worst ports from a less powerful console to a newer one?

[pragmatic insanester]

i bought the dc version of grandia 2, having heard the ps2 version was crap. not that the dc is less powerful. the dc emulation of golden axe's sound was awful too.

[Bluteg]

The PS2/Xbox ports of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 were not bad but more or less pointless.

[InsaneDavid]

i bought the dc version of grandia 2, having heard the ps2 version was crap. not that the dc is less powerful. the dc emulation of golden axe's sound was awful too.

I thought Grandia II was crap all together compared to the original Grandia (my all time favorite RPG). Yeah, the battle system was nice but the original's was better, especially with the mana egg thing which was grossly simplified in Grandia II. Also the experence building / weapon wasn't there. In other words if one character in Grandia had sword weapons for half the game, and then you switched them to a throwing weapon, they would have to learn their techniques for it from the ground up since it was different. Also the characters were underdeveloped and once you beat it and see the "that's IT?!" ending.... anyway, play the original Grandia if you ever have the chance (or already have) it was translated on the PlayStation from the original Saturn version.

Yeah the DC emulation was off a bit in the audio department on the Smashpack but that was the fault of the emulator not the DC. We're still searching for proper Genesis emulation on the DC (and don't mention that one illegal emulator because that IS ripped from the smashpack).

[rayearthknight]

The Artari Arcade Collection for Playstation choked on the sound quality (try playing Roadblasters, you'll see.)

Flashback for Jaguar--The Sega CD version ran faster and had the FMV/voice

[Dangerboy]

The PSone Activision Collection blew shit. Wrong colors, absolutely no control on the Paddle games (aka Kaboom), etc.

The Intellivision collection wasn't much better on any system. The damn colors were wrong! :(

[-hellvin-]

Sega Smash Pack. I like Virtua Cop 2, but the rest of the games have such HORRIBLE sound emulation I think it just kills it...might as well play the cart.

[Berty]

Strikers 1945 I & 2 to the PS2, absolute shite conversion, sprite tiles do not match up correctly and the colours seem to be all tinted green :angry:

[The_EniGma]

The metal slug x from neogeo to ps1 was pretty crap. The controls sucked and the res was all mashed up along with the speed and colours..

Lucky since im a big metal slug fan i could see past that.

[klausien]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the Saturn version of Castlevania SOTN. For a machine with superior 2D capabilities, it is incredibly poor.

[Tatsu]

I didn't even know there is a SotN for Saturn?! Stupid me...

[jdc]

The absolutely incredible Test Drive Le Mans was ported from the Dreamcast to the PS2. Every review was the same....."How could they have fucked this port up SO badly?" One of THE worst ports ever. It went from addictive to unplayable. LOL

[GaijinPunch]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the Saturn version of Castlevania SOTN. For a machine with superior 2D capabilities, it is incredibly poor.

That's b/c it doesn't, technically.... just a shitload of 2D games in the face of less 3D games when compared to the Playstation. There are a few others where the PS got the better port. Dodonpachi is one that comes to mind.

[AB Positive]

Viewpoint from the Neo to the PS1? Some people believe that genesis port was better than the PS1 port. Ouch.

-AG

[fishsandwich]

I didn't even know there is a SotN for Saturn?! Stupid me...

It's not called SotN though... it's called Dracula X (it's based on SotN and not the PCengine game, despite the name.)

[fishsandwich]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the Saturn version of Castlevania SOTN. For a machine with superior 2D capabilities, it is incredibly poor.

That's b/c it doesn't, technically.... just a shitload of 2D games in the face of less 3D games when compared to the Playstation. There are a few others where the PS got the better port. Dodonpachi is one that comes to mind.

Doesn't what? The Saturn doesn't have better 2-D capabilities than the PSone?

X_x

[Xexyz]

How about Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the Dreamcast? Capcom ported the PSX version isntead of using the superior Saturn version with all the animations in tact instead. Where was the logic in that?

[LethargicTheHutt]

Im in the middle of playing through FF6 for the first time in years, and the load times are really pissing me off. Starting to wish I had dusted off the SNES...but my PSOne with the little screen begs to be used.

[Richter]

I didn't even know there is a SotN for Saturn?! Stupid me...

It's not called SotN though... it's called Dracula X (it's based on SotN and not the PCengine game, despite the name.)Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight

it's still a great game despite the poor performance

[Gamereviewgod]

Spy Hunter: PS2 to Xbox. I've also heard the Gamecube version is crap. It's like someone put a grey color filter over it all and killed the framerate.

