Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Retro

Building Your Own Steam Based PC Setup

Posted on by Viljami

This article is here to introduce to you an idea and also an alternative to something I have achieved here with my Raspberry Pi 5. I am talking about an alternative to Recalbox. This means a PC system, maybe a mini PC one, that is running also Steam. With this kind of setup it would be possible to run any game that you own through Steam. Lets begin!

What I did earlier was that I setup a Raspberry Pi 5 as a retro gaming device. I connected it to my 4K television. This system is good. Its biggest flaw in my mind is that it is not a legit device to play your retro games on. What would be a nice solution is a sort of personal computer that you have a Linux OS running in it and you could also play Steam games on it this way.

Raspberry Pi 5 is a powerful computer. However if you really want something powerful you could get yourself a mini PC that might have something like 32 GB of RAM, a proper CPU and maybe a GPU and also some disk space like for example 2 TB of SSD. As system like this can cost above 1000 or even 1500 euros. This would however be noticed as a totally legit device. It would enable you to play any PC game that you have bought through Steam.

One solution to which operating system you could use for a project like this would be Bazzite. It is a Fedora based Linux distro that can run Steam. Just search for Bazzite through your favorite search engine. I also watched a video on YouTube about this. The video was TechDweebs “This is a fun project!”. You can watch it for some more inspiration. Of course you can find it from YouTube.

If you have a Raspberry Pi 5 or some earlier one you can also try to install some other Linux distro and also play games through Steam. There are many distros available. Just remember that even Raspberry Pi 5 has limited power and doesn’t run the latest games. However it is possible to play many games that don’t have such demanding system requirements. You can also consider getting a real Steam Deck handheld console that is priced somewhere between 600 € to 840 euros. There are ways to hook up Steam Deck to your televsiion.

I wrote this blog post just to remind you of some ways that you can achieve a nice experience while playing your favorite video games. There are many alternatives to Recalbox. I think you will find the right way just for you. You might even want to buy some older game collections for your latest console or maybe you want the original retro hardware. The choice is always yours and there are lots of choices available!

Some of The Limitations of 16-bit Era

Posted on by Viljami

I have recently stumbled on to two great games that were first published for the 16-bit game console era. The first game I am going to mention here is Turtles – The Hyperstone Heist. It was originally released for Sega Mega Drive in 1992. You can also play it from the collection of Turtles games that was just released a while ago. I am talking about The Cowabunga Collection. You can pick it up for 40 euros from Xbox Store if you want to.

The other game that made me think about the topic we are going to go through here is Super Castlevania IV. It was released for SNES in the 90s. There were three Castlevania games released for NES before this fourth game was released. This is a good video game that has action and also some mediium level puzzles that the player has to solve. The Hyperstone Heist is basically a “beat-em-up” in just the way that you could imagine a Mega Drive fighting game to look, feel and sound like. Actually we can say that it reminds a lot of Streets of Rage games.

These two games do offer a challenge for a gamer. They are both great games. It just seems to me that these games have some sort of limitations. They are over 30 year old games after all. What are these limitations? That seems to be the reason for me to write something like this. Lets go over some points that I am right now thinking about.

Back in 1990s you didn’t have a way to save your game. So, as a starting point the games were designed to be played in a one session. In Super Castlevania IV there is a password option. Before anyone even had an idea of some sort of a memory card, that were later commonly used in gaming consoles, passwords were a way for a player to continue playing the game even after you had powered off your console. The issue was that lasting memory was expensive. The consoles did have sort of memory but it wasn’t for means to save a game.

Some limitations could be circled with clever game design and programming. Game designers had to know the console they were developing the game for very well. I don’t have a clear idea of what programming language was actually used but I am guessing the code that was used was sort of C and/or pure assembly code. You shouldn’t underestimate the talent that game developers back then had.

Why is the era called “The 16-bit Era”? What this basically means is that everything from background graphics to sound effects would have had to be in 16-bit format for the processor to be able to handle them. This was a huge step from using only 8-bits. Some 8-bit consoles include Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System. 16-bit consoles include at least Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. What this also means is that graphics were more detailed and sounds and background music also. Later there were even 32-bit and 64-bit consoles released but they did belong to other and newer console generations.

The music that had to be compressed is today called “Chip Tune”. This music genre has its roots in as deep as Commodore 64. You can enjoy many music tracks of this genre online. You can try your luck and trying to find something interesting. If you’re interested just make a search with this genre as a search term.

You know back in 1990s we didn’t have 3D modeling in our video and computer games. Instead there were animations that were created using sprite sheets. They were basically some 2D images that were sort of rotated to create a feel of constant graphical flow. We could have a character in our game that had a way to display which way it was currently running. This is one significant limitation. Although you can’t really compare these two ways to create graphical output since they can create very different kinds of results.

You had way less going on while you were playing. Do you know these modern action RPGs? They handle and use a way more data than game consoles did in the 90s. This is one limitation. The last limitation that I am going to mention here is the quality, or maybe the lack of it, when it comes to controllers and game pads. If you are playing on an original system this can be a serious limitation.

There are many ways to play these games of 16-bit era. You can get your hands on an original and physical copy of the game and the console. You can download an emulator, a game file (actually not so “legit”) and connect a USB game pad to your PC. You can also get a collection, like Cowabunga one, for your modern gaming console be it Series S/X, PS4/PS5 or Switch,

Two New Additions to The Collection of NES Games

Posted on by Viljami

I just picked up two NES games from mail. They did cost a bit and they aren’t the cheapest games available currently. There can be a debate about how retro games cost today a lot but I decided to spend my 100 euros for these two.

What do we have here? Well, there is the sequel, Super Mario Bros 2. It is somewhat different as a platformer video game if we compare it to the game that was also released for Nintendo. The game I am talking about is of course Super Mario Bros.

I actually have completed the first Super Mario Bros. I have only played the second game on the collection, Super Mario All-Stars, that was a cool remake collection of the first three games. The collection was released for SNES. I haven’t completed fully Super Mario Bros 3. Mario games, especially these NES/SNES games are something so phenomenal. I have to show appreation.

The other game I got through mail today is Punch-Out. If you really want to know a thing about these games prices I can tell you that Punch-Out was about 55 euros and SMB 2 was 45 euros. Pucnh-Out might be a bit rarer than SMB 2.

Punch-Out is a nice boxing game. As you can figure there is the great boxing star, Mike Tyson, on the cover of the game. The matter that Tyson is in this game’s cover might have been also a bad thing since Tyson was sentenced to prison some time after the game was published. I am not going into details with this one.

I have been thinking about buying these both two games for a long time already. There is just something magical in my opinion in owning a real physical game and also playing it. I could download a rom and fire it up on my Recalbox but I still think the way that I do about this matter. And it is also as legit way to play these NES games as can be.

My NES collection seems to be still growing. It takes some time to browse NES games from different web shops that are dedicated to retro games. It also takes time to find games that I don’t already own. My philosophy in NES collecting seems to be to find a game that I want to play. I also collect NES games that I have played as a kid.