Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Retro

Is Sega Saturn Worth Your Time?

Posted on by Viljami

The story of Sega Saturn is, might I say, interesting. It was released in 1994 in Japan and in 1995 in Europe and North America. So, it was a competitor of the first PlayStation gaming console. To begin with Sony made its consoles price a bit lower. It had an edge because Saturn had already been released when the talks began about PlayStation and its pricing. If we look at sales numbers we can see that Sony sold a bit over 100 million PlayStations worldwide while Saturn sold somewhere around 15 million units also worldwide.

Why would you bother to take some time to get to know to a loser like this? Things aren’t always as clear as they might seem. There are some reasons why Saturn sold so badly. After all the sales figures can only tell so little about the variety of games, even some exclusives, that you just couldn’t experience elsewhere. Today Saturn is being recognized as an important part of history of video games. It sadly lost to its competitor or competitors as it couldn’t adapt as quickly to video games moving on to three-dimensional graphics. This was somewhat a start of an ending for Sega’s game console efforts. This wasn’t however its last misfortune but that’s another topic for another blog post.

How can you play Sega Saturn today? The legit way is to buy the hardware needed. You are then going to buy a Sega Saturn. It might cost around 200 euros. Maybe a bit less if you don’t buy it from a game shop. Maybe a bit more if the condition of the device is very good. You are going to also need some actual and physical games to play. Saturn games are somewhat rare to find. We haven’t seen and I doubt that we will ever see some sort of a mini console made out of Saturn. This might be a bit sad.

While always taking account on what is legal and what is not. Let me remind you that if you are going to play Saturn games on an emulator you would have to dumb your consoles BIOS to a file. Also you would have to rip every game from a Saturn type of a game disc that you actually own. Otherwise in terms we are going to an illegal zone.

If you consider game preservation it is definitely nice to have these places online like “Vimm’s Lair” (check from your DuckDuckGo search engine if you wish) that provide you with every single Saturn game ever released. If there aren’t any places that you can buy your Saturn games how are you going to manage to acquire a collection of Saturn games and maintain also a working Saturn console? Now that’s a question. What might the current copyright holders think about that? I think that if you don’t release remakes, or even even collections, of these classic titles the option seem to be very clear.

If you go for the emulation option it is nice to have a Rapberry Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM and install a Recalbox operating system to it. After that you are going to have to move your game roms and BIOS file to a proper location. You can then enjoy the game play using Xbox Series controller or some other USB connectable controller. I myself prefer the Xbox Series controller. If you choose you can also install, like Mednafen, on your Windows PC. The games run very well also there but it might be clumsy if you want your screen to be presented through a true television instead of your PCs screen.

After discussing about some philosophy about old retro-type games we can now finally present you which games to choose to play. The first one that I can recommend is Radiant Silvergun. It is a smooth space shooter where you control a space ship and move from bottom to up shooting these enemies that appear on the screen. A true space shooter is this game. This game was also recently remade for Nintendo Switch. So, you might want to check it out also.

Next game I am going to introduce to you has been also remade recently. The game is House of the Dead. This is something that you would probably play preferably with a optical gun but you can also play it with a controller. The game is very nice. You just shoot things that appear to the screen. You also need to reload your weapon almost constantly and try to not to shoot friendlies.

Two other games I like mention here are Panzer Dragoon and Nights Into Dreams. These are very good games. Panzer Dragoon is currently available for Switch. I don’t know why so many of these remakes appear for Switch. While making a list of best games on Saturn you cannot forget Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing which come directly from Sega. You probably can dig on and on and find more games that you like. If you need more games try Sonic games and Sega Rally.

Super Punch-Out!!

Posted on by Viljami

Super Punch-Out!! is a nice boxing game for Super Nintendo. It is kind of a remake made out of the NES title Punch-Out!!. It includes updated and better graphics and also very unique opponents that have special ways to box. For example the last opponent of The Minor Circuit, Bald Bull, has a punch that knocks you down to the floor no matter how much health your boxer has. Piston Hurricane has a long combo that you must dodge if you wish to win this boxer.

I really like how the game progresses. It is a bit repetitive as any 16-bit eras game can often be. In Super Punch-Out!! you have to box against the same opponents in the same tournament some times to achieve the progressing. I like how the opponents are designed. They look nice. I managed to get through Minor Circuit. There are also two other tournaments that you can compete in after you finish Minor Circuit. There is also one more tournament that is called Special Circuit. So, there are four tournaments in total in Super Punch-Out!!.

