Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: retro

How Games Used to Be

Posted on by Viljami

I can remember it clearly. Games were different. I am talking about how games were at the time when original Xbox was released. Thinking about this brings me, again, some very nostalgic feelings and thoughts.

So what excactly has changed? We have today more powerful gaming consoles, screens  and televisions. Even things like controllers and consumption of electricity have improved. It seems although that we are seeing very different kinds of games today compared to what we saw about twenty years ago.

Back in the day game publishers took more financial risks. There was also less money  involved all in all. This has led to a situation in which we are seeing huge releases that try to appeal to as huge of an audience as possible. Just think about Elden Ring or Cyberpunk 2077.

Old or retro games can give you a different approach to how a game should feel like. Some games are not even trying to reach to the sky. They might use only 2D scenery or they might concentrate to bringing you something that can be classified very easily. Just think about racing games. Everyone knows how  a typical racing game feels like.

Seems like games today try to be everything for everyone. We haven’t seen many new genres formed in last past ten years. We are seeing lots of remakes of old games that were very popular at the time they were originally released. We seem to see fewer definitely distinctive new games. Have game developers lost their creativity? How is this going to affect to new games we are already waiting to be released?

The times are changing and that change is constant. Because of delivery problems of electronical components we are seeing some other difficulties also. Has the gaming industry reached already its peak? Are we going to be still playing games and going to find more new games that attract us and bring us deeper and closer to the core of this hobby?

There is something very definitive in video games that attracts people. More and more people are starting this hobby. Age isn’t in any way anymore a limitation. And who tells you that you cannot play also some older games instead of these newer huge releases?

Collecting, Buying but not Playing

Posted on by Viljami

I am happy that I am currently employed. I work and I also have some freetime. Although I don’t have the amount of time I had as a teenager. I propably wouldn’t even want it to be that way anymore. I guess I have less time for playing today.

As I have less time for gaming I do have more income. That gets me to buy more collectable items, games, that I couldn’t afford some time ago. I am finding myself buying interesting, nostalgic and exciting games. Some of them, the retro ones, I have owned or played during my childhood. Some games just are plain intersting. I think I cannot fully explain this.

There seems be a lot of items for me to get to my hands. I might buy an interesting game and just leave it for a month or two and then get into playing it. I can picture myself buying even things like CRT television, light gun or another retro game console. Those are very interesting things inside my mind.

There are of course limitations. I don’t have so much room in my house. So, what’s next? Moving to a bigger house to collect more games, systems, televisions and what more? There gots to be a limit somewhere.

Instead of just spending all my time playing every retro title I have for two to three hours a day I am actually also finding myself in improving my personal skills. This is somewhat the fact even when I am playing something but I also am spending my free time for learning something new in programming, technology, making my own games and writing texts and making music. So there are lots of things going on and this is just one way that reflects me as an individual.

Everything depends on everything. As I keep spending more time alone or with my wife I find myself quite content in my current situation. I am a developing individual but of course I am not a software developer…at least not at this moment. But who knows what future just might bring!

Characteristics of Sega Mega Drive Games

Posted on by Viljami

I was playing Shinobi III – Return of the Ninja Master as I started to focus on how the game is actually developed. I am sometimes, maybe subconsciously, starting to think how the game that I am playing is programmed or how the graphics are put together. I am not a professional game developer but I still find thinking about this very interesting. I started to realize that there are some characteristics of games that are developed for Sega Mega Drive.

Mega Drive, or Genesis, was released in the late 80s. It aimed to be a serious competitor for Nintendo Entertainment System. It also made it’s best to bring the experience of arcade to consumers living rooms. At this point the hardware performance of game consoles was beginning to be a lot closer to the level of arcade game machines. It was clear that Sega wanted Mega Drive to be more powerful than NES. Sega made this message clear by printing the text “16-Bit” to the surface of Mega Drive game console.

What kinds of games there were back in the day? Are they still worth playing ? We can start from the visual perspective. As Mega Drive had power, it produced very nice graphics if they were compared to the graphics that NES provided. I think SNES has a bit better graphics if you compare them to Mega Drive’s. But SNES was released way later than Mega Drive. The graphics are of course two dimensional as 3D modeled games weren’t yet available.

Mega Drive games are said to be repetitive. I think this is somewhat true. Many times you have to play the same part of the game over and over again until you finally succeed and get to progress. Mega Drive games can be a bit more violent than Nintendo games. You can understand this by thinking about hockey games that have or do not have fights. If you also compare Mortal Kombat games released for these systems there are some clear differences. Sega’s version has more blood on it.

Let’s talk about the gamepad a bit. As you think about how the controller looks you realize that it definitely was designed to be an improvement of NES controller. I mean, just look at it! It’s completely round. NES controller is so edgy and simple compared to Sega’s. There are three buttons, a start button and an axis button – nothing else. This makes this controller simple and easy to use. Although in some games it would be nice to have some more buttons. There are of course some more advanced gamepads available and this is only the one that originally came with the console.

Mega Drive games are addictive. You can play it’s games for hours. That’s just about how long you can spend playing Mega Drive. I think PlayStation later made it possible and even preferable to play the same game for tens of hours and it’s sequel, PS2, took it even further to this direction. Playing Mega Drive can cause you some serious raging. I think this has to do with the repetitiveness. Mega Drive was in late 80s and early 90s very affordable if you compare it to for example PC. In those days you had to spend a fortune if you wanted to buy a personal computer.