Were arcade ports changed to not hurt arcade sales?

[homerhomer]

I can't help but think that some arcade ports back in the day were changed or gimped so they didn't affect arcades sales.

The first company that comes to mind is SEGA. They promised the arcade at home. They really brought the arcades home with games like Golden Axe and Strider, but what about some of the other games like Shinobi series and games like Toki? Do you guys think they were out to make a better game for the consoles or were theses games changed to lessen the impact of the arcade games?

Space Harrer = Space Harrier II was released instead of the arcade game
Toki = Different game than the arcade
Shinobi = Never released, Console sequels released, good games but not arcade Shinobi
Samurai Shodown = Controls Changed from the arcade, not in a good way
Shadow Dancer = Different Game than arcade
ESWAT = Console Port different game than the arcade
Outrun = Outrun 2019 was originally released in like 88, but then later on in 91' we got a true ( awesome ) port.

[Leo_A]

Outrun 2019's title screen says 1993. There's no way that this could've been done in 1989.

I doubt there was a single instance where this ever happened in order to keep exclusivity of some sort for arcade operators.

[SparTonberry]

Back then arcade machines advanced much more rapidly than consoles, so it was natural that games would have to be degraded in ports.

With Sega games, Galaxy Force II was supposedly so advanced for its day that it took a couple generations for consoles to handle it.
(some said the 3DS was the first accurate ROM emulation. Don't know if that's true since I know there was a Saturn port but I never played it, and I'm only assuming it's somewhere in the PS2 Sega Ages line.)

[7th lutz]

I can't help but think that some arcade ports back in the day were changed or gimped so they didn't affect arcades sales.

The first company that comes to mind is SEGA. They promised the arcade at home. They really brought the arcades home with games like Golden Axe and Strider, but what about some of the other games like Shinobi series and games like Toki? Do you guys think they were out to make a better game for the consoles or were theses games changed to lessen the impact of the arcade games?

Space Harrer = Space Harrier II was released instead of the arcade game
Shinobi = Never released, Console sequels released, good games but not arcade Shinobi
Samurai Shodown = Controls Changed from the arcade, not in a good way
Shadow Dancer = Different Game than arcade
ESWAT = Console Port different game than the arcade
Outrun = Outrun 2019 was originally released in like 88, but then later on in 91' we got a true ( awesome ) port.

I don't know if you meant to say Sega Genesis because Outrun, Space Harrier and Shinobi were ported to the Sega Master system. Outrun was ported to the Sega Master System way before it was ported to the Sega Genesis. Outrun was released on the Sega Master system in 1987.

Space Harrier was ported for the Sega Master System 2 times with the 2nd version of Space Harrier supporting Segascope 3-d glasses.

[Gentlegamer]

Shinobi was released on PC Engine.

Genesis Shadow Dancer was different than arcade, but the Sega Master System version followed the original much more closely.

Arcade ports were changed as programming constraints dictated, or playability on a home system demanded.

Many early 80s arcade games received nearly perfect home versions on Famicom/NES such as Galaga, Mario Bros, and Donkey Kong.

Later, games like TMNT Turtles in Time and Street Fighter II were nearly arcade perfect on SNES.

Sometimes, home and arcade versions were made at the same time by different teams, such as Strider and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, resulting in completely different games.

[celerystalker]

I remember rumors that SNK intentionally held back resources for console ports of Neo Geo games so as not to devalue AES ownership and rental, but I have no idea if it's true... but Capcom's SNES stuff sure looks and feels a hell of a lot better than Takara and co's SNK ports.

[WoodyXP]

Software houses adapted the games to the hardware of the time and some of them wanted to make the games worth buying so they'd give the games a different spin. Not many people wanted to drop $50 of 80's era money on a game they could blow through in 15mins.

[SparTonberry]

They usually put in a credit limit to stop you from beating a game in 15 minutes.

And weren't some console ports improved over the arcade? I heard Turtles in Time for SNES was better than the arcade version.
And Contra. NES version was definitely better than the arcade original.

[Flojomojo]

Software houses adapted the games to the hardware of the time and some of them wanted to make the games worth buying so they'd give the games a different spin. Not many people wanted to drop $50 of 80's era money on a game they could blow through in 15mins.

I assume that's why Space Harrier II is a little different, and Super Thunder Blade is very different from the original arcade game. It always felt like an odd calculation to pay $60 for unlimited play for arcade games at home.

