Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: dreamcast

New and Better Controller for Mobile Video Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

I just got this piece of joy by mail. It is Turtle Beach Atom which is a controller for mobile devices. Actually it’s for smart phones. It cost me only 70 euros. I have seen this model being sold for about 100 euros. So, I got some discount.

I have been thinking about bringing my retro gaming to a zone of emulation. You know that you can fit every released NES game to a 237 MB of disk space. And all SNES games would take 1,7 GB. If you consider it you can probably get a micro SD card that has 128 GB of space for maybe 20 euros. That should hold a lot of games.

Of course only the required disk space isn’t the only matter that comes to consideration. You would certainly like to have a system setup that can handle as many high quality retro games on as many consoles as is possible. I figured that you need at least 512 MB of RAM, about a half of a GB, for running a Dreamcast emulation. I started to think about getting a new phone. It would cost me about 200 euros. I checked some smart phone models. They all seemed to have 2 or 3 GB of RAM. Then I remembered that I have an old phone laying around. So, I decided to use that.

Of course only the RAM that is available is not everything that an emulator needs. My old phone has decent level of performance. The model is Huawei P10 Lite. It is an old phone from 2017. I haven’t used it since the beginning of 2021. That is when I bought a new phone. Let’s consider some specs of my P10 Lite. It is capable of displaying Full HD quality video. That’s 1080 x 1920 pixels. It has 3 GB of RAM. It has a processor that is octa-core which translates to “4×2.1 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53”. I am not a big specialist on multiple core processors. The phone only has 32 GB of space so it definitely needs a memory card. I did have one laying around so I decided to put it to good use.

I set up some emulators. Duckstation was one that I installed. I also installed Retroarch which can handle many systems. I aimed for being able to play at least systems including GameCube, Dreamcast, PS1 and Nintendo 64. You don’t actually need a lot of power for playing games on systems that are older than SNES. I didn’t think to play newer systems like PS3 or Xbox 360. Some might want to play also PS4 on an emulator. That would require a higher permance personal computer. I am not saying it’s not possible.

So I am currently charging the battery of my Turtle Beach Atom controller. I have installed already some games. I picked one game from here and another game from there. PS1 emulation seems to be running fine and I am able to play N64 games also. Even only this is very satisfying. I remember having some tough luck trying to set up a Lakka OS based system some years ago and then I struggled with PS1 and Dreamcast games. I had an old PC that could quite handle the performance.

I am ready, soon, to try to test some games. At this time things seem to be working fine. I have to wait for about 2,5 hours for the battery to charge. It was then promised that the controller would be functional for 20 hours. This is a huge upgrade to the controller that I used with smart phones earlier. I have written a blog post about it in this blog earlier. I have broken the glass of my screen of my P10 Lite. I didn’t want to show it. That was the reason why I didn’t include ít to this blog posts featured image.

I hope this blog post gave you inspiration. There is a very good guide for someone that wants to build or assemble a system like this for retro gaming. Here is the link:

Android Emulation Starter Guide

 

Could This Be The Answer?

Posted on by Viljami

With all these hardware consoles you get a sense that there could be an easier solution. This answer would be in this case one single personal computer connected to the 4K telly with a single HDMI cord. It would take only one HDMI port. This isn’t a hallucination. There already are several computers available for this task. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the power that one modern PC today holds can handle almost any gaming console emulator from NES to PS4.

You would need one PC. This would cost something from 300 euros to several thousands of euros. You would also need a controller. I prefer Xbox Series S/X controller when it comes to emulator gaming. If you would like to change a controller between systems you would need to assign keys over and over again. You could be able to make a profile for every controller of every system. However it would be easier to play all systems with only one controller.

The first thing you need with this kind of setup is a reliable Linux operating system dedicated to emulation. At first it seems I would choose Lakka OS. It is a nice emulator that allows you to run several different emulators of different gaming systems. After setting up you don’t need to actually unplug your controller or get to your keyboard at all. So, I prefer Lakka OS. There are other operating systems available, like Retropie, Recalbox and Batocera. The last mentioned can be run from inserted USB stick without any other kind of installation.

