[General Discussion] This port tastes terrible

You can spit it out if you want! Porting games over to other machines long after the original version surfaced is nothing new, developers have done it since the dawn of time. The dawn of time I tell you! This often works well, like say, Resident Evil 2 for N64/DC/GC/Gizmondo/Phantom or Ecco for Master System. But sometimes, sometimes! .. It results in nightmares. Here's two I can think of off the top of my head, where they hurt my neck.



A whole bunch of 16-bit games had been successfully ported to the GBA long before this came out (including the FIRST EWJ), so it COULD BE DONE on the hardware, but I guess someone was drunk. Holy craaaap. It suffered huge amounts of slow down and sprite flickering, the soundtrack was completely out of tune and scratchy sounding, most of the animation was cut, collision detection was totally broken, you could fall through sections of the ground and to top it off the level passwords DIDN'T WORK. It was pretty much unplayable.





I know, it's Atari 2600. ;_; But it's still something that just shouldn't have existed in the first place. Who's bright idea was it to try and port this over? Especially in 1991. Just LOOK AT IT. That's pure rape. Like trying to shove an Xbox inside a sock. It was impossible to play, too. You'd be lucky to ever get past the first screen. Once an enemy punches you, THAT'S IT. You get frozen on the spot (with fear? "Oh no some purple guy has punched me whatever shall I do waaah wah wah!"), which means they can just keep punching until you're dead. One life. No continues. It did have full music however, something pretty fancy for the 2600.

I have a lot more to spew useless rage over, but everyone else go go go!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Wow. Someone actually ported Double Dragon to the 2600?! Are you sure that's not a hoax, like the DOOM for 2600?

Mortal Kombat on the Gameboy was a real shitty port. Absolutely God awful. It was missing Johnny Cage (fuckers) and only had two stages I believe. Plus it was dreadfully slow and in monochromatic green.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I haven't played many ports, since I usually already own the originals for the ones I'm interested in. But the PSX port of Chrono Trigger was pretty bad. The anime FMVs were nice, but the massive load times when you do ANYTHING were just unforgivable.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by guyinrubbersuit

Wow. Someone actually ported Double Dragon to the 2600?! Are you sure that's not a hoax, like the DOOM for 2600?

I used to own it. The furthest I ever got was the third screen, where some huge grey blob guy threw an endless stream of barrels. At least I think they were barrels.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

How ya doing, buddy?

You see MSPaint gone bad. I see a gold mine. Think of the possibilities with the wiimote slash nunchuck. Read any Nintendo related thread. Graphics are of no concern to the fans. It's about the MAD GAEMPLAY!


On another more recent note however, I think everyone will agree Gearbox (was it??) made a right pig's ear out of porting HALO to the PC. I mean here's a game that belongs on PC to begin with and instead of adding a bit of shine and content those fuckers decided to take the lazy road and make the game run in such a way even NASA's super computer with 18 million 7900GTX ULTRA SUPREME in SLI would cry mother.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The Ecco port for the collection on GBA sucked too; just repeating a handful of tracks many, many, many times totally ruins the experience.
And I'm sure many are already familiar with the doomed DS port of Lego Star Wars II. At least Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was playable, albeit 10fps when using the stealthy vision modes!

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

You see MSPaint gone bad. I see a gold mine. Think of the possibilities with the wiimote slash nunchuck. Read any Nintendo related thread. Graphics are of no concern to the fans. It's about the MAD GAEMPLAY!

Not even flailing your arms about the room could improve that disaster! I wonder if anybody even owns the right to it anymore, Technos and Acclaim are dead. Mystery!



There was nothing SUPER about this. When even the NES has a better looking port you know you're in trouble. But the game ran so bloody slowly, they even limited the amount of enemies on screen to about ten, which basically ruins the experience right there. Bosses caused your main character to flicker so badly you couldn't see where you were going. Only one song made it into this version, one. One song to listen to for hours on end. One. Flying Edge hurt the Master System with everything they did, but this was perhaps the worst of their efforts.



Huh? Surely it's impossible to bugger these up. Oh wai- DSI found a creative way. Marble Madness wasn't even complete. After three levels, the game would take you back to the title screen. How the hell can something like that slip by the play testers? Maybe they hired a cat. A dead one. The Klax part wasn't bad (because it's Klax), but the Marble Madness goof up is fantastic. Good work!





