Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Xbox Series X Has a Nice Backwards Compatibility (But Far From Full)

Posted on by Viljami

My Xbox 360 has been suffering. It doesn’t read game discs anymore. Otherwise it is fully functional. I tried opening it a bit through the disc unit as was insturcted on an official guideline I found from internet. I read from the guide that you should first power the device off, remove all cables and then try to push the wheel of the disc unit so that it opens up a bit. This was instructed to do with paper clip that has been straightened. Then you should bloww some compressed air to it.

I did mangae to do this and it fixed the problem. I was able to start a game once again. Then some weeks went by. I wasn’t playing anything with my Xbox 360. I played my other game conmsoles. As you might know Xbox 360 has a backwards compatiblity with original Xbox games. 463 games out of all 996 published are backwards compatible. We can make a quick calculation and find out that this makes 46,5 % of all games that were published for original Xbox.

If you think about PS3 and PS4 and their backwards compatibility you can propably figure how differently Microsoft and Sony deal with this issue. PS4 wasn’t at any moment backwards compatible at all. This pissed off some people. You were able to play PS1 games on PS3. Some PS3 models you are able to play also PS2 games with. PS5 however has limited backwards compatibility for PS4 games.

Xbox Series X, the latest Xbox, is fully compatible with older Xbox consoles’s games. However every game is not supported. There are 63 original Xbox games out of 996 and 633 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games compatible with the latest Xbox console. Xbox Series S doesn’t even have a disc drive so apparently it doesn’t support older consoles’s game discs. All Xbox One games are compatible with Series X.

With this information available I decided to remove my oddly acting Xbox 360 from my current setup. This meant actually that I had to remove also tens of games from my lineup. I like to keep every game that I am able to play with any console in my setup in this huge shelf. I had to remove many Xbox and Xbox 360 games.

I have now only six original Xbox games left in that shelf. The picture related to this post shows my current games that I am able to play with my Xbox Series X. I didn’t count the games that I removed so carefully. I think I set aside maybe 70 games in total. I had to put games like Halo 1 and 2, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 and many others to storage. These were games that I haven’t had time to get into thoroughly.

I would like to be able to play every game that has ever been released for any Xbox system. This is just the way that things go. You are updating your setup and getting into some new or retro consoles. You don’t actually play every game that you own. Some games and systems you just have to set aside at least for a while. Xbox 360 is an old gaming console. It was first released in 2005. I bought my Xbox 360 as a used copy. This was about six years ago. So maybe it was time for me to move on.

Games do get old. Systems do get old. There are many games that you just can’t play, buy or enjoy in any way no more. I think there should be something that could be done to this issue of great games just disappearing somewhere. We seem to be still moving so fast forward that we can easily completely forget a nice old game.

I don’t know the exact answer to this question. Will there be in the future some websites or collectins of old games. Are we going to be able to finally play these games with an emulator? Would it be nice to have a museum that could hold many old games? I know that there are already some websites that are dedicated to old Commodre 64 games. They have archived thousands of games which are also available as downloads.

There cetainly is some knowledge about gaming that also I as a gamer have been able to develop in myself. From the moment when I first gazed at a video game in some arcade I have been curious to find out more about games. I went as far as studying the field. I dreamed I would be able to make a game or something similar. And I think I am not alone with my knowledge and I think this is an interesting topic all in all.

Competition Between Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation

Posted on by Viljami

Yesterday I ended up watching a video from YouTube. It dealt with some difficulties that Sega Saturn had and how it could compete against Sony PlayStation back in the 90s. The person that was interviewed was Hideki Sato. The interview took place in 2018. I will place a link to this video at the end of this blog post. So, just keep reading.

There were differences in hardware between these two gaming consoles. PlayStation was able to bring 3D environments to gamers while many Saturn games had 2D graphics that were based on graphics created with sprites. Although Sega tried to bring some developers that had some ability in designing 3D games they weren’t as successful. Sega did have games like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing that were also popular in arcades.

Sony had an opportunity to utilize hardware that they manufactured by themselves while Sega had to use contractors. Parts that were needed were different kinds of chips, processors and, for example, CD drives. Sega was more of a software and game development company. This was a matter that would be stressed to Sega by Sony several times. This was also the direction that Sega finally took later when also Dreamcast seemed to fail.

Sony also made it easier for other game developers to make games for their new console. We were then living the age of 1990s. Sony PlayStation was released in 1995 and so was also Sega Saturn. Sega relied on assembler code while Sony gave game developers a full SDK (“software development kit”) that they could develop their games with.

