Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: book

Yesterday’s Purchase

Posted on by Viljami

Just yesterday I made a tiny purchase from a local flea market. I bought a pocket book titled Resistance – The Gathering Storm. It was only two euros. I also found a driving game for Xbox One. The game was Forza Horizon 3. It is an open world racing game. I have just recently finished Forza Horizon 5 and I very much enjoyed playing it. The game was three euros.

This is why I like going to flea markets. You never know beforehand what you will find. I had to think for a moment several times, yesterday, when I was walking inside the flea market. They had some neat programming books, some hardcover books, many Tom Clancy titles, and also several very interesting pocket books. Pocket books had mostly a price of one euro. I came across also some Ilkka Remes books. He is a Finnish writer that writes these popular thrillers and has tens of books already written. Also there were many Stephen King books.

I had to hold back a little bit since there were many interesting things available. At the beginning of this year (2025) I handed over lots of books that I didn’t have time to read since I do have lots of books that I haven’t had time to read yet. This time, while visiting the flea market, I didn’t find any audio CDs or movie DVDs. At this particular flea market CDs have a price of two euros and DVD movies are one euro. There are some exceptions of course. Sometimes a CD or a DVD has a bit higher price tag on it.

Lately I have noticed that there aren’t as many video games available in our local flea markets. I think this has everything to do with that some people do this kind of “scalping”. They try to find as many games for as low price as is possible and then they resell them with a bit higher price. Also, if you are going to buy these games from a dedicated game shop you are going to have to pay a bit more. This is of course understandable and it happens to be so because game shops have to pay rents and salaries of their employers.

The pocket book, Resistance – The Gathering Storm, was a nice find and purchase. I think that scalpers aren’t so interested in buiying and then reselling books. I hope I get to read this book through sometime. The author of the book has also written a Halo themed book titled “Halo – The Flood”. My yesterday’s purchase has over three hundred pages in it.

I haven’t read the book yet but its plot centers on fighting against an army of aliens and/or zombies that are trying to wipe out whole human existence from planet Earth. I have Resistance as a video game for PS3. I bought it and started playing it also but really didn’t get into it. I hope the book is going to be a good and exciting one to read.

I don’t have high expectations about Forza Horizon 3. It was also a nice purchase. I am expecting to experience some exploration and easy to handle driving from this purchase. It was originally released in 2016. It is released for Xbox One but since Xbox Series X has a wide backwards compatibility it is playable also on the now latest Xbox gaming console, also. Xbox Series X is fully compatible with Xbox One games. You can certainly find some good titles from the game library of Xbox One.

Going to flea markets now and then is a fun activity. I just hope that I would find even more games as I visit these places. The prices are usually low. There seems to be more and more people interested in making a purchase or two and the popularity of flea markets seems to be rising.

I Read a Lot

Posted on by Viljami

I have to make it clear – I like reading and I read a lot. This hobby that I have might not be so popular at this moment in our history and in our society right now. I have read tens of books during the last years. I actually don’t have any statistics to back this up. I only have this pile of books that is showed in the featured image of this blog post. I have read all of them.

I have this habit of putting a book that I have read to a pile. I have many piles like this. I also have a pile of books in my home that I haven’t yet started to read. I read one book at a time. Sometimes I abandon the book I am reading but this is not so usual as I can find many topics interesting  to me. These kind of rules help me to grasp on this hobby. At times I feel a bit amazed of how large these piles are.

“Why do I enjoy reading?”, one might ask. I have always been an introvert. This was apparent all the way through my childhood. I liked drawing. I stayed home for hours drawing. When I was seven years old I learned to read. I was nine years old when I started learning English in school. At first I read books written in Finnish. Lately I have picked up some books that were written in English. I have thought about also reading a book written in French or Swedish since I have studied both of them.

I haven’t really counted how many books I have read. I can make some conclusions. During my four week vacation I read four books. That makes one book per week. I don’t normally read at a pace this fast. The time I do spend reading is depending very much on what else I have to do. This includes working, cleaning the house and things like that. Also, my other freetime hobbies take up some time.

Some topics I am interested in when it comes to books are technology, future, science, physics, space, video games (of course), programming, computers, philosophy and phychology. I do read also fictive books (like that book written by Dan Brown that you can find form the image featured on this blog post).

I just wanted to impress this side of my life also. I read a lot. Currently I am reading a book about Linux and its creator Linus Torvalds. The book is titled “Kapinakoodi” that means “Rebel Code”. The book is a bit old but the topic is fascinating.

A Retro Gaming Book About Nintendo GameCube

Posted on by Viljami

Yesterday I got to add a new retro game book to my collection of books. It is the book about GameCube, “GameCube Anthology”. This book is published by Geeks Line Publishing. I was very content when I found out that this book was available very easily from a well-known Finnish web shop. Now, I am not going to advertise here. Let’s just say that it was easily available. The price was 42 euros with the shipping.

There has been a lot of conversation about GameCube lately. It is a very popular console among collectors. This anthology consists of 360 pages. It is written in English. Through these pages the book tells the reader about technology and how the process of developing the console formed. There are games presented. Actually ALL games that were released, that makes the total of 647 games. It includes games that were exclusively released in Japan, USA or Europe. So, this is all good information for a GameCube collector.

I am not so familiar with Geeks Line Publishing. I did find also a book about Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short, and a book about Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES. These both are available from the same web shop. I figured I am most interested currently in GameCube, so I picked this one up. Although a book about NES or SNES would sound interesting to me, also. As I browse through this publishers website I find that they have published similar books about other retro game consoles like PlayStation. All these books seem to be targeted for a collector.

GameCube is a very interesting system. It brings me closer to the feel of 2000s retro games that have this particular combination of game play and 3D graphics. I don’t have so many games currently for this system. I have all in all about maybe 15 or 20 games for GameCube. I have the remake of the first Resident Evil and RE zero, Super Mario Sunshine, Need For Speed Underground and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4, just to name some games. There were several kind of “new” and “wild” ideas concerning the design of GameCube. First of all the controller was something other than those Dual Shock or original Xbox controllers we were used to. It was also something different to have these small 1,4 GB game discs instead of DVD game discs that had 4,7 GB of space for the game. There was no hard disk. You had to use a memory card. There were also four spots for a controller, so, you could play multiplayer on only one screen.

Why Nintendo did these decisions with the design? I think they probably wanted to stand out and create something unique that gaming fans would love. In my thinking this was a success. How otherwise would you still be playing these GameCube’s games after over 20 years since its release. GameCube sold almost 22 million units. It was manufactured between 2001 and 2007. GameCube was facing tough competition from Sony’s PlayStation 2, original Xbox and of course from Sega’s Dreamcast, that sold “only” 9 million units worldwide. PS2 was  the greatest gaming system back then when it comes to sold units. It sold over 150 million units.

I am hoping to read this book soon. I am currently reading some other stuff also. It definitely seems promising. Maybe I even figure some new games that I would like to add to my collection. It’s just that these games prices are a bit high right now. So, it’s not a good idea to spend all your money to GameCube games. Maybe we will get a GameCube mini console, soon, who knows?