And the best PC game to never get a console port is.........

[Jorpho]

[quote="Neo Rasa"]The Dreamcast Smash Pack had Flicky, Sega Swirl and several other games, the PC Smash Packs were something of a completely seperate line that had been released/recompiled/etc. throughout the mid nineties and up.

What? The two PC Sega Smash Packs used a special version of the commonly-available Kega emulator. This is well documented. (I think there's even a reference to it that can be seen in the emulator code.)

I'm not sure if the same was done for Sonic & Knuckles, the Sega Puzzle Pack (Mean Bean Machine + Columns + Lose Your Marbles), Garfield: Caught in the Act, or Sonic 3D. Certainly, Comix Zone was recompiled.

If you look around now there's even ones that pack together every 2D Sonic game up to Knuckles Chaotix for not too much.

Sega Smash Pack 2 (including Sonic 2), Sonic & Knuckles Collection, Sonic CD, and Sonic R. That is all: No Sonic 1 or Knuckles Chaotix (or Sonic 3D, for that matter).

[Imstarryeyed]

Humm I would say..

1) Shogo (was supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast)
2) Septerracore
3) American McGee's Alice (since it was a platformer)
4) Heart of the Dragon (Dynamix)
5) Neuromancer (Great C64 & Amiga game!)

I would have liked to have seen an anime or movie based on Neuromancer as well.. I liked the graphic novel very much..

[j_factor]

I can't believe nobody's said The Last Express. That was an incredible game!

I always wished for a console version of Shadow of the Beast 3. To this day I haven't played that game, thanks to it being exclusively for Amiga and pretty uncommon (it came out after the Amiga market had gone to shit). Supposedly a Genesis port was being worked on at some point, but I doubt it made it to the proto stage.

Speaking of Amiga ports, wouldn't a Genesis version of Rick Dangerous have been awesome?

[tom]

Lula

[tom]

Looking at my PC shelf:

Spycraft
Life and Death
Stunt Island
Panik in the Park
All 'Legend' titles
El-Fish
Omega
Space Rogue
Knights of Legend
Man Enough

[tom]

Another excellent:
Freddy Pharkas
and of course, Larry games.

[Nature Boy]

I'm kinda suprised Neverwinter Nights never saw a port (and likely wouldn't at this point, with 2 not far off). Seems like it'd be perfect for the console RPG crowd (then again, they do tend to hate anything not Japanese).

[Ze_ro]

and Ultima V came to the FM Towns (GOOD LUCK).

There's also a version of Ultima V for the NES, but I think we're all better off just ignoring that one. I hope that through efforts like this, this, this, and (of course) this, my dream of playing Ultima on a console the way it was MEANT to be played will eventually be true. I know some of these have already been ported to machines like the Dreamcast and GP2X, so things are looking good. I wish I could say the same for the Ultima Underworld games, but it appears all similar efforts are either stagnant or completely abandoned (?).

Anyways, as for some games of my own, I really think God Of Thunder (The game is now freely available, so try it out!) would have made an excellent console game, as it's a Zelda-style puzzle/adventure game that is tons of fun, and even quite humourous.

Traffic Department 2192 was an excellent top-down, 360 degree, futuristic shooter where you flew a ship around a city killing gang members who were attempting to take over the city. The game had a very deep and engrossing storyline that really kept you interested, which is very unusual for a shooter.

One Must Fall 2097, in case you hadn't already tried it, is just about the best 2D fighting game to never make it to a console. You choose a pilot and a robot (whose stats are somewhat combined, giving you some strategic choice) and duke it out with other pilots. The game includes fatalities, arena hazards, very customizable rules (ie, turning air juggling on/off and controlling whether certain moves will knock your opponent down or not), secret characters, and long and involved tournament mode that lets you gradually upgrade your character, not only just their stats, but actually upgrading specific moves too.

Wasteland is still, in my opinion, one of the best RPG's of all time. You control a band of rangers in a post-apocalyptic future. You end up fighting mutants, robots, and even religious zealots as you roam around the wasteland trying to figure out the source of a number of robots that have been maurading the area lately. The storyline includes some very interesting quests, including venturing inside a cyborg's head, assembling a robot in order to get information from him, and fighting your way through an (extremely hard) citadel full of militant religious zealots. The game also has a very advanced skill system that was at least a decade ahead of it's time.

