Worst Port of a Great Game?

[Nikademus1969]

Zaxxon for the 2600. Seriously, why did they even bother?

[c0ldb33r]

Wasn't there a Genesis/Megadrive port of Duke Nukem 3D? I never played it, but it couldn't have been very good.
From a technical perspective, I found this to be pretty impressive. It's hell to play, but it's a Genesis FPS without that postage stamp sized window that Zero Tolerance had.

[Tupin]

Zaxxon for the 2600. Seriously, why did they even bother?
It was a decent game for what it was, but it was hardly a faithful translation.

Holy crap, Duke Nukem 3D on Genesis? Also, yeah, I made it to Classic Discussions. :-D

[Bloodreign]

Also, the Toaplan shooter ports on FM Towns are mostly terrible, just terrible. Usually poorly remixed music and tiny lil' fake vert screen, aagh :(

Example: Flying Shark. Fire Shark seems somewhat better, though.


As far as I know Fire Shark's only port was to the Genesis, there exists no version of it for the Marty.

[crom]

gotta say pacman gets it for sure...

altered beast for the master system comes to mind too... it was sooo slow and laggy that i thought there was something wrong with my game, untill i played at a friends house and sure enough... what were they thinking?

thank god the genesis version was good

[AB Positive]

Marble Madness on the Genesis

I love the Genny.... LOVE it... but what the fuck did EA do to Marble Madness on it? The control is so bad... yet the NES version is brilliant. Highly disappointing port, and I agree that it belongs in this thread.


To repeat another poster's sentiment: What the HELL happened to Chrono Trigger on the PSX? Seriously, it's a snes game with a few cinematics how the fuck do you get it wrong? Le sigh.

[retrogamer96]

Pac Man for the Atari 2600 and Gex 2 for the gameboy are the only two that come to mind.

[PK ButtMan]

Mortal Kombat Advance. A horrific (and I do mean horrific) port of Ultimate MK 3. This game barely functions.


This is definitely the worst port ever...

They combined High and Low Punch / Kick into one button so it's a very cheap...he computer is almost damn near impossible to play (coming from a UMK3 ace). Jeez, I could go on if I wanted too, but I think you got the point.

[Sonicwolf]

Sonic Adventure DX for the GameCube. It did nothing but put in shiny, super smooth character models and a ton of tacked on GameGear Sonic games that no one cares about. The game is still chock full of glitches, corny dialogue and badly scripted and designed cutscenes. It could have been so much better but they fumbled the ball with this port.

[Nebagram]

Sonic Genesis on the GBA is just evil. The slowdown and the buggered controls make me weep for the charred remains of my childhood.

[Vlcice]

Puzzle Bobble on Taito Legends 2. I love Puzzle Bobble and they raped the game(graphically atleast.) Sure it features the same gameplay, but Bub and Bob are nowhere to be seen in the game.. Instead, the characters are replaced with wheels and the backgrounds are changed to crappy world landmarks.

What version were you playing? I own the PAL Xbox version of Taito Legends 2, which has all the characters very much intact.

For a recent bad port, I'd nominate Okami for the Wii. While it's not completely unplayable, the combat controls are truly awful and make it impossible to play the combat sections with any real skill. The rest of the game is okay, but the graphics are worse and while the point-painting feels good the shape detection routine is much worse than on the PS2.

[Sonicwolf]

Sonic Genesis on the GBA is just evil. The slowdown and the buggered controls make me weep for the charred remains of my childhood.

With all the ports that game has had, wouldnt it be the charred remains of the charred remains of the charred remains of the charred remains of the charred remains of the charred remains of the charred remains of the charred remains of your childhood?

[Draven]

I'll go with Capt. America and the Avengers for NES. It went from a fun beat 'em up to a lame sidescrolling platformer. How freakin' disappointing!

[koshichka]

I just thought of another one - Marble Madness/Klax on the GBA. Klax is fine, but for whatever reason, the last three levels in Marble Madness were cut out - once you reach the goal in the third level, "Game Over" appears on the screen. Extremely lame.

Oh, let's be serious. Have you ever played arcade Marble Madness? The game was SO made for a trackball that playing it on anything else....even the NES port I played a fair amount of as a kid....kinda sucks.

[koshichka]

As for an addition of my own to this thread...I won't say it's WORST by a long shot, controls and graphics are fine, but what in the hell were Capcom thinking when they put Super Buster Bros on the SNES...without 2-player mode?! ><

[Platinum]

Probably the GBA port of Earthworm Jim. I remember playing it when it first came out, and everything about it was bad.

The sound (I know it's the GBA), the graphics (really weren't a step up), the mechanics, the animation (play "for pete's sake" and you'll see), and everything else.

[Ruudos]

The Lion King (NES).
Bad port of the SNES/Genesis version. They didn't even finish this game either (it quits after the Hakuna Matata level), there's no excuse for that.

