Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: retro

8BitDo M30 2.4g – Wireless Gamepad for SEGA Mega Drive

Posted on by Viljami

If you thought that there wouldn’t exist a wireless gamepad for Mega Drive, well, you were wrong. 8BitDo is known for its innovative gamepads for, i think, any platform. You can find a controller for SNES, NES or MD and maybe PC, Switch or one of those Classic Mini consoles. They have also brought us some USB-Bluetooth dongles that I for example find very useful. Prices of these products are low so you can clearly understand why they are so popular. Gamepads and differents kinds of other accessories are also widely available at least here in Finland and many gaming stores, the small ones also, give you an opportunity to buy these products.

I found this model, “M30 2.4g”, very nice and easy to use. You just basically plug the USB-dongle in to your original Mega Drive, make sure that controllers battery is charged, and start playing. Some games allow you to modify key mappings but some don’t. There’s three buttons, “A”,”B”,”C”, and another three, “X”,”Y”,”Z”, axis-button, start-button, one trigger-button on left and right and also three other buttons. You connect the controller wirelessly by pressing blue start-button.

I remember and can still feel how bad the actual, original, controllers felt. Compared to them this is something I find amazing. Price of this product was as low as can be. It was only about 25 euros. I think right now this product is not available. And again, this is not a true commercial. I am just very content about 8BitDos product and happy to write this kind of content to my gaming blog. Be sure to check out any of this companys products. I’m telling you this because I found other interesting equipment for “hardcore” gamers. A while back I found a USB dongle for PlayStation classic that allowed replacement of controller so you basically could plug in any Bluetooth controller. I didn’t buy it so I don’t have any knowledge on how to use it and I am not sure if it supports PC controllers or Xbox ONE and PS4 controllers. So this was just an example and you can find more information from their website. Here’s the link to it: https://www.8bitdo.com/

So how can you find these amazing products? You should check your local electronics shop or at least its website. There is also a shop on 8BitDos homepage. In Finland their products are widely available in smaller game shops and also in bigger, globally influential, stores. As I have told you, my dear reader, already, these accessories are widely available. I found my gamepad ultimately pleasant. I didn’t even know you could produce gamepads for Mega Drive with wireless functionality. And the gamepad is very confortable to hold in your hands.

Streets Of Rage series

Posted on by Viljami

Who remembers this classic beat-em-up called Streets Of Rage? It had a strong impact and was very popular so I think most of us, at least ones that played games back then, remember it well. It was originally released on Sega Mega Drive at beginning of nineties. In Japan the game was called Bare Knuckle. Action takes place in city that is covered with aggressive criminals that are being led by evil mastermind named Mr. X. Your mission is to fight your way to this boss and end the misery. First game of the series was released in 1991 and third one in 1994. I played most the second game that I still have in my collection of Mega Drive games.

The idea of this post was basically to reminisce about these retro pieces but also to consider if it would be worth it to get your hands on the upcoming release of Streets Of Rage 4. Judged by the trailer it has completely new graphics. They aren’t so pixelated and they seem like they were drawn by hand. Music of this game has been re-made also but you have an option to change background music to original. Game is released on PS4, PC, Xbox One and Switch.

I have memories, mostly happy ones, about playing part two of this beat-em-up game series. It was actually my brothers game. He had an eye for beating guys up virtually and I got to play this game also with him. We ended arguing and fighting since we hit each other in this game as we played in co-operative mode. It happened also a few times as I played with a friend. The game was aggressive and I think I took the game too seriously as a kid. Today I wouldn’t start such an argument or at least I think so.

Graphics were nice, gameplay was very good and soundtrack had plenty of electronic rhythm and melody in it. You have to consider that these games were released as Sega Mega Drive games. If I could change something it would be the controller. But I think that issue is solved today since I bought 8BitDo’s wireless Mega Drive controller a while back. I have to remember to write a post about that also when I have time.

I liked these games and they gave me a lot as I was a young gamer starting slowly to grow up. We will see if the remake comes close as a fighting game and if it does honor to the name of this game series. And if it doesn’t we’ll always have our retro Mega Drives, Classic Mini and not-so-legit emulator versions of this classic and classic is a perfect word to describe Streets Of Rage.

What exactly is chiptune music?

Posted on by Viljami

What means chiptune? Chip reminds of electronic component while tune brings in mind a simple musical melody. This even now popular genre became known when game developers, back in 80s, needed music and sound effects for their games. First very popular system that had decent music was Commodore 64 which came to markets in 1982. It had a chip called SID (“Sound Interface Device”) that was responsible for producing the sound for this system.

You can find chiptune also on NES (“Nintendo Entertainment System”), that was released in 1983. 16-bit systems that were later released also could produce music that would be categorized as chiptune althought they were of higher quality as systems moved from 8-bit to 16-bit. First very popular console that had sound quality very close to CDs was the first Sony PlayStation. You can argue for hours about which has better sound – vinyl or CD, but we are not going to go there. So chiptune was originally popular in video games from 1980s to, I think, 1995.

Today chiptune is still very popular. You can find artists that have been strongly influenced by this type of music. Usually chiptune is strongly associated with retro games or the games that originally had chiptune as their background music. As retro gaming is popular chiptune is alive even today. Some artists are producing chiptune with modern tools such as software synthesizers that are just basically virtual instruments with some presets and the ability to create various sounds, your own presets, and can run inside any kind of DAW (“Digital Audio Workstation”) you can imagine.

Since I started with this topic I have to write also more about so called tracker music that first made its way to home musicians sometime in 1980s. So tracker is simple application that runs on computer that allows you to make music. Amigas computers were first devices that made this functionality available for music production. Inside tracker you can define your songs tempo, basically just how fast the track is flowing, and add drum sounds and melodies that are created using small digital samples of audio. Trackers are used also today but they are not as powerful as music applications such as FL Studio for example. Some now popular trackers are Renoise, a very good one, Mad Tracker and OpenMPT. Some older ones are Scream Tracker, Fast Tracker and Impulse Tracker. You can find many great trackers and please comment and let us know if you have a suggestion for readers of this blog.