If you want to play emulated games on systems like GameCube, PS2, original Xbox and Sega Dreamcast, you will need a powerful computer. I would say that you need more than a Raspberry Pi 4 can provide. I am not going to give you detailed specifications here. We can of course check what are the recommended requirements for an emulator like PCSX2. We can get to a conclusion that you would need at least 8 GB of RAM and a GPU with something like 4 GB of VRAM and capability to run DirectX 11 or OpenGL 4.5. Well, what about the processor? The processor would need to support AVX2, have a rating of 2600 and have four cores with or without hyper threading.

This kind of an emulation station could be your solution to this very interesting question. As prices of games are ricing this would make your wallet heavier at least for a while and enable you to play lots of retro game content. There is of course also the question about breaking every copyright law that exists. This is a difficult matter. Let’s just say that it is not legal to load hundreds of games from internet for free. While this is illegal there seems to be very few choices. You can pay hundreds of euros of games that cannot or are very hard to rip to ROM file and play with your emulator. Some emulators need also the BIOS of the system they are emulating.

Nintendo has been busy bringing its retro content available for those that have an online Nintendo account. You can probably figure how popular retro games currently are. It must be stated that it would be nice, for us game hobbyists, to be able to somehow get our hands to this content for a reasonable price. Playing original games on original hardware is becoming more and more expensive. And it must be said that game consoles don’t last for several decades and must be at some point at least repaired.

What to Think About Game Collections?

Posted on by Viljami

I have mixed thoughts and feelings about game collections released on modern gaming systems. These collections try as hard as they can to bring some retro consoles most impressive games to consoles like PS3 or PC or even some newer ones like PS5. I own many game collections. In the featured image of this blog post there is a Dreamcast collection for PC and Mega Drive collection for PS3. Dreamcast collection has four games which are Sega Bass Fishing, Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5 Part 2. The list of games in Mega Drive collection has over 40 titles. Some of the games included are Sonic The Hedgehog 1, 2 and 3, Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3, Ecco The Dolphin, Golden Axe series and Phantasy Star I to IV just to mention some of them.

How much would you pay for this kind of a collection of games that have been released on some earlier retro gaming system? Is it fair to sell them for the price of a completely new and unreleased game? Are these collections a good way to get deeper into a gaming system? I have to say that I didn’t pay the full price of these two collections. I bought both of them from sale. I remember getting my Dreamcast Collection for PC for about 10 euros and this Mega Drive Collection for PS3 was about 20 euros. I wouldn’t have paid 60 euros to have one of these even if it were some years ago.

Why would I make my decisions the way I do in this matter? I think there is a point in getting to know your gaming consoles games may they be retro or new. I like to think that every system has its own strengths and weaknesses. Mega Drive is great for 2D platform and shooting games and Dreamcast is capable of bringing you the experience of early 3D games of the end of the 90s. I think you have to get into the system you play these games on. That’s what makes it interesting for me and this is true for especially retro games.

There are limitations in gaming systems that were released in the 1980s but you might still have the motivation to play some Commodore 64 games to have some nostalgic feelings. Of course it has its limitations. After all it is an old system. But that same limitation becomes an advantage when thinking about what game designers had to face and how where they able to get around these technical limitations. The design process and the ways and skills in how to design games has progressed. It is also not so odd to find a new game, released last year or something like that, released for older gaming system.

It is not also common that all of your games in your full gaming library can be actually even played at all. As a game hobbyist you have to think about what games you have, or what games you are going to acquire, and how can you play them. Do you use emulators? Do you buy all the games as physical copies? What systems you have and what systems do you want to have in the future?

So, as a conclusion to this blog post, I think there is some sense in re-releasing old retro games as a collection to a newer system. They might be even quite playable. This is not, in my opinion, a proper way to sell games although and the price would have to be a bit lower than for a new game. There are many ways you can play your retro games. Original systems is just a one way. There are also consoles like Evercade and we have definitely seen mini consoles of Mega Drive, NES and SNES and there might be some new releases in the future also.