[Rickstilwell1]

Sonic Jam for Tiger game.com is totally unplayable due to both terrible system specs and programming.

[Breetai]

Golden Axe for the PC Engine CD is very not good.

[Tempest]

Hmm... What can I say that hasn't already been said?

7800 Karateka - Not only are the graphics stripped down (the 7800 was more than capable of doing Apple II graphics), but the control scheme was made unnecassarily difficult and the gameplay is all wrong (shorter levels, fewer guards). As far as I can tell the bird is also impossible to kill as your foot seems to pass right through it. What an F'ed up port!

7800 Choplifter - All things considered Choplifter is a rather simple game and should be easy to port, but the 7800 port is all kinds of screwed up. Large ugly graphics (why is the tank bigger than your chopper?), poor framerate, and lackluster sound. Not surprisingly it was by the same programmer who did Karateka. Ugh!

NES Altered Beast - Thankfully this wasn't released in the US because it had to have been some half finished prototype that was accidentally sent to stores. Seriously watered down graphics (worse than the SMS version) and really choppy movement (It's not like the original was exactly smooth as butter).

Any Neo Geo game for any system other than the Neo Geo - The Saturn came close to being able to reproduce the Neo Geo's abilities, but why the decided to try and port all those Neo Geo fighters to 8-bit or 16-bit systems I'll never know. Try playing Art of Fighting on the Turbo Duo with an Arcade card sometime. The screen doesn't scale in and out, it just switches views when you move off the edge of the screen. It's almost unplayable (and it's not like it was a good game to begin with).

The 7800 version of Impossible Mission should also get a nod here just because you can't beat the damn game! :)

Tempest

[deathafterkarma]

NES version of Strider.. It felt like something LJN made.

[Smashed Brother]

Some of you lurking in the forums might :2gunfire: me for throwing this out there, but I was none too pleased with the NES port of the 1st TMNT arcade game! Yeah, the graphics were good for the system, as was the music... and there were those two additional levels, but.... for me, the gameplay was way off, especially after playing the arcade game so furiously each day after school.

The hit detection was screwed; your first attack would hit, but your second consecutive attack would whiff right through the enemy, allowing them to get in a hit on you. Also, unlike the arcade, you couldn't throw the enemy (thankfully, this feature was finally introduced in TMNT 3)!

[Famidrive-16]

Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen....effed up the nostalgia

I'd actually say it's LEAGUES better than the original. It's really hard to go back to the first version, it's so painfully slow.

[Only16bits]

The Punisher for MD, the arcade one is amazing but the port to MD it's horrible

[Ravenswood]

The Final Fantasy I half of Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls.

[Baloo]

Sonic Jam.

The ports of the Sonic games have changed and dulled sounds and the graphics are either the same or worse. For me it's really just an unimpressive collection.

[Graham Mitchell]

The Punisher for MD, the arcade one is amazing but the port to MD it's horrible

There were a lot of half-assed ports of beat-em-ups on the MD/Genesis, weren't there? I remember there was a Captain America game or something that was pretty lackluster.

[Smashed Brother]

There were a lot of half-assed ports of beat-em-ups on the MD/Genesis, weren't there? I remember there was a Captain America game or something that was pretty lackluster.

Captain America and the Avengers was a pretty underrated arcade game, but the SNES/Genesis ports were sorry excuses for programming if I've ever seen any.

Strangely enough, though; the Genesis version is actually superior to the SNES port. The Genesis one plays slightly better and has almost all of the voiceovers from the arcade game, whereas the SNES has none, if I remember correctly.

[Dirkfunk]

I haven't played it in almost ten years but if I recall, Virtua Fighter 2 for genesis is absolutely god awful. . . and obviously not 3D. . . so it isn't really, "Virtua" now is it?

For those that haven't seen it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBxS-68jVUU

Double Dragon. . . which ports didn't suck? The NES one was ok but that's hardly a port. Master System is terrible. Genesis should be good but it just isn't. Lousy compared to the arcade version. I don't even want to talk about the 2600 port.

Double Dragon 3 for Genesis is pretty bad too. . . but the game wasn't great to begin with.

[staxx]

Fatal Fury Special - Sega CD (wow just 2 frames on animation)
Pac Man - Atari 2600 nuff said
Outrun - Amiga (Amiga can do soooo much better)
Space Harrier - Amiga (Again rushed job)
Shinobi - Amiga
Afterburner - Gameboy Advance (what no throttle?), Amiga, Atari ST
Salamander (Lifeforce) - ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC
Final Fight - Amiga, Atari ST
Street Fighter 2 - Amiga, Atari ST, C64, ZX Spectrum (looks good, plays poorly)
Strider - Amiga

[Peonpiate]

Pit Fighter - Snes/Genesis.

Very slow and very choppy. Good game in the arcade for its time.

