Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: arcade

WRC Series (8, 9 and 10)

Posted on by Viljami

I don’t remember, at least clearly, why I didn’t get into WRC series earlier. I do remember that one if this game series’s game flopped very badly. This kept me from starting to play a game in this series. It was back in late 2020 when I got my newest PC and I wanted to buy a game for it. So, I read some reviews and soon I was on my way to order a physical copy of WRC 9.

This was my introduction to the series. I am a big fan of Colin McRae Rally games and also racing and rally games in general. Driving games might be my favorite genre of games. I enjoyed WRC 9. It was a good game. Maybe a bit over half of a year after this positive experience I saw WRC 8 for PS4 in my favorite super market that has a section for gaming products. It’s price was about 20 euros. I decided to purchase it. And I wasn’t disappointed.

What about WRC 10? I recently got my Xbox Series X. WRC 10 was actually the second game that I bought for Xbox Series X. I had bought many digital copies of some games but my first and second games were GTA Trilogy and after that WRC 10.

WRC 10 had received some bad reviews. Finnish Gamereactor gave it 5/10. This score made me really consider about my purchase seriously. I find Gamereactor to usually be a realiable source when I think about buying a new game. Some other reviews, I am not right now mentioning these two blogs names, said, actually something like, “this game isn’t perfect but if you are a true rally game fan, you should definitely buy it”.

One other factor that made think about not to buy WRC 10 was that I already know that there is a new game, WRC Generation, going to be released soon. After all I went and bought WRC 10. I thought that since it was available and I would have at least some weeks to play it before starting to plan on playing WRC Generations I made this decision. Also the price was in my opinion right. I only had to pay about 35 euros for this game.

Just yesterday I got my WRC 10 from mail. The installation process was a bit slow, but it is the same with every new game. They seem to take up some space and more than some years earlier. So the process of installing a game today can take a long time. I have played it only for like two or three hours. At this moment it seems to be a good and solid rally game. I have to adjust my driving style for this game since I have played recently a lot of Forza Motorsport 3. I think WRC 10 is more of a simulation game than FM3.

There are some comments on those reviews that I wrote above. The driving seems more comfortable if you have a wheel and pedals. It might be more difficult to play with a game pad. I can say that graphics, being 4K and displayed from a 4K screen, are absolutely amazing. And you must also consider that this game has a license so you are going to experience all real cars, drivers and teams. Also, this license is going next year (2023) to Codemasters so we are also waiting for a rally game from them.

I really have to get more into WRC 10 and soon. As I am an adult and I have responsibilities, I don’t have all day every day, twenty-four-seven three-six-five for gaming, you know? To summarize, I have some experience of latest games in WRC series and I can recommend them. Especially if you are a rally game fan.

What the Heck is MAME (and Why Should I Care)?

Posted on by Viljami

You might remember video games like they were in the 1980s or 1990s or even earlier. Games were mainly played in arcades. You had a device that looked like a large cabinet that had on one side a large screen and some controls like joystick and some buttons. You might have some other controls also, like a wheel and pedals or maybe a light gun that you could point to the screen. I mean, who doesn’t recognize a character like Pacman or a game as familiar to you as Pong. Do you know Asteroids? These all were first playable back in the days in arcades.

If you are a young person you probably haven’t been to a real arcade. This experience however left a permanent mark in my memories. It might have been the pizza restaurant that had a Pacman game in it. It might have been the supermarket that had Street Fighter II in it. It might have been one of those gas stations our family visited as we were driving to country side to meet the rest of the family. It definitely happened when I was in a realm actual arcade playing some Mortal Kombat with some friends. As a kid from the 80s I couldn’t have missed this.

Even if you have never been in an arcade you can still find some really nice games to play that were originally made to be played in an arcade. We actually have an open source application called MAME that is short from “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator”. You can install it to a Linux or Windows PC. For you to play a game you also need a rom file. As you can expect I cannot post a link here to any rom file because of these legal issues. But you can look up some videos about MAME from YouTube or you can also search for games to see what kind of games it is possible to play on MAME.

There are problems if you really want to play games with an emulator like this. Capcom released some time ago a Home Arcade console that featured 16 games and some controls for two players. It can be connected to a display with HDMI. I am actually a bit reflective because there are so few commercial products available. And MAME could be a good personal project for someone looking to build something out of a basic PC with a custom made controller interface. Imagine if you had a gaming cabinet somewhere i n your hoime that you could play several of these games originally made for gaming arcades. That would be cool!

As time has progressed we have seen the rise of home gaming consoles taking the main role in our living rooms. We are getting more and more hardware that is meant to be placed in our apartments. If you are into emulators why not try also MAME. I am definitely going to get to this a bit more. I remember so many wonderful games from my past. It might be a good time to consider buying some more controllers that are capable of bringing the experience for you. Consider a joystick for fighting games, a racing wheel for driving or maybe even a light gun for shooting. Just remember this thing about light guns – they don’t work with modern displays so be careful not to mix these technical things.

You can definitely try to search for more content on this topic. I found good information from Google and also from YouTube. I think Bing or some other search engine can provide you also with some articles. I mentioned some titles in this post. There are so many games that you can play on MAME that  you have to go and see for yourself for the gems. So go ahead. Maybe you find something that you haven’t played before and that you really like.

Space Invaders for PS1

Posted on by Viljami

Since I recently played Space Commanders, that is a Space Invaders clone for PC, I decided to pick up this PS1 game titled also as Space Invaders. I bought it some time ago but I haven’t really played it.  The price of this game was low. That’s one reason I decided to buy it. Back when I made the decision to buy this game I had already many items in my mind that I wanted to order. It kind of came with the other stuff that I ordered.

It is basically the same game that especially retro game fans know. The original game was released in 1978 as an arcade game and it was also released for Atari 2600 in 1980. Graphics have been improved for this PS1 release. It doesn’t introduce three-dimensional graphics. There is also some slight modifications made in the game play. Activision was the publisher of this PS1 version of this game.

All in all this is  a nice little game. It didn’t keep me playing for a long time. It is although interesting to me at this time of my hobby as a game enthusiast. It is  not difficult to figure out why this game was popular when it was remade for PS1.

As I read the Wikipedia page of Space Invaders I realize that there was a big difference in the arcade version and the console (Atari 2600) version of this game. During that period gaming consoles located at home weren’t as powerful as specially crafted devices that were placed inside arcades. I really don’t know much about their technology.

Things like game consoles and computers are things I know a bit more about. If you are interested in arcade machines and games you could play with them you might want to check this site: https://www.mamedev.org/