Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: gaming

Does Emulation Really Hurt Someone?

Posted on by Viljami

You can spend hundreds of euros to retro video games. Where do these games come from? Some games are sold for a low price to shops that sell games that sell them forward at a more realistic price. This is how this field functions. You really cannot blame them for running a business like this. You have to get your living from somewhere. And game shops are very valuable for us game hobbyists in that they deliver us many games, consoles and all this other stuff, also, that we need to keep our hobby in a big role in our lives.

How about individuals that are selling their old video games? Once again there is this issue of money involved. You have something valuable and someone wants add just that game to his or her collection. Why not sell your game? Of course you cannot sell it at such a high price that the game shop is selling it. This makes sense, right?

Well, some people try to find a game at a low price and then sell it to someone with a higher price. This is familiar to many of us. It’s called scalping. I did notice this rice in prices. I bought Silent Hill 3 for PS2 in 2017 from a game shop. It cost me 15 euros back then. Recently I saw this same game. Its price was 75 euros. Actually, I don’t want to get rid of this game so I am not going to sell it. But if I was after an economical win situation I would probably sell this game.

So the money goes right here to the individual that is selling the game. Alternatively this amount of money goes to a game shop. This doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that big game companies are telling us that it is harmful to their business that consumers are installing emulators and running rom files on them instead of buying a physical copy of that game.

It might be the case that these huge companies would like to make more remakes out of old games. Why not bring more of those mini consoles to the markets? There would certainly be a demand for original Xbox mini console or a GameCube one. This isn’t however anything close to the reality. This is only a dream. While we have seen many classic mini consoles there isn’t going to be one made out of every legendary retro game console.

What if you bought a really powerful computer that would have enough disk space for a huge collection of game roms that could run these games on different emulators? I certainly find this option appealing. I do like buying and collecting old hardware and games. Just that I have faced issues with old hardware. They don’t seem to last for a long time. Dust might be the enemy. And I don’t have the skill necessary to fix these consoles. Currently I have several broken consoles in my storage in my apartment. It might be nice to get them repaired but I am currently also considering of getting a computer with some retro emulation so I wouldn’t have to worry about games not functioning.

Where should you start with this new idea? There are complete operating systems dedicated to retro game emulation. These are open source so they don’t actually cost you anything. You just have to have a powerful enough computer if you want to run games of PS2 or GameCube. If there is enough power in your PC you can even run PS4 games on an emulator, today. You can install, of course, emulators on your laptop or desktop. I myself am interested in this idea of having a PC that I would only use for console emulation. So, I don’t want to run Windows 10 or even any regular Linux operating system. There is something better for retro gaming.

I am talking about a retro gaming operating system. It works like this. You just install the OS and then upload the rom files, that are the actual games, to it. Then you plug your game pad and start up a game. You only turn the PC off or on and you have this simple but effective user interface that you can operate with your game pad. This is what I am talking about.

I am going to mention Lakka OS and Recalbox at this point. I have some experience with Lakka OS as I had it on a PC for maybe some months some time ago. I really liked this system. Although I found out that I wasn’t able to play anything that would require some serious power. I could run PS1 games but I would have liked to run PS2 and GameCube on this system. I just lacked the power. I am hoping that I would be able to get a more powerful PC for this purpose.

You can definitely find out more about Lakka OS and/or Recalbox. You will find them through your favorite search engine. These kind of setups can also run earlier games, like SNES or NES or something else, smoothly. Recalbox is supporting several tens of different video game consoles. Always also be critical about these thoughts I have provided here. Please use your own caution and thought when trying to accomplish your game library. Remember who put these games together and have an appreciation towards them. That might be another topic for another blog post. So, I think that’s it for this time. Thanks for reading!

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.

Things to Explore in Gaming

Posted on by Viljami

Video games have already been here to entertain us for some time now. I haven’t had the opportunity to play every game of every era. You could say that I have been active from 1980 to this day. I haven’t seen everything in gaming. I hope to still see lots of more cool stuff be it old or new. If we think that first games were made back in the 60s there seems to be a lot to explore. But what are the most interesting games and platforms? What is important to know and what you can safely skip?

Lets think beyond home consoles. Things we had before Nintendo or even Atari 2600. Personal computers were also around in this moment and I will get to them later in this blog post. But the thing I want to write about here are games that we played in an arcade. Today there are things like MAME that enable us to play historically important video games we had in arcades some time ago. There’s lot to explore here and you start with your own PC just by getting an emulator. So, that’s one area to explore.

There are home console systems that I haven’t had a chance to own or even play on an emulator. Considering retro games there’s a certain way to get into these games that fascinates my mind. I have been thinking about buying a powerful and small in a physical size computer and installing an operating system to it that is dedicated to retro gaming. We already have Linux based operating systems like Lakka, Recalbox or Retropie. In this way I could explore systems like Neo Geo, Dreamcast, Atari Jaguar and Saturn and even more. There are some bad gaming systems also. Some of them are actually so bad that they are interesting. I recommend that you try them out first before buying a console like this.

What about some handheld consoles? For a long period of time I thought I could really play any handheld on my mobile phone. This is actually only part of the truth. I have found playing Gameboy games on SNES device with an adapter very satisfying. There are also adapter for GameCube that enables this same functionality. It is an expensive option. Nintendo has released many interesting handheld devices. I personally find Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS very interesting indeed. I could also get my hands on PSP or Vita that are Sony’s handheöd consoles.

There are also devices like Steam Deck that can bring you a solid gaming experience. I have read about new Asus device coming soon. It is called Asus ROG Ally and it costs 800 euros. IT is basically a computer that runs Windows 11. So, you can do also many other things with it. The thing I’m a bit concerned about is that the device provides only 2 hours of battery life. This means that you can only play games with it in runs of two hours. This, of course, isn’t an issue when you are playing this in your home. You can also hook it up to a television and use a Xbox Series S/X controller if you wish to do so.

There are also many new games and systems that I am interested about. You might have noticed already that we aren’t getting as many games ass we used to back in the days. There are however many good quality games that you can enjoy. This means that you have to follow the media a bit and keep yourself well informed. I can mention one game that is currently cvery promising. That game is Alan Wake 2. This will be released later this year.

I am also very interested in almost everything concerning Sega. I have already gathered a small collection of Master System games. My love for Sega begun in 1993 when I owned a Mega Drive. I find Sega CD, 32X and , well, actually every Sega console that was released after Master System, very interesting. I also have a good book about Sega that I enjoyed very much. I am always looking some more books to read about games.

There seems to still be a lot to explore. I have collected games now in some sort of meaningful way for about five or six years. I have played games longer than that but in 2017 I started to rally get this hobby going. I have my setup of nine game consoles and I have also some other devices that I can play video games on. I am trying to keep up with what’s going on in gaming globally.  I have written posts for this blog since 2020. It is a really nice hobby and I think this blog has been a success at least in a way that it has attracted so many people here as visitors. Maybe I find some day some way to get also some income also from this website. That’s it. Thanks for reading!