Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: xbox series s

Xbox Series X Has a Nice Backwards Compatibility (But Far From Full)

Posted on by Viljami

My Xbox 360 has been suffering. It doesn’t read game discs anymore. Otherwise it is fully functional. I tried opening it a bit through the disc unit as was insturcted on an official guideline I found from internet. I read from the guide that you should first power the device off, remove all cables and then try to push the wheel of the disc unit so that it opens up a bit. This was instructed to do with paper clip that has been straightened. Then you should bloww some compressed air to it.

I did mangae to do this and it fixed the problem. I was able to start a game once again. Then some weeks went by. I wasn’t playing anything with my Xbox 360. I played my other game conmsoles. As you might know Xbox 360 has a backwards compatiblity with original Xbox games. 463 games out of all 996 published are backwards compatible. We can make a quick calculation and find out that this makes 46,5 % of all games that were published for original Xbox.

If you think about PS3 and PS4 and their backwards compatibility you can propably figure how differently Microsoft and Sony deal with this issue. PS4 wasn’t at any moment backwards compatible at all. This pissed off some people. You were able to play PS1 games on PS3. Some PS3 models you are able to play also PS2 games with. PS5 however has limited backwards compatibility for PS4 games.

Xbox Series X, the latest Xbox, is fully compatible with older Xbox consoles’s games. However every game is not supported. There are 63 original Xbox games out of 996 and 633 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games compatible with the latest Xbox console. Xbox Series S doesn’t even have a disc drive so apparently it doesn’t support older consoles’s game discs. All Xbox One games are compatible with Series X.

With this information available I decided to remove my oddly acting Xbox 360 from my current setup. This meant actually that I had to remove also tens of games from my lineup. I like to keep every game that I am able to play with any console in my setup in this huge shelf. I had to remove many Xbox and Xbox 360 games.

I have now only six original Xbox games left in that shelf. The picture related to this post shows my current games that I am able to play with my Xbox Series X. I didn’t count the games that I removed so carefully. I think I set aside maybe 70 games in total. I had to put games like Halo 1 and 2, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 and many others to storage. These were games that I haven’t had time to get into thoroughly.

I would like to be able to play every game that has ever been released for any Xbox system. This is just the way that things go. You are updating your setup and getting into some new or retro consoles. You don’t actually play every game that you own. Some games and systems you just have to set aside at least for a while. Xbox 360 is an old gaming console. It was first released in 2005. I bought my Xbox 360 as a used copy. This was about six years ago. So maybe it was time for me to move on.

Games do get old. Systems do get old. There are many games that you just can’t play, buy or enjoy in any way no more. I think there should be something that could be done to this issue of great games just disappearing somewhere. We seem to be still moving so fast forward that we can easily completely forget a nice old game.

I don’t know the exact answer to this question. Will there be in the future some websites or collectins of old games. Are we going to be able to finally play these games with an emulator? Would it be nice to have a museum that could hold many old games? I know that there are already some websites that are dedicated to old Commodre 64 games. They have archived thousands of games which are also available as downloads.

There cetainly is some knowledge about gaming that also I as a gamer have been able to develop in myself. From the moment when I first gazed at a video game in some arcade I have been curious to find out more about games. I went as far as studying the field. I dreamed I would be able to make a game or something similar. And I think I am not alone with my knowledge and I think this is an interesting topic all in all.

Concentrating More To Modern and Recent Instead of Retro Video Games

Posted on by Viljami

I have lots of games already for my Xbox Series X. The backlog is getting a bit heavy. I have given a though to my habit and hobby of collecting games. I started getting into retro games back in 2016. Since then prices of games that can be categorized as retro games has risen seriously. I have witnessed these prices to go up with games ending up 3 times more expensive than what they used to be.

Why has this happened one might start to figure. One thing about this issue is the rising popularity of collecting and playing video games. Both types of games are popular if we think about modern and retro. Modern games can be produced and delivered to almost as many players as there is a demand for. While we have witnessed some cases of games being produced too many for consumers to buy, I mean for example the ET Atari 2600 game, that the manufacturers have been left with several unsold copies in their hands. I think today this isn’t a big problem as also many customers buy their games as digital editions.

The people that used to play video games in the 80s and 90s are coming to an age that they have a bit more currency to spend to their dear hobby. Did you notice how quickly classic and mini consoles were completely sold out. The demand was huge. These are same consumers that are buying today most of games that are sold through different forms of delivery. Some are sold in digital stores that are available for players of PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo or PC.