Abuse was an excellent run-and-gun game where you ran around various levels in a platform fashion, but used a mouse to target your weapon, meaning you could run and fire in arbitrary directions. There was a wide variety of weapons to use, and the atmosphere of the game was surprisingly dark and even scary at times as the aliens ambushed you, or you heard alien screams in the background as the lights gradually dimmed. The control scheme would likely make a console port somewhat difficult, but dual analog sticks would certainly work nicely. There is also source code available for this game, so homebrew console ports are entirely possible.

Space Taxi. C64 games are fair game here, right? Space Taxi was an excellent puzzle/arcade game where you flew a flying taxi around, picking up and dropping off passengers. You had to be careful while navigating the maze-like levels, but speed was important in getting the best tips! This could have been a huge hit if someone had made a NES version.

And while I'm mentioning C64 games, Paradroid is another game that could have really taken off on the NES. The game is a top-down 360 degree shooter. The twist here is that you're attempting to take over a space ship full of robots, and you can hack into their brains to take control of them (this takes the form of an odd circuitry minigame). Different robots have different powers and abilities, and the space ships you infiltrate have a very maze-like structure.

Some of my fondest computer memories were while playing the SSI Gold Box AD&D games like Curse of the Azure Bonds, Death Knights of Krynn and Pools of Darkness. There were a few attempts to bring these games to the consoles (Pool of Radiance for the NES, Buck Rogers - Countdown to Doomsday for the Genesis, and Order of the Griffon for the TG16 come to mind), but none of them really managed to capture the magic of the computer versions in my opinion.

---

Nowadays, you can just about make a console out of a cheap old PC. The only problem is that you'd need a good knowledge of DOS (not just commands, but knowing what IRQ's are and such), and the end result pretty much has to connect to a VGA monitor, a keyboard, and maybe a mouse too. I put together an old Pentium in my basement purely for old games like this, and aside from having to do a little typing to actually start the game, it behaves almost exactly like the rest of my console systems. With games like Shadow Warrior and Blood, there are plenty of exclusive games that make it worthwhile. (Of course, if you're short on room, DOSBox is a reasonable alternative, but actually having a real machine doing the job feels much more authentic to me)

--Zero

[Neo Rasa]

What? The two PC Sega Smash Packs used a special version of the commonly-available Kega emulator....

I mean literally there being many different releases of the Smash Pack for the PC that have different combinations of games on them, i.e., recompiled. Not recompiled from a coding standpoint.

One Must Fall was great. They kept talking about making a real follow up for it but nothing happened.

Ditto to Wasteland, a newer iteration of this (for the DS actually, which would have been great for map/stat/command purposes) was also announced a long time ago but nothing. Shame as that game is also one of the best I've ever played. I almost prefer it over its descendant Fallout at times.

[secretvampire]

Ultima Underworld

This was released on PS1 in Japan only, I know because I have a mint, complete copy on my shelf.

[Sothy]

Alpha Centauri


better than any of Sids Civilization games.

[Ze_ro]

One Must Fall was great. They kept talking about making a real follow up for it but nothing happened.

Actually, they did release a sequel. I haven't tried it myself. The reviews seemed somewhat mediocre, and it came out far too late to build on the franchise.

--Zero

[diskoboy]

Black & White.

The first one. It would make a good Wii game with the controller...

[Neo Rasa]

One Must Fall was great. They kept talking about making a real follow up for it but nothing happened.

Actually, they did release a sequel. I haven't tried it myself. The reviews seemed somewhat mediocre, and it came out far too late to build on the franchise.

--Zero

What you've linked is a game I prefer not to acknowledge the existence of.

[almostgotthemall]

So, I'll say . . . . X-COM, UFO Defense. Was that ever ported? I loved that game.

There's a CD32 version as well

I'd say Outcast, as it's still my favorite PC game of newer times.

x2 on the Outcast.

Outcast 2 almost made it to the PS2. SEE HERE

[Princess-Isabela]

Grim Fandango ^^

[Princess-Isabela]

Grim Fandango, Outlaws.... and for that matter, all Lucasarts Adventures Games ^^