Remember when Playstation games were criticized for being "just" arcade ports? I still think of the arcade as the place where premieres happen, even though it hasn't been true for close to thirty years. It's so goofy to go to what few arcades exist anymore and see giant ports of simple mobile games like Temple Run, Fruit Ninja, and Doodle Jump.

There are a few home ports I would love to see re-released. NES Gyruss, Spy Hunter, and Q*Bert would be neat on the 3DS.

[Tanooki]

Shinobi = Never released, Console sequels released, good games but not arcade Shinobi
Samurai Shodown = Controls Changed from the arcade, not in a good way

Not sure where you got your info, but Shinobi was put out by Tengen for Sega on an unlicensed NES cart and it's pretty solid of a port too.
Samurai Shodown, which version? I've played the SNES one against the arcade at the time, same moves, even the Gameboy one does the same just limited to the 2 B and A buttons though.

I really don't recall too many games being watered down. I know you had some minor or major censoring of things, especially in the 16bit era but the games that came over came over pretty intact. The worst was sweaty immoral kombat on the SNES which they rebuffed with MK2 being like nearly the nicest home release made. The NES stuff was hit and miss, but it was also the fact the hardware just wasn't up to snuff for some stuff, while others were pretty good. SNK did a very nice job converting some of their arcade stuff like Heavy Barrel and Ikari Warriors. One game I know was better or worse based upon opinion would be the pC version of the Simpsons Arcade game, it didn't continue, limited lives, smaller characters, stages were made longer to be more tricky, so it was semi-unique. Same kind of could be said with the TMNT2 game on NES where they nearly doubled the stage count making up new levels, but the existing arcade ones were done with pretty good care.

[celerystalker]

Samurai Shodown on SNES is ass. The control inputs are the same, but they are sluggish, and the game is eternally zoomed out since they couldn't replicate the scaling. It looks bad and plays worse. The SNES Neo Geo ports are just about all remarkably sluggish, and I'm not talking about slow down. Art of Fighting admirably went after the scaling, but it runs so slowly with such laggy input that it's a comparative mess. The best ports there were easily World Heroes 1 and 2, which are definitely downgraded, but not so severely, and Tradewest's bang-on port of Super Baseball 2020, which made very smart cuts on a few scaling effects and the land mines in the outfield, but it plays really closely to its Neo original, especially compared to EA's horrific Genesis butchering of the game.

[AdamAnt316]

In at least some cases, arcade ports in the pre-crash era were changed not to protect arcade sales, but seemingly to hurt sales of certain consoles. The best example I can think of is Donkey Kong, which looks better on (surprise) publisher Coleco's own Colecovision console than it did on the Atari 2600 or (especially) Mattel Intellivision. Mattel infamously retaliated by making it so that their follow-up Intellivision II console couldn't play some Coleco-made games. More info here and here.

[Gentlegamer]

Samurai Shodown on SNES is ass. The control inputs are the same, but they are sluggish, and the game is eternally zoomed out since they couldn't replicate the scaling. It looks bad and plays worse. The SNES Neo Geo ports are just about all remarkably sluggish, and I'm not talking about slow down. Art of Fighting admirably went after the scaling, but it runs so slowly with such laggy input that it's a comparative mess. The best ports there were easily World Heroes 1 and 2, which are definitely downgraded, but not so severely, and Tradewest's bang-on port of Super Baseball 2020, which made very smart cuts on a few scaling effects and the land mines in the outfield, but it plays really closely to its Neo original, especially compared to EA's horrific Genesis butchering of the game.

Huh, I used to like SNES Fatal Fury Special back in the day.

[celerystalker]

Huh, I used to like SNES Fatal Fury Special back in the day.

Fatal Fury Special on SNES was decent as far as console fighters of the time go, but when compared to its arcade counterpart, it is very noticeably slower and has control lag. It's nowhere near as bad as Samurai Shodown or Art of Fighting's ports, though, and is closer to World Heroes in port quality. I definitely don't think it's a crap game so much as just more inferior compared to its arcade counterpart than, say, most Capcom ports to the system, such as Street Fighter II, Knights of the Round, or King of Dragons.

[Tron 2.0]

Huh, I used to like SNES Fatal Fury Special back in the day.

In it's day i prefer the sega-cd port more,though look at it now a weak conversion of the neo-geo original.It's a shame to the best port of FFS was the pc-engine version.Still it didn't make here due to no arcade card for the u.s.