Also it seems to be a common way to think that retro games should be bought instead of just downloading them and playing them directly on a gamers personal computer. There are of course many ways to achieve the emulation for these systems. People are spending lots of money to get their hands on some retro consoles. Some games are also very expensive. I have collided in some very heavy prices when I have gone through a gaming web shop. It seems like every interesting game has now got a double or even triple of a price compared to what these prices were back when I started collecting games.

There should be more options. There should be more devices that support older games or retro games. There should be ways to play these games on recent systems. We are in an era in which people are becoming a bit more technically knowledgeable than these last generations that were more into to games than into technology. Especially I see the 90s, maybe my generation, as a time that more players wanted to just play games instead of programming their own applications. You can think about how consumers of electronics were like back in the 70s or 80s. Things have changed a lot and are still constantly changing.

So it isn’t a thing for a young person and a hobbyist to build up a gaming system. At first you might want to buy a PC. Then you will need an operating system for it. I would prefer Lakka OS but there are also more options. So, this is a Linux operating system. It isn’t, today, legal to just download games as ROM files. You have to own the game that you download. That seems to be the rule of thumb here. While there are ways to convert your existing games to rom files I think this has been made too hard for an average consumer.

One option would be to make some or even all old games available to digital game shops. This has been already accomplished. Some retro games are sold and some you can get to play if you have an account that you have registered and payed for. Is this enough for gamers? I think there are ways to keep playing the most important games that exist but there should be more discussion on this issue. We might some day face a problem that we cannot play every game that we would like to. I think some games are just too big, important and interesting to just be left out of our options about what game to play next.

My point here is, my dear reader, that I have thought about these matters and I have decided to play mainly recently released games. I don’t yet know how long I am going to keep this up. Maybe til the end of year or something like that. I just think I have spent lots of money in retro games that aren’t bringing me actually anything worth experiencing as a video game addict. Games that I do play, have been playing and will keep playing from now on are especially these recent titles. I do have also an interest towards Xbox One games since they are backward compatible with Series X. I have played NBA2K23, Diablo IV and Far Cry 6. NBA2K23 seems to take forever to be even near of a completion of the game. So, there is a lot to play for me.

I am also waiting and looking to get FFXVI for my Series X. It is, to my knowledge, appearing to the Xbox store in December of this year. I also have a Nintendo Switch that is also my second newest gaming console after Series X. I am not finding PS4 so interesting at the moment. I kind of skipped Hogwarts Legacy. The next game I am waiting to get to play is probably Forza Motorsport. I don’t know if I am ready to play some Starfield. It is an interesting new game from developers of Skyrim. It is going to be released 6th of September this year.

Nothing Special to See Here

Posted on by Viljami

This image here is a screenshot from Forza Horizon 5. I am playing it currently on my Xbox Series X. I bought it recently as a digital copy. It cost me about 40 euros. I was happy that I didn’t have to pay more for it. It isn’t the newest racing game after all.

I bought also some other games. I noticed that there are some Xbox 360 and original Xbox games available as digital copy and they were on a discount also. So, I picked up some more games. There were 9 games all in all. I picked up Red Faction II, The Darkness, Contra, Vampyr, Flashback, Call of Cthulhu, Crimson Skies – High Road to Revenge, FH5 and Gears of War 4. This cost me only about 75 euros. I saved over 100 euros. If you can call spending money saving money. Well, I think we can.

Some people are talking and even worrying about spending too much money buying gaming stuff. I don’t think gaming would be different from any other hobby that you have to spend money in. You need equipment in sports. You need money if you drive a car. How is gaming different? This talk about money makes me think about some of these big game releases. We can take the latest Zelda game for example. It is Tears of the Kingdom. I think they have a huge marketing budget. This is reality. It is so because I did saw a commercial on a bus stop just some weeks ago. I don’t remember seeing a game advertised on a bus stop here in a long period of time. If this has happened earlier, I don’t remember what the game might have been.

Forza Horizon 5 is already an old game. It isn’t actually old. Its just not the newest game providing racing and entertainment. I decided to start playing it because I hadn’t done it earlier. It has received some good ratings. It would take me at least 20 hours of time to finish it. Or so tells the well-known website named “How Long to Beat”. This is my preferred website if I want to seek information about how long does a game last. Some times, like in the case of Diablo II – Resurrected, I have noticed that it takes me some more time to complete a game than what is told on this website. If you want to see the website, just use your favorite search engine. As you might have noticed I don’t promote any special search engine.

I am hoping to enjoy some more Forza Horizon 5. I hope that I can finish it some day soon. I have spent already maybe 5 hours playing it. There is, as is usual today, many different areas of interest in this game. There’s a lot going on. We have definitely more than a racing game  here. I hope to continue playing it and to explore its content as thoroughly as is possible.