role playing games Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

The Role of SNES In The History of Gaming

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Viljami

There was a time in history of gaming when SNES was the most powerful and the most newest gaming console in the markets. This period of time was followed by many years of dominance from Mega Drive, or Genesis as the system was called in the USA, that in turn was a following of dominance from Nintendo Entertainment System, or for short, NES. What had happened earlier, before Nintendos dominant era, would be known as video game crash. It was a time when video games weren’t selling so well. NES begun the new era when video games started to begin to be popular again.

What makes Super Nintendo, or SNES, so significant is reflected in these games that were released for it. They were beginning to look like something that could be considered a true form of art and not just some entertainment for kids. There were stories that were told through these games. There were some limitations about the amount space available and also some considerations about how to, for example, save a game with this technology. However the progression was fast and SNES had its time when it was actually considered the greatest gaming console of all that were available.

Now, you can debate on which one is better, Mega Drive or SNES but actually the way I see it is something like this. NES was the best during 1983 to 1988. Mega Drive dominated from 1988 to 1991. And SNES was the greatest console between 1991 and 1995. After that it would be the era of PlayStation 1 which would continue all the way to the era of the generation in which PS2 would belong to. Take this as just an idea and not something I could somehow actually prove to be true. This is a sort of a theory.

How were the games that were released for SNES? I would point out that there were games like Street Fighter II and Super Mario World. They were full of action and included graphics that were very impressive at their time. There were also some role-playing games that I think moved gaming very much forward at this time in the history of gaming and playing video games. These games brought us closer to the games that could be later found on PS1. I think that when PS1 came actually as popular as it would show to be we were actually starting to realize the full potential that video games actually had. RPGs on SNES were something like a bridge to more complex and modern gaming.

So, the whole scene of gaming was advancing very fast at this time. Everything I have told you here makes me think how little I have spend playing SNES. I have several RPGs to explore if I choose to go to that path. I am thinking that this system, SNES, has some great games. But the question in my mind seems to be “are they actually worth playing”? I ma thinking this because they are old games. I don’t have so many memories of playing SNES back in the 90s. I have more memories about Mega Drive.

I am still thinking about this. Some good games for SNES include titles like many of Final Fantasy titles, Secret of Mana, Dragon Quest VI and III, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. It also had many good games that weren’t actually RPGs. These titles include Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox and F-Zero just to mention some of them.

If you are a retro collector you must have heard how there was a device that would have actually been a Nintendo console that would have had a CD drive of some kind included with it. This was actually something that would have been a collaboration of Sony and Nintendo. We never saw this machine and Sony went on to release its own gaming console. PlayStation, later. This leaves my imagination with many possible outcomes of what we would have had as video gamers if it would have come to reality.

SNES is a huge part of history of video games. As I am more of a Mega Drive and PlayStation 1 fan I have lots of playing to do if I wish to get into SNES a bit more. There is a lot to explore. Some games might not be ones that I will spend tens of hours or even hundreds of hours playing since they are already a bit old as video games. I might play some newer video games instead. However it is great to acknowledge how these games shaped the way we experience gaming today.

Character Progression in Video Games

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Viljami

Character progression in video games was back in the 90s when games like Golden Axe II were released very much nonexistent. I played the first Golden Axe just a while ago. I almost suddenly started to realize how this game would feel like if there would be some sort of character progression in it. It is very sad that a game like Golden Axe that has very nice visual look and very fantastic character design along with a fun game play to not have something we have seen in so many modern games – a character progression.

Take Donkey Kong Bananza for example. The game isn’t overly obsessed with the development of the character but you get to update your skills with “bananas” that you collect while progressing in the main story. You get to update your hitting force and health level along with many other skills that you can update with the bananas that you collect. You get to choose very much how you will spend your hard earned skill points. This molds the experience and gives you some strategical point of view to the game.

We are today seeing this also in many sports games. In modern NBA games you have to keep developing your player to perform better. There really isn’t a such a solid goal in these basketball games but you can have achievements like winning a championship or getting awarded as the “most valuable player” and things like this. Basically you can play these NBA games almost forever or as long as you will. You kind of get hooked in developing your character and some people are also willing to buy stat upgrades with real money. You can of course have multiple and different types of main characters.

