Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: dreamcast

Some Features of Optical Discs

Posted on by Viljami

Some time, not so long ago, we used to use optical discs way more and in a different way compared to how it is today. I have recently been playing lots of PS2 games using an emulator. I have these PS2 games in their original form. That is on these game discs. That copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 also has a documentary film also on another DVD. DVDs aren’t also so popular anymore. We are used to streaming our video content. If you prefer physical copies you can buy movies on Bluray or 4K.

Some things have changed. We do buy games, sometimes, as physical copies on optical discs. When we do we use the disc to install the game. Part of the installation process is handled through internet connection. Back in the days, in the early 2000s, we had game consoles like PS2 and GameCube. They utilized optical discs in a different way.

If we inspect our PS2 video game console we can see that it doesn’t have a hard drive at all. So games are basically on optical discs. It is the disc that holds almost all the data. There are memory cards used that can store the save files. These memory cards could hold only 8 MB of storage. GameCube is very much like PS2 in this way. It did handle smaller optical discs and it also had to use memory cards. Lets mention Dreamcast here, also.

What about the original Xbox? It actually had a hard drive. This makes playing a game like Max Payne a bit more of a pleasure since loading games from same save spot can make the game very repetitive. That’s why I find playing Max Payne on the original Xbox than on a PS2 console my preferred way to enjoy Remedy Entertainments masterpiece more enjoyable. I think it is best played on PC. But you probably get the point here.

So, the games were played from DVDs. This made the disc very valuable. If it had a scratch the game would stop playing. Sometimes the console you were playing on did break so that you couldn’t play it anymore since it couldn’t read optical discs anymore at all. There are ways to fix consoles, all right, but just let me say this. I have found it way more pleasurable to install an emulation system on a PC with a dedicaded operating system and just ripping my PS2 games to some .iso-files and playing them again and again, fully functioning, from a fast SSD hard drive. You basically have to rip your PS2s BIOS and also the games to enjoy gaming this way. After all it is very easy to rip a PS2 game. You just have to use an external DVD drive and some software application, like ImgBurn, that is also freely available.

We have went through lots of changes. The gaming has evolved a lot. If you think that we used to have games taking some space, like 4,7 GB. We are actually now in a place where a game can definitely take tens, or even several tens, of times the space we were used to back in the days. We went from large HDDs to SSDs. We went from slow internet connections to modern and very fast connections offered while using Steam or Xbox Store or some other web service. This makes me wonder where do we go next.

Today hard drives are faster and can hold even more space than they already used to. I have for example two 2 TB SSDs on my personal desktop computer. That is enough to hold some games. You don’t have to install every game you buy because you probably don’t play tens of games at the same time. There are more games available than ever. You probably play something from three to six games at a time. When you think that you don’t want to focus on a game you can uninstall it and keep your save files and continue playing after some time when you think that you want to install the game again.

We are actually doing something reasonal with buying games as digital copies. We are reducing the amount of carbage in this world. You can debate on that DVDs, these opticla discs, are something that you can hold on to for several tens, maybe even hundreds, of years. Buying a video game console or a PC without an optical disc drive is becoming also popular. You can save some money.

There are many facts here that you can debate on. In my opinion there are just facts against facts. There is no right or wrong answer. In this blog post I told you my perspective on optical discs and how and what they used to be compared to what is the situation right now. You can make your own opinions based on everything I have said here. I am going to enjoy some more time with Gran Turismo 4 since I started playing it again. I have played it for well over 18 hours. I think it takes over 70 hours to complete. I have lots of playing to do.

The Direction of Sega

Posted on by Viljami

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Sega and the statement that they made about not looking so much back. It has also been said that Sega is not a retro game company. They are going to focus more on modern video games. This makes me think about all the classic titles of the past. There is also a question about what new games we are going to see and will Sega bring back their most classic intellectual property like for example Sonic, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and so on.

Nintendo was the first game company to release a mini console. This happened with the release of mini NES that was followed by mini SNES console. This happened in between 2016 and 2017. It is not needed to say that these consoles were very popular. Sega released a bit later a Mega Drive mini console. We have also seen a PlayStation console of this kind among with some Atari, Amiga and Commodore 64 consoles.