Race Drivin on the Snes...

The game runs as what seems to be 2 frames per second and the graphics and controls are horrific. The game is so bad its a wonder if it wasn't a beta they released for retail.
Great game in the arcade when it was first released, one of the first polygonal driving games to.

Snes Race Drivin-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZRZMqLG354

Arcade-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMpZBhHJ1sc&feature=related

[Rob2600]

Race Drivin on the Snes...

The game runs as what seems to be 2 frames per second

Actually, based on that YouTube video you linked to, SNES Race Drivin' runs at 3 frames per second.

But yeah, it's horrible.

[Aussie2B]

I'd say most Capcom and SNK fighters ported to consoles/handhelds prior to the Dreamcast (and even past that point a lot of the ports stunk). There were some good ones, but they're in the minority. I think it actually got worse with the PlayStation because they stopped trying to redo the games and just took the original and cut out frames left and right, ruining not only the visual appeal but also the gameplay.

[G-Boobie]

I'd say most Capcom and SNK fighters ported to consoles/handhelds prior to the Dreamcast (and even past that point a lot of the ports stunk). There were some good ones, but they're in the minority. I think it actually got worse with the PlayStation because they stopped trying to redo the games and just took the original and cut out frames left and right, ruining not only the visual appeal but also the gameplay.

Agreed. Third Strike on the Dreamcast was a serious letdown. So were all the PS1 ports of pretty much everything.

[APE992]

Doom for the 3DO.

[bangtango]

Some of the worst ports of a great game can be found in this web site's game reviews. These guys review every video game version of Double Dragon known to man. Some of them are rather awful.

http://doubledragon.kontek.net/


I have a hard time swallowing answers including ports of games that didn't have reasonable expectations of being any good. Gameboy Mortal Kombat 1? A mute could have told you that was going to be a rough conversion of the arcade game.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

Atari VCS/2600 Pac Man... seriously, it looks nothing like the 5200 version (far superior except for that damn analog stick) let alone the arcade version. Hell K.C. Munchkin was far better.

[mEgAsHoT]

007 Nightfire on the Game Boy Advance. The original 007 Nightfire is an above-average Bond shooter on the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube, but on the GBA it is a disaster. Sloppy controls and extremely repetitive enemies that keep screaming "somebody get him!" only add to the frustration.

San Francisco Rush on the Playstation 1. I have never played this personally, but going by what I have heard, it is almost nothing like the original N64 game...with bad loading times, bad graphics, and bad controls. All I've heard from reviewers is to stay "far away" from this port of the game.

Need for Speed Carbon on the Xbox 360. Don't get me wrong, NFS Carbon is a good game on whatever console you play it on. But on the Xbox 360 the framerate of this game is all over the place due to it trying to run at a crystal clear 60(?) FPS. The graphics may look decent, but I found the ORIGINAL Xbox version to play and look much better than the 360 port. Obviously NFS Carbon was designed on the PS2/Xbox/GCN first and then ported to the 360. On the 360 it just ends up looking like a high-res PS2 game where you can see many inconsistencies in the graphics.

[Casati]

GBA has some of the worst ports of classic games I've seen. For instance, the GBA Millipede has a cropped playing field so you get trapped along the bottom row and you can't see creatures off to the sides. Other bad GBA ports include Sinistar, Asteroids, most ports by DSI Games.

[SparTonberry]

Race Drivin on the Snes...

The game runs as what seems to be 2 frames per second and the graphics and controls are horrific. The game is so bad its a wonder if it wasn't a beta they released for retail.
Great game in the arcade when it was first released, one of the first polygonal driving games to.
It's made by T*HQ. They gave even less of a shit about quality back then.
(sorry, just saw this now)

[Sunnyvale]

Historically speaking, it has to be, without a doubt, the Atari Pac-Man.

That, directly or indirectly, was a factor in the great video games crash.

Absolutely hands down correct! Atari's Pac-Man, the mountain of 3rd party crap for the 2600, and the fact that every other day a new system came out (usually hyped-up by outright lies) caused the VGC of 83. And for those of us who remember those days, even ET wasn't as big a dissapointment.

[Zing]

I enjoyed PacMan on 2600, and ET 2600 was one of my favourite games. Maybe these games were only bad to the 30 year olds of the time.

[Sunnyvale]

I enjoyed PacMan on 2600, and ET 2600 was one of my favourite games. Maybe these games were only bad to the 30 year olds of the time.

I'm 36 now. I just had played Pac-Man 1,000 times at the arcade. ET didn't bug me then. Now I see why it's considered so terrible. But Pac-Man, it wasn't even the same game. Cat Trax on the Arcadia is infinitely better.

[RPG_Fanatic]

720 on the NES. I loved the arcade game of 720 so I was waiting for this game to come out on the NES and when it did I ran out and bought it and it was SHIT!!!!!