On a side note, I loved Grandia II, one of three RPGs I've ever made it all the way through. I cou;dn't make it halfway through the PS2 port.

[Crush Crawfish]

The two GBA ports of the Earthworm Jim games are pretty bad. They're nothing compared to the originals, especially 2...stay far, far away.

[-hellvin-]

Im in the middle of playing through FF6 for the first time in years, and the load times are really pissing me off. Starting to wish I had dusted off the SNES...but my PSOne with the little screen begs to be used.

Oh MAN, I hear ya. FF3 wasn't too bad though because I had previously played the horror on Chronicles known as CHRONO TRIGGER. Oh. My. GOD. I'm usually not bother by load times, but when it takes about 10 seconds for Chrono and friends to draw their weapons EACH fight it's so aggrivating. I just can't fathom why the load times are so bad in that game.

I am not kididng you...Magus' castle was terrible PAIN. So many god damn battles that had to load. I was about to tear my eyes out every time I got in one of those pre ordained encounters.

[GaijinPunch]

Doesn't what? The Saturn doesn't have better 2-D capabilities than the PSone?

No, it does not per se. On paper, it might, but in actuality it lies in the hands of the developers. It's been shown on both sides. Case in point -- Dracula X and the Pachi's for the PSX, Soukyuugurentai and a couple of others I can't remember now for the Saturn.

[Tron 2.0]

Robocop for the NES nothing like the arcade version :P

Still looking at it now the NES was 8-bit back then, compenys had to work with it.... despite it's drawbacks.

I'm just one of those ppl that were very "spoiled" by the arcades back then ;)

[fishsandwich]

Doesn't what? The Saturn doesn't have better 2-D capabilities than the PSone?

No, it does not per se. On paper, it might, but in actuality it lies in the hands of the developers. It's been shown on both sides. Case in point -- Dracula X and the Pachi's for the PSX, Soukyuugurentai and a couple of others I can't remember now for the Saturn.

Hmmm... I have to disagree with you on this one. I'll take your word for it that the Jaguar is the ultimate 2-D machine with a lamentable lack of RAM (I'll try, anyway), but the Saturn has been shown beyond a doubt to be far superior to the PSone in the realm of 2-D graphics. Not just "might" on paper.

The PSone has a very simple, streamlined design where the math co-processor is built directly onto the main custom CPU. That's partly why the PSone does 3-D so well and is so easy to program.

The Saturn's got two lower-end CPU's that don't run in true parallel, a big crapper of a design and the main reason why the Saturn is so hard to program (along with all the multiple chips that have to talk with each other.)

What the Saturn DOES have in its favor is the VDP1 chip for sprite processing... its main function. It throws spites around like crazy, far better and faster than the PSone. It distorts sprites to make polygons, unlike the PSone. It does 3-D in a weird and convoluted way, but it's a fantastic chip for 2-D graphics.

The VDP2 chip (there is no PSone equivalent) does nothing but background graphics (though it can be coaxed to do other things, supposedly.) It handles texture transparencies, playfield rotation, and playfield scrolling. It can handle up to 5 fields at one time. This extra chip frees up the processors and VDP1 chip to do other work.

The Saturn has more VRAM for textures and frame buffers. Adding a RAM cart (1 or 4 megs, depending on the game) gives the Saturn MUCH for memory to play with, and it had a little more to start with BEFORE the RAM cart.

Compare any 2-D Capcom fighter to its PSone equivalent (these are games WITHOUT the RAM cart... the RAM cart games seriously beat the shite out of any and all PSone conversions.) X-Men. Darkstalkers vs Night Warriors. Marvel Super Heroes. Cyberbots (you don't have to use the 1 Meg RAM cart.) Pocket Fighter.

There are many games that appeared on both Saturn and PSone, and most of the advanced 2-D games just look better and have more frames of animation on the Saturn (with some exceptions.)

The Saturn has shitty video quality, especially for the earlier games. It does not have hardware vdeio compression like the PSone and must use software codecs on the game CDs. Cinepack was a common format that yielded crap results, while Truemotion was a better alternative (though still not as good as the video you got from the VCD card, but very few games used that.)