If you think that Saturn ended up selling 9 million units in its lifespan while PlayStation sold 102 million units it isn’t hard to figure that there were also much more games sold for PSX than there actually were for Saturn. As usually manufacturers have to sell consoles with a loss and make up with game sells. This was difficult for Sega and they made a strong loss in sales. They took a beating.

In the end of the 1980s when Sega’s last console, Mega Drive, or Genesis in USA, Sega had the most powerful gaming console in the markets. It competed mainly with Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short. This console also sold nicely. It sold 31 million units while NES sold 62 million units. With all this information available Sega wasn’t done with manufacturing their own consoles. After all, still, Sony was unbeatable. Sony has remained a top console manufacturer since it released their first console PlayStation. Microsoft entered the competition when their Xbox was launched in the beginning of the 2000s. Xbox mainly competed with PS2 but also with GameCube and Dreamcast.

When it comes to who won the competition between these two gaming systems Sony PlayStation is a clear winner. Saturn still remains a popular console in minds of serious retro gamers. It has games that are unique and cannot be found on other retro consoles. This topic seems to be very interesting. At least it is that way in my mind.

You can find the video that inspired me to write this blog post here.

Diablo III – The Battle With Diablo

Posted on by Viljami

Last time I posted I was telling you that I am currently playing Diablo III once again. I have now managed to complete Act IV. I just defeated Diablo. The battle took some time but as I had a strong character it wasn’t a hard one. I made it with the first try. This can be explained through my dedication to develop intensively my character. Well, I had to concentrate for a while. Let me proceed and tell you how the battle went.

I have now, after this battle, a character that is on level 59. There is this kind of a logic of how your character develops in Diablo III. Basically you will unlock skills which are bringing your characters actions, like attacks, and so on, stronger. Of course you will also pick up some items that give you armor and more power to your attack, for example.

Some say that Diablo III is a wack video game. For me it hasn’t lost its appeal. You don’t have to drag health potions from town as was the case with Diablo II. This was actually my case when I played it with a Paladin character. I have always enjoyed playing with a character that has a strong attack and low skill level on magic. Someone might say that Diablo III is too easy or light on the player. I have to say that when you compare these games you are definitely in a tough company. I think all Diablo games that have been released to this day are worth getting into.

Let’s talk about my character a bit. It is a Crusader. There are seven character classes in Diablo III Eternal Collection. These character classes are Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, Witch Doctor and Wizard. I must once again confess to you that I have only played as a Barbarian and a Crusader. I like to use strong melee attacks and have a good sense when it comes to having a powerful armor. So, I am not going to explain so deeply about how these characters differ from each other. By the way, you can get your hands on some strategy guides either on the internet or in a form of a traditional published book. Since this is not a commercial I won’t provide a direct link this time.

There is point in adjusting your difficulty level. Bringing your difficulty higher you can achieve more experience points and level up more fluently. This was somewhat a strategy for me as I started playing Diablo III all over again with a new character. The difficulty level can be adjusted to very high values. I started as normal and then proceeded to Hard and then to Expert. I even played with Master difficulty for a while but changed soon to Expert. There are many other ways of how changing difficulty level will affect on how you are experiencing the game. For example monsters will have more durability and so on. Blizzard has utilized their software engineers and other professionals very fluently in this matter. I am talking about this game’s programmatic algorithms.

The battle with Diablo took me some tens of minutes. It was an easy battle since my character was so powerful. I have read that the character can be developed in this game to the level of 70. Then the development stops. We could discuss more deeply how algorithms of this game work. I am however not going to that. As I have earlier stated you should find information about that matter quite easily by using your favorite search engine.

There isn’t much more for me to tell you about this now a bit over ten years old action role playing game. I had my first touches with Diablo III as I played it with a PC back in the days. I soon also got a version for my PS4. This is actually my third console (Switch) with this game. I have played it a lot. This can probably exlpain why I am considering if it is a good idea to play this some more. Today, it feels easy to play Diablo III. There is however lots of deeper knowledge for a video game player like me still to be explored. This can be in form of different strategies and explaining to myself how these algorithms actually work.

How has this game actually been developed? This was released, as you must already know, by Blizzard. They have hundreds or maybe even thousands of people working with a game like this. So, its not only programming and developing algorithms. There are graphical designers, designers of discussion, dialogue and story, level designers, 3D artists and some people probably working also with the audio side of things.

This is basically everything I have to say about the fight with Diablo in Diablo III at the end of the Act IV. I am continuing to Act V soon. I will attach some more screenshots to my Instagram page of this blog. You can find them there. Please follow if you like the content. Peace!