A (Bad) Port In Every Storm.....
It makes sense of course, why wouldnt it? Imagine you develop a fantastic game that everyone wants but it's only on 1 computer or console, what is a profit hungry publisher to do?
Below you will see/read our resident feature creature Jamalais have a pop at ports of games that very much should have never seen the light of day. Take aim and fire away at these awful excuses for games Jam....
Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
The obvious choice for this list. The original arcade version of this game was absolutely fantastic and is still loved and played by gamers today including myself.
Now would you believe Atari's port of Pac Man was the first game people could pre – order. People were hyped as hell for this game and what they got was ……. Well a total let down. Many are aware of the slowed down gameplay, ghosts flicker awkwardly and the design felt way off.
Now many consider Pac Man was a contributing cause to the 1983 since Atari printed more cartridges than consoles on the market at the time.
Resident Evil 2 (Tiger Game.Com)
Resident evil 2 is a game that has actually had several excellent ports with the huge exception of this one. Resident Evil 2 for the much hated Tiger Game.Com was a total fail.
It was a great effort trying to put a 32 bit game onto a black and white 8 bit system so for that you have to give people credit for trying however the reality of the massive undertasking showswith the final product.
The game is slow, controls are finicky and because of the scren blur it's very hard to play, maybe this was an early tech demo that somebody thought was worth finishing and releasing but basically they were wrong, this is bad.
Virtua Fighter (Megdrive)
Wow this was bad!!
Compared to the superior arcade version or even the Sega Saturn version. The Mega drive just could not handle 60 frames per second let alone 3D. Seriously who thought this was a good idea???
The result was a virtual fighter 2 slowed down 2D affair which may have been ok if you never played the arcade port which of course by the time this was released everyone in the entire world had.
It felt very much a Sega cash grab and unlike the Saturn version did not sell as well at all, considering it was also released late in the Megadrive's lifespan this has rightly gone down in history as a very bad port as well as a very bad actual game.
Mortal Kombat (SNES)
Rarely do you hear gamers saying the Mega Drive port is better than the Snes version (at least with the crowd I chat to) and that same crowd still argue the SNES version is better than the Mega Drive version in terms of gameplay and arcade feel but the jury is still out on that one.
What you can’t defend is Nintendo’s removal of the blood and fatalities which was what the entire game was about after all especially if you played the arcade version. Turns out the public agreed as the Mega Drive port outsold the SNES version.
Nintendo corrected this error for Mortal Kombat 2 by keeping in the gore and instead plastered the case with several warnings of its content, at least things turned out all right in the end here eh?
Jamalais Final Thoughts...
Maybe it's just me but surely the point of a port is to get the game as close as possible to the original version, to do anything otherwise is to simply not do what the design brief indicates.
It's no secret that rubbish ports do not sell and probably never really have so why do publishers even to this day keep doing this rush job phone-in filth?
Maybe it simply comes back to the number 1 reason to do anything, money. What a shame because when it's done right (Res Evil 2&3 from PS1 to Dreamcast) the world is a better place and that cash the publisher was wanting gets delivered in big 'ol trucks.
- Jamalais