cowabunga collection Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

I was playing today a fairly new Turtles game called Splintered Fate for Nintendo Switch. I was playing it on my Switch 2. Just recently I have also bought the Turtles movie trilogy in 4K. I also had the Cowabunga collection that features plenty of Turtles games from the past. I am a big fan of Turtles. Of course I have been a fan since I was a child.

So the trilogy includes the original movies that were made back in the beginning of the 1990s. I like to own this collection. Having these movies as 4K is very nice as an experience. When I was a kid I was so young that I wasn’t able to go to see the first two movies in a cinema but the third one I at least got to see. I am watching these movies with my 4K television and Xbox Series X. I did also get a sort of a discount. Currently the trilogy does cost about 76 euros. Also I have to remind that these movies don’t have Finnish subtitles. I liked to tell you about this in case you my dear reader are from Finland or from any other non-English country and are wondering about this matter. I didn’t actually find any difficulties with the level of English I have currently.

The Cowabunga Collection features many retro games from systems like NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive / Genesis and also from arcade. It is kind of nice to have the disc and also the cover case. Although I wouldn’t mind if I only had this collection as a digital edition. Also many of these games are already available for me to play on my retro computer that happens to be my Raspberry Pi 5 that runs Recalbox. But if you like to get into some retro style of Turtles games and happen to also see this collection available I can definitely recommend it.

What about the Switch game – Splintered Fate? I am actually still playing this one and I have only spent a bit over two hours playing it. It is cool how they have made the game as a Turtles themed one. The game reminds me a lot about Hades. I used to play Hades about a year or two ago. Also there was Hades II released just some moments ago. There is a lot of repetition. I think that it would have been nice to see a deeper story evolving during the game but the game actually isn’t a bad one.

This tiny collection is just a part of my huge collection of video games and movies. I wanted in this blog post to display it to you my dear readers and tell you about my passion towards Turtles. I know I have some other collectibles also but I think a huge part of them are still in my parents house where I lived my childhood in back in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. I did have Turtles action figures, some comic magazines and also a board game. I also had a pair of running shoes themed with Turtles but I think they aren’t anymore in any condition at all. Actually I think we threw them eventually away as is usual with old clothes.

Some of this Turtles stuff is related to my childhood closely. I sometimes like to reminisce about all this stuff. It brings me so many memories. I used to watch Turtles cartoons especially on weekend mornings. We used to wake up with my brother because we were used to waking up since we were in school every weekday morning as is usual in where I live.

So, Splintered Fate is a decent video game. Cowabunga Collection offers a lot of nostalgia. Turtles 4K Trilogy offers you the collection of these original movies. If you are interested in this stuff just look around in your favorite shop of games and see if they have these available. Splintered Fate is also available for PC and PS5 and Xbox Series S/X as is also The Cowabunga Collection and they are both released as a digital and also a physical copy. There was my take on Turtles for this time.

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,

Intensive Gaming Diary

Tag: cowabunga collection

Some Turtles Stuff

Some of The Limitations of 16-bit Era