Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

What Is Abandonware?

Posted on by Viljami

Have you heard about abandonware? Does it actually mean that you can just copy abandonware and can it be in some way profitable for the original developer of the game? In this blog post we are trying to get a thorough answer to these questions.

There are many websites that provide some old games that you can download and install them to your PC. Many games are or can be played on a modern personal computer with a modern operating system. There are games also available for emulators. Some games require a special software application like DOSBox. So it is possibly to play old DOS games with a new PC.

The case of abandonware concerns console game and computer games. Some game companies, like Nintendo, like to stick with their old copyrights and try to ban and make copying old, or retro, games totally illegal. They are acting like this even when clearly there is not a clear option for them to collect a price for this kind of a game that is already some tens of years old.

Some companies publsih remakes. Some companies totally abandon their game. This is where the term gets its true meaning from. What then means public domain? Could games be released in public domain? This means that you could re-publish a game of this kind and even take some parts of the game and make a new game out of it with paying nothing for the original developer.

What would it mean if we had all old games in a public domain? We wouldn’t have to pay for our retro games. There would be more websites sharing these games. There would be a lot of exploration and even research done by playing these games and getting to understand their content.

There are many games currently classified as abvandonware right now. You can find a deeply involved website titled “My Abandonware” that provides ten of thousands of games for you to download. You can download games like Silent Hill 2 or Need For Speed Most Wanted for free. If there is a game that is currently in any form commercially avaialble this is mentioned and it isn’t possible to download it as a free copy but there might be a demo version available.

I have written here in this blog earlier that we are having difficulties of maintaining and keeping old games, I am talking about games that are 20 years old or even older than that, available. Are we supposed to just forget these games? I thinkthey have high value even if nobody has a way to buy them.

What should we do? Should we make every 20 year old game totall free? Should we allow some other parties to make more good remakes out of all these old games? Could large companies like Nintendo provide more opportunities to buy and maintain a collection of old and retro games?

We are having this business that is very profitable for game shops. You buy a physical copy of an old game and the price is very high. You keep the game for years. Of course you have the original gaming system. But what happens when the game gets so old and the divece you are playing on has become broken? Do we just delete this stuff and move on? I think we should think more about maintaining old games and trying to remember also in the future what they are all about.

Basically a game ends up as abandonware because the original owner of this game doesn’t find a way to make the game somehow profitable again. Every game can be profitable when it gets released. After many years the owner doesn’t care about the game and so it becomes abandsonware. There is an issue also with the copyright. It is hard to make a remake out of a gaem that is abandonware. This is why public domain would be a consideration.

Some Notes About Game Boy Color

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I write to you about Game Boy Color. Playing video games with a handheld device seems to be interesting. At least that’s what it is to me. Nowadays you can load an emulator to your smart phone and play games like this. You can even get a game controller that uses Bluetooth. Why would you bother to buy a real hand held console? Should you buy one or not? In this blog post I am trying to answer these questions.

I have right here, in that featured image, Game Boy Color. It was first released back in 1998. I think I bought it last years summer. So, the console has been with me for a while now. I bought it for 80 euros. You might be thinking of getting yourself a Game Boy Color. So, let me tell you some facts about this model of a handheld gaming system.

Let’s start with the bad facts. The screen is very poorly lit. You really have to focus your eye for it. The lighting has to be almost perfect for you to enjoy playing with this device. That must be the biggest bad fact about it. Actually I think we can move on to describe what is good in this device.

You can adjust the sound volume very nicely. It has this sort of a wheel that you can roll. You can also plug your headphones in. This makes playing in a bus or a train much more private and you don’t also annoy other passengers. The sound quality is adequate. I mean it’s way nicer than for example PC speaker. The device is powered with two AA batteries. There is also an option for an external power supply unit. The connection type is 3V and the plug is of size 2.5mm x 0.7mm. You can probably get this kind of a power supply unit for maybe 20 euros. I recommend buying one that you can adjust the output and the size of the connector. Let me make this clear – the power unit doesn’t have to be precisely designed for Game Boy Color so you can use this kind of an adjustable unit.