You make a critical point whe you say it (the game's performance) is in the hand's of the developer. A crack team working on a PSone 2-D game is going to craft a better game than a slack-ass team doing the same game on the Saturn. Often, a developer would not assign its best programmers to work on a PSX to Saturn port (like SotN to Dracula X.) However, if both teams are equal, the Saturn team will ALWAYS produce a better 2-D game, regardless of any RAM cart. It's got more base RAM, a faster CD drive, and two graphics chips that were designed to do sprites. No one said the Saturn was EASY to program, but it's easier to do 2-D on the Saturn than 3-D, by far.

Dracula X for Saturn was not done by the same team that did the original SotN PSone game... it was farmed out to another team within Konami and they did a shite job.

I'm done now. Too much coffee!

:o

ps. Despite my disagreements with your assessments of some 2-D systems, I think you have the best site on Japanese games EVER. Bar none. I check it regularly. :lovin:

[goatdan]

Headhunter for the PS2. While the gameplay still remains, they took one of the most graphically impressive Dreamcast games and had to dumb the graphics down pretty far and then they put it on the PS2. I really love the original, and I bought the PS2 version (even though I don't have a PS2) because I know I'll want to play through it again, but now after seeing it in action it makes you wonder what happened to it.

[emumuumuucowgomoo]

Doesn't what? The Saturn doesn't have better 2-D capabilities than the PSone?

No, it does not per se. On paper, it might, but in actuality it lies in the hands of the developers. It's been shown on both sides. Case in point -- Dracula X and the Pachi's for the PSX, Soukyuugurentai and a couple of others I can't remember now for the Saturn.
[type type type type]


This is inane.

The best 2D console is the same as the best 3D console.

It doesn't exactly matter how many "sprites" a graphics chip has support for. That's just a bit of paperwork, finger-twiddling, guesstimation - like the weight limits in elevators. The Atari 2600 used way more sprites than it was allocated in hardware - Pacman being a rather notorious example of this - and conversely, the SNES had "support" for 128 moving objects, though try getting much more than 40 sprites on screen at once and you'll end up with slowdown like Gradius III - anyone remember that? "HELLO I HAVE ALL THE OPTIONS AND ?'S! OH LOOK AN ENEMY I WILL FIRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WWWWHHHHHHOOOOOOAAAAAA GGGGRRRRRAAAAANNNNNNDDDDDDDMMMMMMMAAAAAA TTTTTHHHHHIIIISSSS IIIIISSSSSS TTTTTRRRRIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPYYYYYY--ZING! WHOA WHAT WAS THAT?"

The numbers don't matter, rightfully or wrongfully you're going with raw power in the end, plus color support. In the days of the Saturn vs PSX, consoles were getting capable of SVGA standards (more than 256 colors on screen at a time). That leaves sound - the Saturns inferior sound chip with LOSSLESS AUDIO WOOO NELLY versus the PSX YEAH SURE IT'S COMPRESSED AND SONIC SOLUTIONS GIVES IT A :( BUT HEY LOOK NOTICE HOW ALL THE BLINGS AND BLANGS ARE COMING THROUGH LOUD AND CLEAR!? - and overall playability - okay, sure Saturn fans, the Saturn was a very nice console and that drawing you made of your family playing Saturn looks like ass incredible! :) :) It's just a pity shame that those with objective tastes deemed the Saturn "unfun" and the PSX, conversely, "fun". They obviously never played awesome rail shooters like Rebel Assault Panzer Dragoon and imported games from the back of magazines.

Now, the PSX may not have quite as many 2D games as the Saturn - I'd assume that'd be because developers were focusing on the brand new possibilities offered by 3D, like swingy cameras and Resident Evil (which, let's face is, is no more 3D than Maniac Mansion). but it's sort of like if you were in Kindergarden and your older brother brought home his final report card, with straight B's in everything (hey man work is HARD okay), and you managed seven D's and an A in "Keeping a Neat and Clean Cubbyhole", which isn't given to high schoolers anyway - then your family sings your praises to the heavens and OMG UR THE NEAT CLEAN CUBBYHOLE 2D HERO!!!!

In order to like a console - especially a mediocre console (Fairchild F, 5200, SMS, 32X, Saturn, N64) - you've got to find something GOOD about it. Like a high school art class - "oh, your drawing of a great American buffalo looks sorta like Adolph Hitler with a tumor... but... umm... your color composition is wonderful! And you used the right end of the pencil and didn't accidently wipe your ass on the canvas! B+ for you!". For the Saturn, that happens to be that it has a moderately decent selection of 2D games from the dark age of fighting games that we prefer to forget, just as the Channel F has, um, controllers, and the SMS has a game about some Kid named Alex that wasn't quite as tedious and mediocre as everything else for that system*.



