DVD drive and some software application, like ImgBurn, that is also freely available.

We have went through lots of changes. The gaming has evolved a lot. If you think that we used to have games taking some space, like 4,7 GB. We are actually now in a place where a game can definitely take tens, or even several tens, of times the space we were used to back in the days. We went from large HDDs to SSDs. We went from slow internet connections to modern and very fast connections offered while using Steam or Xbox Store or some other web service. This makes me wonder where do we go next.

Today hard drives are faster and can hold even more space than they already used to. I have for example two 2 TB SSDs on my personal desktop computer. That is enough to hold some games. You don’t have to install every game you buy because you probably don’t play tens of games at the same time. There are more games available than ever. You probably play something from three to six games at a time. When you think that you don’t want to focus on a game you can uninstall it and keep your save files and continue playing after some time when you think that you want to install the game again.

We are actually doing something reasonal with buying games as digital copies. We are reducing the amount of carbage in this world. You can debate on that DVDs, these opticla discs, are something that you can hold on to for several tens, maybe even hundreds, of years. Buying a video game console or a PC without an optical disc drive is becoming also popular. You can save some money.

There are many facts here that you can debate on. In my opinion there are just facts against facts. There is no right or wrong answer. In this blog post I told you my perspective on optical discs and how and what they used to be compared to what is the situation right now. You can make your own opinions based on everything I have said here. I am going to enjoy some more time with Gran Turismo 4 since I started playing it again. I have played it for well over 18 hours. I think it takes over 70 hours to complete. I have lots of playing to do.