THE FUCK IS THIS? It isn't Pac-Man, that's for sure. Man, unlike Double Dragon, this could have easily been crammed into the 2600. Pac-Man isn't a very demanding game. The maze is like smeared car crash vomit, the controls were unresponsive and they didn't even get the sound effects right. Instead of "wakka wakka wakka" you were treated to "BONG BONG BONG BONG". They must have been using one during development.

How ya doing, buddy?

Personally I've always kind of felt the Donkey Kong Country GBA ports to be pretty subpar to be perfectly honest. =\

Horrible music, washed out screens. The GBA was a pretty port happy device in general. When it came down to it many of them were really either hit or miss...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah, they were pretty crappy. Especially DKC 3. Still slightly better than the eye straining/bleeding Game Boy Color version of the first DKC, though!



Aaaauuuuuuggggh. I love how he blends into the background colour.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The original GB version of DKC wasn't any easier on the eyes because it was so ridiculously hard to tell your character from the background. Ah, the days when ACM was so cool~


Anyway, I can immediately think of that Prince of Persia: Warrior Within PSP release. It wasn't so much a bad port as a completely pointless one.

One particular stinker would be the SNES/Mega Drive version of Worms. No battery backup for saving statistics or team/player names? What an absolutely wonderful idea, I would LOVE to rename every single character every time I start up a game!

No bungee, ninja rope or bridges? Blowtorch now only goes horizontally? All good, don't want to complicate things too much. Might as well remove some of those pointless weapons too.

No zooming camera? What an excellent improvement, now we don't need to bother wondering where we're shooting with the bazooka when the camera doesn't keep up (because the omega slow camera only has one movement speed and I can reveal it's slower than even the slowest bazooka shell speed).

Add the cheap computer AI that will keep shooting 100% accurate volleys at you from any corner of the map (no word generated maps either, btw), even through 20 feet of ground (just keeps shooting to get at you) and you have a worthy SNES classic. The single only game EVER to make me hit my console in anger. The poor thing ;_;

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I can reveal that the GB edition of Worms is just as intertaining. Not the least big fun. Plus it had the added bonus on not being able to see which worm belonged to what team. Brilliant!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The SNES Street Fighter Alpha 2. Where as the game LOOKS fairly nice, the sound is horrible, and it has the worst loading of any SNES title I have ever seen.

Game loads, you press start. Thats a 2 second wait there, then you get to the char select screen, and wait some more. After your character has been selected, you get to wait on the screen showing the selected stage. Then the announcer shows up, yells "Round 1, FIGHT!", then the game just freezes completely for around 3 seconds.

There is rarely any lag during actual gameplay thankfully, but the framerate is so low that you probably wouldn't notice it anyways. By the way, get ready for your game to freeze again after you knock out your enemy.

The worst part is that even with its immense flaws, I actually own the game, and played it a lot as a substitution for the excellent arcade version whenever it was unavailable to me.

- WraithTwo -

I was speaking idiomatically.

The Serious Sam for the PlayStation 2. Oh my fucking god, THAT was terrible. Sure, mindless shooting fun, but his one-liners there were horrible. Sure, there were vehicles but come-on, who the hell needs THAT when you need is just guns and more guns? Blech.

On the contrary though, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is a good, if not the best port right now.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Quote:

Like trying to shove an Xbox inside a sock.

Not unless you're using Sass' socks.

Well, I don't know if this game was made for the PS2 or was just ported to the PS2 from the Xbox and PC.

MAX PAYNE 2.

Qwarky and Infernal may now jump on me and rape me. This game runs so terrible you don't even NEED bullet time to slow things down. Awesome 2 frames a second. This is THE shortest time I've ever kept a game, 3 full days, I bought it Friday night at Best Buy for $9.99 and got rid of it at EB Games in Sunday for $3. LOL.

Talk about not reading reviews.

FELIPE NO

I played through Max Payne 2 on the PC. Then my friend got it on PS2.

PURE UGLY! I love the PS2 but the game looked like crap. I'll stick to the PC for that game thank you very much.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Contributed to the crash of Video Gaming in the early 80s.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Final Fantasy V and VI and Chrono Trigger for the PS1. Mangle the music from the originals, add insane load times and slowdown and you've got all the more reason to buy the originals or download the ROMs instead. Just the fact that Chrono Trigger was included in a package called "Final Fantasy Chronicles" should tell you how much thought went into these ports.