*-outright fabrication because OMG SPACE HARRIER AND OUTRUN AND THE BRITS LOVED IT FOR THEIR NON-FOOTY ENTERTAINMENT!!!

[sabre2922]

ummm ok LOL

anyway a another bad port from DC to PS2 was Crazy Taxi it ran smoother on DC and the graphics suffered some of the jaggies that first-gen PS2 titles were known for.

Also the Saturn was a FAR superior 2-D machine compared to the PSx. It had twice the built in RAM and could expand even that with a ROM cart it killed the PSone in that respect.

Of course the PSx was a better 3-D machine muuuch better.

but hey this is an old argument isnt it? ;)

Anyway why all the harsh comments about the Saturn? or even the N64? damn :hmm:

[njiska]

How come no one's mentioned MGS2: Substence from the XBOX? It's just terrible. It doesn't control well because of the lacking extra shoulder button, and it has slowdowns that the ps2 version doesn't have. The thing was terrible, but then again i'm a pureist.

[klausien]

Skeleton Warriors is another, abeit obscure, 2D game that was better on Saturn than Playstation. Cool game BTW. Like He-Man the game. ThunderForce V is a PRIME example. There is no contest there. Darius Gaiden was much better on the Saturn as well, mostly due to the fact that there was less slowdown.

And the PSX port of DoDonPachi has slightly better graphics in some ways (explosions especially), yes, but you can only choose one ship per game and Player 2 has to use the same ship.

There is a reason why most of the great shmup developers chose to port their games to the Saturn over the PSX.

[evildead2099]

Dead or Alive 2, which first appered on the Dreamcast (after being ported from the coin-op) and then on the P$2 as DOA2: Hardcore.

Dead or Alive 2 on the DC looks a lot better in action than the P$2 version. Admittedly, the P$2 edition is graphically superior in terms of its non-interactive aspect: its FMV videos, which run at 60 FPS rather than 30.

[bargora]

In order to like a console - especially a mediocre console (Fairchild F, 5200, SMS, 32X, Saturn, N64) - you've got to find something GOOD about it.
In the Saturn's case, that would be the JP shooting game library.


Viewpoint from the Neo to the PS1? Some people believe that genesis port was better than the PS1 port. Ouch.

-AG
I have both (PS and Gen), and I'd rather play the Genesis version.

All Sinistar ports to (more powerful) modern systems that support analog control suck the bone due to their lack of 49-direction control support. Sinistar is a brutal game to begin with, but taking you down from 49-direction to 8-direction control is like a big "fuck you" from Midway.

[Leo_A]

Sinistar on current generation systems supports analog control. It isn't limited to 8 directions like the Sinistar port on Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits for the SNES.

It's little different than the arcade now.

[Lady Jaye]

Hmm, that's not really what I had in mind when I read the thread title.

I guess in a way, though, that I can nominate Spy Hunter (NES), which sucks compared to the (much better) Spy Hunter for Colecovision.

[klausien]

Dead or Alive 2 on the DC looks a lot better in action than the P$2 version. Admittedly, the P$2 edition is graphically superior in terms of its non-interactive aspect: its FMV videos, which run at 60 FPS rather than 30.

The same could possibly be said about the Saturn version of the original DOA versus the PSX version. They both have their merits, the extra character in the PSX version comes to mind, but the Saturn version is much closer to the arcade. The graphics may actually be better as well, depending upon your taste. DOA is one of the best, if not the best looking 3D Saturn games.

[diskoboy]

I dunno if this counts, but my vote is for ANY Intellivision collections on one of the current systems. Or the standalone version that you plug into the TV.

It's kinda hard to play inty games without the standard inty controller :/

[bargora]

Sinistar on current generation systems supports analog control. It isn't limited to 8 directions like the Sinistar port on Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits for the SNES.

It's little different than the arcade now.
Holy shmoly! I just got Midway Arcade Classics (PS2). And while I can't tell whether they implemented full 49-direction control, it's definitely at least 16-direction. And it makes such a huge difference in grabbing those little crystals. Now I can entirely fill up my Sinibomb magazine before I hear that first "I LIVE".