Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: PC

Waiting for Forza Horizon 6

Posted on by Viljami

Forza Horizon 6 will be released 19th of May this year (2026). It will be available at the launch for PC and Xbox Series S/X. There have been some very unofficial discussions about this game getting released also for other mainstream gaming consoles. This just seems to be the viewpoint today. There might be such things as exclusive releases soon as every PlayStation title seems to be getting released for PC and now also for Xbox.

So, what I have been up to lately, one might ask. Mainly I have been working and keeping myself busy in that way. There seems to be less time for video games as I get older. However I have played some games and this blog post deals with that part of my life now. I have played Crash Bandicoot 4, Doom – Dark Ages, Half-Life 2 and also more and lately Dirt 5 which seems to be a nice racing game to start to get ready for Forza Horizon 6.

Dirt 5 was originally released in 2020. It isn’t the newest game that has been developed by Codemasters but it still remains as a part of this legendary series of racing games that might even been started by Colin McRae Rally already back in the end of the 90s. There have been many great games in this series. I especially want to mention Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and Colin McRae Dirt 2. Those might be the best games out of this series.

Dirt 5 has a lot to offer. I have already spent a bit over 7 hours playing it. You get to drive with several different vehicles and there are several types of driving you will get involved in during playing. There are many camera options to choose from. You can set the camera to the surface of the road or then set it to display the whole car from the back. I chose to set the camera so that I can see the whole car I am driving. This makes it somewhat easy to play Dirt 5. You do have to control the vehicle precisely. I have played this game with a game controller. I really don’t know how a driving wheel and pedals would make the game seem to feel like.

Dirt 5 is a nice racing game in overall. It is almost unfair to make a comparison between the earlier games in this series because they are just so good as racing games. If we put it into this perspective Dirt 5 is a good game. There might have been some issues early when the game was released but I think that in 2026 this game is still a fun one to play. It has received the “metascore” of 79 out of 100 on Metacritic.

I originally picked up Dirt 5 just some weeks before the upcoming release of Forza Horizon 6. It currently has a price tag of 21 euros on the Xbox store. So, it is a cheap game that can help you to better deal with waiting for Forza Horizon 6. This time I bought a game as a digital copy. Although I decided to order Forza Horizon 6 as a physical copy. There will be a long installation process since the game takes a bit over 130 GB of space from my Xbox Series X. Do remember that there is also a PC version available.

With having already made the purchase I am waiting to get my hands on the new Forza game at next Tuesday. Today I am having a day off and I am currently enjoying it an drinking some coffee while I type this post that you are soon able to read. I really have nothing else to say right now. So, until next time my dear readers.

Some Problems With Corrupted Memory Card

Posted on by Viljami

I have had some problems with my Raspberry Pi 5 and its memory card. I have Recalbox installed on my Raspberry Pi. The problems started when I turned the power off from the button that this Raspberry Pi 5 has while it was running a game. This corrupted my memory card. Luckily it was quite easy to fix this problem once I got to understand what should I do to fix this matter.

So, the problem was that Raspberry Pi 5 wasn’t starting. The screen wasn’t detected and my television didn’t display anything. I had to search for some guidance which is nowadays easy. You just have to use a search engine that also preferably has a mode in which you can utilize some AI power. I first thought that I would try to run some commands directly from SSH connection. I tried to run this Linux command (“fsck”) but I couldn’t get it to work. I would have needed to unmount the memory card first and then I would’ve had to run that command.

I didn’t feel so confident trying to unmount the memory card. Luckily the filesystem that Recalbox uses is compatible with Windows. I found out that it would be possible to run a Windows command (“chkdsk”). The filesystem of a boot partition in my memory card was FAT32 and the other partition had a exFAT filesystem. I first only repaired the FAT32 partition. I obviously had removed the memory card and inserted it in my Windows PC. Now I inserted the card back to my Raspberry Pi. Of course it didn’t load. However there was a picture.

What I had to do was to also repair the larger partition of this memory card that had the exFAT filesystem. So, after I had repaired both of these partitions, the Recalbox system now started just as it did before the memory card became corrupted. So, the problem was eventually fixed.

The memory card of a Raspberry Pi is quite vulnerable and it can get corrupted easily if you switch the power off in a wrong way. You can also access your Recalbox system by opening a web browser on a computer that is connected to your apartments nertwork and going to address: “recalbox.local”. This enables you to for example restart and shut down your Recalbox system.