I violently reject FFIV Advance as well for its' way of handling the battle system. No reason I should be clearing battles without getting so much as nicked. Also, the sound effects and music were bad even for a GBA port.

I somehow managed to clear 99 levels in Galaga for Atari 7800 when I was 6 or 7. I rock...But I can't get past level 34 in the "real" version even nowadays. HMMM....

Lastly...X-Men vs Street Fighter for PS1 was the game that made me buy a Saturn, RAM cart and the game for the system. A PS1 version should never have been brought up for discussion at a board meeting, much less attempted. I would have loved to have seen Capcom attempt Marvel vs Capcom 2 on PS1.

Although...I actually liked Pac Man for the 2600. Not a GREAT "port", but I liked it because the maze was different from the original. 2600's Ms Pac Man is still my favorite version of that game.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

Lastly...X-Men vs Street Fighter for PS1 was the game that made me buy a Saturn, RAM cart and the game for the system. A PS1 version should never have been brought up for discussion at a board meeting, much less attempted. I would have loved to have seen Capcom attempt Marvel vs Capcom 2 on PS1.

X-Men vs Street Fighter was alright on PS1. I played that quite a lot actually, it's certainly more fun than waiting 5 minutes for Alpha 2 to load anything in.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Infernal Monkey

A whole bunch of 16-bit games had been successfully ported to the GBA long before this came out (including the FIRST EWJ)...

So was the port of the original Earthworm Jim pretty decent then? It's just I heard otherwise.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yeah, the port of the first one's pretty good. They even chucked in the Intestinal Distress level which wasn't in the SNES version. Though they ruined the character animation (not as bad as the sequel, but still) which can make latching onto hooks a bit crap at times.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Plenty of 2D fighting games were awful on the PSX, Samurai Shodown 3 being the worst offender. The loading times were extremely long and frequent and the screen would have "NOW LOADING" in orange letters stretching vertically and horizontally. The game also felt a lot slower, so it was often called Samurai Slowdown or Crashdown, seeing as it could crash halfway through the game. The special effects were also heavily pixelated and lots of animation was missing from the arcade version.

There are plenty of other bad ports I know, but I felt like mentioning this one in particular.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I haven't played it, but I hear the GBA port of R-type 3 is awful (hmm, the GBA sure got a reputation as a port machine, and it wasn't even a good one at that). The collision hitbox around your ship is supposedly much larger than the ship itself, there's no 2-player mode, and it just has a number of random quirks for no reason like forces that don't behave properly, and the music was turned into Gameboy-quality midis. Plus the screen had to be cropped to fit on the GBA's low resolution display.

I have to say though, I didn't expect to hear about so many terrible ports in this thread. When I hear "bad port" I think of Splinter Cell on the PS2/Gamecube or that WWF game on the PSP with the horrid loading times or something. A lot of these games sound downright unplayable...how the hell did they even get through alpha testing if apparantly noone is even able to play it because of all these issues?

FELIPE NO

Mostly all Takara ports of SNK games to SNES are really insane, specially Fatal Fury 2... that got more bugs than Ultimate Mortal Kombat III for the same machine (another horrible port too)

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

Final Fantasy V and VI and Chrono Trigger for the PS1. Mangle the music from the originals, add insane load times and slowdown and you've got all the more reason to buy the originals or download the ROMs instead. Just the fact that Chrono Trigger was included in a package called "Final Fantasy Chronicles" should tell you how much thought went into these ports.

Um, Chrono Trigger's port was released alone in Japan. Square, I'm sure, didn't want to release it based on the Chrono Trigger name here when they could shove it into a Final Fantasy-themed release (You know, for Sales ++).

The only reason you guys have a problem with the damn port is because it has similar load times to EVERY OTHER PS1 RPG whenever you get into a battle. I didn't hear any music issues when I played it, and I actually played through the port quite a bit in my attempts to get more endings. And you've gotta admit those anime cutscenes are pretty hot.

And let's not forget that Final Fantasy IV in that collection was a retranslated version, that's much harder and more faithful to the original Japanese version. It also has fewer technical issues than Trigger, if you're more inclined to that.

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