It took me some hours just to complete Minor Circuit. The way you actually play the game is simple but can take some time to adjust to. Super Punch-Out!! utilizes the SNES controller that already had several buttons along with directional buttons. This makes playing the game more easier and I think it makes the game also more enjoyable. You could think about some of the limitations of Sega Mega Drive controller that only has three buttons along the directional buttons.

You actually play Super Punch-Out!! with two buttons that you can land a punch with. If you press also forward button your boxer tries to land a punch to the head of the opponent. If you don’t press forward the punch gets directed to stomach area. You can also block and try to dodge your opponents punch. You can dodge to back or to left or right. You can also block a punch directed to your head or stomach area.

Every punch you attempt doesn’t necessarily hit. I think there is some randomness about when your punch actually hits. You cannot actually see clearly when to attempt to punch. And every opponents punch also doesn’t land also. This makes the game a bit more entertaining and more funnier to play. Some people might say that this makes the game a bit less realistic. I think this just improves the overall game-play after all.

There is another boxing game for this era of 16-bit gaming that I also like. This game is Greatest Heavyweights and it was released for Sega Mega Drive in 1993. If you like boxing games I think you will like Greatest Heavyweights also. If we compare this game to Super Punch-Out!! we can definitely see how Nintendo has invested in designing the details of the game. The characters are all very unique compared to Greatest Heavyweights and it tries to be more realistic and this might even seem to be a bit ordinary. In any way both of these games are very good products and very solid as video games.

All-in-all there are several good video games released originally for Super Nintendo. I think Nintendo dominated the field after it was released. I think the progression can be seen clearly from NES to Mega Drive and then to SNES and on to Sony PlayStation 1 and onward from there all the way to today’s devices. The technology seems to be developing even further. Sometimes it is definitely nice to play these retro games and try to enjoy these devices and the ways that they utilize the technology of their time.

When Games Had No Graphics at All

Posted on by Viljami

We’re you playing video games when there were no graphics at all? This screenshot is the featured image of today’s new blog post. As you can see there is only text content for the player and no graphics. You can see the title, “West of House”, and the score. You can also see how many commands you have given in the game. That value is displayed as “Moves”. There is also an opportunity to save a game. You progress in the game with writing commands like where to move and what items to pick up and how to use them. The player also has an inventory system that can be displayed with a proper command.

This game is a text adventure game called Zork 1 – The Great Underground Empire. It was released originally in the beginning of 1980s. As you can probably already figure the first computer and video games were many times very moderate when it comes to graphical performance. They had no graphics. Some of the best text adventure games that I have come across include the first version of the adventure game Leisure Suit Larry. There was also an interesting game called Colossal Cave Adventure. It was one of the first games ever released on computer. It was released already in the 1970s.

It is interesting for me to look back in the video game history as I am such a young person that games for me have always included graphics of some type. When I was a small boy I played many DOS games on our family’s PC. Even some of the adventure type games, many of them were released by Sierra, had some sort of graphics. Later we saw games from Lucas Arts that even had an user interface that utilized some mouse interactivity. So, these games had already a real user interface.

Playing a text adventure game that has no graphics can be very charming. Early in the game you become used to the limitations. While there are many functions in the game they are a bit harder to figure and image. So, this leaves a lot to your imagination. You have to figure out what are the main commands that can make you progress in the game. It helps if you have some experience in playing adventure games be it that they would have had some kind of graphics. You can get into text adventure games more easily if you know concepts like items, maps and/or inventory systems. In some games your character even has some kind of development that can be based on for example experience points. Your characters abilities can sometimes open new opportunities like some new function that is enabled as your character has a more advanced ability. Sometimes there can be a new option inside some conversation dialogue. This all is based on charaters abilities like intelligence, luck or strength that can have a value like a number from 1 to 10. So, this number increases when your character goes up a level. Sometimes you may have options on how to develop your character. Character progression is however considered to be more of a character of a role playing game. Most text adventure games aren’t considered role playing games.

I encourage you to try for example Zork 1 or its sequels. You can get an idea of the surroundings of the space or room you are in with a command like “look around”. Then you are beginning to find some points and items that you can interact with. The score tells you about your progression in the game. Text adventure games are a bit limited but they can be a fun way to experience something new. They sure tell us a lot about the history and origins of video and computer games. The first Zork game is considered abandonware and you can download it from internet and install it through Dosbox. You can maybe use a frontend like D-Fend Reloaded that I am personally using for this purpose.