I recommend to use for storing your roms and bios files some other way than just a memory card. I have a 512GB USB stick that stores currenlty all my data that is used in Recalbox. This is just huge enough for some older game roms like PS1, Mega Drive and NES just to give you an idea. I have another device that I run some newer retro games, like GameCube and original Xbox, that has a bit more power and also more storage space. A Raspberry Pi 5 isn’t so powerful that you could run for example Xbox games on it. My other device doesn’t however run Xbox 360 or PS3 games. This would require a bit more power.

So, my usage of Raspberry Pi 5 continues. I have been waiting some more news also about Valve’s Steam Machine. It would be a considerable part of my setup in the future. It would provide some power for playing retro games with emulation. We just have to wait for the announcement of price and release date. I am also dreaming about purchasing a PS5 console to empower my gaming setup even more.

The problem has now been fixed. Recalbox for Raspberry Pi 5 uses these two types of filesystems that are very much compatible also with Windows along with the compatiblity with Linux systems. It was eventually easy to fix this issue. Everything now works with this device as it did already some time ago.

Playing Gran Turismo 3

Posted on by Viljami

Gran Turismo 3 is a game that I hadn’t played a lot. Now just recently, I think it was yesterday, I figured that I would like to get into this game. Gran Turismo series has always been one of my favorite game series and also in my opinion a very good racing game. I first started playing the first game in this series back when I first bought my PlayStation 1 console. That was back in the end of the 1990s. It was among the first games that I played that were for PS1. I also got to play, back then, a demo version of Resident Evil 2. I liked it so much that I soon had to purchase it.

I am a fan of Resident Evil series also. Just yesterday I got my new copy of Resident Evil 9 (or Requiem). I haven’t played it yet. It might just be a very good game. Somehow playing some Gran Turismo 3 was more important than getting into RE9. That does not make sense in any way. I just think that you must sometimes go with your first initial thoughts and instincts when it comes to matters like what game do you want to play next. That’s just how I feel and think.

Gran Turismo 3 was released originally for PlayStation 2 back in 2001. The first two games in Gran Turismo series were released for PS1. It is very much have been a PlayStation only game. So, it is an exclusive game that you can play only on PlayStation consoles. It has been that way for a long time. It’s like Forza Horizon or Forza Motorsport. They are exclusives of Xbox consoles. While there have been many games ported from console to another, lately, you can say that there are these certain limitations that are still in effect when it comes to Xbox, Nintendo and/or PlayStation games. Also PC can be mentioned when having a debate or conversation like this. I think the limitations are beginning to be small and we are going more and more towards games that are released and can be played on almost any system that does exist or is available. That might be a good thing. It might be a bad thing. Or, it might be something in between.

Gran Turismo 3 offers a bit over 40 hours of playing time. That is way less than the time it tooks to finish Gran Turismo 4. If you are thinking about which one of these two games you are going to try to play first I really don’t have a good advice, at least yet, for you. I started my journey with this franchise with the first Gran Turismo. I wouldn’t advice you to play it today as your first Gran Turismo game since the graphics are somewhat disgusting to look at. Nostalgia cannot save everything. This same advice goes with the second Gran Turismo. I think Gran Turismo 6 or maybe Gran Turismo 7 would be good starting points. If you don’t mind about outdated graphics you should go with Gran Turismo 3 or 4. You with yourself get to decide if you choose 3 or 4. I think they are both great games.

Since I have broke already two PS2 consoles I today play my PS2 games, that I still like very much to play, with Batocera emulation. Last autumn I installed Batocera to my old desktop PC and setup the whole environment for playing PS2 games with that PC. I have it hooked to my television through HDMI connection. I use Xbox Series S/X controller with this retro gaming PC. This seems to be a good way to experience PS2 in 2026. PS2 games are also very easy to rip as they act like your regular DVDs. I use a program called “ImgBurn” to create an image out of the game DVD. Then I just transfer the file to the right directory on my Batocera PC.

All-in-all Gran Turismo 3 is a nice game. The first and yet the only car I have acquired in this game is Mazda MX-5. It is a good first car in the game. I have purchased many updates already to this vehicle. I have unlocked B and A driving licenses. My car has now almost 340 horsepower (or HP). I have played the game, since yesterday, six and a half hours. There is a lot more to play in Gran Turismo 3. I hope to also get to play some Resident Evil Requiem soon.