You can play Game Boy games on Game Boy Color. Of course there are some newer games that are only supported for Game boy Color. Game Boy Color reminds a lot of Game Boy that was released about ten years earlier. If you are thinking of playing Game Boy games I also recommend an adapter that enables you to play Game Boy games on a SNES. This adapter can cost something like 35 euros. This way you don’t have to suffer from the bad screen. Let’s tell you also that there are several other ways to play Game Boy games and this includes emulators also.

What are some good games? From Game Boy I definitely recommend Super Mario Land, Link’s Awakening and Pokemon games. As is with these old retro type games usually there are a lot of poor quality games available also. Some of these are trying to act as some sort of ports of these really famous and popular games. I can just mention games like Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto. So as you can probably imagine the power of this system is not so great. But there definitely are some good games made for you to play on a Game Boy Color.

My Game Boy Color is a bit broken. What I mean is that the power switch doesn’t seem to function at all. So I power up the device by inserting two batteries and that’s when the device turns on. Another way would be to use a power supply unit. The thing that the power switch was broken probably made the device’s price lower. I don’t know if some talented electrician could fix it. And when it comes to fixing I can tell you that there are many professionals that do repair and even mod old electronic video game consoles including Game Boy Color. It is a popular mod to replace the display. I don’t have information about how much would it cost. I know that there isn’t a service like this available in my home country (Finland).

Let’s summarize. Should you get yourself a Game Boy Color? I think you should consider this decision wisely and deeply. The price is a bit high. Playing with this bad type of screen makes it a bit awkward. Although the device provides a good entertainment for for example a long road trip. The design is very strong and I can figure that it can take some hits and not being broken easily. In today’s era of sensitive electronic devices these features are a welcome exception. Or, if you don’t have any money left in your pocket, you can just buy a Super Game Boy or use an emulator. Think wisely.

Returning to Halo In The Form of Master Chief Collection

Posted on by Viljami

It’s been some years that I played the first Halo game. It was probably on Xbox 360 but I can clearly remember when I got my first touches to this game on original Xbox. The year must have been 2006. The first Halo was released for PC also. I have it as a physical copy that I managed to buy from re-use center only a few years back. I also have Master Chief Collection on PC. I bought it through Steam and it was clearly on some kind of sale when I bought it.

What it comes to Master Chief Collection for Xbox Series X I can tell you that I only recently bought it. Yes, it was the time of this years Black Friday. So, I did buy something on this years Black Friday. I am not so big fan of this event or season or whatever you call it. I think this has become too important for everyone of us. Well, maybe I have to just adjust to the situation. Let me just tell you that it is ridiculous how much people buy stuff during this time of year. And you know that the amount of stuff you have in your  apartment has been increasing. This has happened, I think, in overall in almost every apartment.

Halo was released in 2001. It was a remarkable game. It wasn’t the first first person shooter that we got for a game console. What it was was surely one of the first games that successfully and finally brought FPS games steadily to also consoles. Before this we really couldn’t play games like this with a game pad. The first FPS of this kind must have been Golden Eye for Nintendo 64 and it was released in 1997. This was the beginning of the era when you wouldn’t necessarily need a mouse and a keyboard to play these types of games that were strongly categorized as games for only PC.

The first Halo offered tight shooting action. The controls were smooth. The crosshair was a bit larger than it had been on some earlier games of this genre. The game was set in some kind of a futuristic and fantasy type of environment. The world of this game looks and feels beautiful. Since this is a remaster of the original game the graphics have been improved. The latest Xbox controller also improves the average gameplay a lot.

I have completed 70 percentage of the game. By this I mean only of the first game – Halo: Combat Evolved. The collection comes with every Halo game that was released before and including Halo 4. I bought the collection when I realized that the only Halo I have completed was Halo 3. I paid only about 25 euros for this collection. It gives you a good value. Since I got my Xbox Series X and removed Series S from my current setup I have bought many games as physical copies.

I have to tell you that I had a slight issue with installing the game. The menus appeared in Korean. I had to make a search for some guidance and finally found some video that showed me how to change the language to English. The game didn’t seem to offer an option for selecting the language to Finnish. But that’s OK for me. I don’t like to hear or read Finnish from a game and since I read and write also very good English it doesn’t matter to me at least so much.