The origins of character progression are in my thinking something adopted from today so popular role playing games. The origins of RPGs then are from something called Dungeon & Dragons. Of course we cannot forget also how fantasy literature has shaped the scenery of today’s role playing games. The components of modern video games have everything to do with the creative power of those people that keep on creating and telling stories and describing different characters, missions and stories. We owe a lot to these foundations and there has been a long time that modern video games have been getting developed.

First we had some games that were organized as turn based games. In the middle of the 90s we saw something new as a very popular game called Diablo was released. The year was accurately 1996. Blizzard was the game house that finally brought us a video game that had along with role playing elements also elements of pure action. I have to bring up once again a spectacular game that inspired the creators of Diablo. This game was NHL 94 for Sega Mega Drive. Also it was a game that inspire many other game developers like the makers of Doom. NHL 94 was a very good game and it inspired also me at that time.

The question that still remains unanswered and might not be answered even after we go through these thoughts a bit more is that how come no one has ever utilized the characters of Golden Axe in such a long time? Maybe they don’t have the copyrights? Then what about Sega? Why haven’t they come up with a new Golden Axe game or spinoff?

The short answer to my question is that we have seen some Golden Axe games after the third game was released for Mega Drive back in 1990s. It just happens to be that they weren’t successful games either financially or content wise. And once again we have a question that needs to be answered and all I can say is that time will probably give us an answer of some kind. We will have to wait and see. There have been many games that have a character progression but I think we would need a new and decent Golden Axe game for modern gaming platforms.

Getting Into Final Fantasy Origins

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Viljami

There have been many Final Fantasy games released throughout history. Some of them are spin-offs. If we consider the main line of Final Fantasy games and think about its definitive roots you simply cannot forget the first two games that were originally released for NES and/or SNES.

So, you want to play these two games? You have several options. I, myself, went with the Final Fantasy Origins that was released for PS1 in 2003. That seems pretty late for a PlayStation 1 game don’t you think?

What are the other options? Well, you can go with the “pixel remaster” collection that I have been considering also buying. This collection includes all first six Final Fantasy games from I to VI. So these are remakes of these games that graphically seem like some SNES games. Or, at least they come near to that. They are remasters after all.

One option for a hardcore Final Fantasy fan is to go with the original NES version of the first game in this RPG series. Graphically it isn’t as nice as the SNES version of the game. The first game of this RPG series wasn’t published originally in Europe at all and also North America got to see Final Fantasy with a delay of several years.

Final Fantasy as a video game series didn’t get a justified beginning in the PAL region firstly at all but this all changed when in 1997 we got to see also in Europe the seventh FF game to be released for PS1. After FFVII conquered almost every gamers hearth it was acceptable for the gamers in Europe also to see some earlier releases of this famous game series. After all we saw every game that were already a pretty big thing in other parts of the world to get released for PS1 and after that we saw even more games for newer gaming consoles.

This one blog post is too short for us to properly discuss about Final Fantasy as a game series. Instead I am going to write tot you about how I felt getting into the first game of the series. I bought the copy of this game already some months ago. It might be already a year ago or so. I just haven’t had the time to play it, yet.

I was familiar already with FF1 as a NES game. I have tried my hand playing it. This PS1 release includes two games FF I and FF II. It isn’t the most priciest retro game but it isn’t also the cheapest. The way I started to play it was to actually rip these two discs as rom files. After that I transferred these files through Ethernet to the Raspberry Pi 5 based Recalbox. I like to play nowadays my PS1 games this way as it is easier. I do have the hardware, of course, also. It is just easier because you don’t have to mess so much with memory cards or minding of the disc getting scuffed.

The game itself is an adventure type of game meaning you can have conversations and you are trying to obtain some objects that will guide you in your quest. The actual battles are turn-based and they occur at random moments. You have to be in a zone that gives you these occurrences. There are some areas where you don’t have the battles. They are kind of turned off.

The game is also about character development. In the beginning you get to choose four characters with some different character classes. I for example created a group of two Fighters, a White Mage and a Black Mage. I decided to go with a team like this. As you might know I think that there must be someone in the team that can also heal other members and itself also. Fighters are good for fighting and they get powerful combat weapons and armor while Mages can have very powerful attack spells also. It is one point to spot a weakness in monster that are trying to attack you.

Final Fantasy games usually take a long time to finish. I think FF I takes about 16 hours to complete while the second one takes about 22 hours. I think playing Final Fantasy Origins is a good way to deepen your knowledge even more about this RPG that might just be the series that brought these kinds of video games to Europe in the first place.