Game consumers have been waiting and hoping for something from Sega like a mini Dreamcast or mini Saturn. It has now been stated that this is not going to happen. It is stated that Sega has no interest in bringing new mini consoles that would include some retro games. Instead it was said that the company wants to identify as a modern game company. Fans have also hoped to see something related to Sega CD and/or Sega 32X. This makes me think that we are probably going to see some new game titles that are going to be released in the near future.

I actually have this Sega Mega Drive classic/mini console that I bought for a cheap price, as always, some years back. If I remember correctly it cost me 60 euros. That is a cheap price for a retro game console that comes with several tens of games installed. It is very easy to hook up to your television screen as it has an HDMI connectivity included. It came with two controllers and they were very nice and of a good quality. Sega also released a bit later a second Mega Drive mini console that included some more games including some Sega CD games. There were a total of 53 games included. The first mini console had 40 games included.

For me, personally and as a video game enthusiast, Sega has been very important since the beginning of my interest in video games. I did play some PC games and tried out NES but Mega Drive was the first actual video game console that I owned back in the beginning of 1990s. The system was not so expensive at that time and it had many great games. I also had some friends that had a Mega Drive also so we could swap some games. My favorite games were Sonic 1 and 2, Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe just to give you some idea. Later I continued in this path and got my second gaming console and that was PlayStation 1.

As we are waiting for some news about new video games that are going to be released by Sega we also have to think that there probably will never exist a mini console made out of some classic game consoles or games. We just have to accept that and start to look in to the future. Will it be a bright one? We have to wait some more and just see how things start to shape up. What will we see when it comes to the future of Sega? What will we see in the future of video gaming? With these thoughts deep in our minds, or something clever like that I am now ending this blog post. I also wish you a very merry Christmas!

About Sega Dreamcast

Posted on by Viljami

Sega Dreamcast was released 1998 in Japan and 1999 in North America and Europe. Its game library consists of about 600 games. This is considerably lower than all games that were released to PS2, a console of the same era and console generation, that had several thousands of games in its game library.

Some other gaming consoles of this generation were Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2. So, Dreamcast was competing with these giants. This was an era in which we saw definitely more games released than we have in todays world of gaming. It has to said that the competition was tough. PS2 sold most consoles and had the most games in its library while Xbox and GameCube sold well but not as much as PS2. In 2001 Dreamcast was discontinued. It didn’t sell well.

Today Dreamcast is considered to be a definite gem as a retro gaming console. You can get the original console for about 200 euros. It is also possible to play it by emulating Dreamcast on a system like Recalbox that you can run on a Raspberry Pi 5 or PC. Raspberry Pi 5 has enough power to run Dreamcast emulation while some older Rasbperry Pi models might lack this power. We have to consider if this way of playing Dreamcast is actually legit or not. After all every Dreamcast game isn’t available.

I have solved this problem with buying this Dreamcast Collection for PC. I bought it a long time ago but it seems to be totally legal. This collection has four Dreamcast titles in it. While Sega quit manufacturing gaming consoles they still make video games for other systems. There are lots of good quality games still getting released by Sega. This tells something about their position as one of the most legendary game companies in the history of video games.

Sega’s history includes classic consoles like Mega Drive / Genesis, Master System and Saturn. However some of its products weren’t so successful. They did take a wrong direction with releasing 32X and Mega CD. They weren’t commercially successful which evidently lead to some financial problems that lead to discontinuation of Dreamcast.

What are some good games for Dreamcast? There are some role-playing-games like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II, a boxing game, Ready 2 Rumble, many 2D fighting games, some 3D fighting games, like Virtua Fighter 3tb, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, Resident Evil – Code Veronica and many others. The game library is in its entirety a very solid and of good quality. I think that finding a bad game for Dreamcast is a difficult task to complete.

I do have some critic also about Dreamcast. The fact that the controller only has one analog stick makes playing first-person-shooters a bit clumsy. You have to map movement and aiming differently than you would with a better gamepad. Also when compared to some newer consoles Dreamcast lacks some power. But it has to be said that when considering it to be a retro console it handles its business very nicely.

It would be great to get something from Sega today that would be legit and also of good quality when it comes to retro gems like this one. There would definitely be many gamers that would like to buy a mini console, a remake or a completely new game from some of these classic titles. We have to see and wait for what the future holds for Sega fans.