gamecube Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

Some Features of Optical Discs

Posted on November 3, 2025 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 Power of Batocera

Posted on August 30, 2025 by Viljami

This blog post mostly deals with what Batocera can accomplish as an operating system for a PC. I recently bought a new personal computer. There were many reasons for this and one of them was the global transition to Windows 11. After October 14th (2025) Windows 10 wont be supported anymore by Microsoft. This means that there are no guarantees that your Windows 10 computer would be functional. There will be no security updates. So, I had to buy a new PC mainly because of these considerations.

My older PC was bought at the end of 2020. It wasn’t an old computer. It just wouldn’t be supported by Microsoft anymore after October 14th. I have to agree that it had some age already, but I really wasn’t ready to buy a new computer. I would have liked to use the old one a bit longer than was actually possible. My new PC runs the latest PC games smoothly. It also runs Xbox 360 and PS3 emulation which wasn’t possible with my older PC.

I figured that since my old PC was powerful enough to run PS2, GameCube and original Xbox emulation, I wanted to use it as a retro gaming platform. I have had some nice experiences with Recalbox, so, that was my first option. Well, I wasn’t at first able to get Recalbox installed directly to my older PC. It did run but it was kind of installed to my USB stick. I wanted to try to install Batocera instead. I had heard a lot of positive debate about it. So, I went with Batocera and finally it worked like a dream.

Batocera is an operating system that is very much related to Linux and is also dedicated to being able to run some retro games. My older PC was powerful enough for this purpose. After some fiddling with installations and moving some games to the computer I managed to get some games running. I think original Xbox, GameCube and PS2 have many interesting games for me to play and experiment with. Since all my gaming consoles of this particular era have ended up getting finally broken I figured that emulation could enable me to play these kinds of video games one more time.

I have this issue with older gaming hardware. I have a Nintendo GameCube, Sony Playstation 2 and also an original Xbox but they all broke down as I had them set up in my corner of gaming in my living room. I guess they are gathering too much dust and finally end up not reading the disc at all. I also have a Xbox 360 console that isn’t functional and the reason seems to be dust.

You can actually run Batocera from a USB stick but I wanted to install it to my older PCs hard drive. This required me to boot the computer to my USB stick. This required some fiddling with BIOS settings. This isn’t actually difficult but it requires some knowledge. However there are instructions that can be found online. I also wanted to wipe my disks completely. I did it with a program called ShredOS. Now, this procedure took about 14 hours. I ended up running it through overnight so I wouldn’t need to monitor this. After I got rid of all the content from my hard disks, that were a 2TB disk and a 256GB disk, both of them SSDs, the actual installation process was simple. Of course I had to set up all of these systems BIOSes and move over all the game roms.

I wanted to be able to play my retro games on the Batocera that I had installed with a controller of Xbox Series S/X. I find this controller to be as comfortable as a controller can be. I also bought a good quality cable that was three meters long. This way the controller didn’t need a battery at all. I don’t actually mind about the cable. I actually prefer using cable over using a battery in a controller. The latest Xbox’s controller is also a natural choice because it is very much compatible with a PC. I am playing my GameCube, original Xbox and PS2 games with this controller. It is very versatile as a game pad.

Batocera needs some power to run this kind of emulation. It is nice to be able to actually have a dedicated device for playing retro games like this. I am very content that the system is able to run also Dreamcast games if I would just set up the BIOS and move over the game roms. You can also play some older video game consoles games with Batocera. Some of these games feel a bit clunky since they are a bit old already. All in all I find Batocera a good video gaming operating system for any gamer. It is a good way to utilize also your old personal computer if you are replacing your old PC maybe because of the transition to Windows 11.

Having Some Fun With A Retro Game

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Viljami

I had the pleasure to find a really fun game that I got yesterday as a loose copy. This means that I bought a game that was in a good condition but it didn’t have the original cover or leaflet at all. I wanted to play that game. I was also informed that the disc was in a good and acceptable condition which was proved to be actually true when I finally checked the disc.

The game was Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 for Nintendo GameCube. I have lately been banging my head with two titles. Those are first, Gran Turismo 6, and second, Sea of Stars, which is a nice role-playing-game. I have put tens of hours in these games but I seem to be unable to finish them. I have spent a bit over 40 hours to Gran Turismo 6 and a bit over 12 hours to Sea of Stars.

What NFS Hot Pursuit 2 offers is a nice and fluently constructed game-play. Everything seems not to be so much about your driving skills. You can drive like a perfection and still end up getting busted by the police. The whole game centers on trying to achieve at least third position just to be able to progress to the next race that gets unlocked as you achieve this placement.

When considering graphics GameCube has, of course, its limitations. You have to consider this game to be a retro title. Sea of Stars, which I play on PS4, seems way better. Even Gran Turismo 6, that I play on PS3, looks better. But after all everything isn’t always about the technical performace. Hot Pursuit 2 just seems like something I could spend about two or three hours today as I was palying some video games on a regular Saturday.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 for Nintendo GameCube as a loose copy cost me 15 euros. This seems to be just the right price. I did manage to advance in the actual career mode that I chose to play. I didn’t finish the game but I might get back to it in a while. I am a bit concerned about finishing Sea of Stars. It does take about 28 hours to finish this RPG. I am also a bit thoughtful about finishing only a bit over 50 percent of Gran Turismo 6.

Today I also finally ordered Call of Duty – Black Ops 6 for Xbox Series X. I got it for a cheap price of 50 euros. I could have supported some small time game shops but this just is how it came about this time. Of course I am already waiting to get my hands on this brand new FPS. While thinking about some games I have yet not finished I managed to get something out of one of these Need for Speed games that I luckily had a chance to purchase and add to my collection of GameCube games.